If all documentaries are fiction to some extent, the film titled Donna Haraway: Storytelling for Earthly Survival readily presents itself as a creative endeavour. Through fragmented interviews, archival materials, and animation sequences, it shows Donna Haraway narrating her family history and combing through three-decades worth of scholarship. On September 28, the film was screened at an event organized by Media@McGill, a cultural and media studies research group that offers grants for graduate students and organizes public events throughout the year.

Listening to Dr. Haraway talk is similar to watching Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos while high. Her playfulness and brilliant imagination allow her to spin a web of tales about her dog and childhood into theoretical models for surviving environmental devastation. You might expect her wit to be intimidating but she, like many of us, is also prone to rambling and has a quirky sense of humour, as most hippies do.

In 1984, Haraway published the text that canonized her in feminist scholarship, in which she famously declared, “I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.” Her interest in cyborgs comes from her love for science fiction, specifically alternative worlds as imagined by women. In the 2016 film, Haraway reaffirms her desire to privilege “other women’s ideas, originality, and importance,” citing an indebtedness to Octavia Butler, Joanna Russ, and Ursula Le Guin.

Like a game of cat’s cradle, science fiction is built on giving and receiving patterns, making string figures of possible worlds and possible times, a form of storytelling that is itself a theoretical practice. Anticipating the future is a way of surviving the here and now – sometimes called anthropocene, the epoch in which human activity continues to significantly alter ecological conditions. The anthropocene is, as Haraway writes in her latest book, a time of “great mass death and extinction; of onrushing disasters,” a “muddle of messy living and dying.”

Storytelling was an essential part of Haraway’s childhood, “especially over dinner.” Her abundant use of metaphors in speech and writing affects how her arguments are read – like a story. A trained biologist, Haraway writes fluidly in an obscure tongue, delivering a weird, psychedelic blend of bacteria-laden scientific facts and poetic analogies about our relationship to earth. She has a way of describing the most minute natural processes that change profoundly how we envision our place in the world.

Formally, interview segments are interspersed among static long takes of scenes of nature, rejecting a coherent narrative structure. The nature shots, many taken in Haraway’s backyard, filled entirely with diegetic, or within-film sound, allow the audience to take in each shot in a suspended temporal realm. At one point, a voice-over sequence by Haraway’s partner compares versions of bird songs played at different speed, revealing a music that the human ear, in most circumstances, is unable to appreciate. In a parallel move, still shots of nature disrupt narrative flow to remind us to engage with what we often dismiss as background noise.

Perceptual tricks like these are played throughout the film, which recycles analogue footage from Haraway’s 1987 television appearance and shows her reacting to this footage in 2016. This doubling of figures is a recurring visual motif, with different shots of Haraway stitched together in a single frame, creating the illusion of spatial containment. These layering effects begin subtly and eventually escalate. In a particularly flamboyant moment, a majestic octopus emerges from Haraway’s desk while she sits, talking, and eventually fills up her room as if it were a cave in the deep sea.

Making kin and companions across species is an essential component of Haraway’s philosophy. For her and many other feminists, the cyborg imagery was useful for deconstructing mythic ideas of mind/body, human/machine, and human/monster binaries. As a materialist historian, Haraway remains dedicated to the very stuff that makes up this earth, speaking of cells and bacteria like a loving observer. The film ends with Haraway describing through voice-over a world where we live in organized communities with alternative family structures and collective child-rearing, hinting at more equitable futures. She too participates in the tradition of science fiction, of telling stories about surviving in turbulent, scary times.

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Episode six of Avi Does the Holy Land, titled “Self-hating Jews,” begins with a factually dubious claim. “As a Jew, you need to support Israel,” declares Avi. “That’s like, what it says in the Bible.” This is a mild statement compared to most other things she says. In a discussion on pinkwashing with Palestinian activist Rami Younis, Avi proposes that Palestinians would be treated better “if they all became gay” before draping a big Pride flag over Younis.

Avi is not a real person. The “Canadian Jewess” and video blogger who has fallen in love with Israel after a Birthright trip, who twirls in a bikini made out of an Israeli flag, is a character created by Aviva Zimmerman. Her YouTube series pokes fun at the uncritical celebration of Israel among Jewish communities and aims to unsettle the traditional Zionist narrative in North America.

Avi Does the Holy Land is currently in production for a second season. The Daily spoke to Zimmerman about the ideas behind the project, the political potential of satire, and the difficulties of rejecting Zionism as a Diasporic Jewish person.

The McGill Daily (MD): Whose idea was it to start this project? What are your goals, and what brings your team together?
Aviva Zimmerman (AZ): The project began as the brainchild of myself and one of my best friends – Danielle Angel, a Turkish-Israeli – as a way of lampooning all of the day-to-day absurdities we saw as foreigners who moved to Israel. With time, it took on more of a political edge and we began to narrow our focus to make the show a direct critique of Israeli politics […] The core driver behind the project [has] been to address the political situation in Israel, and to create a space for Jews in the Diaspora to wrestle with their opinions on Israel. Many Jews in the Diaspora are raised to maintain unwavering support of Israel, regardless of Israel’s actual policies on the ground. This show aims to question that unwavering support, and show people, especially North American Jews, what is going on in Israel in their name.

MD: What do you think makes Avi an effective character?
AZ: Avi is based on a caricature of a Jew that over-zealously supports Israel. Everyone knows an “Avi.” Especially now with extremism of all kinds spreading throughout the globe, the audience recognizes her as a caricature of that phenomenon […] We were tired of the dry and stale ways in which [the Israeli occupation] has traditionally been portrayed and wanted to change things up. The mockumentary/satirical format is a commentary on the absurdity of what’s going on – that we’re trying to remain objective and unmoved by such incredible suffering and absurd politics […] The use of humour allows you to get in with people who would otherwise be turned off by your message. People can only be hit over the head so many times by a given message.

“[We want] to address the political situation in Israel, and to create a space for Jews in the Diaspora to wrestle with their opinions on Israel.” —Aviva Zimmerman

MD: The show has tackled a variety of human rights injustices in Israel, from pinkwashing to the treatment of African refugees. How might the Diaspora relate to these issues?
AZ: The subject of Israel’s internal issues is often brushed over by the desire to paint the conversation in black and white: you are either for Israel or against Israel. When criticism of Israeli internal policy arises, it is often brushed aside as “all democracies have flaws” and “why not criticize another country doing the same thing?” These are just different attempts to stifle conversation and delegitimize criticism of Israeli policy. Mainstream organizations, such as the ones that organize Birthright trips, often brush over the “bad” parts of Israel or the parts they don’t want people to see. That is where we come in. Our series is an attempt to satirize these efforts to sweep under the rug the very problematic […] policies that we feel are pushing Israel closer and closer to extremism.

MD: How have North American Jewish communities reacted?
AZ: The response has been mixed. Many young Jews have reached out saying, “thank you so much for making me laugh, and for making me feel okay for criticizing Israeli policy.” But we have also received a lot of negative feedback, mostly from right-wing groups who do not appreciate our humour or our message.

MD: Do you think social media plays a role in the show’s reception?
AZ: When the show first dropped, the whole crew was watching the online comments roll in […] After working for so long on the show, there was an immediate satisfaction to reading the comments, especially the people who were hate-watching it. Those are still my favourite. Of course, we’re not the only ones seeing those comments. Social media allows our followers to interact with one another and for us to jump in and join the conversation, too. It makes for a show that’s living and breathing and constantly changing, which is more of the model we’re after: an interactive experience that goes both ways, between fans and creators.

“Our series is an attempt to satirize these efforts to sweep under the rug the very problematic […] policies that we feel are pushing Israel closer and closer to extremism.” —Aviva Zimmerman

MD: Does viewer input affect your production process?
AZ: We’ve definitely been listening to our viewers when it comes to planning new episodes, shorts and one-offs. [We’re] especially attuned to feedback from the people who are most pissed off by the show’s content. When we really get under someone’s skin, then we see how we can push even further in those directions.

MD: What advice can you give to Diasporic Jewish people who may have doubts about supporting Israel?
AZ: I fully understand the quagmire that many young Jews of the Diaspora face. Often, they grow up in communities that offer unwavering support [for Israel], and most mainstream Jewish education presents a totally one-sided approach to the [occupation] without presenting any other side […] For me, I felt I was raised with a definite right versus wrong. Israel was always right. And anyone who doesn’t think that way has a problem […] So I was raised a staunch supporter of Israel. When I got to university in Toronto, I was shocked to first learn of so much anti-Israel vitriol out there in the world, and I was totally unequipped to deal with it. At that point, though I was interested in learning […] the Palestinian narrative, I definitely did not feel welcome in [relevant] student groups on campus. Their rhetoric frightened me, and I didn’t have the tools to understand it at that time. But then when I went to Hillel, their right-wing rhetoric totally isolated me as well. So in university, I had no place to connect with […] It took a few more years, and actual trips to Israel to ‘see’ the other side and to begin to form an opinion. Now I think the arena has changed, and there are lots of Jewish groups emerging that are critical of Israel, or at least, invite the space for Jews to be critical (Jstreet U, If Not Now, Jewish Voices for Peace, the Centre for Non-Jewish Violence, All that’s Left, Open Hillel). So I hope there is more space for young Jews to still be connected to a community [while voicing] their criticism of Israel.

