November 2021 - Outburst Arts

Archive for November, 2021

Open Call: New Outburst Publication

Posted on: November 25th, 2021 by Marc Gregg

A periodical of smart new queer writing with a disco heart

Outburst Arts is pure excited to announce a brand new periodical of queer writing, with the launch issue dropping at Outburst Queer Arts Festival in November 2021. For our first issue we’re inviting some writers we know and love to share work and ideas and also leaving it wide open to new and established voices who would like to submit. We love surprises.

This is a non-academic periodical , making space for exciting new queer thinking, hits of literary goodness and accessible commentary on queer art, culture and ideas that there currently isn’t a platform for here.

Edited by poet Mícheál McCann, this is a publication that doesn’t compromise on big ideas in queer thinking. There’s space for everything from poetry to journalistic think pieces, long form essays to cultural reviews that will intersect and speak to our current moment. Anything that will expand our thinking, conversations and creativity in new and energising directions.

For the first issue of this publication we’re inviting you to explore queer joy. After the year that’s been in it, we could do with some meditation on queer joy, which has a history of persisting despite efforts to quell it. What does radical queer happiness look like? When so many ways and places we connect have been disrupted, where do we find our queer delight in connection? How and where is joy found in the body, in queer space, in the everyday, in community, in dancing, in kinship, in gentle transgression and bold imaginings?

Let’s see where we can take this. We would love to read your:

— long and short-form non-fiction (essays; commentary; think pieces up to 3,000 words, or else a 300 word pitch to the editor; pieces as short as 500-750 are welcome too! think micro-reviews, postcards or cultural diaries)

— poetry (2-3 pages of poems, up to 40 lines each; if in-translation, please include original [and have the rights to reproduce])

Please send all work and to micheal@outburstarts.com as a Word document or .PDF, alongside a short artist/writer biog (no more than 100 words). If you are submitting a pitch, please attach examples / links to existing writing. Simultaneous submission of your work elsewhere is fine, but please inform Mícheál if your work has been accepted elsewhere.

Contributors will be paid for their work.

Deadline for submission: July 9th 2021.

PHOTO ID: A wooden ladder is held up against a grubby white-wash building. One individual at the top of the ladder holds a pink triangle in their left hand while the right clings onto a metal grille. Three people are at the bottom of the ladder; two steady it while a third in a vivaciously yellow jumper and white bowling shoes directs the person hanging the pink triangle. Their hands and arms are posed at jaunty angles, as though they are posing a model or a photograph.

Photo credit: 1981 Don Woods, from the LGBT History Archive. Erection of pink triangle at Hirschfeld Centre, Dublin.

Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness – Outburst Book Group

Posted on: November 25th, 2021 by Marc Gregg

“that night, they were not divided”…

For May’s bookgroup we’re reading Radclyffe Hall’s groundbreaking classic novel The Well of Loneliness. Published in 1928, the book was swiftly banned from print for ‘obscenity’ reasons, only re-emerging into print in 1948. Despite being initially praised for its bravery and countercultural approach, it was soon railed against by various institutional, male critics. James Douglas (then editor of the Sunday Express) wrote:“In order to prevent the contamination and corruption of English fiction it is the duty of the critic to make it impossible for any other novelist to repeat this outrage. I say deliberately that this novel is not fit to be sold by any bookseller or to be borrowed from any library.” Meow.

Offering the first direct exploration of lesbian experience in fiction (Hall was referred to as “our Matron Saint”) the novel is part protest against queer subjugation, part manifesto for rights, as well as an incredibly important step toward the representation of homosexuality and lesbian women in particular. Many are revisiting and rereading The Well recently and exploring how the novel can be read in relation to trans masc and non-binary experience alongside lesbian experience.

The book is now, thankfully, wildly available in print, but please get in touch if you have any trouble finding or affording it and we can help!

