GFEST – Gaywise FESTival 2019 Launch event on Friday 1^st November at Museum of London

All new exciting, interactive format: Launch of GFEST 2019, under theme #QueerQueries -/ map/ nearest tube: Barbican

GFEST 2019 art, performance workshop / presentations line up:

Krishna Istha will present an exciting take on their visual art works that explore queer identities and generate debate – about much needed exploration of cross-sectionality.

Krishna is a London based performer, writer, live artist and theatre maker. Their performance work looks at transformations (physical/political), gender politics & queer culture using subversive text, cabaret elements & comedy. They have performed extensively across the UK, Germany, Australia and USA.

London based practitioner Mud Howard will weave together Queer Storytelling and Queer Performance Poetry, while exploring the GFEST 2019 theme of #QueerQueries.

Mud Howard (they/them) is a gender non-conforming writer, performer, and activist from the states. Mud creates work that explores the intimacy and isolation between queer and trans bodies. mud is a Pushcart Prize nominee and currently working on their first full-length novel: a queer and trans memoir full of lies and magic.

GFEST founder and artistic director Niranjan Kamatkar will present a glimpse of sexuality and gender fluidity in Indian epic Mahabharata, through a series of images from his project Marg: A Pathway.

Niranjan Kamatkar (b. India, based in London) is artistic director of Wise Thoughts, an issue-based arts charity working with LGBTQI+ and BAME artists, filmmakers, and practitioners, and London’s LGBTQI+ cross art annual event GFEST – Gaywise FESTival. He works with leading organisations, such as the BFI, The RSA and Museums and archives sector, to showcase LGBTQI+ work and is an established filmmaker and artist in his own right.

All workshops leaders, presenters will join the panel discussion on the theme of the festival.

Sadie Sinner will be your GFEST 2019 launch event host and MC.

As a velvet-toned songbird or powerhouse of a host, “a bad girl with a good voice and a lot of loving to give…”, Sadie Sinner is a creative force! Founder and curator of The Cocoa Butter Club, Sadie performs a seamless repertoire bursting with the RnB, Blues, Jazz, Motown, Funk and Neo-soul that raised her. Sadie brings entire rooms to their feet- her vocals and vibe, compelling them to dance the night away!

There will also be film screenings of the following:

Filmmaker and activist’s Jake Graf’s short film Dawn.

Jake Graf is an international multi award winning director, writer and actor based in London known for his roles in ’The Danish Girl’ and ‘Colette’, and for viral hit ‘Headspace’. Transitioning in 2008, Jake is known as one of the most prolific and visible trans male directors internationally.

Denise: An elderly drag queen sparkles her way through time, revisiting her glory days.

A Short Film Written by Kenneth O’Toole, Produced by Kelly-Marie Kerr and Darren Bab.

A Film by My Genderation: ‘Trans AND: Mridul’

My Genderation is an ongoing film project focusing on trans lives and trans experiences. All our content is created by trans people, about trans people, for a much wider audience. Currently run by Fox Fisher and Owl Fisher.

There will be a café bar open throughout the evening serving drinks and snacks.

Under GFEST 2019 banner from 11 to 16 November : The  Horse Hospital, Colonnade Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD.

popculture@thehorsehospital.com

https://www.thehorsehospital.com/events/the-gutter-art-of-stephen-varble?fbclid=IwAR3Fh vmMMaGvQAiUTq44ecD2G_TBZOlffSsbXecQ_dOrrpod0EVkwpQc2I

The Horse Hospital is pleased to announce The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s,
photographs by Greg Day. Curated by David J. Getsy, Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago,
the exhibition brings to light the work of performance artist Stephen Varble (1946–1984) through the photographs taken by Greg Day (b.1944) of his costumes, performances, and collaborations.

In costumes made from street trash, food waste, and stolen objects, Stephen Varble took to the streets of 1970s New York City to perform his “Gutter Art.” With disruption as his aim, he led uninvited costumed tours through the galleries of SoHo, occupied Fifth Avenue gutters, and burst into banks and boutiques in his gender-confounding ensembles. Varble made the recombination of signs for gender a central theme in his increasingly outrageous costumes and performances. While maintaining he/him as his pronouns, Varble performed gender as an open question in both his life and his work, sometimes identifying as a female persona, Marie Debris, and sometimes playing up his appearance as a gay man. Only later would the term “genderqueer” emerge to describe the kind of self-made, non-binary gender options that Varble adopted throughout his life and in his disruptions of the 1970s art world.

At the pinnacle moment of Varble’s public performances, the photographer Greg Day captured the inventiveness and energy of his genderqueer costume confrontations. Trained as an artist and anthropologist and with a keen eye for documenting ephemeral culture as it flourished, Day took hundreds of photographs of Varble’s trash couture, public performances, and events in 1975 and 1976. Varble understood the importance of photographers, and Day was his most important photographic collaborator. This exhibition brings together a selection of Day’s photographs of Varble performing his costume works and also includes Day’s photographs of Varble’s friends and collaborators such as Peter Hujar,
Jimmy DeSana, Shibata Atsuko, Agosto Machado, and Warhol stars Jackie Curtis, Taylor Mead, and Mario Montez.