MD: What’s next for Avi?
AZ: We’re hard at work on our second season, which we’re aiming to release around the 50th anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank […] We are really excited to tackle Israel’s PR machine, Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and the Israeli government attempts to suppress criticism, such as the recent travel ban on visitors who support of [the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement]. We’re also trying to find a way to bring the show to a Canadian audience, and are developing a new project in that vein.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post “Everyone knows an Avi” appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Such is the aim of re:asian, a new online platform that seeks to publish the art and stories of the Asian diaspora in North America. Tailored specifically to youths, re:asian hopes to establish a community where personal and political concerns are voiced and channeled into direct action. The Daily spoke to two of its editors, Elysse Cloma and Michael Stewart, about the importance of creating media, generational gaps among immigrant families, and solidarity with other people of colour.

The McGill Daily (MD): Could you describe re:asian, its vision, and team of editors?
Michael Stewart (MS): re:asian is a Canadian and U.S. based online platform, though we plan on doing different kinds of platforms in the future. Our focus is to allow Asian-identifying people people living in the U.S. and Canada to create content for other diasporic Asian people by providing them with their own space and filling it with critical and political writings. We want to look at our history, culture, and community in both celebratory and critical ways.
Elysse Cloma (EC): In terms of publishing, right now we’re slowly relaunching from what re:asian used to be, which is Yellow Noise. Our goal at the moment is to publish once a week,. In the future hopefully we’ll expand to something bigger – or we’ll be publishing more frequently.

MD: What’s changed from Yellow Noise and what hasn’t?
EC: The main thing is the name change. For the new editors who got involved, we didn’t think that “yellow” was something we identified with. I thought that Yellow Noise was a really catchy name, and represents the act of reclaiming specifically East Asian-ness, at least in the way I understand it. I understood why it would be called that, with the history behind it, but I didn’t feel included with the word “yellow.” Changing the name, and also redefining the platform and how it can be used, allowed us to redefine the Asian identity as something more expansive and inclusive.
MS: We want to include more South Asian, Southeast Asian, even West Asian folks on the platform and working toward ensuing that their voices are also heard.

MD: Discursively, West Asia is more often grouped together with North Africa, commonly designated by the colonial term “Middle East.” What made you decide to highlight this identity category in re:asian?
MS: We want to expand the term “Asian” and what that encompasses. Part of that does get a little wishy-washy in the sense of how people identify, exactly. If we did receive submissions from people who identify as West Asian we would love to work with them and work to publish their work on our site.

MD: What do you think are the most important issues that Asian people are facing right now, especially for those in the diaspora? How do you see them addressed in your publication?
EC: Seeing ourselves as settlers on Indigenous land is one huge thing, and how we might be perpetuating anti-Blackness, but also wondering what our internal issues are, such as how we deal with the intersections of class and race, which is a big issue in places like Vancouver.
MS: With the conviction of Peter Liang, a letter about police brutality was crowdsourced. Things like that show how solidarity work looks like. Other points of discussion include mass incarceration, anti-LGBTQ legislation, and dealing with xenophobia and anti-Muslim violence. As someone living in the U.S. and staring down at the Trump presidency, I hope our publication can help talk about these issues and start dialogue a community space where people can come to and look at and see how other youths are talking about these things. These discussions can lead to going out and doing the work that makes the world a better place at the end of the day.

MD: Do you see re:asian having a role in negotiating the position of Asian folks in relation to other people of colour, in particular Black and Indigenous folks?
EC: This conversation is about Asian-identifying people in the diaspora defining our role as settlers on Indigenous territory, showing solidarity with Black folks, and connecting to other people of colour, which goes to show how the ways by which Asian people relate to the concept of race – through the model minority trope in particular – are intersectional. For re:asian, our goal is to create dialogue on these issues from the perspective of youths in the diaspora.
MS: In the political climate that we’re in, there’s been a lot of talk within Asian communities regarding our role within white supremacy and about our anti-Blackness. Exploring that would be essential to our idea of solidarity work, in addition to finding our own place within the formations of racial identities in the U.S. and Canada, historically and in present-day.

MD: What are the obstacles for Asian people working in media? Why is creating content important?
EC: For Asian writers and figures in the media, the main obstacle they’re facing, aside from getting a foot in the door, is that they have a sense of responsibility that they have to tell stories accurately if they’re going to tell stories about being Asian. That’s a huge responsibility, to have to develop a generally satisfying representation in mainstream media without trying to play into stereotypes or dulling it down for white audiences. I notice that Generation X, and anyone older, struggled achieving visibility. I’m really critical the roles they played because they were trying to be considered acceptable for white media. I’m not saying it’s better now, but it’s something people are more aware of. We even have representations like Fresh off the Boat that might resonate with a lot of people. It’s not that these shows shouldn’t be received without criticism, but we’re moving in a direction where we’re starting to see the responsibility of having authentic portrayals being more important.
MS: It’s not only representation on screen, but also the writers or videographers behind the scenes – if they identify as Asian, they have that lens to look at things. Even for a publication, like ours, it’s important that there is representation in its editorial team. I have seen a lot more Asian youths really starting to make their own spaces, on Instagram, or websites, or blogs, which is a really great thing to see. It gives ourselves a means of expressing ourselves within a power dynamic that really doesn’t want us to say what we want to say. It’s like our food: a lot of the times the kind of Asian food that’s accepted is the kind where the taste is changed so that it fits a white palette.

MD: You emphasized getting Asian youths involved in publishing. Do you envision re:asian having a role in facilitating dialogue between youths and older generations?
EC: Definitely. [Within immigrant communities] there’s this epidemic where you don’t relate to your parents, or your grandparents, or your relatives, to a satisfying level. I think focusing youths on the platform is [so they] have an outlet of expression. But on the other hand, I also want to have those expressive outlets be used to bridge generational gaps. Say my parents didn’t agree with the content: they can at least be exposed to [what we are saying] and reflect on it. A lot of people also don’t necessarily feel safe sharing these kinds of [political] thoughts with their parents at this point. But being able to express themselves is really important, and so fostering safeness and inclusivity on an online platform is huge for us.

MD: What do you want potential contributors to know?
MS: Right now we’re having a callout for submissions this month [January] around the theme of “firsts” since this is our first month after launching. A lot of times we have these moments in our lives that stay with us. For example, the idea of firsts: Is the first time the last time? What does that mean to you? It could be something serious like the first microaggression you felt, or the first time you felt racialized within white supremacist society, or the first time you had this type of food, or the first pair of shoes you bought, first time you felt beautiful, stuff like that. We just want people to really have fun with it – or be serious and critical with it. [It’s] a space [for] you to express a first you felt and share that with us. We would love to work with anyone who wants to submit, as long as it’s on the lines of firsts.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Catch an audio recording of this interview on Unfit to Print, through CKUT radio or The Daily’s website.

Find re:asian on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

The Daily would like to acknowledge that Saima Desai, current Features Editor, and Chantelle Schultz, past Multimedia Editor, are part of the re:asian editorial team.

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The Herbivore Society for Peace and Justice kicks off the year with Veganuary, an event series exploring the ethical and cultural aspects of veganism. Self-described as an “anti-colonial, inclusive, and intersectional” political activist group, The Herbivore Society for Peace and Justice recently celebrated their first year of being an official club and is currently the only vegan club on campus. The group aims to educate students about the political and personal benefits of abstaining from or reducing one’s consumption of animals products.

Running from January 13 to 27, Veganuary boasts an impressive line up of events, including potlucks, panels, and hands-on workshops addressing both practical and theoretical concerns. Highlights include “Veganism on a Budget,” a workshop that aims to challenge the Gwyneth Paltrow brand of veganism with specific advice on making the lifestyle sustainable and affordable; “Veganism and Privilege,” a panel discussion exploring the ways in which veganism intersects with specific identities and axes of power; and “Veganism x Feminism,” hosted in collaboration with the F Word, a biannual feminist publication, which addresses the opposrtunities and problematics of joining the animal rights and reproductive justice movements.