Email: (micheal@outburstarts.com)

Outburst’s book group explores classic and contemporary queer books and ideas, sharing exciting writing that introduces and explores queer themes. From James Baldwin and Radclyffe Hall to Torrey Peters and Paul Mendez, we mix it up between the queer past and queer present, tones and themes, always sharing work that will get us talking! We meet about every six weeks to discuss a new book in a welcoming and friendly setting that’s open to everyone. For the moment the reading group is online, but we hope to be able to gather in person as well soon!

Image ID: An iconic painting by lesbian artist Hannah Gluckstein, or Gluck, that was used as the cover of the Virago Press edition of this book. It’s a sparse, close up, double head-and-shoulders portrait of two androgenous female / masc figures in profile close together, both with strong features and looking to left of picture. One has short, dark, combed back hair and looks straight ahead. The other has wavy short blonde hair, also combed back, and is looking upwards. There is nothing else in the picture except the figures against a grey background. It feels very powerful and mysterious.

Developing as a Queer Producer: Part 2

Posted on: November 25th, 2021 by Marc Gregg

This is the second in our series of free workshops for queer producers / event makers and people who want to be, with Outburst favourite, Manchester Creative Producer Greg Thorpe!

These two workshops and one event viewing on the evenings of 28/29/30 April (see full schedule below) are a follow-up to our popular programme hosted by Greg last August. Like those, these workshops are for queer folks who are looking to develop both their own events and the platforms available to them and support other queer artists to develop their work. Greg draws from his own extensive experience making queer events, from underground/DIY shows to legit or supported spaces, with queer artists from many disciplines. Together we will work in a small group to explore queer ways of making and producing your work.

You don’t have to have attended the last sessions to get involved, as there will be a refresher of what went before.

Registration is FREE, though strictly limited in numbers to keep the sharings more intimate.

As part of the short course, the group will watch and reflect on a new piece of queer stage work, LOB, by Roma Havers (“a tennis and poetry bonanza about moving through sporting spaces as a queer body”), which is part of Manchester’s Queer Contact Festival online.

Free tickets for that will be provided by Outburst for those registered. Further details on the show HERE.

We’re delighted that Roma will join us in discussion for the final session on Friday.

As this is a group activity, registration preference will be given to folks who can attend all three sessions.

If you can only attend some of the course but are still keen, please drop us a line to hello@outburstarts.com and we’ll be happy to offer you a place if there are any free after full attendees have registered.

Session 1: Wednesday 28 April, 6-8pm

What is ‘queer’ to us? What is queer about queer work?

Developing work and working with care.

Session 2 (screening): Thursday 29 April, 8–9.30pm

We’ll watch ‘LOB’ by Roma Havers at Queer Contact. You’ll be provided with your own ticket to watch online.

Followed by Q&A.

Session 3: Friday 30 April, 6–8pm

Critical thinking about ‘LOB’ and exploring watching queer work and being influenced by queer work.

There’ll be a guest appearance from Roma to discuss developing ‘LOB’, specifically around aspects of collaboration and queer methodologies.

Time for reflecting on participants’ own practice or current projects.

FACILITATOR INFO

Greg Thorpe is a creative producer, writer, artist, mentor and curator based in Manchester. He has worked in queer arts programming for over ten years, across nightlife, cabaret, dance, written word, visual art, film and performance. Greg is the Project Manager for Superbia, the year-round programme of LGBTQ arts and culture from Manchester Pride, and works for Islington Mill, the independent artist community in Salford. He curated and produced his own queer cabaret A Queer Revue! and has made work for and with Manchester International Festival, Southbank Centre, various arts centres and festivals, charities, individuals and organisations.

IMAGE CREDIT: LOB by Roma Havers. Illustration by Hannah Mclennan-Jones

The Gentrification of the Mind – Outburst Book Group

Posted on: November 25th, 2021 by Marc Gregg

**reading and talking together**

Yes, Outburst already has a book group where we read the best in queer fiction, but we also now have a reading group where we dig into theories that help us to see the world around us, and our place in it, in a different way (we can see queerly now!).

These reading group events will provide an informal, friendly and social atmosphere in which to explore challenging and compelling texts and ideas, There’s no need to prepare in advance. We will read and discuss one short text (e.g. one chapter of a book, an essay, etc.) together for each session.

