The Gift of Time: In Conversation with Holly Timpener

Holly Timpener, Our Bodies in the Pandemic, Montreal, Feminist Media Studio, 2021. Richard Mugwaneza.

By Brody Weaver

Holly Timpener is a non-binary performance artist, facilitator, and PhD Candidate in the Interdisciplinary Studies program at Concordia University. Their extensive body of performance art addresses themes of trauma, resistance, and transformation, particularly as they overlap with their own lived experiences. Making use of the body, duration, and minimal materials, there is something classic and pure about the performance work that Timpener creates. In Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia), where I have been living since 2018, this branch of performance art is less common than it’s more hybridized and interdisciplinary forms.

What draws me to Holly’s work are the containers they create through collaborative performance-as-research projects. Discussed in depth in this interview, Timpener has brought together more than 50 trans and non-binary artists to create performance art addressing trauma, gender, and transformation, and has managed to foster intentional spaces for their creation and reception across physical and digital space.

Pi*llOry, cleverly appropriating it’s name from a medieval device designed to secure one’s body in place for public humiliation and abuse, took place through five iterations in Toronto, Ontario (and online) between 2019 and 2020.

Epicenter Revolutions, an ongoing project forming the core of Timpener’s work as a PhD student, began in 2021 and has featured five iterations across Montréal (Quebec), Saint John (New Brunswick), Kumeyaay (San Diego), Poznań (Poland), Berlin (Germany), Mexico City (Mexico), and was recently manifested as the exhibition Epicenter Revolutions: Self-Documenting Internal Transformations at Eastern Bloc in partnership with Fierté Montréal (Montréal Pride).

I met Holly in the way most great connections are formed–a mutual friend saying, “Hey, I think you’d like what this person is doing. You should talk to them,” and for this, I have Grey Piitaapan Muldoon to thank.

This interview transcription is an edited version of Holly and I’s two-hour conversation, which took place on the morning of June 20th, 2025. Note that Epicenter Revolutions: Self-Documenting Internal Transformations is discussed here before the exhibition had taken place.

* * * * *

Brody:                                                                                                                                    

To get us started, I would love to hear about how you began creating performance art. What was your catalyst?

Holly:                                                                                                                                     

I danced and I went to theatre school, but I have a real problem with authority. Autonomy is a big value in my life, and I felt like it wasn’t being met in a theatre and dance context. I was searching for something where I could still perform and meld my life into the performance so that they weren’t so separate.

In 2011, I met Sylvie Tourangeau, who is one of the core members of the Montreal-based performance group called the TouVA Collective, with Victoria Stanton and Anne Bérubé. Sylvia was doing a performance workshop on Toronto Island, and it changed my life. She has been my mentor ever since. Some of the things I’ll be talking about today, I note back to this workshop, because it created my foundation as a performance artist and facilitator. When I opened the door to enter the workshop, I was hit by a wall of magic. I joined the circle with Sylvie and the other participants, and I was ready to learn skills. I was ready to learn technique, which comes from my theatre background. Sylvia’s teachings are open to letting people extend their life experiences into the art that they create. I wasn’t ready for the kind of radical openness she gave me, this permission to look inside and trust that I knew what I needed to do.

Holly Timpener, Trans Bible Readings, Saint John, Epicenter Three, 2022. Corey Negus.

Brody:                                                                                                              

A lot of people have stories of an influential teacher, mentor, or role model who changed their path forever–it’s informative to know who influences artists in their early stages. It’s clear to me that you are a performance artist before you are an academic, and I mean that as a compliment.

Holly:

I take it as one.

Brody:

What you’re saying about performance art as an accessible entry point for theorizing about lived experience and embodiment is so powerful and real. That’s its special power, and what makes performance a unique form of art.

I want to ask you about how that formative workshop experience influenced your approach to the collaborative projects you’ve organized, called Pi*llOry and Epicenter Revolutions. Can you describe these projects for readers who may not be familiar? They’re quite expansive with multiple iterations, locations, and participating artists.

Holly:                                                                                                                                        

My curiosity and techniques for performance art developed through taking part in workshops, constantly in group settings, and I found that is where I grew. Right before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was craving queer and trans community, and performance community, those spaces of trust. I’ve been out for most of my life, and my experiences within these workshops were with queer people, and that’s how I developed trust and deepened relationships. Because of my history with trauma, I wanted to understand the relationship between queerness and trauma, which I had been questioning in my own art practice. Entering my master’s program, I wanted to further understand the relationship between performance and trauma, so I created Pi*llOry. Pi*llOry was an invitation for queer folks to perform trauma to shift it into something else.

I was curious how performance can help form queer networks of healing. There were five iterations of this project, with the last being online, and all of the artists who participated were shifting trauma in different ways. While I was researching, I became interested in how performance art transforms the self, not physically, but internally. Transforming trauma, and queer trauma specifically, has an impact on our internal sensations and internal experience. I was looking for existing resources focusing on the intersection of performance art and internal transformation, but I couldn’t find anything. Of course, external transformation is a huge part of performance art. They go hand in hand.

As Pi*llOry was coming to an end, I was in love with working collaboratively and feeling so fulfilled. These collaborations and groups helped get me through COVID–we were there for each other, online, and we were checking in on each other throughout the whole process. From the first iteration, we always kept in contact, and performers from previous iterations would attend the later iterations, and it was a real family. That was wonderful.

Leena Raudvee, Teetering on the Edge, Toronto Media Arts Centre, Pi*llOry One, 2019. Aedan Crooke.

I wanted to create something that could address internal transformations through performance. Thinking back to my first workshop with Sylvie, something we said every day, multiple times a day after a performance, experience, or what have you–“I was transformed.” All the time. How was that? How was that experience for you? “I was transformed.” It’s funny, looking back on it. It could be so cliche, and perhaps it was. I have no problems with cliches. If it was said so much, why could I not read anything about it? Internal transformations initiated through performance art have helped me learn so much about my own gender identity, and I suspect that other trans and non-binary artists have had the same experience.

My response was to create the project Epicenter Revolutions so that we could create a family again, and continue the family created in Pi*llOry. It started in 2021, with the last iteration happening in 2024. The project travelled to Poznan, Poland, Berlin, Germany, and Mexico City, and some participants were in Guadalajara, Mexico, and San Diego, California. We were lucky to have participants all over the world who have different experiences of gender, politically and personally, which affect their gender and internal transformations. A lot of the work addressed trauma in different ways, so it has remained a through-line between the two projects.

Brody:                                                                                                       

Jumping back to Pi*llOry, queer performers invited queer audiences who knew they would be witnessing work intended to shift trauma. You created a semi-closed space where the performers and the audience are signing on to something specific. I think that’s key to understanding the success of Pi*llOry, and in turn Epicenter. We’ve all had experiences where we are moving around an art gallery and encounter an intense artwork that we were not prepared to see. This brings forward a conversation about emotional safety and “trigger warnings,” if you will. This is a common topic in art spaces today, to which I think a lot of old school feminists and performance artists might say, “I don’t really care about any of that. The work is meant to be an affront.” At the same time, I think the container that you’re creating is intentional and wise. Can you talk more about your practice of inviting participants and witnesses into your projects and how you approach creating that container?

Claudia Edwards, Regenesis, Pi*llOry Two, Kensington Market, Toronto, 2019. Chris Blanchnot.

Holly:                                                                                                                          

I call myself a facilitator, but it is important to me to act without any kind of hierarchy. I consider myself an equal participant in all the projects. I separate myself as the academic who has the opportunity and privilege granted to me by an institution to act as the facilitator. In both Pi*llOry and Epicenter, I put out calls for participation through social media and people who participated often helped me disseminate the call. Since performance art is quite a niche category, it was important for me that anybody who wanted to participate could be in the project, regardless of whether or not they have performed before. I never asked for a CV.

