Movement: Issue No. 19

no . 19 movement

vixen von flex Get bendy

MURDER in the sky Why crows roost

Unist’ot’en Pipeline resistance

Stories, Art, and Design Quarterly

19

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LETTER FROM THE editor When I was young, I was painfully shy. I stuck to my mother’s hip like glue and had trouble being myself around new people. But something changed in me when I got on stage. I grew up as a dancer, and when it came time to perform, I was a completely different person. Dance was a window into the person I always knew was in there, though it took years for her to climb out in full force.

Movement means something different to everyone, but its power to alter, to shift, to change, is universal. For contortionist Vixen Von Flex, who graces our cover, movement is how he interacts with and entertains the world. Actor Libby Osler is at the forefront of a movement working to redefine gender roles in the theatre. The Unist’ot’en Camp in Northern BC is actively fighting back against pipelines—the movement of oil—

editorial staff

threatening to cut right through their unceded land. This issue also has stories on literary movements, moving cities, and the movements of crows.

Movement is a topic that is dear to my heart, and I cannot think of a better issue with which to introduce myself as editor in chief; I am so proud to join this team of passionate and talented people. So whether or not you define movement in the physical or the philosophical, I hope the pages of this magazine inspire you, surprise you, shake you, and, in some way or another, leave you just a little bit transformed.

— sara harowitz, Editor in Chief

contributing writers

contributing photographers

Jowita Bydlowska

Rob Daly

Roland Campbell

Joel Gibb

Sean Cranbury

Jordan Houston

Robin Evans

Katie Huisman

Rommy Ghaly

Robyn Humphreys

Steph Hill

Kyla Jamieson

Kyla Jamieson

Brian Lye

Megan Jenkins

Grady Mitchell

Kristine Sostar McLellan

Sarah Race

Grady Mitchell

Ed Spence

Stephanie Orford

Katie Stewart

Chelsea Rooney

Sarah Tesla

Pamela Rounis

Alex Waber

Alice Fleerackers Co-Web Editor

Amanda Lee Smith

Lauren D. Zbarsky

Megan Jenkins Co-Web Editor

April Thompson

Jayme Cochrane Web Designer

Chris Walter

David Mayoh Ad Sales Coordinator

contributing artists

Katie Stewart Creative Director & Co-Publisher Michelle Reid Cyca Production Manager & Co-Publisher Sara Harowitz Editor in Chief Pamela Rounis Lead Designer Robyn Humphreys Art Coordinator Kristin Ramsey Proofreader & Copy Editor

Tariq Hussain Shannon Tien

Colin Cej Ad Sales Coordinator

Michael Champion

Deanne Beattie Founding Editor-in-Chief

Shannon Elliott

Brandon Gaukel Founding Creative Director

contributing stylists Monika Koch Waber

Christoph Prevost Tierney Milne Heidi Nagtegaal

contributors to sadmag.ca

Rachael Stableford Nicole Stishenko Drew Young

Sean Cranbury Megan Lau Mac Lugay Amanda McCuaig Amanda Lee Smith Pamela Sheppard Daniel Zomparelli

friends of sad mag Rachel Burns Adam Cristobal BC Arts Council Dina Del Bucchia Luke Cyca Lily Ditchburn Rommy Ghaly Kroma Acrylics

Alexandra Bogren

MAKE

Cianda Bourrel

Olla Flowers

Alice Fleerackers Kyla Jamieson Megan Jenkins Shmuel Marmorstein Lise Monique Cole Nowicki Shannon Waters Shannon Tien

David Phu Pamela Rounis

board of directors

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SAD Mag is published four times per year by the SAD Magazine Publishing Society, 846 East 14th Ave Vancouver, BC V5T 2N6 Email: hello@sadmag.ca

ISSN 1923-3566 Contents © 2015 SAD Mag All rights reserved.

Distribution coordinated

by Disticor

Jackie Hoffart Producer, Co-Host, Editor

sadmag.ca facebook.com/sadmag twitter.com/sadmag

Pamela Rounis Co-Host

#SADMOVES

featured contributors

roland campbell spends most

of his time in the forest teaching kids about nature and primitive skills. He lives in Vancouver where he also writes and makes analog videos. He loves to sing, especially with the birds. You can find him and his work on Twitter as @ ro_oland and afriendlyinquisition.org

table of contents

06 08 09 10

Dispatches Elie, New York, Vancouver

Feel the Burn A jock critiques the cult of CrossFit Under the Big Top When life is a circus

Flexible The life of a professional contortionist

shannon elliott is an artist

and tattooer. Shannon spent her younger years travelling overseas and throughout Southeast Asia. She is a graduate of Capilano University’s illustration and design program and plans to relocate to Europe within the next year to pursue a love of fine cheeses. You can find her on instagram as shannonelliott_y2k

14 16 17 18

The Disposable Camera Project

Person, Place, Thing Heidi Nagtegaal, Hammock Residency, Money Art & Photography Rachel Stableford, Brian Lye The Birds Why crows roost

grady mitchell is a writer

and photographer in Vancouver.

He specializes in documentary and portraiture, and when not shooting/ writing or procrastinating shooting/ writing he enjoys eating chicken fingers and not letting people touch his belly button. You can find his work online at gradycmitchell.com

22 24 32 36

Stick it Undercover sticker lover

Body Break Ballet BC moves us

The Literary Renaissance The literary talent in Vancouver What is Love?

A journey with Angela Fama

what’s in this issue?

on the cover

on the back cover

Cover contortionist Vixen Von Flex P.42

If

by Drew Young

99% Spandex

Photographed by Sarah Race

Oil & Collage

1% Wedgies

kristine sostar mclellan

is a communications professional by day, and a writer always. Sometimes she can be found at one of the many comedy venues around this city telling the jokes she tried out on Twitter (@KristineSostar) first. In summary: wine, naps, puppies.

38 40 42 46

Role Reinvention An actor defies gender typecasting Photography Sarah Tesla

Point of Inflection The moment a momentous change occurs The Good Fight An indigenous camp in the path of pipelines

special thank you to

5

: Dispatches

D I S PAT C H E S illustrations by nicole stishenko

elie, scotland The greying skies of northern Scotland promise inbound winds and heavy rain. I return again and again to Elie to seek the things I will invariably find— my constants—rain, cool swirling air, wandering through long, straight lanes with no tributaries, and flowers to touch when no one is looking.

Our windowpanes vibrate endlessly with the howl of wind and the thundering jet engines from the nearby military base. Despite being an intruder to a culture gone centuries undisturbed, I’m at home in a place so talkative that I fear it may wake the dead (they sleep just down the street). Under the predictable and unforgiving claws of the waves on the horizon,

sediment is stripped from old cliffs to create new beach—beach that was smooth under the feet of creatures great and awful for hundreds of years, and onto which I’ll splash my own epiphanies.

I sit on the top floor of a 200-year-old home with a 100-year-old addition and feel young, like a cobblestone in a street of which I could never walk the length. Two lots over, the pastor that constructed this place is buried next to the grave of his dog. I can see his headstone from my pillow.

People who pay brief visits to the Scottish countryside, or those who are never formally introduced to the

gusts of wind or the relentless buzzing of summer honeybees, qualify Elie as a place without life. But those lucky enough to exist here for a while within homes whose bones creak in kind with their age will notice it. Once settled, it becomes apparent that Elie shakes with the forces of the natural world.

Though the city I inhabit presently may succumb to the intensity of its lively population and sink to dereliction, Elie’s age will never show. Its youth is preserved in a consistent revival with the changing of each season. —megan jenkins

n ew yor k, n ew yor k In October, I left Vancouver to move to New York. I bought a one-way ticket to a new city for the sixth time in 10 years. It was time to move on.

Movement is a reminder of life. It forces one to re-adapt, to relearn, to re-examine oneself. Any anxiety I suffer is a product of endless routine.

Routine is a slow, dull pain—a constant reminder of death.

As I walk through Bed-Stuy at midday, I hear an imam chanting afternoon prayer. I stroll past the halal delis, the Goodwill stores, the bodegas, the Obama mannequins, the garbage tumbleweed prancing across the street.

New York is not an easy city to live in. It’s the toughest city I know.

Having grown up around here, I acknowledge its challenges. The glaring, blaring, flaring lights. The rattling and screeching of the subway. The honking of the cabs. The feverish pace of the pedestrians. The jaywalking.

The yelling. The guy at the deli talking to me about how their pastrami is the best pastrami in NY State, pound for pound, and betting me that I’ll never find it better.

This city is noise. Noise on top of odours on top of lights on top of the most unhealthy sandwiches you’ve ever eaten. It’s pain, it’s joy, it’s stress, it’s insomnia, it’s success, it’s failure. We dream, we love, we hate, we fuck. We take lovers. We fake lovers. We love fakers. We live like this because it’s the only way we can manage to survive the frantic energy, the manic energy, the maniacal energy of this place. The line between consciousness and sleep has been blurred, leaving me with a constant headache, a throbbing pain behind my eyeballs. It reminds me I’m alive.

—rommy ghaly van couve r, B C She scratches her bushel of hair so violently it looks like her scalp might just come off. There’s probably a rat stuck in there. I don’t want to see her face. I see her feet; they are dirt-black. My friend walks by, walks on—he maneuvers me around the woman, then around a wobbly man with pink over-the-knee boots—and I jam my prissy little fists into my prissy jacket pockets. I’m going back to my hotel later, on Granville Island.

“It feels wrong to gawk,” I say to my friend. “It’s a misery zoo.” And he says, “I know.” I asked him to show me the Downtown Eastside. He’s a good host. He’s wearing a suit, a tie. An old man shuffles towards us, eyes darting between our faces, our clean outfits, and he smiles, a small rock of teeth on the bottom: “Ah, congratulations, congratulations.”