Veganuary combines theory-heavy discussions with practical lessons, from budget-planning to kombucha-brewing, making the festival an ideal primer for anyone who is curious about the vegan lifestyle. With a mandate that acknowledges veganism’s colonial, racial, and class-related implications, The Herbivore Society for Peace and Justice promises to make the move away from animal products accessible to a marginalized audience and essential to one’s activism.

We Can’t Make The Same Mistake Twice For McGill University: Film and Panel Discussion

We Can’t Make the Same Mistake Twice seeks to uncover the ongoing legacy of colonial discrimination towards Indigenous peoples: violence that McGill’s administration not only fails to acknowledge, but continues to perpetuate. In 2007, The Child and Family Caring Society of Canada – led by Cindy Blackstock – and the Assembly of First Nations filed a human rights complaint against the federal government. They argued that the child and family welfare services they were being provided – inadequate, underfunded, and deployed of basic human rights – discriminated against Indigenous children. The trial, however, was dragged on for six years by the government, though the court eventually ruled in favour of the Indigenous activist groups. Director Alanis Obomsawin’s documentary is set within the court hearings: detailing the various testimonies and revealing the Canadian government’s “mind-numbingly bureaucratic approach to a human crisis.” However, the court battle is not an isolated instance, but is embedded within a legacy of discriminatory government practices whereby Indigenous peoples were forced to leave their land and families in order to access basic services. On January 19, We Can’t Make the Same Mistake Twice will be screened at Cinema du Parc, with opening remarks by the director herself and a panel discussion moderated by Allan Downey, assistant professor in the department of history and classical studies at McGill. In a city founded through the colonization of Indigenous land, it is important to recognize, understand, and resist these histories and their present-day implications.

The Rap Battles for Social Justice

In response to racial discrimination, the hip-hop movement gained momentum during the 1970s in New York City’s South Bronx. African-American, Caribbean-American, and Latin American youth used music as a vehicle for self-expression, empowerment, and resistance. Since then, hip-hop has evolved considerably – but The Rap Battles for Social Justice, a Montreal-based collective, shows how music remains a powerful form of activism. On their Facebook page, the group emphasizes the importance of including People of Colour (POC) on stage “especially in hip-hop” – a racialized art form created by those who were, and continue to be, systemically marginalized. The collective strives to challenge these systems of inequality. Bringing together “hip-hop heads and activists,” they aim to “showcase the wide range of talent in the MTL scene while educating the masses.” The Rap Battles for Social Justice is funded by various grassroots, community and student groups from McGill and Concordia universities. They also collect donations door-to-door in order to support the performers and raise money for valuable collectives such as Aamjiwnaang & Sarnia Against Pipelines.

Since March 2015, the collective has produced numerous rap battles centred on themes such as climate justice, gender freedom, and austerity. Over 800 people have attended so far – and the organization is still in its early stages of development. Spring 2017 includes two highly-anticipated rap battles: one against Police Brutality on February 15th, the other against consumerism on March 29th. The use of hip-hop provides not only a means of resistance but a platform for dialogue, self reflexivity, and teaching.

Festival Nuits d’Afrique

Celebrating their 30th anniversary last year, Nuits d’Afrique will be continuing the party into the new year. Nuits d’Afrique is primarily recognized for their summer world music festival – which boasted over 700 artists in July 2016 – but the collective produces events throughout the rest of the year as well, including the 24th edition of Festival de musique du Maghreb. From March 31 to April 2, the festival will melodically transform the Théatre Fairmont and Club Balattou into spaces reminiscent of  Tunis, and Marrakech through North African beats such as chaabi music and gnawa rhythms. Until then, Club Balattou on Saint Laurent will be hosting two to three events per week; the exciting lineup features music that ranges from gospel to funkadelic to Cuban. In 1985, Lamie Touré – the president and founder of Nuits d’Afrique – opened Club Balattou, after his previously owned club, Café Creole, closed down. Touré launched Café Creole after immigrating to Canada from Guinea in 1974 with the desire to “create a space for Africans.” In an interview with the Montreal Gazette, he recounts a day where there were “twenty immigrants waiting at the [club’s] front door with their suitcases.” Through Nuits d’Afrique, Touré continues to provide an indispensable space for voices of the African diaspora: a platform that fosters self-expression while showcasing the creative, diverse, and complex history of African music.

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For fans of the long-time performer, poet, and writer, Kai Cheng Thom’s first novel is nothing short of a gift. Recently published by Metonymy Press, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir, to quote the prologue, “bursts through doors […] like a glittering wind.” It is a kind of story that we rarely get to read, about trans girls who wield knives and survive out of spite, femmes of colour who tear each other apart and learn to love one another through “hot sex and gang violence and maybe zombies and lots of magic.”

A novel about violence, glamour, and the kind of love that sparks a revolution, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars is a testimony to living dangerously and on the margins. The Daily spoke to Kai Cheng about the book.

[Longer version of interview by Viola Chen and Coco Zhou, audio edited by Viola Chen.]

The McGill Daily (MD): Did you have a vision for this book? If so, has it changed over time?
Kai Cheng Thom (KC): When I started writing this book, I didn’t think anyone was going to see it. My vision was that I wanted to write the kind of novel that I would’ve liked to have been able to read in my teens, or even now, a novel about trans women who are incredibly empowered and dangerous. Danger is an important theme in the book because, of course, trans women live in danger all the time. I wanted to see a rendering of us having reclaimed that power to be dangerous in some way. I also wanted to write about violence of all kinds. What does it mean to be someone who is forced to be violent in order to survive, like most of us are? What does that do to one? Experiencing violence is very traumatic, and we see a lot of literature about this. There’s very little literature about how traumatic it is to be violent. The project of this book remains, even though it started as a personal project, to examine violence for trans women primarily, but also for everyone, and to explore ways to heal both from the violence we experience but also the violence we commit.

MD: What was your process like?
KC: I started writing the book in Halifax at a writer’s residency. I’d just had my book of poetry rejected by a publisher in New York, who was basically like, your book is bad. So I was really sad – my book is really bad and I don’t know what’s going to happen. I started to write a new book, which was this book. I wrote one chapter a day for ten days. All I did was write the book and go for walks by the ocean. I thought I was only writing it to prove to myself that I could write a long-form novel, and also to work out some internal conflicts. But then Metonymy asked if I had any books lying around, and I happened to have this one. So that’s what happened. I finished it by writing chapters late at night and not sleeping.

MC: Does the book combine fiction and memoir?
KC: The question of autobiography versus fiction is one that’s come up a lot in different reviews and interviews. I think it’s hilarious because I’ve never once said that the book is my autobiography. But people assume that it is, which is fine. They’re probably right, in some way. The way I’ve been answering this question so far is that the book is definitely not autobiography. If one reads it, one will see that is definitely true. It’s a surrealist novel, though my life is fairly surreal. I would say that the novel comes mostly out of Audre Lorde’s idea of biomythography, which is this idea that you can start from the factual truth of your own life, but then also mythologize it and use poetic language or magical thinking to capture experiences in reality that are not able to be expressed through cold facts alone. The quote that keeps coming back to me while I was writing the novel was actually from Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, where the main character is caught having lied about her whole life after seducing all these men and stuff. She’s great. Her lover’s like, you’re a liar and you’re unclean. She goes, I never lied in my heart. The title of the book is Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars, and it’s about how sometimes we have to lie or use fiction in order to express the truth about our lives. For me, I’m able to use this book to express some stuff that’s happened in my life without having to directly talk about my life.

MD: You’ve worked mainly with poetry in the past. What is it like writing prose?
KC: Oh man, it’s really challenging! The book breaks into poetry here and there, and it also uses the script format. But prose itself is very difficult. There is a woman of colour poet who said, poetry is the form of the marginal because poetry is often short and to the point. Poetry is a wallet while prose is a suitcase. You need to have a lot of time and privilege, honestly, to write long-form prose. You also have to have a lot of stamina and dedication. I think this book is indicative of – what I hope is – my growing ability to write long form, but definitely of my growing privilege as an artist. I started out writing poetry in high school on Xanga and Facebook. I didn’t think I was ever going to be published or a professional, because that’s not the message you get when you’re an Asian growing up in Eastside Vancouver in the 90s. As I became more and more able to get money for my work and get residencies, I then became more able to write, to imagine longer form projects.