We’re kicking this group off on 22 April with Sarah Schulman’s ‘The Gentrification of the Mind’…a vivid and accessible account of what queer culture has lost in recent decades.

“In this gripping memoir of the AIDS years (1981–1996), Sarah Schulman recalls how much of the rebellious queer culture, cheap rents, and a vibrant downtown arts movement vanished almost overnight to be replaced by gay conservative spokespeople and mainstream consumerism.”

“‘The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination’, reckons with the intellectual and spiritual consequences of this displacement… “Gentrification,” Schulman said recently in an interview on WNYC, “was not caused by individuals. It was the process of city policy.” A moratorium on construction of low-income housing and tax incentives for luxury developers combined to create severely class-stratified neighborhoods where anyone with less than significant wealth has limited options for where to live. For white newcomers to the city who can’t afford much, that often means renting an apartment in a neighborhood that doesn’t have many people who look like you.

But in Schulman’s telling, the struggle over real estate is only the most obvious side of the story. As gentrification reshapes people’s understanding of the urban experience, the damage goes deeper; the mind itself, she argues, becomes gentrified. “Spiritually,” she writes, “gentrification is the removal of the dynamic mix that defines urbanity — the familiar interaction of different kinds of people creating ideas together.” That lost mix was once the fuel for new art and new politics. Gentrification restricts the availability and viability of new and inventive forms of thought, art, and politics.” – Emily Douglas, LARB

Image credit: David Wojnarowicz, ‘Burning House’, 1981
Spray paint on cardstock stencil

Image description: A stencil of a simplified image in red and white of a small house with flames coming out of the windows.

Special School: Raisa Kabir

Posted on: November 25th, 2021 by Marc Gregg

…queering the idea of disabled labour…

We are delighted to be joined by artist and weaver Raisa Kabir for Special School on 20 April at 7:00pm. Raisa will discuss alternative weaving practices that can inform an embodied understanding of labour, queerness, disability and collective trauma.

Following this introductory talk, Raisa will lead a loom making workshop, producing a simple but functional loom, using clay (materials will be provided to participants, see details below).

By making her own looms with others, Raisa’s explores how colonial forms of textile production exclude the labour of disabled and queer people, and how we may reclaim these stories.

This event is split into two sections, with 30 tickets available for the talk and 12 for the talk and workshop. Workshop bookings must be completed a week in advance (bookings now closed for the workshop) and if you book a workshop ticket, Outburst will send you a package that will include the clay needed to make the looms.

The workshop is open to all disabled and non-disabled people. Please let us know about your access needs in advance.

Raisa Kabir:

Raisa Kabir is an interdisciplinary artist and weaver, who utilises woven text/textiles, sound, video and performance to materialise concepts concerning the cultural politics of cloth, labour and embodied geographies. Her (un)weaving performances comment on power, production, disability and the body as a living archive of collective trauma. She has participated in residencies and exhibited work at The Whitworth, The Tetley, Raven Row, Cove Park, Textile Arts Center NYC, and the Center for Craft Creativity and Design U.S. Her research into non mechanical looms, bodies and machines has taken her to Mexico and Bangladesh.

About Special School:

What can moving, making, writing and imagining teach us about disability and queerness?

Special School is a learning programme developed with curator Daniel Bermingham along with queer and crip (sick and disabled) artists and cultural producers. It is for the uninitiated and the curious as well as for those who bring their expertise to their own non-normative bodies.

Special School includes workshops in dance, writing, textiles and worldbuilding by queer crip artists. It is a space for those who are unsure in their bodies; for those who are looking to explore (their) disability and/or queerness through doing together; and a space to testngled in threads and question desire, pleasure and ability.

Image Description: Raisa sits on a pebble beach in a red and white garment. She is adorned in gold jewellery and her legs are tangled in red threads.