The next day, I ride a bicycle to Stanley Park. I pass morbidly serious joggers, palm trees in the fog. Somewhere behind me, there is the dark, pulsing forest of the Downtown Eastside, people with feet like roots pulling out of the ground.

In the park, the trees are big enough to hold up the sky; there’s calm, like a deep hum. I look into the forest, try to see past it, the trees, to conjure something bigger hiding in there: a secret creature watching me watching, an enormous turtle-like being, a shell made out of boulders and mud and leaves.

Instead, I spot a massive tree split in two; its shape is that of two horns, growing out of a thick trunk. Inside the partly hollow trunk, it smells of wetness and moss and…heartbreak: I make out rags, clothes, a broken suitcase. A sleeping bag.

It isn’t terribly hot outside, maybe 17 degrees. But here amongst the trees, it is warmer; the earth like skin with blood running underneath it.

—jowita bydlowska

7

: Essay

feel the burn A jock critiques the cult of CrossFit by steph hill illustration by tierney milne

When I walk past a CrossFit gym, I am struck ankle. “Don’t worry,” I say to concerned bystanders. by two conflicting urges. The first is to escape, “I wasn’t using it.” clutching my sports-ravaged joints for dear life, without making eye contact with anyone involved You might think my activities hardly give me a leg to in the class. The second I’ll admit is a little more stand on when judging CrossFit enthusiasts. You’d unusual: I want to sprint inside, grab the nearest be right, too, since they actually made one already person, and shake them while shouting, “Did they bad knee worse and a not-bad knee pretty terrible. teach you how to lift with your knees? How to really That’s the real reason CrossFit scares me. I can only imagine that your typical CrossFit type is just like lift with your knees?” me. That is to say, possessed of more toughness I’m not afraid of exercise, but I am a little worried than common sense, and more guts than brains. You about grievous and permanent bodily harm. In case know, a jock.

I sound like a prissy jerk, I should say that I am someone who has voluntarily taken part in activities The truth is, if I had come across CrossFit even involving being kicked in the face, dunked in a three years ago, I would have likely been in that cold lake, and bear-hugged by sweaty strangers. I crazy circuit training like a dirty shirt. CrossFit is have run a trail fully aware that something relatively the natural home of the washed-up athlete, and with serious was going wrong in my knee but thought, university behind me, I was at loose ends. I’m sure “Oh hey, there’s only, what, three kilometres left?” I nothing would have been more comforting to me kept wrestling for two minutes after tearing my toe than intense physical activity and aggressive peer halfway off, because I couldn’t be bothered to figure bonding under the eye of a benevolent exercise out why my foot was hurting. But it’s CrossFit that dictator. gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Regimented workouts are seductive. You are told Aren’t you all doing that circuit a little fast? Who’s what you have to do to succeed and if you do it, you win the approval of your trainer and the respect of watching your technique? your peers. It’s satisfying. If you’ve been doing it I get hurt so often doing sports that I have a your whole life, it’s comforting. Above all, it’s simple. favourite joke for every time I get hit in the face, or In the gym, nothing is as important as giving your hyperextend an elbow, or bite my tongue, or roll an all and making gains. It’s easy to turn your brain off and just grit it out. For those of us who tend to get

a little tangled in our thoughts, it’s probably even healthy. For our brains, anyway.

The arguments against CrossFit could be just as easily made against my activities, and I don’t really want to tell anyone not to do what motivates them, no matter how stupid and repetitive. (I used to row, so I get to say that.) The difference between the stupid stuff I do now, and the stupid stuff I did for a team, for a race, or for the sake of showing off is that I now do this stuff for the fun of it, for the hell of it, and for the comfort of something familiar.

I still go to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I still lift weights.

It’s just that now I keep one eye on the long run.

Is proving I’m tough really worth refusing to tap until I see stars? Will really pushing it right now be worth a day of limping, of being too tired to write, to socialize? What’s more important: going for a run now, or really getting into the book I just bought?

Sometimes the answer goes one way, sometimes the other, but at least I’m asking the questions.

Maybe you feel the same way, CrossFitters. Maybe you’ve got some good tricks for protecting your joints and holding your form in the last quarter of the workout. Want to share techniques? We could go for a mellow walk and trade stories. Just not on Saturday—that’s when we do sparring.

: Interview

Fuji Superia 200

under the big top When life is a circus by pamela rounis photography by rob daly

What is it like to join the circus? Or should we say, the Cirque? Vancouver-raised dancer Melena Rounis sits down with cousin (and SAD Mag designer) Pamela Rounis to discuss outrageous costumes, dance battles, and performing with iconic Canadian troupe Cirque du Soleil.

pamela rounis: Being in the creative arts isn’t always easy. How have you dealt with the ups and downs of the life of a dancer?

melena rounis: I still deal with the ups and

downs. In all fairness, though, I feel that I am one of the more fortunate dancers who has had the opportunity to experience the industry from all angles as a dancer, choreographer, director, studio owner, adjudicator, etc., which I like to think has given me a great deal of perspective for all aspects of the dance industry.

dancing into more choreography? Which do you prefer?

would ever say. Any type of dance is so good for the soul. I think more people should give it a shot. The world would be a more peaceful place if we took the time to use the many different artistic avenues we have to express ourselves and free ourselves from our daily trials and tribulations.

mr: I don’t have a preference between being

pr: Are there any trends in dance we should look

realistic with yourself on how and when the next big job will come through.

pr: Do you want to move away from full-time

a dancer and being a choreographer. They are such different roles, and equally satisfying, just in different ways. To be able to perform is such a rush for me that I’m totally addicted to. On the flip side,

mr: Yes I have. Difference is, I

dance to have a good time and exchange energy with people, not to “battle.” In New Zealand I actually had a woman in a sequin dress attempt to fist fight me after her dazzling dance moves, which she jumped into our circle to aggressively showcase, didn’t faze me the way she had planned.

mr: I auditioned for Cirque in

2005. I flew down to Las Vegas for an open call and made it to the end of that day and the following day of callbacks to be put on file. Two years later I received a call for Beatles LOVE and the rest is history.

pr: How do you feel being typecast as Latina? Do you feel it gives you more or less opportunity?

pr: What has been your favourite dance costume?

mr: Oh yes, the type cast drama.

mr: I have worn a ton of interesting

struggling dancer?

mr: Definitely to hang in there if you are doing all

you can do; your time will come! That being said, I also think there is a dose of reality that we often neglect to mention. You may wait for that that one big break for a long time and when it’s done, be

the less obvious. They are often a great source of inspiration for those that you can easily identify.

battle with a stranger at a club?

Does that happen?

Cirque du Soleil?

pr: What is some advice you would give a

mr: I say to keep your eyes and ears peeled for

pr: Have you ever been in a dance

pr: How did you begin dancing with

stuff, from full LED suits to costumes that make it appear as though my head is falling off my body! My experiences have had me in everything from the tightest heavy-duty Lycra unitards with full blown soldier armour on top, complete with a helmet, blacked out visor, and LED screen, all the way to simply a bra and booty shorts.

out for in 2015?

It depends on the gig as to how I am cast. It can definitely work for me, but has worked against me in certain scenarios. I understand it, but sometimes I wish it didn’t need to exist.

as a choreographer and director, there is a different level of pride that accompanies bringing your visions to life on others.

pr: Is there anything else you wish was different

pr: What type of dance is the most fulfilling for you?

mr: Yes. I wish the dance community was as

mr: I don’t have one style of dance that is most

fulfilling to me because they all fill different parts of who I am; that’s probably why I have trained in so many different styles. I am mostly a hip hop/ commercial dancer these days, which I love, but there are those days that I wake up thinking about going to a ballet barre, which I never thought I

about the dance community?

supportive as it likes to think it appears to be.

That’s not to say that the dance community in its entirety is unsupportive, because I support anyone who is chasing their dreams and have friends that support me the same way, but just in general as a community, I feel we can do better. In my eyes, there are enough pieces of pie for everyone.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

9

Art direction by Robyn HumphrEys b y s ha n n o n t ie n / p h o t o g r a p h y b y s a r ah r a c e

FLEXIBLE

Fujicolor Pro 160NS

The life o f a p r o fe s s i o n al c o n to r t i o n i s t

11

Besides his makeup, however, Vixen Von Flex has no backstage good-luck rituals. In fact, when asked about it, it’s as if the thought of luck has never even crossed his mind. “I’m normally rushing around trying to get my makeup done and I’m completely scatterbrained until the second I’m on stage,” he laughs.

Though what Vixen Von Flex does during performances can only be classified as “adventurous,” he is anything but a risk-taker off stage. When I ask him if contortionists think about their bodies differently than other people, I

As much as his talent has grown over time, his enthusiasm for theatrics and costumes has expanded even more, distinguishing him from other contortionists on the scene. “I’ve always been a really big fan of Jeffree Star’s

when I’m interesting to look at as well. [Performing without makeup] is very intimate, and you’re putting a lot of yourself out there. It can be draining. I like the anonymity of not being myself, which gives me the freedom to really break free and do the things that I really want to or try new things.”

As a performer, Vixen Von Flex’s look is as flexible as his body; some of his characters include a Cheshire Cat and a robot in a purple body cage. He cites makeup and contortion as equal components of his performances, confessing that he hates to perform without makeup and coining the phrase “makeup courage.” He’s even learning to sew his own costumes. “I really like almost not looking like myself,” he says. “I’m definitely comfortable with the person that I am, but I feel like I’m a much more grand and exciting performer

work. He’s a makeup artist and a singer,” says Vixen Von Flex. “For me, he was really the start of my journey of realizing I could do whatever I wanted to do, because he’s such an outlandish and out-there character.”

Vixen Von Flex prefers working with Vancouver’s burlesque community now that he is more grown up. “[Burlesque has] helped me really up my game in terms of costumes and choreography,” he explains. “I’m recreating myself every week or every two weeks and that’s really refreshing, whereas in the circus world it was always a different audience so I could be doing the same routine for two or three years.”