Each iteration is structured differently because it has to suit the needs of each individual. There’s a lot of flexibility and creativity in the ways the journey might manifest leading up to the event itself. I try to facilitate in an open way so that everyone feels included and encouraged to participate in the way that works for them, while maintaining a sense of community and trust. This helps the community grow and has allowed us to become close to one another. When queer folks come together and are invited to talk about their experiences, that container holds us.                                                                                                                                                                           

The second important part is the invitation–who are we going to invite? What I’ve asked the participants of both projects to engage in is deep and sensitive work. Throughout our meetings together, we talked about traumas, our experiences with gender and developed a container of trust. How do we transfer that into inviting witnesses? The difference between an audience and a witness becomes important in this context. Where the event takes place is equally important, choosing not theatres, but locations that would instigate an environment of containment and intimacy. There is a sensitivity within performance art of knowing that the witness holds responsibility, and the spaces that we chose were important in creating that. In Pi*llOry, there wasn’t a huge call out for an audience–we invited queer witnesses, we invited people personally. To witness actively, rather than “You’re here to perform for me,” we’re creating spaces where we’re allowing each other to embody something that’s very personal.

Racquel Rowe, Washing Rice, Pi*llOry Two, Kensington Market, Toronto, 2019. Chris Blanchnot.

Brody:                                                                                                            

Thanks for breaking that down on the back end of facilitating Pi*llOry and Epicenter. It’s valuable to document the processes that create events and showcases so that we can continually learn from one another. What you’ve shared makes me think of how these projects that you’re organizing are situated in a rich lineage of queer and trans performance culture: cabaret, drag, music, and all the oral and performative traditions that we have. Historically, who has known that these things are occurring? Who knows where to go, and when? Beyond getting the right people in the room, who shows up can have severe consequences, for example, in the case of police raids of bars and other performance spaces. In Pi*llOry, the iterations happened in Toronto, right?

Holly:                                                                                                           

Yeah, it was all in Toronto. Except for the online iteration, which was a collaboration with GLAD Day Bookstore (the queer bookstore in Toronto), because they were administering a micro-grant program for artists to be able to continue their practices during the COVID-19 Pandemic. They were our hub, and they were able to support me with the technical aspects of the online iteration, which I am very thankful for. The artists were all in different places – Santiago Tamayo Soler and myself were in Montreal, Aisha Bentham was in Toronto, and Rahki was in Mexico.

Brody:                                                                                                            

From my perspective as someone who began medical transition during the pandemic, I witnessed and participated in a resurgence of trans culture and embodiment that happened during that time, primarily and often by necessity, in online spaces. Both performance-as-research projects we’re discussing had at least one iteration purely online, and while someone might see that pivot as a compromise, I think that it reflects the moment in trans and non-binary culture from which they emerged.

Epicenter appears to be more complex, with iterations happening in different places across the globe. I feel like you built capacity with Pi*llOry and worked on a grander scale with Epicenter. Can you talk more about Epicenter, and break down what it was like to take your approach to different cultural and political contexts?

Holly:                                                                                                         

Epicenter is different from Pi*llOry, particularly with how it concerns the witness and act of witnessing. I realized in my own practice: I don’t need a witness to perform. When I perform, I enter into a state of awareness with a specific intention, engaging in a kind of internal listening. I don’t need anybody to witness me to know that I have switched into a state of awareness, turning my attention focus on my own sensations.

Part of the invitation for Epicenter asked the participating artists to likewise turn inwards during performances, to listen to what is happening inside of themselves. This raises a question: do we need witnesses? In Pi*llOry, we would take turns performing one after another, aside from a few durational pieces, but in Epicenter, the works are explicitly durational. We performed for four to six hours alongside one another, engaged in internal listening in a shared space. Even though we performed individually, we came to the realization that we were also each other’s witnesses.

Holly Timpener, One Piece at a Time, Montreal, Epicenter Revolutions Two, 2022. Richard Mugwaneza.

Several Epicenter interactions took place during COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions, so the question of witnesses was concerned with safety and minimizing transmission of the virus as well. The first Epicenter took place at the Montreal LGBTQ+ Centre, a large space that allowed for physical distance between performers and attendees. At this iteration, we had invigilators, which is somebody who stays with a performer throughout a durational work to watch out for physical hazards, dangers, and to help maintain our immuno-accessibility protocols.

In second Epicenter iteration, we performed in our own physical spaces: Aquarius Funkk performed in their house in Guadalajara, Grey Piitaapan Muldoon performed in a studio space in Halifax, joey eddy performed in a gallery space, and I performed in a garage. We were connected through a shared video call, not publicly available online, but projected in each place for IRL witnesses to see the different performances. We invited people to attend who we knew and trusted, but it became more about witnessing one another than having external witnesses, or an audience, so to speak. Engaged in intense inward and collective listening, we were not trying to sell seats. It wasn’t part of the process.

Grey Piitaapan Muldoon, Road Songs for Fugitives, Halifax, Epicenter Revolutions Two, 2022. Grey Piitapaan Muldoon.

However, in Poznań, possibly because there are so many people and because I was working out of a queer cafe during my time there, we did promote it more publicly in the cafe itself. If anybody wants to go to a queer hub in Poland, it’s Poznań. One of the reasons I wanted to travel with Epicenter was my curiosity about how people’s lived experiences with politics in different parts of the world have affected their gender identities and gender experiences. The participating artists and I spoke about how we felt safe inviting people from this cafe, and I had been there writing my dissertation, so I got to know some of the regulars, some of whom came to witness each performance. I think this pivot speaks to the reality that queers know how to witness queers. We know how to enter a space and understand that performing requires a great deal of care, and often we know this without being told. It’s a lovely thing about queer community that touches me and has touched both Pi*llOry and Epicenter. It felt like we were extending our family a little bit.

Brody:                                                                                                               

The durational aspect of Epicenter is important, where you’re all performing alongside one another for an extended period. There are many art forms that break down the divide between art and life so severely that it can become hard to distinguish between the two, and durational performance is definitely one of them. It creates heightened senses, intense and sometimes painful physical sensations, and a tension between time and the body which likewise occur in different creative, spiritual, and even sexual practices. I’m curious to hear more about the relationship between the subject of internal transformation and its chosen expression in durational performance: what do you think are the ingredients that make it particularly suited for addressing the subject of internal transformation?

Holly:                                                                                                              

I think one thing that often gets muddied is durational performance and endurance performance art. Duration has to do with time. There has to be a curiosity about what time will do to your intention. In endurance performance, it is more about pushing boundaries and borders, especially within the body, which time can influence but is not necessarily a foundational element. Over the past few years, it’s rare for me to perform anything that’s longer than four hours. I’m drawn to it because extending time pushes your boundaries of awareness and pushes your capacity to understand and meet yourself. You get bored, you get tired, you get disinterested, and you ask yourself: what is it that is making me keep going?

That is what I think is interesting, when you hit that border of, “Why am I continuing this?” That’s when magic happens, and for myself and some of the participating artists, that’s when internal transformation happens. That’s when you start uncovering new things about yourself. Time is a gift.

I connect internal transformation to gender identity because people who do not conform to binaries of gender are constantly performing different selves to fit into different social spaces, which in turn affects one’s internal sensations. It happens fast, and it’s not necessarily something that always feels pleasant. It’s tiring. It’s not something that you are often able to spend time investigating. Despite how valuable time is for self-discovery, we don’t often ask ourselves: What is this doing to me? What are these internal shifts? How is this affecting my experience of self? To experience the gift of time permits you to uncover aspects of yourself, some of which you’ll want to keep and others you’ll want to leave behind. At the same time, you might find power in meeting the edges of your own boredom, frustration, and exhaustion. It’s not always an amazing, “A-hah!” moment. It can be more like, “I have something inside of me that’s special, that’s mine, that’s unique, that’s powerful.” That can be harnessed for yourself and to support the community of people around you who are going through their own internal transformations. After doing this for five hours, radical empathy for yourself and the community of performers can rise up. Hopefully, that empathy can be transferred into other spaces beyond performance and Epicenter.

Aquarius Funkk, Untitled, Guadalajara, Mexico. Epicenter Revolutions Two, 2022. Sky Vermanei.

Beyond creating a durational performance, Epicenter was about embodying aspects of your gender identity. This was very different than Pi*llOry, where embodied trauma was the subject. In Pi*llOry, the invitation was not to relive, re-perform, or re-traumatize yourself. It was to use the space of performance to pick at and pull apart an aspect of a traumatic experience to intentionally shift it into something new. In Epicenter, each artist’s curiosity created their own performance intentions from their lived experience of gender.

Brody:                                                                                                             

What do you think was the result of specifically looking at internal transformations of gender for the participants? It’s likely impossible to summarize with so many different artists, but if you have any examples or highlights to share, I would love to hear them.