MD: Toward the end of the book, it almost seems like we were going to have a fairy-tale ending. This expectation is broken, however. What did you have in mind when you wrote this ending?
KC: I keep on asking people about this ending. I’m going to try to not spoil it too much. I knew for sure when I started writing that it was going to start in a certain place, with this narrator becoming what she calls “the greatest escape artist in the world.” Her life is about getting “unstuck” from the story that she was trapped in. It’s her conflict, and mine, and that of many women, trans and cis – this idea that we are stuck in a story. We’ve been trained to want this fairy-tale ending with all the things that come with it. I wanted to give the narrator this opportunity to have the chance at a perfect fairy-tale ending, not one that’s corrupted, which we see in a lot of feminist literature, like Margaret Atwood or whatever. People writing about princesses who marry princes, and the prince turns out to be abusive, which often is the case. But I wanted to examine a situation where you had everything you wanted from a fairy-tale ending, and it still wasn’t enough for you. It’s not enough because you wanted to create yourself to be someone different. I knew for sure that that’s where the narrator was going to end up because she’s a character that’s perennially unsatisfied. I also think she’s somewhat self-destructive. She’s like, I can’t give myself a happy ending. But then I don’t know if she really would’ve been happy in her happy ending.

MD: Are you in love right now?
KC: What! Yes, I am in love right now. I’m in love with my wife, Kama La Mackerel, because she’s fucking amazing and changing the world right now. She’s at McGill in an artist residency at the Faculty of Education. I really hope everyone at McGill is appreciating her and loving her the way she deserves. Kama is a glowing force of trans femme goodness, and I’m just really happy to be married to her. I’m in love with all my closest folks, in particular Emily Clare, who is really important and an amazing artist, and we are working on some projects together. I feel love for the queer people of colour community in Montreal, because we’ve been through a lot. Like, so much! We have been through all kinds of hell that are particular to being in that space of white supremacy. I’m in love with trans women, and that’s a complicated love, which is also what the book is about. I feel like I am in love with trans women and I am terrified by them. I want to say that I’m in love with myself, but I think I waver on this one. We all waver on being in love with ourselves.

MD: What other projects do you have lined up?
KC: It’s been difficult being a trans woman, especially being a woman of colour, working in media. It’s really intense with the media being such a white and traditionally masculine institution. I have so much love in my heart for women of colour who are making media and staking it out, especially in leftist media because that can be such a bro-dude space sometimes. We obviously live in a time of great terror right now. The rise of white nationalism on the global sphere is really intense. The struggles around maintaining any kind of human rights for marginalized folks is about to become really difficult. I have a book of poetry coming out early next year, which is really exciting. Emily and I have a children’s book coming out in the fall. All those things aside, what I really hope is to be able to be there for other women of colour, and trans people, because we need each other more than ever. If art, or activism, or being around for two a.m. calls is part of that, then that is what’s right for me.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir can be purchased at the Concordia Community Solidarity Co-op Bookstore, or online at http://metonymypress.com/.

Catch the recorded version of this interview in Unfit to Print through CKUT radio or on The Daily’s website.

The post Trans girl dangerous appeared first on The McGill Daily.

During one of my visits to the emergency room this summer, I met a doctor who wore a checkered shirt and spoke in a gentle voice. He was young, about to complete his residency at that particular hospital. We chatted about my studies (“So contemporary art is, like, paintings with colourful stripes?”) while he gave me stitches. “What happened?” he asked. I told him.

“Oh,” he said, “I’m so sorry. That must’ve been hard.”

Another had asked me, “is it because of school?” (Sure.) “Do you live with anyone?” (No.) “Are you serious about…?” (No, it was merely a gesture.) “Do you have a plan?” (No, I don’t. I promise.) There were nurses who checked in on me constantly. “Do you feel like you might hurt yourself?” (No, but if you keep asking, I swear I will.) I woke up one morning to a breakfast plate on my lap. My neighbour peered over. “If you aren’t going to eat the cheese, can I have it?” We complained about the guy who had screamed through the night. “Probably fucked in the head,” my new friend said. (Me too.)

I know this is all very alarming. But the alternative is always worse.

The word “recovery” signals progression. The path of recovery, they say. A path is linear and designates a certain chronology. Like a piece of prose, it proceeds.

Trauma time is written in verse, line upon line, ledge on ledge. Verse reverses. Your body remembers each and every time you have been hurt. Sudden anger, fear, a twitch, phantom pain, “I’m sorry I’m so sorry please don’t leave me.” A flashback doesn’t always involve vision. In my experience it often does not. The body speaks pre-human tongues, a language not yet codified. If you don’t believe in what your body tells you, no one will.

Like a supernova, my dreams are hot and loud and threatening. In these dreams, I am constantly running, blood pumping behind my eyes, my legs heavy and full of lead. These sensations dissipate as soon as I open my eyes, blue bedroom buzzing with aftershock. The rest of the day is blank. The rest is white noise. Hours creep. Each day an iteration of the previous, channeled into static.

In the Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away, the child protagonist and her parents are trapped in a ghost world. Forced to adopt a new name, she is told to always remember her original name. If she forgets it, she cannot go home. I’ve cried many times watching this scene. I’ve forgotten so many things, my memories sounds and images from another life. My most buried thoughts bear the fruit of screaming. Can I still go home if it ceased to exist a long time ago? If I were never meant to have a home? If I forget who I am? One day, you walk through a room and realize what you were holding is gone. You can’t find it, even when you get down on your knees.

Trying to locate a piece of memory is like walking through rooms full of strangers. One day, I may find a child in one of those rooms. The child that used to be me lived across the ocean in another country, which I no longer recognize. I suspect it doesn’t recognize me, either. There is nothing inherently bad about losing attachment. Your body does this to survive. It doesn’t always succeed, but it works hard to forget.

Over time your body learns to deal with bad things by itself. My memory is full of intentional blanks. The more I become aware of these blanks, however, the more I try to excavate meaning out of them. My psychiatrist insists that dwelling on awful feelings is not useful. I want to tell her that the decision to linger inside trauma is not arrived at logically. I feel myself summoned to the task, the same way I am called upon to confront the world’s injustices. The child that used to be me was brought across the ocean through a current of blood and money, a system of labour build upon bodies and bodies of knowledge. I could not have existed without this relationship to other bodies. I have a responsibility toward them. I cannot possibly heal without them.

“It must’ve been hard.” This kind of response is good for ticking off a point on an empathy checklist. Meanwhile, your wounds keep bleeding because stitches won’t keep them closed, because trauma has no boundaries, because no space is a safe space when the world wants you dead at every turn. There is so much your doctor doesn’t ask you, may not care to ask you, doesn’t want to hear you say.

Friend, you were built to survive. You have always known this. Trauma has no discrete edges, and neither do our bodies. No matter how many times I’ve beaten it, cut it open, burnt it, starved it, tried to get rid of it, my body finds a way back. It bleeds and writhes in pain, and this is proof that I am still alive, isn’t it? [special_issue slug=”body_special_issue” element=”piece_footer”][special_issue slug=”body_special_issue” element=”init”]

The post Walking through rooms appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Sporting a baby pink top bun that matches her sweatpants, gothshakira exclaims, “I love it!” as she steps into the apartment where our interview will take place. “So cute and cozy.” She lounges on the couch while discussing creating Girl’s Club, a blog that arose out of a need for women and femmes of colour to own creative spaces. In other equally impassioned moments, she delivers an in-depth analysis of the rivalry between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump based on their astrological birth charts.

gothshakira is best known on Instagram for “intersectional feminist meme-making,” a description that publications and fans alike have coined to try and encapsulate her work. What began as a self care practice during a challenging Montreal winter evolved into a semi-career, with over 36,000 Instagram followers as of this writing. Initially an attempt to process her vulnerabilities through laughter, her memes gained traction as they connected and represented marginalized voices. As a nonbinary person of colour, gothshakira’s memes represent a new wave of “internet activism.” They create dialogue around the nuanced nature of identities – the ways in which they are shaped by history, personal experiences, and perceptions of others – in an easily consumable way.

Memes, by definition, are shared content; they exist to be reproduced, reacted to, and altered in online communities. Thus, they can be studied as a way to gain insight into the politics of the communities in which they circulate. For instance, in the recent U.S. presidential elections, candidates from both parties have tried to capitalize on the viral power of memes, leading to Hillary Clinton declaring Pepe the Frog a hate symbol due to its appropriation by Trump supporters. For gothshakira, meme-making reconstructs the complexities and contradictions of society in a format that is accessible and allows for dialogue. Her large following shows just how influential these seemingly innocuous images can be. She regularly receives private messages of gratitude from people who see their identities and experiences validated through her memes.

However, her work is not without controversy. This June, gothshakira came under fire for a photo published in the Fader that showed her with blonde hair and pale skin. The accompanying article hailed her as “The High Priestess of Intersectional Feminist Memes.” Black feminists on social media took issue with the fact that a white-passing, middle-class content creator – was being idolized as a trailblazer, while Black people have been making politically conscious memes “way before” gothshakira came along.
gothshakira emphasizes that she is proud of being Latinx and a child of immigrants, but acknowledges that those aspects of her identity are complicated by her privileges. Growing up, she saw her father, speaking English in a thick accent, deal with racist violence. Witnessing how immigrants are othered and punished is a key motivator for her anti-oppressive politics.