“When I told my mom I wanted to do this, she told me if I was serious and I could find a school on the mainland and get myself an audition, she would support me,” he says. As soon as he secured an audition at Westcoast Contortion & Acrobatics in Langley, Vixen Von Flex and his mother left Vancouver Island in pursuit of the circus. Though the classes and equipment were expensive, especially for a single mom, it wasn’t long before Von Parker secured his first paying gig at the PNE. “I did that a lot as a child and of course I really loved it back then,” he says. “But [now] I’m nasty and old and I don’t want to be at the PNE anymore.”

Though he’s only 20, when reminiscing about having stage fright as a new performer, Vixen Von Flex speaks in the tone of a much older, wiser man.

This is fair, given that 20 is pretty old in contortionist years, as the average age of a performer is more like 16. Vixen Von Flex only started training professionally at 15—but he had been practicing on his own for years before that, having decided at an early age that contortionism was the life he wanted to live.

It’s true that, despite his “unconventional appearance,” Vixen Von Flex has had no trouble infiltrating Vancouver’s circus and burlesque scenes. You can find him performing at cabaret shows in Gastown and at the Rio Theatre’s burlesque shows. His unique talents have also taken him to Las Vegas and to perform with Cirque du Soleil.

We meet to talk at a Thai restaurant in Hastings Sunrise that is playing traditional French accordion tunes. Von Parker carries himself with the grace and self-awareness of a ballerina but is down-to-earth at the same time.

“I don’t look like a contortionist,” he declares frankly. “Typically contortionists in the past have been small, slender, Asian females…and here’s me, a kind of bulkier, bigger black guy out there on stage, completely painted in a really strange costume. But I let my body work for itself. People are usually really blown away.”

That he thinks about contortion as an exercise in mental strength rather than physical strength is what makes Vixen Von Flex so endearing. Caught between the cynicism of his industry and the innocence of his youth, here is a person who truly believes you can do anything you put your mind to.

A year later, he returned to Vancouver with a renewed passion for his art.

Besides performing, he also coaches kids at the Vancouver Academy of Dance and adults at the Screaming Chicken Theatrical Society. Though it’s certainly easier to become a contortionist when you’re younger, he sees no reason why an adult of any age could not learn the craft. Somewhat breezily, he says, “I would say contortionism is for everyone physically, but mentally I would say it’s not for everyone. You need to be really willing to put the work into it.”

Vixen Von Flex’s bold devotion to his craft comes, in part, from his own “lost year”—at 17, he escaped a messy relationship in Vancouver only to find himself in Toronto, underage and unemployable. “I wasn’t performing, I didn’t know anyone, and I got really sick,” he recalls. “As much as it’s a job, it’s also a creative output for me. I feel like I was really sick when I wasn’t dancing. When I moved there I kind of gave up on contortion, but I discovered I could never work a conventional office job or a factory job, either.”

The fear of injury follows Vixen Von Flex on stage. Ever since an overrotation on a back flip at the International Contortion Convention in 2009, he has had a hard time sitting on his knees. Compared to other contortionists, however, Vixen Von Flex has been lucky. At the same convention, he met a young girl who had been improperly and forcefully trained by her coach. Her spine wasn’t strong enough to hold her up, so she couldn’t stop fidgeting and wiggling offstage. Vixen Von Flex says the haunting sight now informs his own coaching practice. “There are a lot of coaches who have never been contortionists,” he says. “I personally don’t believe you should be training people in such a fine skill if you’ve never done it yourself. You need to have done this to know how it feels and feel what’s right and what’s not right.”

expect a poetic reply concerning the truly amazing design of the human form.

Instead, he tells me that he constantly worries about car accidents. “I think a lot of young people do things in life that I wouldn’t do just because I’m so worried about my body,” he explains. “I feel like teenagers are so excited about getting their licence, but I’ve stayed away from that because I’ve had some contortionist friends in the past who have gotten into car accidents and their backs are toast and they’re not able to do what they love to do, and I would just die if I had to give that up.”

things without trying—and a lot more. He is a professional contortionist. Being flexible is his job.

to put our legs behind our heads. Jamaal von Parker, also known as Vixen Von Flex, can do both of those

Most of us struggle to touch our toes. We pat ourselves on the back if, af ter 60 minutes of yoga, we manage

Kodak Portra 400

: Dispatches

13

Kodak Portra 400

: Photography

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15

: Person, Place, Thing

Ilford XP2 400

person

place

thing

Heidi Nagtegaal

Hammock Residency

Money

by amanda lee smith & sara harowitz photography by katie stewart

Artist Heidi Nagtegaal only uses money for the three things she can’t barter for: Internet, phone, and rent. It’s money she makes reading Tarot once a week at Quidditas health store on Commercial Drive. Everything else she needs, she gets by trading, salvaging, and sharing. “The repetitive systemic inequalities were draining on me,” she says.

Nagtegaal used to work four days a week for the Vancouver School Board, making a reasonable wage, but she caught herself developing expensive habits: buying a coffee and a cookie every day, picking up a chapati for lunch, smoking to deal with stress. She was carrying $60,000 in student loans and wasn’t making a dent; she was working full time and had nothing to show for it. “I could crush money or money could crush me,” she says. “So I was like, ‘Fuck money, I’m not going to use it.’ Then I got really into it. It felt so good.”

As an artist, she says, “you’re supposed to make the things, to get the show, to get the CV, to get

the grants—that’s not a rabbit hole I want to go down.” She didn’t want to go to graduate school and simply repeat theory. “You know, saying, ‘Here’s my idea and I’m going to prove it to you by showing you other people have had similar ideas.’”

So she created an alternate route for herself: what she calls the Hammock Residency, an initiative to create space for artists to explore their work, and more recently, the School of the Free Hammock, an extended learning and self-investigative process. “I wrote all the major tenets from my school on two pallets, and those became my unofficial tenets of my thesis—decolonization, free capital, spiritbased stuff—what does it feel like when you honour yourself and you’re an artist?” says Nagtegaal of the School of the Free Hammock. It is a two-tothree-year program of self-directed learning coupled with guidance, resource sharing, and skill sharing, designed to engage the local artistic community and foster meaningful relationships—with oneself and others—minus the impending debt of “mainstream” post-secondary.

Now, to spread her message, Nagtegaal salvages old T-shirts from friends, silkscreens them, and sells them for $20 each. The profits from her sales go toward her student loan debt; she estimates needing to sell 1,000 to clear her completely. “I hate waste and the fact that there’s so much waste in our world, and student loans were crushing me,” she explains of where the idea came from. “I thought, ‘There’s gotta be a creative solution to this.’” The result? “I started silk screening everywhere,” she says. “In my house, on my porch in the snow.”

The silk screening project was about taking her student loans and dealing with them “in a way that feels right to me and that’s honouring who I am,” Nagtegaal explains. “Life is strange and weird and magical. How do I do this in a way that feels right?”

Nagtegaal is figuring it out as she goes, building up an army of lovers around her and her extended community. And that, to be sure, is something money can’t buy.

: Art ——Rachael Stableford

: Photography ——Brian Lye

Pearl Acrylic on Woodpanel

Ilford Delta 400

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: Essay

The Birds

by roland campbell

illustration by shannon elliott

There were no crows in sight. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and its colours began to change as the sun sank. Then, travelling from the southeast, we saw it. It was as if a dam had breached, its river surging into the flood plain, black and slow moving. We guessed at its length as it flowed towards us, shaped like a snake, its source and extent unknown.

The black cottonwoods around us were now filled with crows, their caws and croaks competing with rush hour traffic. The sky above the roost now had a swarm of birds spiraling like a frenetic cyclone. Our mouths gaped as the mass of thousands formed order and direction and then suddenly shifted into chaos, again and again.

And then, almost without notice, the sky was empty. They had roosted. In the creek trees, on the office buildings, and in the greenery that lined the streets.

with a higher-pitched version referring specifically to eagles.

Butler says he doesn’t know what the “popping cork” sound means, though, nor what they are saying when they “coo and gargle to one another.”

Wayne Goodey, a zoologist and lecturer at the University of British Columbia, says that although there is not much known about the specifics of crow communication, their intimate language—those clicks and coos and gargles—might be meaningful to the mating pair making the sounds. Just like a couple with inside jokes that no one else gets, the close interaction of a mating pair is likely not significant to the larger group or roost.

The Burnaby crow roost has existed since the early 1970s.

Before that, it was outside the city, but it has likely been in the general area for a very long time. Urban sprawl has spread to where the crows roost, as opposed to the crows moving into the Crow communication has been verified at a deeper level, too. city. The roost site has moved locations four times since it was “They are capable of facial recognition across generations,” established in the Still Creek Corridor between Gilmore and Clulow says. He is referring to the now-famous John Marzluff Willingdon, but has only moved 400 metres or so each time. experiments out of the University of Washington. Marzluff Loss of habitat and disturbance from development can be at demonstrated with the use of masks and threatening behaviour least a partial credit for the movement. Human encroachment (such as trapping) that crows were able to communicate to their into the roost area has created scenes like an office worker using offspring and other adults whether or not a specific individual an umbrella to leave her building on clear day and the nearby was a threat.

McDonald’s headquarters being blanketed by crows.

This is one of the theories behind crow roosting: information There were probably 8,000 crows in the murder I witnessed exchange. Butler, Clulow, and Derek Matthews of the in February, according to a count last December by George Vancouver Avian Research Centre agree that although it is not Clulow, president of the British Columbia Field Ornithologists. confirmed and it is difficult if not impossible to study, the crows Clulow tallies them every year as part of a bird count in tandem are likely communicating to each other about where the best with the National Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird food sources are.