Holly:                                                                                                            

There was an artist in the Poznań iteration of Epicenter, Pipeq Szczęsnowicz, who performed a work where she had a trunk of clothes in front of her and wore noise-cancelling headphones. With each song that played into her ears, she would change her outfit and dance to the song. They were looking at performing different selves, and how you perform different selves, but rather than in the external world of others’ perceptions, they were celebrating the multiple selves within them that were all beautiful. Once their performance had concluded, they shared with me that they did not want to stop dancing. They did not want it to end. Through the performance, they realized that they did not get to have that amount of joy and fun in other parts of their life.  I think for her, through this celebration of herself, she came to honour those parts of herself and recognize the need to find ways to continue that beyond the performance itself.

Pipeq Szczesnowicz, Untitled, Poznan, Poland, Epicenter Six, 2023. Mattia Spich.

Damaris Baker was a performer in the first Epicenter, and Damaris has had a long journey with their physical appearance as a non-binary person. They have a beard while still having a somewhat femme exterior. During COVID, they were diagnosed with breast cancer, so they were really interested in death and how it could relate to an internal listening of gender. In their performance, they had mounds of dirt, cat claws, and hair. They glued the hair onto their body, and they were singing to dirt and bones, shaking with this exterior shell of dirt and hair. They wrote about how duration was a big part of that work, and how it confronted feelings of shame. I remember they shared their intention to add hair to their body to resist others’ discomfort in their interview: “You don’t want to see hair on my body. Well, I’m going to glue more on, and how do you like that?” They told a story about a passerby who had told her that she should stay at home: “Why would you leave the house with that hair on your face?” Gluing hair on her body was a way to help lay that shame to rest.

In the fourth iteration of Epicenter, Eva Gonzales-Ruskiewicz, who performed in San Diego, also talked about experiences with shame. They did this piece where they felted an outline of their body onto pieces of a trans flag, and they decided to be topless. They felt shame during the performance, this feeling of “I’m not trans enough, my body is not going to be seen as trans enough. I’m working with this trans flag, but I have a chest that doesn’t signify trans.” In their reflection and interview, they described how they invited a few close friends and their partner as witnesses, and emphasized how they held space and witnessed as an act of care. This, they felt, helped them transform that shame through feeling held by their community.

Eva Gonzalez, Rewilding, San Diego, CA, Epicenter Four, 2022. Naomi Nadreau.

Those are some wonderful examples of how internal transformations about gender manifested through durational performance in Epicenter. Often, failure or unexpected issues can come up during a performance, and while this may feel uncomfortable at first, working through it and sticking with failure makes it easier to confront failure in everyday life.

Brody:                                                                                                              

The examples you’ve relayed make me think of something you shared earlier–queer and trans people want to speak about their experiences, especially in a safe environment. I have a background as a facilitator as well, but primarily in social and community programming where direct conversation and verbal engagement are more common. When I’m facilitating in those spaces, I notice that there are always some attendees who don’t participate or who are not being given the right environment to serve their full presence. They might be having a hard time finding their voice or the right moment to jump in. Hearing about how you utilize performance as an arts-based method for community building and empowerment, creating the conditions for queer and trans people to see and be seen outside of the constraints of language, highlights performance as a more accessible and neurodivergent way to engage groups of people. It sounds like you’ve been able to help people find their power, and that’s an amazing gift to share. I think you should be proud of that.

Holly:                                                                                                         

Thank you. Beyond accessibility, it is meaningful that the form of performance we’re engaging in Epicenter and Pi*llOry is not a solo endeavour: it is intentionally collaborative. I was gifted with early experiences of learning about performance art and myself through collaborative settings in workshops and community settings. Sometimes, I think that my performance-as-research projects are a selfish act–I crave that community, I need it, and I’m doing it for myself as well. This doesn’t just go one way. The artists in both projects have given me a space where I get to talk about my experiences and work through traumas, questions, and curiosities. I would never have been able to do that without each and everyone one of the people who have taken part in these projects. I would not be the person I am today without the containers they helped create.

Brody:                                                                                                           

In my own life, I’ve often said that creating art has been one of the most healing things I’ve ever done. It far outpaces what formal therapy has ever done for me. It is transformational to create art from inside of yourself, collaborate with others, and have that be witnessed in the world.

You have a project alongside Fierté Montréal (Montréal Pride), the exhibition Epicenter Revolutions: Self-Documenting Internal Transformations at Eastern Bloc from August 1st–9th, 2025, with a performance event on the 7th. Can you tell me more about this project and how it extends or adapts your typical working method with Epicenter?

Holly:                                                                                                           

Most of the artists in Epicenter are interdisciplinary artists, meaning they work in multiple mediums, including and other than performance art itself. The Epicenter performances were documented through photography, but we lost the documentation for the fifth iteration because the photographer’s roof caved in during a rainstorm, damaging his equipment. I saw it as a blessing in disguise, because it made us rethink documenting the project through photography alone. Obviously, we love having images of our work and need them for grants, funding agencies, and applications, but the performances’ focus on internal transformations raised a question of the appropriateness of a third party creating the documentation. We asked ourselves: How can we flip the traditional script of others documenting trans people, and create our own documentation of our own experiences? On a larger scale, there’s wonderful and challenging conversations to be had about trans people, documentation, and control. For example, the rigorous documentation required to access gender affirming health care.

I’m honoured that the participating artists have chosen to put faith in Epicenter Revolutions: Self-Documenting Internal Transformations and use it as an opportunity to continue our conversations about how best to create a record, document, or extension of the five iterations of the project. We all have different ideas and methods for engaging documentation, and these will make up the exhibition at Eastern Bloc in Montreal, including mediums like sound, video, installation, and ephemera. For example, Eva Gonzalez, the artist who used felting in their performance, has subscribed to major newspapers in the United States and has been clipping headlines and articles that talk about trans rights. Eva is creating a hand-drawn film from these materials which will be projected in the gallery, and the clippings will be present for gallery attendees and collaborators alike to create a papier-mâché sculpture that will hang in front of the projection to distort and reframe the headlines.

Another Epicenter artist in Poland, Kai Milačić, used a full-length mirror to paint and continually repaint their reflection during their performance, resulting in this layered depiction of themself and the internal listening they were engaged in. They have continued this process since the iteration in Poland, engaged in daily self-observation and self-portraiture, and these will be part of the exhibition.

Kai Milačić, Transition of the line, Poznan, Poland, Epicenter Six, 2023. Skye Wilk.

Damaris Baker, whose performance featured gluing hair on their body, is going to be doing another participatory action involving dirt and a recording of themself singing, alongside a space for viewers to write down what the sounds bring out of them. While listening, people will be able to interact with dirt and feel their own internal sensations, and maybe even transformations. Freddie Wulf from the Berlin iteration is sending their top surgery band aids to display.

Since August of last year, we’ve been discussing and asking each other: What means and modes of documentation are effective for performance art? How and when can we document performance? Do witnesses alter or influence the nature of documentation? How does documentation create opportunities to reflect, reconsider, or extend performance? Through this process, artists from different iterations of Epicenter have gotten to meet one another over regular online meetings, so it has extended and strengthened our community as well. Eventually, materials from the exhibition will become a publication with writing from each artist about their performances and documentation process, and in their own languages, with English translations. They can use drawings,  sketches, or whatever means of communication they want to express how they thought about documentation. It will be another document and archive of trans narratives, experiences and creations, with the artists having ownership and authority to discuss their own experiences, methodologies, and ways of living and creating for other people to come across.

Ruya, Silent Revolution, Poznan, Poland, Epicenter Revolutions Six, 2023. Mattia Spich.

Brody:                                                                                                            

Both the exhibition and publication sound fabulous. It’s exciting to hear that the documentation emerging from the durational performances has a kind of durational or time-based element itself, manifesting in acts of collecting, repetition, and revisiting.

You have, alongside all the artists that you’ve worked with, created a performance art community that centres queer and trans experiences. That’s really admirable. Do you have any advice, words of encouragement, or wisdom to share with someone who might want to create a queer performance art community where they live?

Holly:                                                                                                              

The first thing I would say is: just do it. Find a group of people that are curious and get weird. Just start. Nobody needs to know how to do performance art because we already do. We’re performing every day. Be brave and silly and find a group of people ready to do the same. Most of these things happen in people’s homes. There are quite a few collectives in Toronto that have happenings in people’s houses, where they invite friends and share small pieces of performance and talk about them.