Critical self-reflection is difficult, but it is necessarily involved in understanding the power imbalances woven into the framework of society. gothshakira creates a shared sense of belonging among marginalized communities, while highlighting the complexities within one’s personal experience. Her memes evoke learning and healing – for not only herself, but also the wider community.

The McGill Daily (MD): What is it like being a “double Aquarius” [having both Sun and Moon signs as Aquarius]?
gothshakira (GS): Being a “double Aquarius” means that I vacillate between being a robot with no emotions and being really passionate about the world. Although Aquarians may have difficulty relating to people emotionally on a one-on-one basis, we find it very easy to be emotionally attached to causes, and bring up the underdog, and give people voices. But we are very eccentric – the weirdo sign. There’s a joke that says that if aliens ever came to earth, the first people we should thrust at them would be Aquarians, because they’d know how to communicate with them.

MD: Do you consider your work a form of activism?
GS: That’s a good question. I’m not sure. I would call myself an “internet activist” but when that goes through my head I begin to think, is that a thing? Is there activism on the internet? Is it activism if it’s not done in real life? But, at the end of the day, at a time when more parts of our existence are lived through the internet, what is real life? Is what’s happening on the internet not “real life?” I don’t know what I would label myself at this point, and a lot of my interests coincide with those of activists, and I do participate in acts of activism in my life, but I’m still not sure.

MD: Are you involved in any other artistic projects?
GS: I’m involved with quite a few creative projects right now. I’ve been doing commissions for galleries and events, and I’ve just started branching out into digital art. I did a piece, that’s not a meme, for a book that’s curated by Molly Soda. The book is coming out in November, and I’m really excited about that. But I’ve always been a writer, and I’m working on some pieces for different publications right now, and that’s kind of what I want to branch out into. But I mean, I love memes and I love making them. I’m not making as many as I did before because I have a lot of stuff on my plate, but I think I’ll always love memes, you know! “I’m married to the game,” as a great philosopher once said.

MD: Do you find that there are differences between these different platforms you mentioned – your writing, your memes – with regards to how they facilitate discussions on intersectionality?
GS: The main thing about memes is that they’re accessible, and that’s what attracted me in the first place. The reason I started introducing more complex ideas like intersectionality is because I thought I should use this platform to say something productive about what I believe, the way I’ve thought for a really long time, and the reality of my lived experiences. It wasn’t super intentional. “Intersectional feminist memes” was kind of a label that other people put on me. I was just making memes about my life and what I’ve been through as a person who’s identified as a woman, as non-binary, as a child of immigrants, as Latina.

“I don’t know what I would label myself at this point, and a lot of my interests coincide with those of activists, and I do participate in acts of activism in my life, but I’m still not sure.”

— gothshakira

MD: You’ve talked about representation of people of colour in memes before. Can you elaborate on the complexities of this kind of representation?
GS: It’s always been really close to my heart to represent the voices of people who aren’t otherwise heard, because I’ve felt like that person at a lot of points in my life. I know that I am white-passing, and I know that I have privileges that a lot of people don’t have, like how I speak English fluently with no accent. My dad doesn’t. He has experienced so much discrimination over the years, and I saw that from a really young age. I try to only speak for myself and my experiences, because I’m not trying to claim that I know anything about the experiences of other people of colour. I have come under fire for being privileged. There’s a lot of critique about this one press photo in which I happen to be blonde, and I looked very pale because of the photo editing, and there was a lot of dialogue on the internet about it. People were saying, is it okay that this person is being called an intersectional feminist meme creator, when a lot of Black people have been making political, intersectional memes for a really long time.

MD: You’ve made memes before about being white-passing and middle-class, and having friends with similar identities. How do you navigate your positionality?
GS: I grew up in Calgary, which is predominantly white. A few years ago, a lot of my friends were people who grew up in smaller cities and moved to big cities like Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto. We were all kind of into the same thing, and our social circles were white in a lot of ways. It’s been difficult learning to critique different aspects of this culture, which are things that I’ve seen my entire life: marginalization of people of colour in different communities, as well as women in creative spaces. That’s why we created Girl’s Club. It’s really difficult trying to critique these things in a way that’s funny, but not slanderous – but still incisive and still constitutes social commentary. I just feel like, if nobody says it, I gotta say it. When I first moved here two or three years ago, I was like “the new kid” and I did feel a very cold front, like I wasn’t cool enough. But now, since I’ve somehow gained this big Instagram following, and most of the people in these communities are down with what I’m saying, I’ve found that people’s attitudes towards me have changed, and that’s really unfortunate. But that just goes to show that what I say is important if it’s my personal lived experience, and I see that people like me have gone through the same feelings of being an outcast, and I do it for them. I do it for us. We deserve to be heard, right? We deserve to be heard in creative spaces as artists as POC, as women, as non-gender conforming individuals.

MD: A lot of your memes address dating in Montreal. What is the dating scene like, in your experience?
GS: A lot of those memes were about experiences I had from 2013 to 2015. I was a lot younger then and was going through a lot of partners – both lovely and questionable ones – and I was noticing certain trends. I don’t know if there’s a definitive dating scene. I don’t date a lot anymore. I’m pretty introverted and have become even more reclusive since the Instagram thing happened. This sounds weird coming out of my mouth, but people will actually want to fuck you just because you have a lot of Instagram followers. It’s really weird, and it makes me suspicious of everyone’s intentions now. I used to be a lot more free-spirited because I was allowed to be, but now I feel like there’s something I have to protect, so that’s a little sad. Sometimes I wish I could be as free and gloriously slutty as I used to be.

MD: Have you learned to care for yourself through Instagram?
GS: When I started making memes, I was going through a really rough winter and was feeling like a loser in a lot of ways. I realized I had a lot of self loathing that I needed to work through and I figured – well, that my tactic was always to laugh at myself – and I love memes. I think they’re hilarious. I love the absurdity of them. I figured that If I were to write all my feelings in this relatively innocuous format then I’d be able to see myself more as who I actually am – someone who is strong and beautiful and powerful, and that’s exactly what has happened. Every day I’m learning to love myself more and take care of myself more. I’m also really getting into cooking for myself more, and I’m not really a big cooking person. But I’m really getting into the ritual of preparing a meal and nourishing my body. And letting myself feel things.

“It’s always been really close to my heart to represent the voices of people who aren’t otherwise heard, because I’ve felt like that person at a lot of points in my life.”

— gothshakira

MD: You’ve mentioned the kind of stages that you’ve gone through. What stage would you say you’re at right now?
GS: “Ethnic aunt!” When I first moved here, I was in my early 20s and I was still a kid. Now, I just feel like I’m slowly coming to this stage of my life where I’m like: “I wear loose pants, and cook to Erykah Badu, and I found that I’ve accumulated children.” I always happen upon people who are like 18, 19, 20, who’ve just moved to Montreal. They’ve started to call me “mom,” or “auntie,” which I think is really cute. There’s so many amazing, young, artists of colour who are just killing it! I feel like I’m transitioning into a more mothering, nurturing role which is really new to me but really exciting. Though I still try to live life like a teenage girl, which I think is the secret to life.

“I see that people like me have gone through the same feelings of being an outcast, and I do it for them.”

— gothshakira

MD: Memes are supposed to be silly but have become increasingly politicized. Can we analyze them in a serious way?
GS: I think that’s what’s most important and powerful about memes. They’re pretty light in a lot of ways, but there’s always some social commentary within them. I do think that memes should be open to analysis, just like pop lyrics should be open to analysis, just like the Kardashians should be open to discursive interpretation. These fast things that we consume for immediate gratification – they constitute a big part of what entertains us. And the lowest common denominator of what entertains the generation – that, I believe, is indicative of the culture as a whole. In that sense, if a meme can make people discuss, “hey, how are we portraying certain communities of people?” then that’s incredible. And in that case, I’m so happy to be alive in 2016.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post Married to the game, devoted to the memes appeared first on The McGill Daily.

in black holes it’s easy to pretend that she is just a hoax
that you are just human
but fantasy deliquesces
and the truth can be so easily unleashed

[you created me]
she coats her cracked lips with copper
(you wanted to be unearthed)
you taste the metal

she is forged venom
and you know so little about the antidote
but more often you know her wiring slipping between your ribcage
you are galvanized and malleable
and her toxins are excellent sophistry

she wears ordinary clothes but she wears them differently
velvet soft razors, silky buttered knives
and you relish the vitriolic cuts
but when she unwraps, her bronze flesh sets you on edge
(your thigh
her knife
her tongue)

sometime you wonder what beast she is
and then you know
serpent, ophidian
skin shimmering, gaze matte, eyes devouring
alluring yet deadly

[i think sometimes that you misunderstand me]
legs cross and lace falls
[or that you understand me too well]
you stare at the scar on her shoulder

her lesions make a filigree on your skin
as she places you in a crucible
and marinates in your company
[indulge me]
(consume me)
you churn and growl

the silent alleys are ageing
but still nails clash
but still skin mingles like an alloy
with blood dripping through the spaces of your teeth
you are gilded and raw

when she welds crevices into you with tempered phrases
her words are verdigris
and all you can ever breathe is her

–Maddie Gnam

Gros Morne

If I could write this ruddy mountain
As thinly as I see it

I would loll my arm into
The intimacies of people weaved

Ghost threads, cobwebs stretched
Frail across this sea

I would name each
Ligonberry and pretty meek boulder

With all the blunt spread
Of a colonial, or a tourist

My irreverence dulling the bloody
Colours of sugar my lips can’t define

But now the skies are swollen
With myself, I’m piercing

This land, my words
Clumsy raindrops.