Torrey Peters, ‘Detransition, Baby’ – Outburst Book Group

Posted on: November 25th, 2021 by Marc Gregg

What would happen if we took seriously the perspectives of trans people, and allowed them to potentially transform how we see the whole of gender? – Mackenzie Warke

Up next in Outburst book group: Torrey Peters’ Detransition, Baby, one of the most talked about queer books of the year. We’ll meet over Zoom at 7pm on 13 April to chat informally over a cup of tea or a glass of wine…we’d love for you to join the discussion!

Reese nearly had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York, a job she didn’t hate. She’d scraped together a life previous generations of trans women could only dream of; the only thing missing was a child. Then everything fell apart and three years on Reese is still in self-destruct mode, avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

When her ex calls to ask if she wants to be a mother, Reese finds herself intrigued. After being attacked in the street, Amy de-transitioned to become Ames, changed jobs and, thinking he was infertile, started an affair with his boss Katrina. Now Katrina’s pregnant. Could the three of them form an unconventional family – and raise the baby together?

They say:

Irresistible … Detransition, Baby is the first great trans realist novel’ Grace Lavery, Guardian
‘A voraciously knowing, compulsively readable novel’ Chris Kraus
‘Tremendously funny and sexy as hell’ Juliet Jacques

The book group is free and open to all, but there are limited places. Please book your ticket below and we’ll send you the link to meet us online.

Outburst’s book group explores classic and contemporary queer books and ideas. We want to share accessible, exciting fiction (and more) that introduces queer themes, creative forms, and ways of being…and think about how these ideas relate to the queer futures we imagine for ourselves. We meet roughly every 5 or 6 weeks to discuss a new book in a welcoming and friendly setting. For the moment, our meeting place will be online, but in the future it will be in a city-centre Belfast location.

If you have any trouble finding/affording the book, please get in touch (participate(at)outburstarts.com) and we can help out!

ID: A cropped photo of the book cover, with the title on bright green, orange and pink drawn shapes including stylised faces.

Special School: Laura Lulika & Hang Linton

Posted on: November 25th, 2021 by Marc Gregg

We are delighted to be joined by artists Laura Lulika & Hang Linton for Special School on 23 March at 7:00pm. Using technology, sound, video and performance, and taking influence from queer crip cyborg theory and Afrofuturism, artists Laura Lulika & Hang Linton challenge the common preconceptions of care and what it is to be sick, crip and disabled.

To kick off the session, we will meet in Zoom for an introduction, where Hang and Laura will discuss their work, including ideas around how care, labour, sickness, performance and sound can be part of a practice of worldbuilding. Then we will move over to the messaging app Telegram for the rest of the session, where Hang and Laura will share three video and sound artworks – reflecting on care, the body, touch and sound – and host conversations in response. The move to Telegram is an experimental and accessible way to present work that accommodates ‘crip time’. Crip time is a concept that deals with, among other things, how our expectations of ‘how long things take’ are based on normative minds and bodies.

The session is open to all disabled and non-disabled people. People can also just attend the Zoom talk, if preferred. The event will be captioned by otter.ai and BSL/ISL can be provided – booking required. Please let us know any access requirements in advance by emailing participate@outburstarts.com.

Telegram is a free messenger app, that automatically deletes messages after a certain time and does not data mine users. If you would like to attend the Telegram session, please download the free Mobile, PC or Mac app. If you have any trouble, please get in touch on participate@outburstarts.com and we’ll try to help. We suggest you download the app the day before, if possible, to be sure it’s working for you.

About Special School:

What can moving, making, writing and imagining teach us about disability and queerness?

Laura Lulika & Hang Linton

(Laura: All pronouns, Hang: All pronouns)

Laura Lulika is a crip (sick+disabled) artist and researcher. Working predominantly with video, sound and performance, their practice explores themes of care, sexuality, labour, sickness and performativity in the everyday. Their work is driven by the rhythms, movement, and rituals within daily activity. Looking at accessibility from various perspectives, Lulika attempts to work outside of common capitalist artworld structures in liminal spaces that are not controlled by structures of oppression.

Lulika has worked with many community groups and collaboration is key to their practice. They strive to work in interdependent formats which reflect their care needs and the care needs of everyone involved.