Count. The highest number of crows in the roost since he began counting in 1981 was 30,000, in 2009. The average number Goodey puts forth a parallel, but more indirect explanation: crows, like humans, are very perceptive of their peers, with ranges from 10,000 to 15,000. the ability to recognize individuals. Just like we are able to Before the Burnaby roost, the crows of this area used to roost differentiate between each other and recognize how healthy on Bowyer Island, by the George Massey Tunnel, and in Indian someone is from their appearance, so too can crows. Goodey Arm, according to Robert Butler, an ornithologist and retired says that a crow who is struggling to find food will identify by Simon Fraser University professor who lectures on crows on sight which crows have had a good day foraging and follow behalf of the Pacific Wildlife Foundation. The Burnaby roost them to their feed the next day. In a sense they are “stealing is not the only roost in the area, either, with others in the Fraser information,” Goodey says, or spying.

Valley, specifically in Langley and White Rock. Roosting is a common phenomenon for crows, with noted sites in Danville, Illinois and Chatham, Ontario, both, a one point, approximately Thousands of crows commute 30 to 45 minutes from Port 100,000 crows large.

Moody, New Westminster, North Surrey, UBC, and the North Shore because the Central Valley in Burnaby is an amenable environment, according to Clulow. The roost offers a warmer When Chloé Ziner, one-half of the Mind of a Snail shadow setting, shelter from the wind, and low, 30-foot trees that crows puppet duo, was in her early twenties, she climbed up a tree prefer. It is relatively well lit, too, which helps the birds see with a crow perching in its branches; she cawed at it and it flew predators. away. She thought she had scared it off, but five minutes later the crow returned—with a gang. They all began to caw at her. In this lies another theory about why crows roost together: Ziner got scared and climbed down to escape their scolding. But protection. For the daytime feeding crows, roosting at night afterwards, she was hooked: “The crow had gone to its crow with thousands of other birds offers “communal protection,” friends and said, ‘There is a human-shaped creature up in that says Clulow, and guards against predation, notably by one of tree,’” she recalls. “They’re actually communicating with each the bird’s nocturnal antagonists, the great horned owl. “It’s defense by numbers,” Butler explains. “If an owl does show up, other. They all seemed to have a plan when they showed up.” the crows go crazy.” As Matthews says, “It helps when you have They are indeed communicating with each other. Some of the 20,000 pairs of eyes.” common noises crows make have meaning: the longer “caaaaw” is territorial, while a fast, repetitive “caw, caw, caw” is an alarm,

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: Feature

Goodey agrees that the protection theory can’t be discounted, but says it’s “less likely” than others because there are fewer predators in the city and most of them wouldn’t look for crows in a roost. He concedes that the birds might have to worry about coyotes on the ground and perhaps raccoons in the roost trees.

Owls are also possible, he says, but they prefer mice and rabbits, and there aren’t many in the city. The numbers in the roost would be, in short, “overkill.”

Eric exudes confidence. That is how June Hunter distinguishes him from his offspring, who look physically identical. Whereas his progeny veer like a car skidding on ice, Eric is the James Bond of crows: landing without falter, posing for photographs, and only picking the largest peanuts for his payment. Eric, a name given to him by Hunter, who is guessing at his sex, is not camera-shy like most crows. She can get almost eye-to-eye with him when she takes his portrait.

Hunter photographs crows and sets their images onto tiles and other surfaces, or as she likes to put it: “canning with my lens.”

Caws and Effect is a fable performed with an overhead projector, Ziner and Gabriel in crow costumes, and an original soundtrack—all without dialogue. In the story, a grieving mother crow dreams up a self-serving urban environment to dire consequences. The allegory touches upon the ambivalence of the human desire to shape our environment and make it safer for ourselves. It parallels crows gaining from the by-products of human society, Ziner says, while also having to deal with the hazards of living in close proximity to people: “They both suffer and benefit from human civilization, just like humans do.”

In January 2010, Sara Ross was riding home at dusk along the Central Valley Greenway in Burnaby when she encountered 15,000 crows. She stopped and stood, transfixed. She had stumbled upon the roost.

The Crow Roost Twilight Bike Ride started with the need to create an event, for the Still Moon Arts Society, to raise awareness about World Water Day and the Still Creek watershed near Gilmore Avenue. Knowing that the crows roost on Still Creek, Ross asked: “Wouldn’t it be cool to follow the crows?”

From that question the ride was born. It starts at Renfrew SkyTrain station and follows the crows and the Central Valley Greenway bike route to the roost. The first one took place in 2011 and drew about 50 people; the second ballooned to 170. It has happened annually since then.

“If I can identify with them, then it expands my field of compassion.”

She says it is hard to get photos that capture the magnitude of the roost, but tries nevertheless. Going to the roost acts as a “mood booster” for Hunter; she goes to take pictures and to soak up the energy. She noticed that once Eric’s two yearlings were old enough, he began to let them gather their own peanuts—but “To be travelling with the crows at the same time as they travel to not before he had passed through and had his pick of the best. the roost is honouring and exciting,” Ross says. “If I can identify Afterwards, Hunter would see Eric preening his offspring, like with them, then it expands my field of compassion. And that’s a fundamental part of nature connection—to feel in relation with a parent forcibly combing his child’s hair. other creatures.” The cyclists can ride with the crows to the roost On most days, the place that crows are commuting to and from and connect to nature in the city. As Ross puts it, “the crows every dawn and dusk is their nesting territory. Territory is held help us look beyond the concrete.” by a mating pair, who will retain and defend it over the winter.

Although these boundaries do change, they are likely to remain There were 30 of us participating in the ride this year. At one consistent so long as the mating pair survives (which might point, I stepped off my bike and began to walk down the path only be two years together before one dies). In other words, you towards Still Creek. The water was on my left and as wide as are probably seeing the same crows, perhaps a pair or a family two-lane street, but no more than knee-deep. This section of the creek continued east towards Burnaby Lake, just a sliver of group (parents plus offspring), on your front lawn day to day. green space in the asphalt city.

The roost is at its peak population between November and January when the mating pairs are residing in it, and drops in The path was lined with red alders, their branches reaching up March when nesting begins. The non-breeding crows continue and over the walkway into a joined canopy. Once I entered the to use the roost beyond this point. And here lies another theory grove, I was engulfed by crows. I could smell their feces, dabs of behind the roost: it creates the opportunity for non-breeding white blotting the path. My sight was seized by black silhouettes crows to find mates. Crows can demonstrate social dominance on all sides, their shapes so numerous that they looked like the (show off their size, speed, and strength) in the roost—things leaves of the trees they were in. Shifting, dancing, bobbing, important for territorial defense. In doing this, they place shuffling. Some whirled around and spun circles as they got ready for bed, while others just sat still, having found their spot. themselves in a hierarchy for mates and territories.

Ziner has an intimate view of the crow commute from the front window of her East Vancouver home located near the roost. This proximity helped her and her co-puppeteer Jessica Gabriel develop their bird characters, Crowy and Jessicaaw, who would eventually appear in their show Caws and Effect. They observed the crows, sometimes following them around with video cameras, to learn their movements.

Neither sight nor smell was the dominant sensation in this experience, however; it was sound. All at once, like a crashing wave, they would thunder together as a chorus, the noise almost tangible—and then, just as abruptly, they would drop back down to a murmuring chatter. Again and again their voices would rise and fall, bodies flitting, wings fanning, as the fading light slowly made them invisible. I walked to one end of the section of creek and looked back at the roost. It was a hive, a whole with many parts, a city within a city.

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: Profile

Ilford XP2 400 Super

stick it Undercover sticker lover by april thompson photography by lauren d. zbarsky

Vancouver is a tidy city. It prides itself on its cleanliness. The Vancouver air smells clean, with its fusion of seaside with forest, coastal with mountain.

But I sometimes find myself asking, “Is Vancouver too spotless?” There is something to be said for cities that are littered with the traces of past movement— hints that exist as fragmented relics of a larger story, connected to each hand that inscribed them. They can be ugly or haphazard: layers upon layers of graffiti or the dilapidated remains of makeshift housing salvaged into something jarring, a little out of place. Perhaps Vancouver’s deficiency of mess reflects the city’s complicated history of ongoing regeneration. Think back to the beautification initiatives of the 1986 Expo or the 2010 Olympics.

They function on recognizable sign systems that are subtle but powerfully pervasive. Like a calling card, they have the ability to catch our eye as we happen upon them in our everyday travels through city streets. Humans have a proclivity for remembering visual signs, and stickers tap into this, causing us to familiarize ourselves with the aesthetic identity of an artist or collective.

D-Evil says he gets excited when he sees other artists appropriate or mash-up his own stickers, building on them in a way that becomes a creative process of back and forth, rather than an infringement on copyright or ownership—issues that have become central to mainstream art markets. In D-Evil’s stickered studio lies a great source of encouragement that Vancouver is not entirely a clean city without traces of what once was; there are things going on beneath the shiny surface that have a real ability to surprise and captivate.

It’s hard to find untidy tinges of past inhabitants in the everyday streets of Vancouver unless one really looks for them. So it was invigorating to discover the haven that exists within sticker artist D-Evil’s humble Acme Studio in Chinatown. Here, underground, lies a goldmine of visual stimuli plastered to the studio walls.

The international scope of the stickers covering D-Evil’s studio is mind-blowing, because behind each one is a physical exchange; each sticker is the evidence of an interaction. D-Evil speaks of the pleasure he gets from knowing that his stickers exist in places across the globe that he hasn’t even travelled to. In this way, an artist’s stickers and slap-tag graffiti are a fascinating form of distributing visual material with the potential to connect people across the world.

monetary consumption. Possibly the most wonderful thing about D-Evil’s Chinatown mecca is that it exists through a barter-type exchange system that is increasingly rare these days. Stickers allow one to indulge in the acts of collecting, organizing, and displaying—vital elements of the art world—but without the concerns of profit. When you reorient art into a barter system, you also escape the cult of the art world celebrity. Instead, value and importance is refocused to the work itself.

There is less competition and more collaboration.

They also intrigue us: you recognize a sign enough times and you begin to wonder what it stands for.