–Keah Hansen

Salty moon

girl meets Girl
girl trips over the moon for Girl, but
Girl leaps through stars for another and, they somehow don’t collide
but girl imagines their universe
when she trips
and spins
back down
sees their own world of soft yellow
light, even as she sinks in damp earth
and salt
down down further down
where
girl tastes the sick sweet white light
of Girl on honeymoon with another
and their universe drifts
without sparks
somewhere far
far, so, so, very very
far.

–Anonymous

Madari

I ask my grandmother where she comes from
she says I stem from suitcases

I ask her who she comes from
she says I come from nomads

I take her hands into my own
And ask what the journey was like

She says the road is toughest when you’re on borrowed time

I ask her if she wants to rest
She says she’s never had the time

I wake up at dawn and sit next to her while she prays
She says God hears you better when the rest of the world is sleeping

So I ask, where does God come from
she says, God comes from women who spill their bodies to make room for us

I ask her of these women
She says soon I’ll be one of them

She rests her hand on the side of my cheek and says
Your mother was your first home

And now you pray to the East
Every time you bow your head
Heaven grows under her feet

I ask her if she enjoys poetry
she says I am her favourite poem

I ask if it’s because she helped write me into existence
she says I am the light in her eyes

I ask who she got her eyes from
She says she stole them from the boy next door

I ask her about her first love
She says she left it where she found it

so I trace her footsteps and follow her back to the village where she was conceived
and i marvel at her conception

She was made of her father’s hopes and her mother’s worries

They dreamed of a boy and she harboured that insecurity
she laced it with shortcomings and tied a perfect a bow on what could’ve been her

But she taught what it means to keeping moving on

Her life was not effortless and neither was her love

So

I ask her if she loves me
And she says, enough to step out onto the road again

–Khatira Mahdavi

Baba

I am three years old and my skyline is a soft blue

with your head a halo against the sun

I shut one eye and gaze at you through the other

a cloud of hair on top of a man

Who tethers his love to balloons

You bent down to lift me

And I thought to myself how foolish is the sky to leave you all to me

–Khatira Mahdavi

Lying to your mother is something
you knew instinctively
at 13, and remembered with hell in your head
at 21.

The moon pale as a rib. Houseful of adults and their languages.
Where were they when you pondered bleach at 14?

At the counselor’s you smiled hard
with half of your face. Tea leaves swirl
then settle. One time when you were eight

your mother picked you up from school.
In the car your tears hot enough
to brew tea with. If you behave this way again, I will –

You felt your shoulders turn in, and in, and in.
Cute. Compact. You are the girl-child
your mother never wanted.

–Coco Zhou

Dusk, a lake: where Girl was last seen.
A Girl with brains of beryl, lung of wool.

How did she get here. Whose.
It was the year children learned to swim.
A litter of them, by the lake. Find her

at the edge of slumber. Brains & lung.
Washed out & stretched. Every fish
that swims by throws away its voice.

–Coco Zhou

My belly
Is swollen
with the pain I hold for you
It sits, bloated, between the wet raw flesh of my organs
And it
expands between my ribs
with every
breath

that I take.
I cater to it deftly
Careful not to burst its taut skin
With the soft strokes of
My straying thoughts.

On days where the pain
Sits neatly
Amongst my other organs,
I hold my breath
Careful not to move too quickly.
At home in the body

Of a soul rubbed raw
The pain has started to feel
Like my natural landscape.

On other days it begins to bloat
Seeping out into the dark,
Damp folds of my flesh
And as the storm begins to rage,
My skin
Serves only as a boundary
That contains the violent thoughts
That seek to contort
My muscles
And
Rip through the flesh
That used to sustain me.
That flesh is now a part
Of the pain
What once was my body
Is left, deserted, on my bedroom floor.

– Anonymous

The post Girl appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Inspired by Sarah Waters’s Victorian-era crime novel The Fingersmith, Park’s film is a psychological thriller set in Japanese-occupied Korea in the 1930s. The protagonist, Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri), is a Korean pickpocket masquerading as the personal maid of Japanese noblewoman, Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee). She’s on a mission to help Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo), a Korean con man, steal Hideko’s heart and inheritance — but what she does not anticipate is falling for Hideko herself.

The film made its debut at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, and was most recently shown at the Toronto International Film Festival. It is expected to be released in Canada by Halloween. Already, many American and Canadian critics have criticized the film for the sex scenes between Sook-hee and Hideko, saying that they were overboard, pornographic, and unnecessary.

I want to see those who have objectified and belittled me fall at my feet and beg to be forgiven.

Two East Asian women are having sex on camera and it looks hot – it must be exploitative, right? Many reviews remark upon the similarities between The Handmaiden and Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013), which won a Palme d’Or at Cannes and is heralded as a milestone in queer cinema. Considering Blue is a terrible film, I’d argue that it deserved neither the awards nor the praise. It employs some of the most tired tropes for depicting queer people, tells us that our love must always end tragically, and gratuitously includes excessive and voyeuristic sex scenes that even made the actors feel uncomfortable to shoot. It was porn for the straight male director and viewer, with the queer women characters enacting their fetish and fantasy.

I was hesitant to watch The Handmaiden because of the comparisons to Blue. As a racialized queer femme, I am tired of having to choose between invisibility and fetishization in media. I am sick of dying on screen. I am traumatized, and I am vengeful. It’s no longer enough that I see myself survive and make peace with my oppressors. I want to see those who have objectified and belittled me fall at my feet and beg to be forgiven.

In The Handmaiden, the two women protagonists destroy their male abusers. We see Sook-hee and Hideko become closer through conversation and play, their intimacy captured by a single glance, a gesture, a word. Count Fujiwara, the person Sook-hee is supposed to convince Hideko to marry, is entangled in this relationship — not as the common love interest of the two women, but as both obstacle and key to their romance and happiness. It is by manipulating Fujiwara — who deceives Sook-hee and tries to take advantage of Hideko — that the two women are able to escape from their predicament and be together.

A significant portion of the film delves into Hideko’s experiences living with her misogynistic uncle, Kouzuki (Cho Jin-woong), who has groomed Hideko to perform readings of lewd stories in front of other noblemen. Scenes that portray these readings position the men as pathetic, repulsive voyeurs who get off on elegantly staged pornography. The dynamics here are similar to the ways in which, since the Renaissance, male European artists have been exploiting the nude female figure for the appetite of an elite male audience under the pretense of high art.

Apparently, people cannot watch a film about queer women of colour without presuming it to be the antithesis to feminism.

The Handmaiden not only illuminates these relations of power by exposing the male characters as abusive and unethical, but also builds up to a cathartic sequence of Hideko and Sook-hee wrecking Kouzuki’s library. We see Sook-hee tearing up the books — fragments of obscene drawings littering the ground, while a hesitant Hideko shuffles in the background, both unsure of Sook-hee’s defiance and empowered by it — a painfully relatable portrayal, for me, of a person coming to terms with the possibility of surviving abuse. “The one that saves me,” sings the voice-over, as Hideko watches her lover rip up the last book, “my Sook-hee.”

It is the emotional intimacy between Hideko and Sook-hee that makes their sex scenes seem more genuine than spectacular. Park navigated the filming with care and respect, establishing boundaries and negotiating camera angles with the actors before the shoot, vacating the space during filming, and letting the actors rest away from the crew after. These measures alone distinguish The Handmaiden from Blue Is the Warmest Colour, for which the filming of a single sex scene lasted for days on end.

As a result, the performances in these two films convey vastly different senses of intimacy. There is warmth and joy in the way Sook-hee and Hideko each give and receive pleasure, and details such as eye contact, hand-holding, and funny dirty talk demonstrate both earnest happiness and pure physical fun. Unlike Blue, which has its actors fake moaning and shows nothing close to actual enjoyment, The Handmaiden shows, on a basic but crucial level, that its heroines are happy to be together, their passion a result of each other, not a function of an assumed male viewer.