Lulika is an initiating member of Sickness Affinity Group which has been active for three years.

Hang, is a self-taught musician, visual artist and filmmaker. Care, community and collaboration are integral to his work. Personal practices explore otherness through music, movement and creating trickster characters. Hang also has an ardent interest in supporting those from marginalised groups to express themselves through music, movement and performance. They have offered workshops in creative expression through music, including lyric writing and performance techniques.

Hang is currently researching immersive installations exploring alternative methods of care and support. Hang has also created ambient sound works and electronic music for dance, performance and live art, collaborating with a variety of choreographers and performers.

Image Description: A white fem person and black masc person are sitting on and standing beside a bed. They are bathed in orange and blue light. The person standing has their arm around the seated person. He/they looks at her/them, and she/they looks at the camera. Props include a doll, a tray of medical equipment, an ipod.

Image credit: Daniel Mutton

Queer Audio Description Short Course with Quiplash

Posted on: November 25th, 2021 by Marc Gregg

Outburst is delighted to offer a queer audio description short course with Quiplash, on the mornings of 15 and 16 March.

Audio description tells, in words, what is happening visually in a performance, TV, film, artworks etc. It was designed by and for blind and visually impaired people but other disabled and non-disabled audiences also use it. For queer audiences, artists, performers and film-makers, queering audio description can be crucially important to the work. Quiplash have been developing and teaching a Queer Audio Description method specifically for this reason. Quiplash are queer non binary blind theatre practitioner, producer and academic, Amelia Lander-Cavallo, and queer non binary neurodiverse artist and producer, Al Lander-Cavallo.

Over two morning sessions, we will focus on blind awareness, audio description methods as well as some general disability awareness. The class will include some practical exercises. The class will be intensive but run in a relaxed way. There will be a lot of information in the session, but how/if you interact with it is up to you.

Access: The event will be captioned by otter.ai. Please let us know about any access needs (ISL, BSL) you may have by emailing participate@outburstarts.com.

To book your place, please complete the Google form on the booking link. You will be guided from there to book your ticket. Tickets are free but we encourage a donation, if you have the means!

___________________________________________________

This short course takes place as part of Outburst’s Special School, a learning programme developed with curator Daniel Bermingham along with queer and crip (sick and disabled) artists and cultural producers. It is for the uninitiated and the curious as well as for those who bring their expertise of their own non-normative bodies.

We are thrilled to partner with University of Atypical for these audio description events.

ID: Image of two aerial performers in a black and white costumes that looks like space suits. They are tangled together and tumbling through mid air, held up by harnesses and surrounded by shoots of rainbow light. It looks as though we are seeing them through a prism. The background is a deep black.

Special School: D Mortimer

Posted on: November 25th, 2021 by Marc Gregg

a somewhere over the rainbow flex: trans crip writing with D Mortimer

We are delighted to be joined by writer D Mortimer for Special School on 9 March at 7:00pm. D will discuss their approach to writing, exploring how autobiography, collage and drawing can be used to explore trans crip narratives. This will be followed by a reading of their essay How to Draw Hands, and an optional writing exercise. The workshop is open to all disabled and non-disabled people. People can also just attend the talk, if preferred.

About Special School:

What can moving, making, writing and imagining teach us about disability and queerness?

D Mortimer

D Mortimer is a London-based writer and researcher focussed on trans crip narratives. Their work has been published in Granta Magazine, The Guardian and Vice as well as The International Journal of Comparative American Studies (2020). Their short story ‘Supermarket Revelations’ was published in Liberating the Canon: An Anthology of Innovative Fiction (ed. Waidner, Dostoyevsky Wannabe: 2018) and their poetic essay ‘Like Lord Byron’ was featured in A Queer Anthology of Sickness (ed. Porter, Pilot Press: 2019). An upcoming volume hybrid prose is slated for publication with Pilot Press in Spring 2021. They are currently reading for a PhD in Creative Writing at The University of Roehampton on the role of intimate naming in trans subject formation.