Stickers whet the appetite; they are tasters that tempt your curiosity to find out what they stand for, whether it’s the broader work of the artist or his commentary on a social problem. Stickers are branding, but they are branding that can evade

Letting my eyes adjust and wander over the walls of the studio, I feel like I am learning to read a new language—a language of visual signs that are easy to miss when they rest in situ on the city streets, casually slapped into place. Once you train your eye to perceive the signs that you previously disregarded—signs that abound on bus shelters, bridges, or bike racks—you begin to feel in touch with traces of the city’s lived history.

Clean or not, Vancouver is inescapably coloured by the stories of the lives pulsing through it.

: Photography

B ODY B R E A K

Ph o t o g r a p h y b y A lex W abe r

s t y li n g b y m o n i k a k o c h W abe r

m a k e u p/ hai r b y Ca r o l y n Se c o r d

Dance is movement in its purest form. “It’s the hardest thing you could do and the most wonderful thing you could do,” says Ballet

Wardrobe: lululemon lab/ Spring 2015 Collection

BC artistic director Emily Molnar. “The life of a dancer is one that requires an enormous amount of dedication and commitment.” Ballet BC continuously inspires and delights local audiences, presenting an eclectic and exciting mix of programs that pay homage to ballet while at the same time pushing the boundaries for what dance is and can be. To explore this, we set company members Emily Chessa and Christoph Von Riedemann loose in the studio and were blown away by their ability to communicate with their bodies, silently intertwining and feeding off of each other’s energy. But don’t take our word for it—let their movement do the talking.

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: Photography

Ilford Delta 150

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: Photography

Ilford Delta 150

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: Photography

Ilford Delta 150

31

: Interview

“Vancouver is an illegal den of literary talent; we shouldn’t be allowed to have this many great writers in one space.” —daniel zomparelli, poetry is dead

by sean cranbury

photography by jordan houston & robyn humphreys

The Vancouver of 2009 was No Fun City. Everywhere you went, artists and writers, creators of all kinds, were decrying the city for its lack of support for the arts and its embarrassing lack of venues for cultural events. The city seemed like it was grinding to a halt artistically—at least if you believed everything that you read in the standard media channels.

Vancouver has always been a city with a rich literary scene. It’s home to some of the most popular and critically acclaimed writers in the country and the world. Douglas Coupland and William Gibson live here. Daphne Marlatt and George Bowering live here, while Fred Wah, Jamie Reid, Bud Osborn, and Emily Carr are synonymous with the place. Our book publishers are some of the best and bravest, both major universities produce incredibly talented writers through MFA programs, and the Vancouver

Writers Festival is recognized internationally for the quality of its programming.

Fertile ground, for sure, but in the neighbourhoods at that time, something was stirring. A new wave was beginning to build. Writers and doers in the literary communities who were freshly armed with new tools and sensibilities began creating projects that reflected the specific wants and needs of the evolving communities across the city. The Internet and mobile phones, among other things, were simple facts of modern life and were exerting their inexorable influence on every art form they encountered.

This was a DIY revolution that sought to rebuild and reimagine how writing, literary or otherwise, connected to other art forms, brought people out of their homes to witness writers reading or performing their work, turned storytelling and spoken word

illustration by pamela rounis into everyday realities, and aimed to change the way that Canadians and the world recognized the contributions of women in the traditionally maledominated publishing industry.

To explore the renewal of Vancouver’s literary movements, we sat down with a series of people who have created interesting and inspiring projects since 2009 (a starting point chosen for its significance to us: the year SAD Mag was founded). Many of these projects are described by their creators as being responses to a lack of inclusion or expressive space in their greater artistic community or Vancouver specifically. The projects were created to give a voice to people that seemed to be ignored because of their age, gender, economic situation, or stylistic inclination. Here’s what some of Vancouver’s best emerging literary minds have to say.

Ilford HP5 Plus 400

about talking cats or writing books about how to build your own house. Everyone is just doing what they love, and, as part of the reading/writing community, everyone at the Writers’ Exchange is also passing along his or her passion for reading and writing to the next generation.

P R O J E C T S PA C E

Project Space is the prototypical modern Vancouver literary arts organization. It’s a protean assemblage of parts drawn from across mediums, styles, practices, and formats. It’s a gallery space and a publisher. It curates and organizes the amazing Vancouver Art/Book Fair, Canada’s only art book fair, which draws thousands of people from across the city and around the world every year. Co-founder Tracy Stefanucci responds.

W R I T E R S ’ E XC H A N G E

Writers’ Exchange is all about getting inner-city kids excited about reading and writing. While they’re adamantly not a literary organization, we include them in this list because they’re smart, passionate, dedicated people who care about the importance of writing for young people in our community. Writers’ Exchange is based on a contagious enthusiasm and relentless work ethic that is making real positive change in children’s lives. Co-founder and co-project director Sarah Maitland responds.

The biggest challenge we faced when we started Writers’ Exchange is still the biggest challenge we face today: There are so many kids in Vancouver who need extra literacy support—how can we support them all? Where do we even begin?

We started in 2011 by opening our Writers’ Room after-school program at Queen Alexandra Elementary School (QA). Pretty soon, the program was full and more kids, and kids who didn’t even go to QA, were asking to participate in the programs. So in 2013, we opened our second location, on Hastings Street, where kids from any inner-city school can attend our programs. Meanwhile, teachers wanted Writers’ Exchange mentors to come work with their kids on class publications, so we started our in-school projects. Although almost 900 kids will participate in Writers’ Exchange programs this year, there are still more kids who want to attend our after-school programs and more teachers requesting in-school projects than we have the resources for. We still need more volunteer mentors to provide individualized support to the kids and more funding to publish the kids’ work so that they’re super proud of themselves and know that they’re awesome.

I’d just like to say I’m not a huge fan of the word “literary,” which, to me, has connotations of highbrow literature and negatively judging everything that is not highbrow literature. I’m not a part of that type of literary community anymore, so I can’t comment on that scene. I would say that I’m now in the global “reading/writing” community, which is way different from the exclusively highbrow literary community.

The common thread between people in the reading/ writing community is that they love reading and writing, so it’s a really positive community to be a part of. It doesn’t matter if people are reading novels

When people ask me if I could ever leave Vancouver I always say, “I don’t think so.” Not only do I love it here and feel incredibly rooted in this city, but the network and community I’ve developed in almost 10 years is something I would have a really hard time letting go of (and I don’t believe I could do it again— it required the resilience and energy of my 20s, which will be ending shortly). And though our main project, the Vancouver Art/Book Fair, has helped me to develop an international network and view of art publishing, I still feel like all the work I do is really set here in Vancouver. I feel personally committed to making space and creating opportunities for the passionate and talented people in this city. I wish I knew why! It would make it a lot easier to explain my life choices.

CA N A D I A N WO M E N I N T H E L I T E R A RY A R T S ( CW I L A ) cwila arose out of a desire for race and gender equity in Canadian literary culture. It’s “an inclusive national organization for people who share feminist values and see the importance of strong and active female perspectives within the Canadian literary landscape.” It is a spirited, innovative, passionate, and intellectually alive organization that matches its words with deeds and is helping to create a future for Canadian writers. Executive director Sheila Giffen responds.

At a national level, I often feel Vancouver is perceived as a remote outpost—far from the Toronto centre.

Is it strange that sometimes I wake up at 8:00am and feel like I’ve slept through the entire Toronto morning? So I do get this sense that Vancouver’s literary community is perceived as being on the fringe of something national, but when you think globally, it

There are so many talented writers and interesting projects and publications [here] that it can feel

“I think Vancouver has a reputation globally as being a thriving artistic centre.” overwhelming to keep up with everything. We are a niche and sometimes hidden community, but once you break through that invisible barrier, you can find a broad and diverse collection of writers, publications, projects, and events.

changes. I think Vancouver has a reputation globally as being a thriving artistic centre.

In terms of Vancouver authors, I absolutely loved reading Amber Dawn’s book How Poetry Saved My Life. I really appreciate her candour in calling out middle class pretensions, and she’s got a deft and brilliant writing style. I’m also really enjoying reading Dionne Brand’s books right now, because her writing is gorgeous and she writes these characters that are thoughtful and frustrating and true.

The Vancouver literary event that’s on my mind right now is the Verses Festival of Words. It’s been great to see how that festival has grown in the last few years. Last year’s Gender Trouble show with Ivan Coyote and Rae Spoon at the Rio was one of the best things I saw all year. I’m in awe of the slam scene in Vancouver in general; I think it’s completely remarkable that you have sold-out event after soldout event where a crowded room full of people are sitting in rapt attention listening to live poetry.

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: Interview

RAIN CITY CHRONICLES

Rain City Chronicles is a storytelling series that features Vancouverites sharing true and personal stories with enthusiastic audiences across the city. You don’t have to be a seasoned performer to rock the stage here, just honest and gutsy with a good story to tell. Each event takes place in a unique venue and is focused around a different theme.

Co-founder Lizzy Karp responds.

[Rain City Chronicles] was designed to be mobile, moving around the city to feature voices and spaces of different neighbourhoods. But finding venues that are accessible, affordable, and comfortable capacity-wise is still an issue. Now we are inspired by moving into unexpected spaces to host Rain City Chronicles—and each space comes with its own set of challenges. Luckily, this city is brimming with intelligent, interesting, and funny people, so filling the stage whenever we find it is not an issue.

“ Time and money are really hard resources to come by in this town.

Even with that dark cloud, some of the funniest people in the literary scene live here.”

The Vancouver literary community looks like a constellation of separate groups or pods that have a few connections here and there. I’m picturing groups of writers, organizers, producers, or planners who find themselves working on a project, and then things might shift a little. The community is filled with creative, exciting, surprising, and goodlooking folks—most all of whom have day jobs that have little or nothing to do with their passion. Time and money are really hard resources to come by in this town. Even with that dark cloud, some of the funniest people in the literary scene live here.