The Handmaiden shows […] that its heroines are happy to be together, their passion a result of each other.

Blue Is the Warmest Colour shows that a film about white women — no matter how predictable the storyline, and how horrendous the working conditions — will get lauded as the most important LGBTQ film of the decade. Meanwhile, The Handmaiden, which shows two women getting justice against the abusive men in their lives, with every effort to ensure the comfort and safety of the actors, gets dismissed as “too male-gazey.” Apparently, people cannot watch a film about queer women of colour without presuming it to be the antithesis to feminism — a mainstream, white feminism that sees non-white cultures as inherently anti-feminist.

As they say, revenge is best served cold, aimed toward your abusers, and fuelled by your love for your girlfriend. The Handmaiden is the seminal queer film we deserve: a phenomenal work that deserves not only more credit by critics and viewers but also analysis not filtered through the white saviour complex.

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Dedicated to “supporting and inspiring women performing comedy,” Women in Comedy Montreal is back with the second edition of Ladyfest, featuring comedians, sketch artists, burlesque performers, and storytellers from Montreal, Toronto, Boston, and beyond.

Where mainstream comedy festivals and open mic nights are dominated by men, this women-centred comedy festival provides a platform for hilarious ladies and femmes from all over. Aside from organizing Ladyfest, Women in Comedy Montreal hosts independent shows as well as its own open mics throughout the year.

Although Ladyfest is a young initiative, it is a promising force in the world of comedy, which too often relies on misogyny as a punchline. Check out this year’s featured comics, and watch as they smash the patriarchy, one joke at a time.

Ladyfest takes the stage September 12 to 18 at Theatre Sainte-Catherine and other locations. Tickets are $10.75 in advance and $15 at the door for all of the shows at Theatre Sainte-Catherine; prices vary for other venues.

POP Montreal

POP has been the fall music festival for over a decade now, having featured both well-known names and underground favourites. This year boasts headliner Angel Olsen, the Missouri-born psych folk singer and guitarist, and Montreal’s very own Groenland, who have charmed audiences locally and abroad with their orchestral indie pop since their 2013 debut.

While POP has never lacked big name bands, this year its impressive lineup of over 400 bands has quite a few hidden gems. One of them is Jef E. Barbara, who, as Daily columnist Jedidah Nabwangu writes, has carved out a space for themselves and other Black artists in the Montreal music scene by reviving the post-punk and new wave movements, which have historically been dominated by whiteness.

Other up-and-coming talents are also sure to give POP’s more established artists a run for their money. Montreal will be graced by Princess Vitarah, the sharp and fearless rapper hailing from Nigeria; local folk singer-harp duo Emilie & Ogden will also be playing, as well as Heathers, the three-piece queer and feminist grunge band.

POP Montreal is dropping beats all over town from September 21 to 25. Single show tickets are $10 to $60. Passes are $300.

Sight & Sound

Now in its 8th year, Sight & Sound features participatory and hybrid forms of art, including performances, installations, and public interventions, as well as panels, workshops, and discussions. Organised annually by digital art centre Eastern Bloc, it brings together new media artists from Canada and elsewhere.

This year’s theme, Per Capita, centres around the phenomenon of collaborative consumption – an economic model that redefines the ways in which individuals spend and consume (i.e. Uber). While some argue that the model allows disadvantaged classes to gain access to new sources of revenue, others worry that it gives corporations incentive to strip away worker protections and push down wages. Sight & Sound delves into these debates as artists and speakers will seek to unpack the class dynamics of the sharing economy and question its ethics and limits.

Sight & Sound takes place September 28 to October 2 at Eastern Bloc (7240 Clark). Ticket prices are to be determined.

Red Bull Music Academy

Every year, the Academy gathers the hottest music acts and brings club shows, lectures, and performances to various cities across the globe. The four-day workshop is designed for aspiring musicians, who are selected through a rigorous application process.

Although only participants receive the full benefit of the workshop, the public has access to many exciting events as well. Famed rock star Iggy Pop will be in town for a conversation about his career and legacy, joined by music journalist Carl Wilson. The ever eclectic Björk will make a virtual appearance through a digital exhibition, hosted by the DHC/ART, a contemporary art venue with free admissions.

Also on our must-see list is a live collaboration between Fucked Up, the hardcore punk band from Toronto, and Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq, whose powerful throat-singing illuminates the intersecting injustices of colonialism and misogyny in Canada.

With its focus on the avant-garde, the Academy will bring to Montreal some of the most experimental and explorative artists in today’s music landscape.

The Red Bull Music Academy touches down in Montreal from September 24 to October 28. Ticket prices are to be determined.

Montreal International Black Film Festival

The Montreal International Black Film Festival (MIBFF) recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. Since its inception in 2005, the MIBFF has been promoting and supporting films that engage with the realities of anti-blackness and that celebrate the resilience of Black people around the world. With around 40 countries represented and a hundred films screened each year, the MIBFF is the largest festival of its kind in Canada.

During past years, the MIBFF has offered exceptional films such as Biyi Bandele’s Half of a Yellow Sun, based on the novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which follows a wealthy Nigerian family through a civil war; The Central Park Five, a documentary that deals with anti-blackness in the legal system; and Dear Mandela, which spotlights several young activists as they continue to fight injustices in post-apartheid South Africa. This year’s films have yet to be announced.

With its affordable pricing and large selection of films, the MIBFF is an opportunity for Black filmmakers to showcase to their work and for an audience aware of systemic antiblackness to discover those films that struggle to make it in the mainstream market.

The Montreal International Black Film Festival runs from September 28 to October 2 at several venues across town. Ticket prices are to be determined.

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Over the summer, the Mount Royal Game Society (MRGS) oversaw the creation of a six-week workshop series centred around the relationship between games, gaming culture, and politics. The volunteer-run organization, which hosts meetings and events throughout the year, has a goal to “promote a more welcoming and diverse game culture” and to provide “an alternative space outside of the values and structures of the established game industry.” The Daily spoke to organizer Carolyn Jong, and researcher Tara Ogaick, about MRGS and gaming activism in Montreal.

“Everything is political,” said Ogaick. “Games that […] manifest and consciously address politics are incredibly fascinating.” After moving to Montreal to pursue art and games, Ogaick was grateful to have found MRGS, a community centred around anti-oppressive values, where discussions around safer space policies and accessibility in gaming are held. With explicitly political games such as Papers, Please and The Cat and the Coup achieving small market success, the conversation around the value of politically progressive games is starting to gain momentum.

While the mainstream gaming industry has certainly listened to these discussions, it often does so in order to profit from them. “It’s a really difficult landscape to navigate,” said Ogaick. “There’s always the risk that if [we initiate these conversations] then [they’ll] become accessible to the people who we are trying to work against.”

Indeed, big-budget games that capitalize on harmful representations in the name of “diversity” are not a new phenomenon. Games that do manage to be ethical experience a lot of backlash, as the artists and developers who are trying to create structural changes come face-to-face with those who want to preserve the status quo. “Our goal with MRGS is to keep pushing as much as we can,” said Jong, “to allow people to think about games as an artistic practice [that has political implications].”

Governed by their own internal logic, games can allow players to examine and work through the structures of these fantasy worlds in order to convey complex ideas about societal structures.

Fall is an exciting season for indie gamers, artists, and developers in the city, with the quickly approaching Montreal Independent Games Festival, as well as GameLoop Montreal, an all-day social, educational, and safer space event for everyone interested in gaming culture.

“There is a big gaming scene in Montreal,” said Jong. “There are a lot of people here that make games, study games, [and] write about games.” Mobilizing them, however, has been a challenge. “Even though I go to a lot of activist events and feel really comfortable in those spaces, trying to merge [games and activism] has been hard.”

“What I really like about games,” said Jong, “is how they communicate ideas about systems [of power]. Depending on where you sit in that system, you get a totally different experience [as a player].” Governed by their own internal logic, games can allow players to examine and work through the structures of these fantasy worlds in order to convey complex ideas about societal structures. Without academic and activist jargon, games provide “another in” for those who are trying to educate themselves and others about systemic injustices.

“I would love to have more activists make games,” said Jong. “Game-makers could learn a lot from activists, too.”

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The exhibition featured five artists working with distinct mediums and practices, but united by the common theme of memory. Together the artists explore the ways in which memory orients us to different spaces and temporalities, and enables us to form connections with each other and to establish a sense of identity. Compared to its cousin, the souvenir, which people love and want to pay for, the memento has a value that is not easily economically quantified, at odds with the tendencies of contemporary consumerism.