ID: A black and white photo of D looking into the camera. They are a white person with short cropped hair and they wear a light coloured shirt and t-shirt and dark tracksuit bottoms. A heavy chain is around their neck. Behind them are bookshelves and a desk on which a mug, lamp, books and other items are visible.

Image: Nora Nord

Special School: Kat Hawkins

Posted on: November 25th, 2021 by Marc Gregg

What can moving, making and imagining teach us about disability and queerness?

For the first Special School artist’s session of 2021 we are delighted to be joined by dancer Kat Hawkins on 23 February at 7:00pm. Kat will share their experiences of disability and sexuality in dance, and how their disability informs their dance practice. This will be followed by a movement workshop, exploring the creative ways disabled people move through space. The workshop is open to all disabled and non-disabled people. People can also just attend the talk, if preferred.

Special School

Special School includes workshops in dance, writing, textiles and worldbuilding by queer crip artists. It is a space for those who are unsure in their bodies; for those who are looking to explore (their) disability and/or queerness through doing together; and a space to test and question desire, pleasure and ability.

Kat Hawkins

Kat is a queer crip director, dance artist and PhD researcher looking at the role of an understudy in inclusive dance, and non-normative bodies in contemporary dance settings.

They create work focused on access, bodies, transcending bodies, time, and the spaces in between.

They are interested in access, pressures, prejudices from without and within and creating meaningful relationships focused on care and movement.

Images: Camilla Greenwell

QUEER ARTISTS, WRITERS & PRODUCERS OPEN MEETINGS

Posted on: November 25th, 2021 by Marc Gregg

We usually share our shout-out for work for the festival in March, so first we want to hear directly from queer artists and producers about the support you need to feed your creative process and make new things happen.

With many queer artists, writers and producers struggling both creatively and financially over the past year, we’re creating space this month before our festival Open Call to talk about making and sharing new work. With venues closed and the entertainment sector shut down, some people we’ve talked to don’t feel there’s any point in making work, while others are adapting to new ways of sharing creative ideas. Others are finding it hard to focus on creativity, or simply have to re-focus on basic material survival.

We’re hosting two open meetings the week of February 22nd, one daytime and one evening. Places are limited to 12 per session to ensure meaningful, open interaction. We’ll also share our own experiences of commissioning and delivering work during the last year and offer some suggestions around what’s working and what’s not that might spark some ideas and open up some opportunities. If interest is over capacity, we’ll add another date. As Outburst’s main focus is support for local queer arts, priority will be given to artists based in the North (queer artists we work with from the South also prioritised).

We’d like to use our resources in ways that will enable artists to make, collaborate, get support for your creative visions, shake it up a bit and find new ways of working and sharing with audiences.

This mad disruption has changed the way we think about and understand so many things and also offers an opportunity to make radical shifts in the types of work we create, how we make it and share it, the bolder themes we need to explore now and the potential audiences we can reach.

Please register and come and share your experiences and ideas.

SESSION 1: Monday 22^nd February 2pm (90 mins)

SESSION 2: Thursday 25^th February 6.30pm (90 mins)

ACCESS : The event will be captioned by otter.ai. Please let us know in advance about any access needs (ISL, BSL) you may have by emailing participate@outburstarts.com.

Queer Audio Description with Quiplash

Posted on: November 25th, 2021 by Marc Gregg

Upcoming! Outburst is delighted to be joined by Quiplash, who are queer non binary blind theatre practitioner, producer and academic, Amelia Lander-Cavallo, and queer non binary neurodiverse artist and producer, Al Lander-Cavallo.

Access: The event will be captioned by otter.ai. Please let us know about any access needs (ISL, BSL) you may have by emailing participate@outburstarts.com.

This talk will be followed in early March by a practical queer audio describing class for LGBTQ+ artists, organisers and allies who are interested in learning this essential skill.

This talk takes place as part of Outburst’s Special School, a learning programme developed with curator Daniel Bermingham along with queer and crip (sick and disabled) artists and cultural producers. It is for the uninitiated and the curious as well as for those who bring their expertise of their own non-normative bodies.