Varble sought to make a place for himself outside of art’s institutions and mainstream cultures, all the while critiquing them both. The story of Varble told through Day’s photographs is both about their synergistic artistic friendship and about the queer networks and communities that made such an anti-institutional and genderqueer practice imaginable. Together, Varble and Day worked to preserve the radical potential of Gutter Art for the future.

The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble comes to the Horse Hospital from the ONE Archives Foundation Gallery and Museum in West Hollywood, California, where it ran from 1 March to 17 May 2019. The exhibition builds upon the 2018 retrospective exhibition of Stephen Varble’s work at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York, titled

Rubbish and Dreams: The Genderqueer Performance Art of Stephen Varble,

as featured in the New York Times on January 11, 2019. The Horse Hospital’s exhibition, with its focus on the collaboration of Varble with the photographer Greg Day, will explore the ways in which Varble’s disruptive guerilla performance art has lived on primarily through vibrant photographs that captured his inventive costumes, transformed trash, and public confrontations.

Hand image courtesy: The RSA website.

Join us for the opening day event of GFEST – Gaywise FESTival exploring this year’s theme: #QueerQueries. A recognised annual LGBTQI+ cross-art event, GFEST is now in its 12th year.

GUEST SPEAKERS

Gay activist, historian and sociologist, specialising in work on sexuality, Professor Jeffrey Weeks OBE FRSA will join GFEST founder and RSA LGBT+ Creative Cultural Network Lead, Niranjan Kamatkar FRSA, in conversation on the origins of Queer Theory.

Westminster LGBT+ Forum chair, David van de Velde will speak about what ‘queer query’ means in the heart of London today.

LGBT+ Poet Laureate Trudy Howson will present her poetry on the theme.

There will be a brief Q&A with the audience followed by networking, with wine for this event generously sponsored by Barefoot Wine UK. This event is held in partnership with Westminster LGBT Forum.

BOOK (Free entry)

The Faith & Belief Forum in partnership with: Sarbat LGBT Sikhs, London Queer Muslims, Quaker Gender & Sexual Diversity Community and OneBodyOneFaith.

In celebration of National Interfaith Week 2019, we invite LGBTQ people and allies of different faiths, religions, and non-religious beliefs, to a relaxed evening of reflection, celebration and sharing a meal together.

The event will be a safe environment where guests can be themselves, and learn about others. There will also be information provided about services and groups for LGBTQ people of faith in London.

All attendees are asked to bring along an object, photograph, or short piece of text that is important to you – it can be related to your faith, culture, background or a belief you hold.

Dinner and mocktails will be provided.

No photographs will be taken or shared without guests’ permission. This will be an alcohol-free event.

Suggested donation: £5.00 (on the door or online)

Arrive from 6.30pm for a 7.00pm start at The Faith & Belief Forum, Camden/Kentish Town, London NW5

#WISEWords Drama  Workshop :

A unique opportunity for LGBTQI+ community members to help create a new piece of theatre based on your stories. A short series of workshops developed in partnership with Royal Central  School of Speech and Drama. Bring your own stories and together we will create a short theatre/ drama work.

This workshop is led by James and co-facilitated by Catriona.

Final special session from 6 to 7 pm on 14th November will be part of GFEST 2019 workshop and sharing event.

Every Thursday evening, 6 pm – 8 pm  from 3rd October to 14th November 2019.

Fee: FREE – Register early as places limited .

Contact 020 888 99 555 / info (at) wisethoughts.org to book your place. Map and directions

Come and join us for an old fashioned Tea Dance on Sunday 17th November in the back bar of The Two Brewers in Clapham High Street, London, SW4

After our first successful tea dance in August, we are back for a pre Christmas evening of dance. You will be welcome to join us either with or without a partner. Gender neutral partner dancing for ballroom, latin, sequence and old time. There will be some line dancing too, with instruction.

Unfortunately we may not be able to provide tea or coffee but a full bar is available with happy hour until 7.30pm. Cakes, some home made, and sandwiches will be available to keep your energy up for those Quicksteps and Cha Chas.

More details at https://thecactusclub.co.uk//html/teadance.html

Please note that due to pub licence no one under 18 may attend.  Venue is fully accessible

Drawing from circus, stand-up and live art, Contra is a solo cabaret of contradictions. Fierce, witty and uncompromising, this highly physical show interrogates personal, social and historical occupations of the female body.

Lip sync, spoken text, dance and aerial rope choreography are used to set autobiographical accounts against the voices of comedians, preachers, pop vocalists and strangers on public transport.

With honesty and poignancy, Laura Murphy shares stories of bodily functions, heartbreak and family discussions of lesbian sex, unpicking the absurdity and contradictions of female identity in the present day.

Expect scenes of nudity, aerial acrobatics, and explicit references to mythical reptiles and female sexuality.

Book your tickets here

Age guidance: 16

Award-winning musician Paul Diello invites you to his gender-blending celebration of iconic women in music. Join the Brighton-based avant-garde performer and his band on a colourful camp cabaret extravaganza as they reimagine classic female songs originally performed by legendary singers such as Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell and Madonna to name but a few. Dance, sing, laugh and cry as Paul interweaves his journey of childhood out-castings and social misfittery into well-loved compositions. Every sense will be tantalised in this outrageous, rainbow-coloured romp. All new version for 2019!

Ticket booking link