You can easily find performance scores online. There’s a great book by Guillermo Gómez-Peña, who is the founder of La Pocha Nostra, a performance group based in Mexico, creating art and resources on non-hierarchical performance pedagogy. They have a book that I highly recommend, full of scores, exercises, and teachings: La Pocha Nostra: A Handbook for the Rebel Artist in a Post Democratic Society (2020).

You can also reach out to artist-run centres in your area and ask them if they know anything happening about performance art. There are often little workshops that happen that might not reach people widely. Ask: Are there performance events happening soon? Do you have any contacts of people who organize performance events? I think the best way to do it is to create opportunities for yourself and others from the ground up. It’s my favourite thing to do.

You can find more of Holly Timpener’s work on their website and Instagram.

Taking care but letting go: A Conversation with Jagoda Dobecka

Where are the worlds that flowers long for? Local Memorial Fest, Bródno Sculpture Park, Warsaw, Kacper Szalecki and Frajda Natychmiast performing The story of two flowers growing on opposite banks of the river, photo by Wojtek Kaniewsk.

By Juliane Foronda

Pansies, friendship bracelets, karaoke, and shared meals all function as gentle tethers into the tender practice of Polish artist Jagoda Dobecka. Based in Wrocław, and a current PhD candidate at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, Dobecka’s work deals with notions surrounding loss, grief, memory, and nostalgia. With a commitment to gathering being a strong pillar in her work, she often invites the public to join her in planting a garden, sing sad songs, or come and cook nostalgic dishes together.

Jagoda’s practice has this beautiful way of making you laugh just as much as it will make you cry. I often find myself smirking through tears whenever I’m fortunate enough to experience her work in person. The courage to choose the path of vulnerability often goes unacknowledged in a world where softness isn’t always seen as a strength. Her work challenges the norms of hierarchy, patriarchy, accessibility, and most other social conventions in manners that may appear so obvious or simple, but are laced with layers of consideration, comfort, and care the more that the works unfold and let you in.

This conversation sheds light on how much we can learn from our surroundings, the importance of saving others from loneliness, and the necessity of community. Her work is a reminder that much like flowers, strings, songs, and food, we can be something more when we’re united—we are stronger together than we are apart.

Juliane: Can you explain why you make work and what your practice is about?

Jagoda: I am creating or building temporary safe spaces where people can exchange their experiences and emotions. These can be performative events such as dinners, karaoke, or meetings to make a garden together. The important factor of those events is participation and encouraging the guests to take part. Materially, I mostly work with text, food, and plants. This is the framework that I’m using to talk about and share the painful experiences that are connected with loss, grief, nostalgia, and longing. I feel that we can sometimes censor ourselves and we don’t want to share those experiences with other people for different reasons, and I thought that it could be helpful to have that kind of space to talk about stuff and feel a sense of community.

To you, what makes for a safe space?

As the host, I think a lot about the space and its arrangement. I like open spaces such as gardens and parks that often have good connotations and some significance to the project itself. I also consider what guests might expect and what they might be willing to give. I’m just building a frame, which is very easy to build again. For a performative dinner, I bring the table, chairs, and food and invite people to come together. I try to be cautious and observant and to make people who are participating feel comfortable. At some point, I think I’m also trying to be invisible and let visitors hold the space as they are. I’m just starting it, but then other people are kind of doing whatever they want with it. It’s a lot about taking care of the whole situation, but also letting go.

Roots of Community, performative dinner in collaboration with Tomek Pawłowski-Jarmołajew, sessi.space, Brno, photo by Polina Davydenko.

Do you see the guests, in a sense, like materials in your work?

Both yes and no. I started making this type of work quite recently so after almost each event, I interview the people. If I know them already, I can text them afterward and ask questions about their experience and their overall feelings. I’m also trying to be critical and see how people are interacting with the whole situation and get their feedback on it. It’s an important part of my research to listen to people and what they have to say about the whole experience. It’s usually positive stuff, but sometimes people complain or say that they didn’t feel so good when something happened. It’s priceless to have that sort of feedback and to see how I can navigate that next time and consider what to change. During the actual events, I don’t think I have ever seen them as material.

Speaking of research, what do you think the purpose of your artistic research is right now? What are you currently working on, and what has led you to this point?

I was in this moment in life when I felt that everything collapsed, and I really needed some support. Then I realized that there are plenty of people like me out there. I thought that maybe I could somehow create, as I said, this frame, where we can meet and talk about things and just have nice experiences of being together. The events are open to everyone, so whoever comes is welcome to participate and become a part of this temporary community. The range of personas is wide. I know that bonds were created during these events as people got to know each other. I call it temporary, but it doesn’t have to be.

It’s not something special I’m doing. Most of these things happen anyway in life: people already meet and have dinners, sing songs, and read books together. Since I work in the arts, I was also thinking about the institutional and non-institutional context in relation to the types of events I have. Every art institution is talking about care, how they should be more open and more welcoming, and asking a lot of questions about how to do this. I wanted to see if it’s possible to build this space within an institutional context. I’ve made a lot of events myself or worked with artist-run spaces or more independent spaces, but then I also did a few events with art institutions, and I can see the difference. I think that the art institution has stiffness within its structure. It also translates into the events since people are less…open, or less free, or whatever.

Do you see a big difference in the demographic or groups of people that would come to maybe more of an ad-hoc or DIY event versus one that’s run more formally with a museum or another institution?

Yeah, one difference is that I see many more elderly people coming to institutions. I think the reason for this is that many artist-run spaces, especially in Poland, don’t have such a long lifespan. They usually exist for two or three years, and then they die, so these spaces also attract younger people who are usually the ones who are showing in, curating, and creating them.

Friendship bracelet, 2022, photo Piotr Blajerski.

I know you have a background in painting. Can you speak more about how you consider your materials and media in your current practice?

I do have a background in painting, which I think I suppress the more that I focus on other things that I’m more interested in. I can divide my practice into two parts when considering materials. One part is the participatory events. I bring food, karaoke, plants, or texts from books – the meeting is the material. Then there’s this other aspect to my practice where I like to create objects or just interdisciplinary works that could be more traditionally exhibited. For example, I made this huge friendship bracelet, which was three meters long. I wanted to recreate the friendship bracelets that many of us used to make when we were kids as a sort of statement, but also a monument for those relationships that we had when we were young. I got really invested in finding the perfect ropes.

I don’t feel that attached to any material or medium. I think that a very strong basis for my work is text. Making notes or writing things that happened to me. I was recently introduced to automatic writing, which is great. After you experience something, you just write for 10 minutes – whatever comes to your head. It’s like a nice source of raw material that you can use.

Where are the worlds that flowers long for? Local Memorial Fest, Bródno Sculpture Park, Warsaw, Wake Karaoke, photo by Wojtek Kaniewski.

It appears the concept tends to inform the material(s). I also wanted to talk about how a lot of your work deals with grief and the themes that surround it. Do you see grief as inspiration, or what’s your relationship with grief in relation to your work?

I think it’s similar to what you asked about the people who are participating in my events, I see grief as both a material and an inspiration.

I experienced grief, and I’m still experiencing it. And I know that every person who is dealing with this topic also has their own experience as well. I know that each experience is very different; it’s not the same for everyone. It really is both the material and inspiration in one since my own experience of it acts as a material in a sense, but I am also inspired by seeing grief in a broader context where I can just see that it is a loss in a more general sense. What’s the difference between grief and longing? I’m just thinking about those things and how it all binds together. I think grief is a material inspiration.

I think one thing I’ve always found quite special about your practice is how you don’t shy away from heavier topics (such as grief), but, at least from my experience of your work – it doesn’t consume it. You pull in quite nostalgic things to offer a different perspective.

Yeah, I feel like this wasn’t a fully conscious decision to use these nostalgic elements, I think it was just purely subconscious.

Then is it a bit of your personal way of coping?

Probably. The thing with nostalgia is that it is also a sort of loss. And I’m very heavy into nostalgia. I’m nostalgic about all the things and it’s sometimes embarrassing, but I’m really that person who remembers things like games and snacks from when we were younger with a deep fondness. Nostalgia is a loss of sorts, but it’s maybe a bit lighter, or at least within a broader recognition of loss. Nostalgia is emotionally lighter than grief so maybe it’s just preparation for the heavier topics. We can first face the nostalgia to see the comfort in loss. As I said, it’s not something that was really intentional, but it might work as this sort of blanket that you’re wearing to feel safer as you see that things are going away.