P O E T RY I S D E A D

Poetry is Dead doesn’t look like or act like other poetry magazines. For instance, there are jokes. And a design that doesn’t suck. And new poets that you’ve never heard of who produce great work. And events—great events with real comedians and poets quoting Mitch Hedberg to rooms full of people. It’s a poetry magazine that collaborates with everybody, that’s as comfortable with George Bowering as it is with Emily Chou. Poetry is Dead reminds us that we’re closer than we may appear and more diverse than we imagine. Editor-in-chief Daniel Zomparelli responds.

V E R S E S F E S T I VA L O F W O R D S

The Verses Festival of Words is a growing East Van institution that came out of the innovative workings of Vancouver’s legendary slam scene and the Vancouver Poetry House. Rooted in spoken word traditions and experimentation but inclusive to poetry and poetics from as many schools and styles as they can find, the Verses Festival is a week and a half of wearing your heart on your sleeve in the springtime on Commercial Drive.

Executive director Chris Gilpin and artistic director Jillian Christmas respond.

Verses Festival was inspired by the need for a literary festival that included spoken word artists and other writers that might be overlooked by book-oriented events. Verses invites participants to not only share their work amongst some of Canada’s most driven competitive poets, but also to thoughtfully engage on a community level, delving into important local and national conversations, exploring established and new event series, and sampling a bevy of languagerelated artistry from across the country and beyond.

[Verses is] more interested in innovation than fame; that’s a function of its isolation. The West Coast will always be weirdo-friendly; that’s part of its appeal.

We have more in common with Portland than Toronto. Vancouver is a city full of writers focused on socio-political commentary, while at the same time maintaining a fantastic sense of humour about themselves. There is a distinct sense of pride in our strangeness and it is evident in the work and the communities that are created here.

I started Poetry Is Dead because I had taken a poetry program, and after that I wanted to get into the community. When I got out there, the events were very intense, or boring, and I couldn’t find anyone around my age group. I looked to literary journals as well, but same thing. So I bought the domain name poetryisdead.ca to potentially start something, and I wasn’t sure what. I was working at Adbusters at the time, so I had all of these magazine experts around me. Quickly it became clear that I would start a magazine that would run events as well to bring together a younger generation of poets.

The Internet is the one of the main reasons Poetry Is Dead has been so successful. We have a large social network that has made us the most popular poetry magazine coming out of Canada. We couldn’t rely on direct mailing campaigns as they were too expensive, and we always had a crew of young people working in digital fields, so that kind of gave us an edge on making a poetry magazine more visible.

“...create a space where dominant narratives are being challenged through community building and craft, rather than focusing on whatever ‘literary merit’ is.”

Previous Page: Sarah Maitland & Jennifer MacLeod, Tracy Stefanucci, Sheila Giffen

R EVE R B: A QU E E R R EA D I N G S E R I E S reverb: A Queer Reading Series has got some swagger to it. A relative newcomer to the scene, reverb brings a style, passion, and attention to detail around community event organizing that leaves many of us shaking our heads in admiration. They provide well-curated events featuring some of the best writers in the lgbt2qi communities.

Co-founders Leah Horlick and Esther McPhee respond. reverb is a anti-oppressive, quarterly queer reading series for lgbt2qi writers on unceded Musqueam, Skwxwú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh land that started up in January 2013. It is serious literary magic and also a lot of fun! We laugh, we cry, we change the world. We built this project together out of a beautiful friendship and a big desire to share writing with our talented friends and communities while being attentive to the barriers that often keep queer folks from participating in mainstream or alt literary events.

Opposite page:: Chris Gilpin, Jillian Christmas, Lizzy Karp, Daniel Zomparelli This page: Leah Horlick, Esther McPhee, Dina Del Bucchia

R E A L VA N CO U V E R W R IT E R S’ S E R I E S

Full disclosure: I’m the founder and executive director of the Real Vancouver Writers’ Series (rvws), so I’d like to let artistic director Dina Del Bucchia do the talking. rvws is the most literary reading party you’ll ever go to. We bring together diverse writers of different genres into a room full of people who are excited to be there. Literary events don’t have to be quiet; Real Vancouver encourages writers to raise their voices.

Vancouver’s biggest problem overall is affordability of spaces, whether living in them, or in this case, finding suitable ones for literary and other cultural events.

We need to find spaces that allow organizations to continue their great work without financial ruin.

Otherwise, I think what’s next is just more great things. Existing organizations are constantly upping their game and creating new projects and crossdisciplinary events. And, of course, there will always be new organizations and publications and events.

Where we go from here is videos and laser shows and musical numbers and tap dancing and everything we haven’t tried yet.

Vancouver as a literary city is stepping into tomorrow.

It’s a city of the very near future already drawing influences from styles, sensibilities, and technologies that are only now appearing in foreign magazines and the remotest reaches of the Internet, but are also somehow present on our streets and in our minds right now. Vancouver proves what one of its most famous literary citizens, William Gibson, once wrote: “The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed.”

Something we’ve always been interested in with the reverb project is looking at how and why access to the world of writing and literacy (and even queerness) continues to be limited. We have felt so privileged to create a space where dominant narratives are being challenged through community building and craft, rather than focusing on whatever “literary merit” is. That doesn’t mean that we don’t curate events with writers who are wildly, brilliantly talented and emerging in their craft (we do!)—it means we’re curious about who gets to decide what kind of writing is “good” and why.

These interviews have been edited and condensed.

35

: Profile

Fuji Superia 200

what is love?

A literal and metaphorical journey with Angela Fama by kristine sostar mclellan photography by katie huisman

cause more pain from the pain that was caused to me,” says Fama. “I was always told that the cap was Butterfly: Formed when a caterpillar digests itself, just to be fine. But it wasn’t to thrive. It was always, entering into a self-contained cocoon chrysalis period and ‘Oh well, now you’re damaged, and here’s how you can cope.’ This project was my choice. We have so emerging after fully transforming. many walls around protecting our vulnerability, but What is love? Perhaps none of us can say for sure, I think we gain so much strength from [embracing it].” but many among us feel it—and Vancouver-based photographer Angela Fama believes it shows. She Fama’s umbrella series, Wabisabi Butterfly, involves travelled, along with assistant Joel Tong, across multiple photo projects that are based on inclusive North America to capture that feeling in a series and safe societies embracing change and uniting survivors of trauma and sexual abuse. What is Love? called What is Love? goes one step further, focusing on expanding this But the road to this specific project took time, with unification and creating bonds between survivors many stops along the way. A survivor of sexual and their surrounding communities. trauma, Fama was also in a severe car accident in her Through a very successful Kickstarter campaign, Fama was able to fund the purchase of an RV that she used as a pop-up studio as well as a home during her travels (this fund covered roughly a third of expenses; the rest is to be paid for by the artist).

She used the vehicle to drive across the continent, photographing locals while asking them questions about love and connection. But regardless of the early 30s that left her with damage to repair. Her flood of support that followed, it was difficult for her recovery process became a pathway, leading her to to go outward and ask the community to be involved understand that she had to make the pursuit of art a in a financial way. “I’m learning so much about how to accept help,” says Fama. “I was going to do this priority in her life. entirely on my own in the beginning. I was so used And for her, above all, art means accessing vulnerability to doing everything myself, and being a contained in order to share something meaningful and artist. But then I realized that I wasn’t going to beautiful with the world. “It’s not my intention to do this project if it didn’t mean anything to the Wabisabi: Acceptance of transience and imperfection.

“I realize now that most of my work is about growing toward love.”

community. I needed to know that the community wanted it to happen. It’s so much bigger than me; I couldn’t make this project myself.”

Fascinated by ego and people’s responses to being photographed, Fama has always been drawn to portraiture. Beginning simply by photographing friends, and then growing to include local yet unknown people, the scope of her projects has organically expanded over time. “I didn’t realize the direction that I was naturally moving to involved community and involved branching outside of myself,” she says.

There may be no one answer to the question of What is Love?, but she has hit on something potent by asking individuals in different places to participate in an exercise of love. “Everyone has insecurities,” says Fama. “Everyone does not see how beautiful they are. I realize now that most of my work is about growing toward love.”

Each of us is a part of something larger, and this acceptance and recognition of something beautiful within us is a powerful, unifying act—an act that will permeate throughout the communities (some large, some small, some still unplanned) that Fama will visit. In light of this, when asked if this project belongs to her, the answer is simple: “I don’t think of it as needing to place it as either not mine or mine,” she says. “It needs me to make it happen, it is my project, but it is also everyone else’s.”

: Art——Ed Spence

Careful! You’re falling into yourself again. Archival pigment prints with glue

37

: Interview

role reinvention An actor defies gender typecasting words & photography by kyla jamieson

Success is a spell, and perhaps the most obvious way it works is by turning whoever encounters it into a subject worthy of our consideration. Another way it works is on our stories: it shuffles everything that precedes it into the rising action of a narrative arc whose climax is success.

When we know where the story goes—that it ends well— early struggles and failures are imbued with a kind of hope that they likely didn’t have when they were lived, and because more often than not we read and write about actors who have achieved at least a modicum of success in their careers, we are accustomed to viewing their experiences in this transmuted form.

I first interviewed Libby Osler, a 25-year-old actor, when she was preparing to play Hamlet in a Vancouver production. Neither of us knew that the play would sell out the second leg of its run at The Shop Theatre, and so the story of her career as I first heard it was punctuated by self-doubt and untouched by the peculiar light that success casts backwards over our lives. I wasn’t certain then, as I am now, about Osler’s ability to cut her own path through the film and television industry—in part because I wasn’t sure that such a path could be cut at all. After Hamlet wrapped, we sat down for a conversation about artistic puberty, the industry’s conception of femininity, and the communion between actor and audience.

kyla jamieson: Let’s talk about Hamlet for a moment. What was it like to take on that character?

libby osler: I didn’t feel good enough for that

role. One of the ways that the experience was hard for me was that I went from zero to 100. I hadn’t been working on my acting for a really long time— after theatre school I’d gone through a period of hardly auditioning for almost three years—and suddenly I was rehearsing every day. I had to flail in front of everybody until I developed a deeper understanding of the role, and that nearly drove me crazy. I always want that shitty part of the process to happen behind closed doors, because I’m very averse to failing publicly.