We are thrilled to partner with University of Atypical for these audio description events.

ID: A colourful aerial image of groups of people at the last in-person Queer Audio Description class in February 2020. They’re sitting on chairs and beanbags and are mid-exercise with Amelia Lander-Cavallo in grey dungarees, a yellow shirt and black trainers looking on lovingly.

James Baldwin’s ‘Giovanni’s Room’ – Outburst Book Group

Posted on: November 25th, 2021 by Marc Gregg

Up next: James Baldwin’s queer classic novel, Giovanni’s Room, exploring queer desire, shame, and the writer’s own sense of self. Outburst’s book group returns on 19 January at 7pm, join us!

“Baldwin’s haunting and controversial second novel is his most sustained treatment of sexuality, and a classic of gay literature. In a 1950s Paris swarming with expatriates and characterized by dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses, despite his determination to live the conventional life he envisions for himself. After meeting and proposing to a young woman, he falls into a lengthy affair with an Italian bartender and is confounded and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two.”

The book group is free and open to all, but there are limited places. Please let us know you’re planning to attend by emailing participate@outburstarts.com and we can send you the link to meet us online.

If you have any trouble finding/affording the book, please get in touch (participate(at)outburstarts.com) and we can help out!

Special School: Day Magee

Posted on: November 25th, 2021 by Marc Gregg

For the second Special School session we are delighted to be joined by performance and visual artist Day Magee. Exploring ideas of purity, chronic illness, mourning, abjection and queer desire, Day will present a talk on their expansive practice.

To conclude this session, curator Daniel Bermingham and Day will have a conversation about their work, influences and queer-crip practice in Ireland.

Special School is a programme developed with curator Daniel Bermingham that makes space for conversation and artistic development through talks and screenings with queer and crip (sick and disabled) artists and practitioners. These sessions are for both artists and a general audience and they focus on the history of crip/queer practice, providing a space for critical conversations about ideas such as ability, accessibility, and non-normative bodies and pleasures.

Day Magee is a performance and visual artist based between Limerick and Dublin. Since 2011, they have performed as part of live art organisations such as Livestock and the Dublin Live Art Festival, before pursuing a BA in Sculpture & Combined Media in Limerick School of Art & Design in 2017. They are a cofounder of the Limerick-based live art collective Evil, staging performance-based events and workshops outside conventional gallery settings. Their work has explored the developmental role of shame-based trauma in the relationships of the queer sick body, owing to the artist’s experiences with chronic pain and queerness under an Evangelical upbringing. Operating via stylised rituals in the form of performance-centered multimedia installations, the works hinge upon the processes of transubstantiation – the viral transmission of ideas via the suspension of disbelief. The artist interacts with totemic art objects in a ritualistic fashion, which is further charged by the witness of the audience.

‘The Watermelon Woman’ – New Queer Cinema Screening Series

Posted on: November 25th, 2021 by Marc Gregg

Join us for the continuation of our New Queer Cinema series for a screening of The Watermelon Woman (1996) and discussion. Cheryl Dunye’s classic film broke new ground in its representation of being queer and black and searching the archives for the wayward lives and beautiful experiments (in the words of Saidiya Hartman) of the women that came before you. Dunye is known more recently for her work on Dear White People, Queen Sugar, and her electrifying episode of Lovecraft Country (2020).

“Cheryl Dunye’s bitingly funny, deeply personal feature debut is a landmark look at the black lesbian experience. The director herself stars as Cheryl, a twenty-something lesbian struggling to make a documentary about Fae Richards, a beautiful and elusive 1930s black film actress popularly known as the Watermelon Woman. While uncovering the meaning of Richards’s life, Cheryl simultaneously experiences a total upheaval in her own when she embarks on an affair with a white woman (Guinevere Turner). Soon, each answer Cheryl discovers about the Watermelon Woman evokes a flurry of new questions about herself and her future.”

With thanks to Film Hub NI.

Archive for November, 2021

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