It could also be about accessibility. I think this sort of juxtaposition of karaoke, for example, which is a really fun activity that we do with friends to have a good time, but then we’re doing grieving karaoke which is all sad songs about dying, loss, and grief. So, we kind of have both because we settle into the party activity, but with those popular songs that are extremely sad and heavy (because I usually use well-known pop songs), so everything feels kind of like a party.

Thinking about accessibility, maybe it also helps to make it a less scary topic than some people could perceive. I interviewed some of the guests taking part in the grieving karaoke and they said that at some point they felt extremely good and safe being surrounded, and they had this desire to do something festive. After they started singing Viva Forever by Spice Girls, they began to cry as they thought about all kinds of teenage memories and other thoughts came back, like losing their first love. They said that it was so strong emotionally, but at the same time, they felt good because they were with people.

For a recent project, I wrote a script for a performance, which is based on a legend with a dragon, witch, and magic potion. It has the framework of a school theater play, which is not too serious. However, it also talks about more difficult things like a tragic death, grief, being stuck in a cluster of cultural expectations, and being in a toxic relationship. I guess I use nostalgia to open up these bigger conversations.

I also see time as a strong thread in your work, both in terms of concept and literal duration.

More recently, my works have become ephemeral. I don’t really care if some of the things that I create will survive over the years. I’m more focused on the process and being with the people right here right now. I guess a good example could be the Grieving Garden, which is a garden with plants that symbolically refer to death, but also to rebirth, grieving, and many elements that could relate to death, like memory. I’ve planted a few of these grieving gardens since, and they were all made in public spaces, so everyone who feels like visiting can spend some time there. So, they exist, but for a limited period of time because eventually, the plants begin to die. Firstly, because some of them are very seasonal plants, and they live only for one season. Sometimes the weather conditions are also quite hard, and some plants might need more water, or more wet surface, or ground, while others don’t.

It’s also very intuitive. I wasn’t thinking about it in a way that part of the installation is that it has to die. It just happened when I did it the first time and then I thought that maybe there’s some sort of beauty in that as well, that it’s something temporary. If people who I planted the garden with want to continue to take care of it, then it’s great, but if not, I’m okay with that. The garden is also a reflection of life because something dies and then something is reborn out of it, like this circle of life.

Grieving Garden, 2021, view from the MeetFactory studio, photo by Richard Hodonicky.

There’s a constant connection to nature in your work. It seems like something that’s also used a lot to talk about life or time spans as well.

I spent my childhood outside because I was raised in a small village, so I was always deeply connected to nature. It was just part of my everyday life, like running around the hills, being in the forest, or swimming in the river. But then I moved to the city, and I forgot about it. When my brother died and I was experiencing that kind of grief for the first time, I felt that I really needed some grounding. I needed some connection with the planet, and I needed to know that I was here for a reason and like this soil was happy to have me here. I found this in nature; it was like an explosion. It was soothing, but then also gave me a lot of energy to go through these very difficult times. I’m grateful for this and that it stayed with me.

I’m also thinking about going back to my roots, where I came from, and why I love it so much. I just started to use that kind of relationship that I have with nature in my artworks and that just became a starting point for considering many important issues for me. I’m interested in my relationship with nature, but also the relationship of nature, humans, and non-human actors that do not project anthropocentric perception. Is it even possible to do or get closer to that state? I think a lot about how we can use some wisdom from nature and apply it to our everyday life.

You can find more of Jagoda Dobecka’s work on her website and Instagram.

Migueltzinta C. Solís’s “The Gay Villain Rides Again”

“The Gay Villain Rides Again: The History of A Queer Biker” by Migueltzinta C. Solís

Performance lecture, 16 April 2021

Co-presented by the University of Lethbridge and Queer/Disrupt (UK)

This is Not a Bike, Migueltzinta Solís, 2021.Image from performative academic presentation, The Gay Villain Rides Again. 

By Lauren Gabrielle Fournier

TW/CW: Mention of residential schools

“I love a sloppy archive,” Migueltzinta C. Solís says during the Q&A of his recent performance lecture. There is power-to-be-harnessed in the mess, in the slop, in the spaces that resist sanitization and homogenization, that resist ossification. There is power in the sour spaces, the spaces where one can harness the possibilities of art practice, including performance and parafiction (art and literary work in which fiction is presented as fact), in history-making, in the resisting of the power of singular status-quo narratives that uphold those in power and protect them from being questioned. And at a time when the very grim aspects of Canada’s history are being revealed—with the unearthing of the remains of hundreds of Indigenous children at the former grounds of a residential school in Kamloops and, more recently, Manitoba—the urgency around Indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups having agency in the telling of history is resounding. These events remind us of the consequentiality of history and how it is told—what is included in historical stories and what is left out. While coverage of recent news events can make it look as though these horrors are outlying events, marking singular “sad days” for Canadians, Indigenous folks will point out, rightly, that these horrific, genocidal events are at the heart of the very founding of Canada—a colonial country on stolen, Indigenous lands, with very long histories for thousands of different Indigenous groups.

With the colonialization of lands comes other colonial inheritances, including the University. Academia and its rituals, methods, and languages are another impact of European colonialization, and we are experiencing a moment of reckoning right now. Challenging and subverting colonialist academia from Indigenous, BIPOC, and queer perspectives is a worthy endeavour. In Mestizx artist Migueltzinta C. Solís’s recent performance lecture “The Gay Villain Rides Again: The History of a Queer Biker,” we get what the artist himself calls an “academically-subversive performance.” In it, Solís tells a story from queer history that he happens upon and in some senses discovers; through personal experience, archival research, interviews, reading, and embodied reflection and deduction. As an artist with a background in performance art, Solís experiments with how research can be presented to academic, art, and non-academic communities, and in this way his practice can be said to ‘queer’ academic structures—which includes bringing more depth and breadth to the archives recognized by academic institutions,  and “queering” the very methodologies recognized as legitimate and worthwhile in those spaces.                           

Tugmented archival image from performative academic presentation, The Gay Villain Rides Again. This is Not a Bike, Migueltzinta Solís, 2021.Original photograph by Sylvan Rand.

The turning toward history from one’s personal and research-based art practice seems particularly generative in a present moment where issues from “history” are urgent and still being processed and uncovered—including the aforementioned news about Canada’s residential schools, and the challenging of the names of many Canadian universities, including Ryerson University, named after one of the architects of the so-named Indian residential school system. The tendency for queer artists to engage with history and the archive is common, often as a way for queers to find their “ancestors” and better understand their own selves and sense of belonging in history. Other queer artists working on the colonized lands of so-called Canada, like Cait McKinney and Hazel Meyer (their collaborations at the Toronto Reference Library and the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archive in Toronto, for example), have used the performance lecture format to present their embodied findings as queer settlers engaging in the writing of queer histories and interventions in the archive. Solís extends the performance lecture from his perspective as a queer artist, Indigenous to Mexico but situated today on Treaty 7 Blackfoot territory, to reveal the changeability of history as a story. Indeed, the telling of “history” is always the telling of a story, from a particular, subjective perspective, even as there might be rhetorical attempts at objectivity by those who self-identify as historians.

This is Not a Bike, Migueltzinta Solís, 2021.

            The artist’s presentation centers on the story of a figure named Solitaire, a mysterious spectre in the background and fringes of gay and lesbian (queer) motorcycle clubs of the mid through late 20th century. Before he begins the story, Solís apologizes preemptively for his “treatment of history:” he is not trained as a historian or a sociologist, he notes, but is an artist “dabbling” in history and the archive. While I take his point, I have a feeling that his “dabbling” is going to be much more than what it sounds like. After all, this work emerged after nearly a decade of lived experience, research, and practice tied to the topic at hand, and demonstrates rigorous academic research alongside oral storytelling, imaging, and parafiction. The fact that Solís feels compelled to make this statement in his opening points to the urgency of decolonizing what constitutes legitimate methodological approaches within universities and who can do what kind of work, especially when it comes to the understanding, interpretation, and production of history—itself wrapped up in often violent colonialist, hetero and cis, Eurocentric biases.

