0:00

[Music]

0:01

[Applause]

0:05

[Music]

0:06

[Applause]

0:11

[Applause]

0:13

a lot of my practice is really based

0:15

around collaboration and community

0:17

um finding opportunities to really

0:18

connect with people um that’s when i

0:20

feel my most creative and my most just

0:22

feels very wholesome and healing lately

0:25

a lot of my work has been to do with

0:27

ancestry and ancestors

0:30

as i said i have some family in the

0:32

punjab and that’s where i’m trying to

0:34

figure out um

0:36

obviously there is a rich tradition of

0:38

um gender non-conformity and transness

0:41

around the world and analogs of being

0:43

transgender

0:44

that exist outside our western

0:46

frameworks of it and so i’m really

0:48

excited to be delving into

0:50

my ancestry and trying to find those

0:52

examples of people who

0:54

broke away from gender norms and gender

0:56

roles in the past

0:58

and bring that out in my work right now

1:00

i’m editing an issue of room magazine

1:03

which is a fantastic literary journal

1:05

published in vancouver and the theme of

1:07

that issue is ancestors

1:10

fantastic

1:11

um as i was going through the readings

1:14

that you shared with us and thinking

1:15

about your practice i really started to

1:18

think about when i lived in toronto most

1:21

of the artists that i i knew of who

1:24

worked in an interdisciplinary way did

1:27

so in a way that was sort of meant to

1:30

intervene in kind of the mainstream art

1:34

spaces

1:35

and what i was thinking about as i was

1:37

reading your work

1:39

was how

1:40

interdisciplinarity

1:43

is a kind of political practice

1:45

for you and it’s not to the end of

1:49

you know sort of

1:50

um

1:51

presentation in a mainstream

1:53

place and i wonder if you could talk a

1:55

little bit about interdisciplinarity and

1:58

collaboration in your work before we

2:00

move on to the

2:01

what does feminism mean to you question

2:04

i would love to answer that question and

2:07

i

2:08

introduced

2:10

interdisciplinary is really squidward

2:12

and also i just think there’s so many

2:13

different words that line up with that

2:15

kind of that

2:17

ethos and that kind of way i approach my

2:19

practice which is you know it’s very

2:21

hybridized it’s very

2:24

it’s the word intro genre it’s it’s

2:26

really mixing and matching you know the

2:28

best pieces of what i love about you

2:30

know non-fiction what i love about

2:32

poetry love what i love about

2:34

art and you know being able to

2:36

facilitate stuff i also felt like a

2:38

strong background in anti-violence work

2:41

and

2:41

i worked for several years of the

2:43

anti-violence project at uvic um

2:45

delivering workshops and supporting

2:47

survivors of sexualized violence and

2:50

so much of my work feels like yeah again

2:52

like an intervention into systems of

2:55

harm and trying to

2:57

introduce you know support and

3:01

representation i guess is maybe a easy

3:04

way of putting it um trying to you know

3:06

tell the stories that i never really

3:08

heard growing up and

3:11

um

3:11

tell them in ways that make sense to me

3:14

rather than ways that will be the most

3:16

marketable or the most

3:18

digestible but then telling them in the

3:20

ways that actually challenge you know

3:22

narratives and

3:23

challenge people to think about you know

3:25

the ways that they

3:26

go about in the world and

3:30

yeah

3:31

yeah you know i think when we were

3:32

imagining this incubator and this

3:34

opportunity to join in conversation with

3:37

so many incredible artists we already

3:40

knew that our terms of engagement were

3:42

troubled we already could recognize from

3:44

the beginning that the very proposal of

3:46

a feminist art field school we couldn’t

3:48

even move from there and so we thought

3:50

well why don’t we cluster those words

3:52

and then critically interrogate them

3:54

from a variety of different sides and i

3:56

think you know your response is animated

3:58

much of what we think as well which is

4:00

how can we borrow and choose from how

4:02

can we be

4:03

feral in our affinities and you know one

4:06

of the things that is a through line

4:09

in the collection of the field school

4:12

and its many interlocutors is a deep

4:14

investment and an engagement with

4:16

artistic practice as one of the ways in

4:18

which

4:19

politics

4:21

takes place and

4:23

one of the ways in which lives and

4:25

narratives are made and unmade and so

4:28

perhaps this is another equally giant

4:31

question but i think it’s a useful one

4:33

on the tales of a of a question about

4:34

feminism which is why is art

4:38

broadly conceived

4:40

one of the modes through which you

4:42

choose to

4:43

communicate

4:45

yeah um

4:49

i

4:50

i’ve been creating art i’ve been writing

4:52

as long as i can remember and it’s just

4:53

been just the way that i’ve always

4:55

expressed myself i

4:57

am one of those people where i have a

4:58

lot of i have a really

5:00

vast and internal world that i don’t

5:03

always communicate to people but when i

5:06

do

5:06

communicate it

5:08

i really feel seen and i think it really

5:10

creates a lot of validity to different

5:12

experiences that a lot of people share

5:14

but i don’t think we always talk about

5:16

even if there’s so much divisiveness and

5:19

separation between different you know

5:21

schools of thought and different

5:23

communities a lot of us have the same

5:25

struggles

5:26

um across the board and thinking

5:29

historically our ancestors had the same

5:31

struggles with us in many different ways

5:34

they might not look the same but

5:36

knowing that our ancestors were just

5:38

like us in many ways and you know we’re

5:40

we’re queer and we’re trans in their own

5:43

ways is like is so

5:45

beautiful and it’s so important for me

5:47

to be able to express that through art

5:49

and to express that

5:51

commonality

5:53

of experience um that highlights our

5:56

unique you know experiences but also

5:58

recognizes that we can all connect

6:00

on a very basic level to each other

6:03

which i think is really beautiful

No results found