Feeling animalistic. Feeling Hyena. Feeling Wolf. Feeling Dog. I am tongue and heart.
David Wojnarowicz, Artist & Activist

Outburst has been a safe space for dangerous ideas in queer performance for almost 16 years. We love the vital energy of queer performance makers who take brilliant risks in their work and we are committed supporting more opportunities for them to step into their radical potential. So we’re beyond excited to produce ­­­TONGUE + HEART, a new Outburst queer performance development programme supported by Jerwood Arts, who are huge supporters of artistic freedom of expression and seeply committed to improving conditions and opportunities for artists.

“We’re truly thrilled to be supporting Outburst Arts to run this carefully crafted, artist-centred programme that will bring new work by Northern Ireland most exciting performance makers to national and international attention.” Jerwood Arts, August 2022

With Outburst’s forthcoming new strategy (2023-2026) centring the development of queer artists and new queer works, Tongue + Heart: The Outburst / Jerwood Arts Artist Development Programme is delighted to support four of the most exciting NI based artists who are exploring and expanding queer ideas and queer forms in their practice. The artists, who were chosen through an open call process, will co-design the programme that will include mentoring, professional development and a new commission to be showcased at Outburst Queer Arts Festival, November 2023, along with ongoing support around expanding opportunities at home and beyond.

ARTISTS

Phillip McCrilly has spent several years working on solo projects and productions, often involving the transgressive and interdisciplinary possibilities of food, hospitality and education. He is now interested in ideas around outsourcing and involving others in the realisation of performed works, an area he will expand on through this programme

Maoilíosa Scott is a performance poet who works primarily in the Irish language. Their work explores working class rural experience through a feminist and queer lens. They have recently been exploring ideas around scripted theatre forms, currently exploring queer ideas around the Cailleach (the Irish divine hag/ witch) amongst other themes including folklore, magic, time, physics, language and tradition.

TJ Tytler (aka Carl Hartt) is a performer who mixes the mediums of drag and boylesque to explore social issues close to their heart, including class, gender and sexuality. They will be exploring collaborative performance ideas and what it is to be a queer performer working in alternative spaces, working overall towards “Making Drag Queer Again”.

Thomas Wells often situates his work in the intimacy of domestic spaces, using layered imagery to elicit feelings of nostalgia. Much like the early 00’s trend of the deconstructed dessert, his aims in this programme to focus on specific elements of the dinner party, layering images, sounds, text and action into a trifle like performance to facilitate a happening. His work through for Tongue + Heart will pull on all strands of his practice to create a new performance work exploring themes of queer identity and heritage in Belfast.

…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.

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?

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 test and question desire, pleasure and ability.

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

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?

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 test and question desire, pleasure and ability.

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

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 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 of 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 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

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.