            The story begins in San Francisco in 2012, when Migueltzinta lived in Oakland and was cruising on the Castro and shopping in consignment stores, before finding a leather jacket that fit him almost “magically.” He found a single playing card with handwritten inscriptions in the pocket, and this moment becomes the engine driving the narrative that ensues. It is this card as a cultural object which launches Migueltzinta into a practice of historical research, him comparing the card’s design to playing cards from the 1900s onward, and ultimately coming to the Satyrs, a Gay Motorcycle Club from the 1950s. Coincidence, happenstance, lived experience, all become drivers in what Migueltzinta researches and what questions he asks.

            The artist tells the story in the first-person “I,” moving between the autobiographical/anecdotal and the historical and presenting this in the form of a lecture: a Powerpoint presentation enlivened by Migueltzinta’s dynamic, live narration. Solís’s bridging of gay motorcycle clubs and Dykes on Bikes was a nice way of cultivating queer solidarity across differences—specifically gay male versus lesbian difference—with Solitaire as a figure being the figurative bridge between the two. Solís learns, through interviews and archival (specifically image-based/photographic) research, that Solitaire rode a bicycle which they called the “Gay Villain;” they put playing cards in the spokes of their bicycle to make it sound like a motorcycle, the cards loudly flapping in the wind. Contemporaneous historical events are discussed, including the Occupation of Alcatraz, an occupation of Alcatraz Island by Indigenous students and other Bay Area Native Americans from 1969 through 1971.

This is Not a Bike, Migueltzinta Solís, 2021.Original photograph sourced from The Los Angeles Times.

            Grounded in historical research and more traditional academic methods, Solís also engages in speculation as part of his process of forming hypotheses. As he works to uncover the “real story of Solitaire,” nearing a conclusion, he engages in a practice of “a theorizing of what Solitaire might have looked like,” and “a theorizing of what a female-presenting Solitaire might have looked like,” and a theorizing of a timeline of Solitaire’s life. And when he finally came to a place in the work where he felt he had a solid theory of Solitaire, Solís was presented with new evidence—photographs of Solitaire wearing what Solís lovingly calls the “vajacket” (jacket with a slit that resembles a vagina), and which radically changed what Solís had thought. “Had I been tricked?” Solís asked, aloud. “Had I somehow tricked myself?” Solís devises two solutions, which move the performance into the realm of parafiction: Solitaire might be a time traveler.

Solís does not stop there but goes on to auto-theorize his own parafictional move: “The act of longing for an idea of the past turns desire into a time machine.” Thus, the lecture concludes on the note of collective queer desire and the ways this drives what questions we ask.

Augmented archival image from performative academic presentation, The Gay Villain Rides Again. This is Not a Bike, Migueltzinta Solís, 2021.Original photograph by Saul Bromberger and Sandra Hoover.

            By bringing in his own queer, trans, Indigenous perspective alongside varied forms of research and writing, Solís shows the potential for autotheoretical modes of art practice in the present-day university. He brings in “queer evidence,” both forms of evidence that lie somehow outside of traditional, colonial, academic structures, but also queerness as itself a form of evidencing—an idea that Dr. Suzanne Lenon, a Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Lethbridge, brings up in the Q&A after the talk. There, Lenon and Solís discussed academic methodologies and what it means to “queer” evidentiary support, as well as ideas of the “bad academic” and the politics, aesthetics, and ethics of engaging “unreliable” forms of knowledge and narration. The artist describes this performance as a “project of self-envisioning within a history;” here, he as an Indigenous and queer person is envisioned alongside and as part of the history, now present and speaking within and about contested histories that are changeable.

Mama Cash Feminist Art Festival

Mama Cash logo
Mama Cash logo.

By Chloe Hyman

International Women’s Day is an increasingly intersectional affair in The Netherlands, where the Mama Cash Feminist Festival kicked off in three Dutch cities on the weekend of March 8th. Programming at art spaces in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Utrecht provided platforms for queer people, POC, and sex workers to discuss issues pertinent to their identities, through panel discussions and interactive tours. Live performances were plentiful too, and their participatory nature embodied the spirit of International Women’s Day; emboldened by the atmosphere of self-love, visitors were free to jump up and dance, tell a story, or strut down the runway.

Mama Cash Ad
Mama Cash Feminist Festival Advertisement by Marilyn Sonneveld.

Intersectionality and participation are central to the mission of Mama Cash, the first international womxn’s fund. Founded in 1983 by a group of feminists in Amsterdam, the Mama Cash fund has grown to support thousands of womxn, trans, and intersex people each year. The fund provides financial and networking aid to 150 self-led feminist human rights organizations annually, and the proceeds from the yearly Feminist Festival help finance these grants. Further, some recipients participate in the festival, which is a wonderful platform to raise awareness for their human rights initiatives. This year, the Mama Cash Feminist Festival sold out completely, aiding future grant recipients and ensuring full audiences for every panel and performance.

The Infinite Kiki Function

My weekend began Saturday evening at the Mama Cash Feminist Festival X Infinite Kiki Function, a ballroom competition held at WORM, an experimental art space in Rotterdam. Co-hosted by the Kiki House of Angels and the Kiki House of Major, this competition—known as a ‘kiki’ in the ballroom community—invited individuals of all identities to compete in a variety of creative categories.

Some of these, like Old Way to Vogue Femme Beats, paid homage to 1970s queer Black ballroom culture, which originated in New York City. Performers in this category embodied the ‘Old Way’ of voguing, at regular intervals sliding from one sustained angular pose to the next. They were accompanied by vogue femme beats, a more contemporary musical subgenre characterized by high-energy beats and frequent crashing—the ideal instrumentation for a perfectly-executed dip. In other categories, like Dyke Realness, Trans Activist Realness, and Transfemme Aesthetic Resistance, the MCs Ms. Maybelline Angels and Karmella Angels welcomed intersectional identities to the runway.

These added categories illustrate the inclusive nature of ballroom culture today, but their incorporation is not always seamless. Questions arose when artist Mavi Veloso took to the stage for Trans Activist Realness and shimmied her silk dress up to her navel in a tantalizing body reveal. The judges questioned whether the entrant adequately fulfilled the category’s activist requirement, and Veloso was quick to defend her performance as activist art. The judges faced a dilemma: what are the parameters of trans activism? After a few tense minutes, Ms. Maybelline Angels announced that the discussion would continue after the kiki, and the judges awarded the grand prize to the performer Alex 007, who walked the category carrying a sign reading, “My existence is resistance.”

Kiki 2
Performer Alex 007, Winner of the Trans Activist Realness event, with MC Karmella Angels, Infinite Kiki Function. Photo by Naomi van Heck.

Later, Rae Parnell—House Mother of the House of Major—would elaborate on the judges’ decision. He explained that ‘realness’ has historically referred to an individual’s ability to pass as a cis woman or a cis straight man. Thus, trans people who can’t or don’t want to pass are not able to walk categories that place a premium on a participant’s ‘realness.’ Of course, such categories were not invented to be exclusionary, but to exalt the qualities that might save a person from anti-trans violence. In recent years, the ballroom community has broadened the meaning of ‘realness’ to make space for non-passing trans people. Newer categories like Trans Activist Realness de-center passing and unclockability; the only quality judged for realness in this event is the entrant’s performance of their activism. According to Parnell, this was the aspect the judges found lacking in Veloso’s otherwise stunning performance.

Though this conflict charged the air in the room with feeling, it was not uncomfortable to witness. Moments of discord should be embraced in spaces of activism, as they enable us to better support and elevate marginalized voices. The ballroom community acted in kind, using the conflict to communicate the community need for a category judged a particular way. Furthermore, Trans Activist Realness is a relatively new category, so it’s understandable that the culture must shift to make space for its presence. Parnell calls ballroom “a living organism,” and we are watching it evolve in real-time.

In addition to intersectionality, the Infinite Kiki Function exhibited a commitment to fostering audience participation. Though most performers signed-up prior to the evening for their chosen events, the MCs frequently invited the crowd to join in. When they first announced Dyke Realness, not a single person hit the runway, but after some encouragement, people leaped off their chairs to show the judges what “lesbian energy” really looks like. By my count, the category boasted the largest number of contestants out of any event that evening.

The Fearless Collective

Fearless Collective 3, Photo by ClaireBontje
Ishq Inquilab (my love is the revolution). The Fearless Collective. Photo by Claire Bontje.