If you look at me as an actor or as an artist, the time when I was on stage as Hamlet was like an artistic puberty. It was awful, I felt awkward and vulnerable and on display. Performing that role in front of all those people forced me to grapple with my selfloathing and figure out how I could pull out my shadow and put it on the table for other people to see. It made me realize that the gross feelings I have, of shame, and fear, and not being good enough, are things I can use in a performance.

kj: Staging this play with a female Hamlet isn’t the most conventional choice.

too attractive. You have the face of a lead character, and you have to make your body match that.”

lo: We got some backlash because Hamlet’s such

kj: What kind of roles would have been available to

a coveted male role and we switched the gender. I think the character works completely as a man or a woman—none of the existential shit or betrayal or rage Hamlet goes through is specifically male. But I don’t think audiences are familiar with seeing a woman inhabit that kind of a role and have so much time on stage. I got to swordfight—there was a lot of action that isn’t usually afforded to any kind of female character. It’s kind of like emotional and physical acrobatics and that’s why it’s so much fun and such a privilege to play.

One of the things I love is the whole arc—the character really changes and develops and has to go to the far reaches of their insides. Another intriguing thing about Hamlet is the amount of androgyny in the text. Hamlet refers to his soul as female in the original text, saying, “My dear soul was the mistress of her choice.” The gender switch allowed us to explore the relationships and dynamics of the play in new ways; for one thing, the mother-daughter relationship becomes fascinating. As Hamlet is growing up and trying to be a powerful, independent, gay woman, her mother’s making choices for protection and security. It’s also an incredibly relatable story—I relate to Hamlet’s experience so fucking hard every time I see it. Am I not allowed to just because I’m a woman? No. There’s so much there that someone of any gender could identify with.

kj: I’m curious about why you weren’t auditioning more, and where you were at in your career when you came on board with this production of Hamlet.

lo: I dropped my agency around that time. I’d

started working with them when I was 17 and over the years I’d spent a lot of time waiting to get work, and the conversation had never been about doing acting classes or getting a demo reel. It was always about looking a certain way. So often what I heard from them was, “I hate the way the industry is, but this is the reality. You’re not going to get through any doors unless you change your body. Either you gain 30 pounds and become a character actor, or you lose 20 pounds and get the leads.” That dictum, “gain 30 or lose 20,” was something I heard a lot. Sometimes it was put in terms of my face needing to match my body. They’d say, “Libby, your problem is that you’re

you if your face and body matched?

lo: I wasn’t going to get the

roles that I’d be brought in for if I’d lost that weight and made my face and body match, because the other feedback I’ve gotten from a casting director is that the heads of networks and directors can’t imagine me in the roles she pitches me for. There’s something about me, whether it’s that I have a deeper voice or a more masculine way of gesticulating, that doesn’t quite fit with their understanding of femininity.

So I’m not going to get hired to play those characters, and I could play them, but I’m not very good at that. I don’t like them.

What I did get booked to play was pregnant women; I had three pregnant roles in a row and my friends call it my Fertile Myrtle phase. There was something interesting about that to me; pregnancy was like a visible manifestation of femininity on the outside of my body that compensated for all the ways that I wasn’t feminine enough.

kj: What is it about certain female roles that you don’t like?

lo: I feel like a lot of the female roles in film and

television are made to be Barbies. I’ll get an audition for a character who I think will be really cool, but then I get to the taping or the audition and realize they’re not actually looking for that character. In the breakdown, when it says “geek,” they aren’t looking for a geek. They want to see a hot girl with glasses on.

A casting director once visited my acting class and typecast all the students; she went around the room

Fuji Instax (Wide format)

slotting people into “types” and I was the last person she got to. She was really stumped by me. She was like, “I don’t know. If you were a guy you’d be the artsy boy, the guy in the background who doesn’t speak much and is intense and serious, then turns out to be either a thoughtful guy or a mass murderer.”

In a way I really enjoyed that, because there’s a lot

huge part of the business. What does me grooming my Facebook, or taking a selfie of this moment, have to do with how qualified I am to portray a character?

I know I’m being stubborn, and maybe a little naïve, but I think the fact that that’s become such a huge part of the industry speaks to how far we’ve come from thinking of acting as storytelling, and actors

“Performance is a kind of communion.

All art should be an offering of some kind.” you can do with it; there are a lot of roles the “artsy boy” can play. I thought it was cool, but clearly I’m not a boy, and my typecast is off-gender, so I’m not going to be invited to those auditions. What does that mean that there isn’t a female equivalent to the

“artsy boy” in our society? That’s a huge chasm in our cultural storytelling.

kj: I’ve heard of acting teachers writing their students’ Twitter bios; there seems to be an emphasis on personal branding in acting classes and schools these days. Is that something you’ve experienced?

lo: On the topic of Twitter, I’ve been hearing a lot of stories lately that scare the shit out of me, about two actors being up for a part and the decision coming down to how many Twitter followers each one has. It seems crazy that it has become such a

as artists. When I dropped my agent, I was feeling more like a product than an artist, and it was so shitty.

The phrase “personal brand” gives me hives. It’s something everyone in the film industry talks

about, and for me it’s tied up with this idea I once fell for, that I was a blonde white girl, and I needed to learn to look and act and speak a certain way in order to get blonde white girl roles. But no one is interested in seeing me be that girl, or casting me to play her. I have gross toenails and trip all the time and spill everything I try to drink. I’m incredibly awkward and nervous and get really scared and feel alone all the time. I think it’s when I’m grounded in those experiences that I begin to think not in terms of my personal brand but my artistic voice, and I can actually create work that has a hope in hell of reaching somebody else.

I want acting to be about giving the audience something to connect with. As Hamlet, I wanted to try to expose my own confusion about what the fuck we’re all doing here, because I knew that whoever was sitting out there in the dark was also struggling with their experience of being human. Performance is a kind of communion. All art should be an offering of some kind.

kj: Where are you at now, in your career, and your working relationships?

lo: I’m working with a new agent and we have a

very communicative relationship; she’s very honest and always tells me exactly what’s going on. But mostly I’m excited about the theatre collaborations I’m working on, and having people in my life who hold space for me to be creative. I’m constantly rehearsing and writing, and I’m prioritizing my

commitment to that over getting my body to fit into a certain mold, whereas before I’d thought that until I got my body into a certain shape there wasn’t any point. I’d felt like it was a joke to walk into auditions the way I was, which just goes back to the idea of having to look a certain way, as a woman in our society, to have self worth. Now, when I walk into those audition rooms, I no longer have the sense that one of the things on the table is permission to be an actor. They can’t give that to me, or take it away, because I already have it.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

39

: Photography ——Sarah Tesla

Fujicolor Superia 200

Fujicolor Superia 1600

Argentina

LomoChrome Purple XR 400

Point of Inflection is an artistic collaboration between Vancouver-based filmmakers/composers Michael Champion and David Phu, filmmaker/ photographer Christoph Prevost, and a group of acclaimed Canadian writers.

Each writer produced a 150-word piece hinging on the metaphor of a point of inflection—the exact moment when a drastic change occurs. The A/V team then crafted a cinemagraph followed by a selection of music inspired by each piece.

In its final state, each Point of Inflection piece is an amalgamation of writing, cinemagraph, and music.

All pieces will be on display at the Point of Inflection gallery show this fall.

—Stephanie Orford

A multidisciplinary project explores the moment a momentous change occurs

W i n t e r H a z a r d, B l o wi n g S n o w She leaves her place at 8:00am sharp and starts the two-hour drive from Sault Ste. Marie to Ottawa. Her mother told her not to come. “They’re calling for blowing snow,” her mother had warned her on the phone the night before. Whatever. She needs to get out of her apartment for a few days. Halfway into the Postal Service album Give Up, her hatchback slides out from under her, lurches sideways then plummets.

In the ditch below the highway she waits for the blood to drain out of her like a headless chicken, but there isn’t any. Just a hot bump forming above her left eye.

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She calls her mother from her motel room. “Why wasn’t Bobby with you?” her mother wants to know. Silence. Then, “He had to work, mum,” even though she hasn’t seen Bobby in weeks. She leans back on the bed with a joint and scrolls through the channels—no reception—waiting to be sucked back into the static and snow.

—Tariq Hussain

43

FWD FWD This time she sends a series of bathroom shots.

A dozen photos, more or less identical, her practiced expression never changing. A single breast winking, the other lost in soapy water. The filter she prefers turns her skin avocado green.

A toilet seat is raised behind her.

The photos come in bunches like penny trading cards.

Not meant to last more than a minute though they live on, password protected, in digital space.

Alone in the bed upstairs.

There is no jpeg filed away for future reference, only the memory burned vivid.

How once she looked directly into him.

How it was to be seen without the aid of a camera.

—Robin Evans

The W o r m s a r e W ai t i n g f o r Me I looked down at Mikey in the coffin, his black leather jacket retrieved from the pawnshop specifically for the occasion.

His death in a drunken car wreck was merely the first of many—an endless string of overdoses, suicides, and murders that only seemed to increase over time. None of that affected me.

I shot dope, picked fights with the wrong people, and carried on with reckless abandon. My own brother dove off a bridge in ‘94, but still I flailed madly, shattered yet somehow bulletproof. Death was something that happened to other people.

Those around me continued to die even after I stopped with the drugs.

Punk legend Brian “Wimpy Roy” Goble dropped dead from a heart attack at 57, and he was one of the good guys. I searched for clues, but answers were not forthcoming. In the end, there can only be one explanation for my longevity: pure dumb luck.