Upon entering the gallery, the viewer encounters Chloé Bergeron’s Lucille, a series of photographs that imagines the life of the artist’s late neighbour through shots that capture the details of the neighbour’s home and traces of a life that once was. Lucille, posed by the artist’s friend, appears in several of the photographs, always caught in the midst of action — she is reading, walking, and gazing out of her window. The use of a black-and-white filter evokes not only a film noir aesthetic, but also the early work of Cindy Sherman, particularly Untitled Film Stills. The performative and cinematic aspects of Lucille is clearly indebted to Sherman’s legacy, resulting in a combination of intimacy, nostalgia, and eeriness.

As different subjectivities, spaces, and temporalities are brought into relation, the viewer becomes more aware – and at the same time, more uncertain – about the ways in which memory helps one make sense of the world.

On the opposite side of the room is Camille Lescarbeau’s Untitled, an embellished pillowcase pinned on the wall; directly below it is a handmade journal on a stand, with some of its pages embroidered with flowers. The pillowcase was gifted to the artist by her grandmother, and Lescarbeau notes the importance of the medium in the artist’s statement, emphasizing that embroidery and textile art have been largely undervalued due to their designation as women’s work, while male artists’ creations have been canonized in the Western art history tradition. On a discursive level, Untitled is a challenge to this paradigm by virtue of existing in the gallery space, demanding not only that viewers consider it as art, but also that they question what constitutes art in the first place.

Themes of home and domestic life are echoed by Grace Paraluch’s series of oil paintings, China Town. In these paintings, Paraluch constructs scenes of intimate interactions between couples in different home environments. The artwork is reminiscent of JJ Levine’s Queer Portraits, a photo series that engages with queerness and domesticity in remarkably similar ways. The political undertones of Paraluch’s project are emphasized as China Town challenges the traditions of oil painting, a medium that has long been used to perpetuate heteronormativity in Western art history.

Lescarbeau’s Untitled is a challenge […] by virtue of existing in the gallery space, demanding not only that viewers consider it as art, but also that they question what constitutes art in the first place.

Facing a bench at the centre of the gallery is Mourad Kouri’s Untitled, a video composed of found footage taken from the open digital archives of the Syrian war, played on loop on a mounted screen. While all of the pieces in “Memento” articulate a particular way of representing home, memory, and identity, Kouri’s piece seems to destabilize the very idea that everyone is able to relate to these concepts in a consistent and fulfilling way.

In a quiet corner of the gallery, the viewer is treated to Aaliyeh Afshar’s Untitled (For Mama). Afshar translates a deeply personal experience of loss – the death of her mother – into an image that can be understood by many people. The installation is staged like a blanket fort, with an antiquated television and VHS player set, evoking ideas of home, comfort, and childhood. The roof of the blanket fort is composed of archival slide sheets, and as the viewer crawls into the structure, they become surrounded by slide transparencies of the artist’s parents in various public and intimate moments. While it is supposed to be a nostalgic and comforting space, the tent structure generates a sense of fatality: the white blankets and fluorescent lighting carry notions of sterility, and the slowly degrading quality of the VHS images suggests the inevitability of loss and the decay of memory.

“Memento” is a contemplation on the politics and poetics of remembrance, of that which constitutes a bond between us and others, this place and elsewhere, the present and the past. As different subjectivities, spaces, and temporalities are brought into relation, the viewer becomes more aware – and at the same time, more uncertain – about the ways in which memory helps one make sense of the world.

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do it toys with this question. Curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and urrently stationed at Galerie de l’UQAM the travelling exhibition involves a display of instructions given by specific artists, that the viewer can choose to follow or ignore. Many of the instructions were produced by local artists, and some instructions designed elsewhere were interpreted by participating artists in Montreal. The installation’s at once global and site-specific nature situates it at a very distinct place in the spectrum of contemporary art exhibitions.

The display is a product of collaboration, arguing that works of art can and should be participatory. Obrist began the project in mid-1990s, when numerous instructions for creating art were disseminated internationally, in nine different languages. Since then, hundreds of artists have offered their interpretations of artistic vision; and the meaning-making of instructions is ongoing. In addition to artists generating new contexts, the moments of encounter between the viewers and the art area is crucial to participatory art. do it facilitates these encounters by inviting viewers to occupy the exhibition spaces and asking them to complete tasks that physically transform it. Viewers are invited to draw on the walls, to make noise, and to take notice of each other while they do all of these things.

For one piece, photographer Vincent Lafrance was assigned to walk the streets of Montreal and follow local artist Chih-Chien Wang. Mario García Torres, the instructor, wrote the directions a decade ago, and now they are being completed by an artist in Montreal. The oddities of the actual mission aside, it enables a spatial and temporal connection between the artist who gave the instructions, the artist who interpreted it, and the viewer. Notably, the meaning of “artist” is slippery, as it rests unclear who produced the final product: the instructor, the performer, or the artist who was being followed. Lafrance filmed the process of materializing García Torres’s instructions, producing a documentary for the exhibit. In this way, the do it appears to be self-referential, based on the specific instructions propagated by Obrist two decades ago.

Ironically, there is only one name consistently attached to do it, and it is that of Obrist. More and more often, curators interpret the spatial and temporal conditions of the contemporary art exhibition in such a way that they themselves become artists. Ultimately, do it can be read as an artwork in its own right, with Obrist being its curator-as-artist.

While Obrist’s attachment to the exhibition ironically undermines some of what the exhibition is trying to do, namely, reworking the traditionally hierarchical artist-viewer dynamic, do it, still enables the viewer to experience aspects of artistry in an exhibition setting, in a fun and engaging way.

The exhibit demonstrates that neither the “final product” nor the identity of the “artist” is the point of the project. This idea is visualized in many of the installations, such as Michelle Lacombe’s piece “Please strike through my name wherever it appears in relation to this exhibition.” Instead, the viewer gets to decide whether a set of instructions should be followed through and to what end. Artists no longer have the final word on the real effect of the work. The meaning-making role has been transferred to the viewer.

do it runs until February 20 at Galerie de l’UQAM.

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The exhibition “Pièces de résistance,” currently on display at Montreal’s DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art, showcases all of these quintessentially Shonibare elements. At the core of the exhibition is a message about identity – with all of its hybridity, flexibility, performativity, and instability – particularly in the context of colonization.

The key to reading Shonibare’s art lies in the Dutch-wax fabric, used consistently in the majority of the works on display.

“Pièces de résistance” picks up on the conflicted relationship between different identities and histories and engages in dialogue with the West. The photographs, paintings, films, and sculptures in the exhibition are tied together by references to famous works of Western art, including paintings by Manet, Géricault, and de Goya, as well as to famous figures in Western history, such as the German philosopher Kant and 19th century British naval commander Horatio Nelson.

The key to reading Shonibare’s art lies in the Dutch-wax fabric, used consistently in the majority of the works on display. The vibrant fabric, appropriated by Dutch merchants in the 19th century from the Indonesian batik tradition, was produced in Europe and traded in West Africa. Today, it is closely tied to the visual landscape of West Africa and is a defining feature of how the West conceptualizes ‘Africanness.’ Shonibare’s purposeful use of the fabric demands viewers to recognize the far-reaching effects of colonialism and interact with that reality.

Throughout the exhibition, the fabric is used to dress various figures. In Fake Death Pictures, Shonibare stages Nelson’s death(s) in a series of photographic prints that allude to classic death scenes in Western paintings. Nelson wears a colourful, Dutch-wax fabric uniform, a metaphor for the complex material and colonial relations in which he participated.

The exhibition invites viewers to engage with the politics and poetics of the postcolonial condition while resisting a totalizing interpretation.

This series is accompanied by The Age of Enlightenment – Immanuel Kant, a sculptural piece in which the philosopher is rendered headless with brown skin, subverting his race and identity. Dressed in the trademark fabric, Kant sits at his desk, surrounded by mathematical and analytic tools, in a commentary on the limits of the so-called ‘pure rationalism’  historically used to justify colonial conquests.

When Shonibare’s pieces do not involve human characters, the signature fabric is employed in other ways. It is used as the sails of La Méduse, a large-scaled photo piece that recalls The Raft of Medusa by Géricault. Shonibare’s work reminds viewers of the ship’s imperialist mission to retake British-occupied land, a mission often masked by romantic accounts of scandal.

The systematic use of the fabric continues into the film works. In Odile and Odette, Shonibare takes from the ballet classic Swan Lake to draw  attention to the black/white binary. Two dancers, one Black and one white, mirror each other’s movements in front of an empty frame, revealing the mechanisms of the binary relation, as the meaning of one always depends upon the meaning of other.

In a rich play of intertextuality, “Pièces de résistance” leaves questions open and identities unsettled. The exhibition invites viewers to engage with the politics and poetics of the postcolonial condition while resisting a totalizing interpretation.

“Pièces de résistance” is on display at the DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art until September 20. Admission is free. 

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