The line-up on Sunday across all three participating cities demonstrated a similar commitment to participation and intersectionality. I was most intrigued by the program offerings at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, which promised an art-filled International Women’s Day experience. Geographically speaking, the festival began outside the glass walls of the Stedelijk. Early attendees arrived to see members of The Fearless Collective—a public arts organization—busily painting the museum façade. They watched as artist Shilo Shiv Suleman traversed her glass canvas on a moving scaffold, carefully bringing her portrait to life. Visitors were also invited to participate in the work by adding their own protest slogans in the bottom right-hand corner of the mural. Later arrivals, including those who slept in after attending a late-night Kiki, were greeted by a complete rendering of the artist’s subject and her penetrating gaze.

 

Fearless Collective 2, Photo by ClaireBontje
Ishq Inquilab (my love is the revolution). The Fearless Collective. Photo by Claire Bontje.

English-speakers had the opportunity to learn about the mural during the English-language panel, which included Suleman—the founder of The Fearless Collective—and a number of different arts organizations. Following a spirited opening address delivered by the Dutch Human Rights Ambassador Bahia Tahzib-Lie, Suleman shared the story of the Fearless Collective.

Since 2012, The Fearless Collective has travelled from the artist’s home in Bangalore to underrepresented communities in over ten countries, where it works with locals to transform public spaces through art-making and storytelling. Each public art project draws on community values, practices, and histories to foster collective healing. Murals are painted to reclaim public space, flooding sites of fear and trauma with affirmative messages chosen by the community—proclamations of strength, sacredness, and beauty. Suleman spoke of recent murals, like that erected in the Indigenous village of Olivencia in Brazil, which celebrates the contributions of women to their society. She also recalled the construction of the first known public tribute to queer masculinities in Beirut, which her organization made possible.

Fearless Collective, Photo by Claire Bontje
Ishq Inquilab (my love is the revolution). The Fearless Collective. Photo by Claire Bontje.

The artist also discussed the significance of her mural on the Stedelijk façade, which echoes a mural recently painted by the collective in Delhi, India. Both public artworks call attention to the peaceful protests led by women in the Shaheen Bagh neighborhood of Delhi, in response to the 2019 passing of the Citizenship Amendment Act targeting Muslim Indians and other minorities. That both are public multiplies their strength; the thousands of tourists who flood Museumplein each day—to see the Rijksmuseum, The Van Gogh Museum, and the Stedelijk—will encounter Ish Inquilab (my love is the revolution). These international visitors will learn the story of the Shaheen Bagh protestors, and will no doubt be affected by its message of resilience and beauty. Perhaps they will find strength in this message and gain the courage to stand up for themselves and others in their own communities.

Las Reinas Chulas

Suleman was joined onstage by a number of other speakers involved with Mama Cash. I was particularly excited to hear from Ana Laura Ramírez Ramos, a project coordinator for Las Reinas Chulas, a human rights group that works with women, youth, LGBTQ+ communities, and indigenous people to workshop cabaret performances, and educate through the medium of cabaret.

Ramos explained how cabaret, a heterogeneous mix of song, comedy, and storytelling, lends itself well to personal expression and community building. She also emphasized the comedic aspect of the medium, which promotes self-reflection, enabling performers and audiences alike to think critically about their identities. Throughout the creative process, participants often find themselves wondering, “How did I swallow so much rubbish?”

Ramos explained how cabaret, a heterogeneous mix of song, comedy, and storytelling, lends itself well to personal expression and community building.

Armed with their frustrations and an acerbic sense of humor, the participants of a Las Reinas Chulas cabaret workshop create characters rarely seen in Mexican telenovelas—autonomous women who enact positive change in their societies. In recent years, many of the participants have been lesbian and bisexual women, and their onstage personas reflect the experiences of queer women in Mexico. By virtue of their visibility, these personas are a threat to patriarchal systems, but Las Reinas Chulas are not content to merely disrupt the status quo; every story seeks to engage male audiences in a societal restructuring. Ramos and her collaborators look to the men in their lives for inspiration—men who feel comfortable living in a male-dominated society. They have found humor to be a successful rhetorical tool in various communities for infiltrating cultural barriers and communicating feminist messages to men in the audience.

Las Reinas Chulas also offers a number of educational cabarets for school and university groups, including the diverse series ‘The New Monographs.’ In these thought-provoking musical skits, professional performers provide information on safe sex practices, dating violence, abortion rights, and a number of other issues. Another intriguing program is ‘The Observatory Publivíboras,’ an awards show parody, in which ad campaigns are recognized for their outstanding contributions to sexism, racism, and classicism.

 

The Sex Worker’s Opera

Another notable presence on the English-language panel was the Sex Workers Opera, a theatre company that promotes narratives written by sex workers, represented onstage by Movement Director Siobhan Knox, and Music Director Alex Etchart. The company’s titular work is a devised theatre piece assembled from one hundred stories submitted by sex workers from 18 countries, incorporating song, dance, poetry, and visual projections. A film adaptation is also in the works, and the performers regularly conduct workshops for sex workers and allies.

Speaking at the Stedelijk, Knox and Etchart discussed the inclusion of sex workers at International Women’s Day celebrations, emphasizing the intersectional relationship between sex workers’ rights and feminism. They explained that most sex worker advocacy groups push for decriminalization rather than legalization because the latter requires sex workers to obtain legal paperwork and pay expensive licensing fees—hurdles for migrant workers and other marginalized groups.

When asked, “Is the feminist future near?” Knox responded thoughtfully. She acknowledged the global trend toward oppressive policies, which are endangering marginalized communities around the world. But she also spoke admiringly of young activists, who she trusts will bring us closer to a feminist future. “We [are] constantly inspired by the next generation,” Knox said. “By young people who are more aware and active than ever before through social media and necessity.” Echoing Ramos’s comments about humor, she added that art and laughter have the power to “disarm hatred or ignorance.”

Feminist Tour of the Stedelijk with Sekai Makoni

Sekai Makoni, Photo by ClaireBontje
Sekai Makoni giving a tour at the Stedelijk Museum. Photo by Claire Bontje.

The next English-language event of the day was a guided tour of the Stedelijk Museum led by English artist, speaker, and activist Sekai Makoni. Makoni’s artistic and academic work is characterized by an intersectional interest in Black Feminism, spirituality, and activism. She is a graduate of the Critical Studies program at the Sandberg Institut in Amsterdam and currently produces a podcast, Between Ourselves, in which she explores the experiences of Black women in Europe. In keeping with the artist’s integrated approach to contemporary art, this tour explored four different works through the shared themes of play, activism, Blackness, and togetherness.

We began at Barbara’s Kruger’s 2017 installation Untitled (Past, Present, Future), an immersive text-based work situated in a transitionary space between the museum lobby and exhibition halls. Visitors moving through this space are bombarded with English and Dutch sentences, printed in all capitals and plastered on the gallery walls and floors. A George Orwell quote takes center stage, informing us: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face, forever.” Other statements come from Kruger herself, like the simple request, “PLEASE LAUGH,” or the Dutch sentence fragment, “GEZOND VERSTAND” which translates to ‘common sense.’

Barbara Kruger, photo by Gert Jan van Rooij
Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Past, Present, Future), digital print on vinyl, acquired in 2012, the installation of the work in 2017 is made possible by ProWinko ProArt. Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij.

Makoni guided our group through a basic visual analysis, beginning with observations about the work’s use of color, space, and light. Next, she asked us to consider Kruger’s intentions—what the artist hoped to communicate to viewers—and how the work’s formal aspects enabled that message to be delivered. Only after this collaborative process did Makoni supplement our ideas with a brief overview of Kruger’s feminist oeuvre, and the qualities that characterize 20th-century American activist art. By waiting to contextualize the work, Makoni created space for free-thinking and participation. That viewers interpreted Untitled correctly without a didactic lecture is a testament to the work’s clarity, as well as Makoni’s skill as an educator.

Esiri Erheriene-Essi, photo by Daniel Nicolas
A Lineage of Grace (for Toni and Cindy), Esiri Erheriene-Essi (2019). Photo by Daniel Nicolas courtesy of the artist.

In contrast, Esiri Erheriene-Essi’s A Lineage of Grace (for Toni and Cindy) (2019) contained a number of visual references unknown to our (mostly European) group. Makoni adapted nimbly, identifying the American Civil Rights slogans pinned to the figures’ clothes, and the patchwork of figures from Black pop culture hanging behind their heads. She discussed the significance of political activist Angela Davis, whose likeness on a button is pinned to the baby’s onesie, and wondered aloud if the eponymous Toni might be a reference to Toni Morrison—the famous Black American author who died last year.