—Chris Walter

The O r i g i n of Language Disrupt the content and flow of information. Reevaluate the words that comprise what we consider information. Always be compassionate.

At the same time, disrupt the flow of information. Lay your body down inside the normal content as though it were a river. Feel it part around you. Direct your thoughts toward something useful, like the mutability of a word. For example, “rape.” What did it mean 15 years ago? What does it mean today? Disrupt the normal content. Take the words into your hands. Throughout this, remember to stay safe. You are responsible for your own safety, of course. However, you may open to the possibility of having someone “spot” you. Invite him or her to stand near and to place their hands beneath the heavy weight, just in case.

You will feel safer knowing they’re there. This state of ease will preclude their necessity. Regard your fellow woman, all.

—Chelsea Rooney

“I shot dope, picked fights with the wrong people, and carried on with reckless abandon.”

45

:Essay

THE GOOD FIGHT An indigenous camp in the path of pipelines by grady mitchell

Th i s b r i dg e ove r th e r ive r, b locke d by th e old b lu e tr uck, mar ks th e on ly poi nt of lan d acce ss i nto th e U n i st’ot’e n te r r itory.

Visitors must answer a series of questions before they’re allowed entry. Work crews trespass via helicopter, and the Unist’ot’en often follow them in trucks and expel them.

Kodak Portra 400

About four years ago, members of the Unist’ot’en, an indigenous clan with roots in central BC dating back millennia, reclaimed their traditional territory in the wilderness outside Houston, BC. It was their response to two pipelines whose proposed paths would drive directly through the region. Using an old pickup truck, they blocked the bridge over the Morice River, which they call Wedzin Kwah, the only point of land access into a vast tract of near-pristine land. Since then, they’ve built a solar-powered cabin, bunkhouse, and permagarden, and used the opportunity not only to reclaim their hereditary land, but to also restore their people’s traditional way of life.

I learned of the place through a friend who’d visited twice to volunteer and film a short documentary. Every summer the Unist’ot’en hold an Action Camp, an opportunity for supporters to visit, volunteer, and attend workshops. I’m no diehard activist, but I’m opposed to the pipelines, just the same as seemingly every other young person across the province, and I hoped to use photography to spread their message. I aimed to bypass the incendiary headlines and show daily life in the camp—a long-oppressed people rediscovering their roots and making a life in the bush. I ended up shooting in the mornings during dawn, working construction on the bunkhouse or attending workshops during the day when the light was too strong, and shooting more portraits in the evenings when everyone gathered for meals and discussion.

My visit was challenging and humbling, and ultimately one of the most profound experiences of my life. The Unist’ot’en are undertaking something extremely brave and difficult, and can use all of our help.

On the right: Earlier I’d shot this woman playing a drum and singing near a campfire.

Soon after she approached me and asked me to destroy those photos—she’d been in a sacred space, she explained, and in her culture they believe a photo takes a piece of a person’s soul and permission must be granted. “Of course,” she said with a smile, “if you’d like to take my portrait later, I’d be happy to.”

This sign bars the bridge into Unist’ot’en territory. The scorch marks were left after some disagreeable locals from Houston doused tires in gasoline, ignited them, and rolled them down the road towards the camp.

The Unist’ot’en have largely returned to the land and their traditional way of life.

Along with donations, they hunt and garden for food, and draw all their water from Wedzin Kwah.

47

: Essay

N i kki was anoth e r vi s itor from Alb e rta an d a g r eat storyte lle r.

Volunteers took turns standing night guard on the bridge, and in the morning after her shift Nikki told of seeing the spirits of her ancestors watching over the Unist’ot’en border with linked arms.

Kodak Portra 400

Tog h e stiy i s th e h e r e ditary ch i e f of a n e ig h bou r i ng clan.

Along with his wife Freda, the official Unist’ot’en spokesperson, he leads the camp.

49

lon n i far mer Registered Massage Therapy . Gastown

REAL VANCOUVER WRITERS’ SERIES

best writers. best community. always.

RETURNING SEPTEMBER 2015

l o nni f

Book online at

a r me r r mt.c o m/ r e se r v e

web: realvancouver.org instagram: realvancouver twitter: realvancouver_ facebook: realvancouver photo by asher isbrucker used under creative commons attribution non-commercial share-alike 2.0 license

RVWS_SADMAG_AD.indd 1

Making paint for artists in Vancouver since 1970.

K RO M A AC RY L I C S . C O M

2015-06-10 9:55 AM

JULY 23 – AUGUST 7

Cor Flammae: Fallen Angels

QUEER ARTS FESTIVAL

Fri Jul 17 | 8pm - Sat Jul 18 | 9pm Co-presented with Cor Flammae | St. Andrew’s Wesley United Church (Friday) and Club 8x6 (Saturday) | Pre-Festival Fluffer. A concert of sacred & profane choral works by queer composers. Choose your venue–church or sex club.

TRIGGER: Drawing the Line in 2015

Thu Jul 23 - Fri Aug 7 Roundhouse Exhibition Hall | QAF’s signature Curated Visual Art Exhibition.

QAF’s curated exhibition honours the 25th anniversary of Kiss & Tell’s legendary exhibition, Drawing the Line. Artists are asked, Where do you draw the line in 2015?

ART PARTY!

Thu Jul 23 | 7pm Proudly sponsored by the Health Initiative for Men | Roundhouse Exhibition Hall | QAF’s spectacular opening night gala–amazing art meets queer conviviality.

Pride in Art Community Visual Art Show

Thu Jul 23 - Fri Aug 7 Roundhouse Great Hall | From the roots of the Queer Arts Festival, this open visual art show celebrates queer artists from our communities.

Thu Jul 23 - Fri Aug 7 Salon des Refusés Opening: Jul 26 | 7pm Little Sister’s Book & Art Emporium | In honour of the iconoclastic Paris 1863 exhibition, anti-censorship champion Little Sister’s exhibits explicit visual art by queer local talent.

Queerotica

at the

ROUNDHOUSE community arts & recreation centre 181 roundhouse mews

Fri Jul 24 | 7:30pm Community Partner Little Sister’s Book & Art Emporium | Roundhouse Exhibition Hall | Anti-censorship readings to tantalize and titillate–aka Catherine and Jim’s dirty porn night.

Tough Language, Sat Jul 25 - Sun Jul 26 | 10:30am-1:30pm Tender Wisdoms Roundhouse | Back by popular demand! Critically acclaimed author Amber Dawn hosts a two-day workshop on memoir-writing for transgressive voices.

Kiss & Tell

Sat Jul 25 | 7:30pm Co-presented with Kickstart Disability Arts & Culture | Roundhouse Performance Centre | Notorious Vancouver collective Kiss & Tell’s first public appearance together in 13 years! Videos with talkback moderated by Janine Fuller of Little Sister’s.

Sun Jul 26 | 3pm Curator Tour of TRIGGER: Drawing the Line in 2015 Roundhouse Exhibition Hall | Get a glimpse into the creative process. Join QAF Artistic Director SD Holman and artists in an informal tour through TRIGGER: Drawing the Line in 2015.

TRIGGER WARNING: a video curation by Coral Short

TRIGGER DRAWING THE LINE IN 2015 TRANSDISCIPLINARY

WHAT SETS YOU OFF? visual art dance performance media art

Mon Jul 27 | 7:30pm

Roundhouse Performance Centre | Fearless queer video art curated by international curator Coral Short. Followed by a dialogue with artists and curator facilitated

by Gwen Haworth.

Sister Mary’s a Dyke?!

Tue Jul 28 - Sun Aug 2 | 7:30pm Co-Produced with the frank theatre | Roundhouse Performance Centre | A coming-out tale set in a Catholic girls’ school becomes a fantasy of attacking church patriarchy. Kim Villagante stars in Flerida Peña’s energetic solo show.

After Party with performance by Kimmortal | Thu Jul 30

I am ME

Wed Jul 29 & Aug 5 | 6pm Drop in!

Roundhouse Exhibition Hall | Explore your identity through movement in this Dance Out Loud workshop with Kinesis Dance somatheatro.

Genderfest Chill Mingler

Fri Jul 31 | 7:30-10pm Roundhouse Exhibition Hall | An introvert’s way to kick off the rowdy weekend

Cosmophony

literature

Sat Aug 1 | 2pm Co-presented with the Powell Street Festival | Firehall Arts Centre | Pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa performs contemporary music inspired by the beauty and mystery of the cosmos. 12 composers share their inner reflections on outer space.

workshops

PROX:IMITY RE:MIX & NIGHT

music theatre

TICKETS $0 - $40

QUEERARTSFESTIVAL.COM and Little Sister’s Bookstore

ART PARTY

JULY 23 I 7PM

Tue Aug 4 | 7:30pm Co-presented with MACHiNENOiSY and Kinesis Dance somatheatro | Roundhouse Performance Centre | Queer contemporary dance by Kinesis Dance somatheatro and MACHiNENOiSY’s youth dance intensive.

QSONG

Wed Aug 5 | 7:30pm Co-presented with Access to Music Foundation | Roundhouse Performance Centre | Prepare to be dazzled by the extraordinary talent of young queer and allied singer/songwriters from our fabulous QSONG workshop.

A Queen’s Music: Reginald Mobley in Recital Thu Aug 6 | 7:30pm Co-presented with Early Music Vancouver | Roundhouse Performance Centre | Reginald Mobley, countertenor, and Alexander Weimann, harpsichord & piano, shine a light on music by gay composers from the 18th century onwards.

Glitter is Forever: Closing Night & Volunteer Fri Aug 7 | 7:30pm Appreciation Party Roundhouse Exhibition Hall | QAF 2015’s final blowout – revel in queer community, effervescent refreshments, and karaoke with glitter.

We Acknowledge the Financial support of the Province of British Columbia

: Dispatches