Inspired by Makoni’s lecture, an observant Hungarian woman in our group wondered whether the family might represent the progression of activism from generation to generation. Another attendee inquired about the significance of Black American activist symbols in a British context, given that Erheriene-Essi is Black British. In response, Makoni described the experience of a global Blackness—a recognition of shared histories that enables Black figures from different countries to feel significant to communities around the world.

Of the four works discussed on this tour, only Kruger’s came from the permanent collection, while the remaining three hang in the museum’s temporary exhibitions. A Lineage of Grace (for Toni and Cindy) is shown in an exhibition dedicated to last year’s Prix de Rome, for which Erheriene-Essi was a nominee. At the beginning of the tour, Makoni acknowledged the lack of female artists represented in the permanent collection—a common feature among modern art museums that Stedelijk director Rein Wolfs seeks to change. “We still have far fewer women than men in our collection,” Wolfs said on International Women’s Day. “It’s important to send a clear message in a strong and also an activist way. And for us, Mama Cash is a really good partner for that.”

Events like the Mama Cash Feminist Festival certainly raise awareness about feminist issues as they pertain to art, but the permanent collection can only be diversified bureaucratically through new acquisitions. I hope that Wolfs intends to expand the museum collection accordingly, but for now, I am impressed by the inclusivity of the temporary exhibit program, which enabled Makoni to create an enthralling tour.

I am in awe of all the artists and organizations that participated in the Mama Cash Feminist Festival. Their work demonstrates how art can be used as a tool for both empowerment and education—to uplift underrepresented communities through art-making, and then share their stories with the world. It was also remarkable to see so many groups with seemingly disparate causes converge on one sunny weekend. Organizations dedicated to LGBTQ+ and sex worker rights shared the stage with those advocating for communities of color, illustrating the increasingly intersectional goals of Dutch feminism and International Women’s Day in The Netherlands.

Bridget Moser: Prop Comedy & Consumer Anxiety

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Bridget Moser, Season of the Witch (2016). Photo by Yuula Benivolski courtesy of Doored.

By Alexandra Bischoff

We live in a society of spectacle where our dreams are often wrapped up in consumer realities. Sparkles and sequins are not practical, but they do catch my eye. “To post or not to post,” but I graze on social media—and their targeted ads—compulsively. Fuck Nestle, but I do miss eating Häagen-Dazs. And neoliberal feminisms got me thinking, like, “I need a new lipstick to be a strong woman.” Some days this feels true. My ideal-I is only the proper shade of violet away.

A few things I would buy as a performance artist if I had unlimited funds:

  1. Several zentai suits in various metallic shades
  2. “Egg Sitter Gel Support Seat Cushion as Seen on TV”
  3. A customized neon sign that reads “a muse me”
  4. Plane ticket to France, so I could take a selfie in front of Victorine Meurent’s grave
  5. 1000 copies of the book “Rosa Luxemburg speaks”
  6. 1000 lbs of butter, in sticks
  7. A large filing cabinet

    butterstick
    Western-style butter.Steve Karg via Wikimedia Commons.

When I explain Bridget Moser to people who aren’t familiar with her work, I first call her a prop-comic because of her use of objects (Marcel Duchamp would love her for her candid use of the ready-made). Then I describe her comedy as awkward because her jokes are always wrapped up in some form of anxiety. But a more nuanced analysis would find that Moser’s objects and anxieties have everything to do with each other, rather than being discrete means to a punchline.

During her artist talk at Concordia University in October of 2018, Moser admitted that sometimes she purchases items—a bright red air dancer, for example—before she knows what to do with them (CICA, 2018). As a follow-up, during the Q&A I asked the artist to speak to her proclivities towards objects. Her purchasing habits came as a surprise to me; I had imagined the artist strolling down the aisles of Walmart or Ikea, pondering her next performance, seeking out and curating the things she imagined herself working with. Instead, her buying practices appear to be far more casual. It sounds like she is drawn to certain things, finds stuff that she just has to have, and stocks up before connecting them to her archives of audio, text, and gesture. She is a collector, like the rest of us.

Don’t be self-righteous; all of us love objects. Minimalism is a luxury and should be taken as an exception to the rule. Beginning with the inflated consumer culture which frames the 1950s, and spiralling into the Globalization and Neoliberalism constituting the 1980s, North America’s identity has always been defined by the desire to spend. What our present moment has inherited is consumer anxiety which pressures us to replace our smartphones every year, and causes us to wrack up an inexplicable amount of credit card debt.

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Bridget Moser, Chaotic Neutral (2017). Photo by Yuula Benivolski courtesy of Doored.

Performance artists are particularly poised to remedy consumerist anxiety because we buy practical things under the guise of artistic worth. We don’t spend hundreds of dollars a year on swathes of canvas, variously-haired brushes, and exquisitely pigmented paints—the most useless, hedonistic, and glorious of art materials. Instead, performance artists buy things that we might otherwise utilize in our day to day lives. The small ladder from Moser’s Real Estates (2013), the lip-shaped throw pillows from Chaotic Neutral (2017), and various teal-coloured apparel from Don’t push the river. (2013) could also function as tools for the artist’s studio, furnishings for her apartment, or as personal gym gear. I wonder if she uses these things for their intended uses, besides as performance props, or if they sit pristinely on shelves awaiting their next performance-induced animation.  

And as it turns out, consumer anxiety and the all-too-familiar buyer’s remorse we collectively experience might be culturally healthy. Whether intentional or not, these feelings of self-doubt and monetary concern could be aptly applied outside of our individualist selves, as prompts to investigate how the objects we lust after are produced in the first place. It is ethically valuable to question who profits off of the vulnerable labour required to make our exponentially cheaper products (though the ability to do so also requires a position of certain privilege).

Performance artists could be considered especially bound to this duty; our practices can be politically motivated in many ways, but conversely, often rely on the purchasing of common things in a very a-political fashion. Moser said that she has always loved objects, but “feels equally troubled” about where she gets them (CICA, 2018). The artist understands the “economic disparity that goes into a lot of the way that these things are made or sold,” and that even the labour of finding it in a warehouse somewhere and sending the objects to her are fraught with exploitative ethics (CICA, 2018). Amazon, for example, doesn’t have the best track record as far as labour practices go. Moser also told the audience that she’s not yet sure how to address these concerns in her performances. I think she’s inadvertently doing a good job of it already.

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Bridget Moser, Season of the Witch (2016). Photo by Yuula Benivolski courtesy of Doored.

The anxieties in Bridget Moser’s performances are served up through the objects that she employs, so I see very little distance between the anxieties of an individual and the anxieties of contemporary consumerism in her work. Broadly, we can understand Moser’s performed anxiety as the anxiety of displaying sincere emotion—a concern common to the glossy veneer of commodity culture. In her exaggerations, Moser simultaneously makes fun of intense emotional reactions, absurd paranoias, and the disappointing realities of everyday minutia—a carbon copy of advertising tactics—while also celebrating, in earnest, the bizarre affections and attachments we form with inanimate objects. In fact, Moser employs the same tactics as television commercials. These are loud, human displays which catch our eye and tell us what we need in order to mitigate our complex concerns, usually to profound and comical psychoanalytic ends. What are commercials, after all, but displays of hyper-human versions of ourselves? Commercials create exaggerated, if not unflattering portraits of human desire—and what we usually desire is for our every minor, mortal agitation to be consoled.

Moser’s inflated and ultra-physical connections with her props best sums up the modern day consumer’s relationship with objects. When we buy, we temporarily salve the wounds of our knowing doom, and cling to our new things as a kind of security blanket. This relationship is absurdly devotional. We know we are killing the planet, but we still buy bottled water. The office coffee maker is evil, but those Keurig pods are so cute and convenient. This pink, plastic watering-can shaped like a poodle is as good as a baby—it might as well be “my son” (Freak on a Leash, 2016). And if given the choice to choose between objects of anxiety or anxiety without objects:

 

WHAT WOULD YOU DO? WHAT WOULD YOU DO? WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

WHAT WOULD YOU DO? WHAT WOULD YOU DO? WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

WHAT WOULD YOU DO? WHAT WOULD YOU DO? WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

WHAT WOULD YOU DO? WHAT WOULD YOU DO? WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

Season of the Witch, 2016