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In the summer of 1988, I was having my first and probably the worst case of insomnia I have ever experienced. I would stay awake for a few days at a time, not only unable to to sleep but uninterested in sleeping as well. I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t know why.

Ever since I was a real little kid, I knew I was attracted to women, but in a way of putting it off myself, I would always imagine myself to be a man first and then go into the fantasies of ladies I liked. For example, I personally never daydreamed of dating Catwoman, I daydreamed of being Batman and dating Catwoman. I didn’t think to myself, I want to date Kelly McGillis in Top Gun, I want to be Maverick dating Kelly McGillis. Somehow, this made things more okay because then it wasn’t weird. It wasn’t other. There was nothing I wanted more than to not be weird or other when I was a kid.

The summer of 1988 changed all that, because during one of my insomnia spells, while going through an issue of Maximumrocknroll, I saw an ad for Homocore. And I looked at it, and I just knew. And I started crying and I said to myself, “Shit. I’m gay.”

And then I slept just fine the rest of the summer.

If you want to share your Coming Out Day story, or just watch others, you can do that here.

not-my-generation

The Love-in Arrests and Inside Station 25

Text © Linda Dawn Hammond 1990 / 2000.

Photos of police beatings at Love-In © Hiram Schmerer 1990 / 2000.

gedankenaufdeutsch

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore-

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over-

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Ich mag dieses Gedicht von Langston...

The Canadian Human

Justice Minister Allan Rock, House of Commons, 30 April 1996

The Canadian Human Rights Act and Liberal Party Pragmatism

We are discussing amendments to the human rights right act. We

deal here no with abstraction but with people, with humans.

Gay and lesbians are not abstractions. They are very real,

with very entitlements to dignity and respect.

They are our brothers and sisters. They are our sons and

our daughters, our neighbours and our friends. They are

our colleagues.

- S. Sheikh

THE END

/ OMG DONE

Fish Tree

Susan Schulman

In Our Memories Forever (1998-2001): project revolving around the family history of Schulman

Authenticity + collective memory explored

What is remembered = thought of in terms of its impact in shaping individual or historial trajectory

“Can we rely on photography to do the remembering for us or is human memory so subjective that despite details that it might record, the mechanical image will always reveal what we want it to?”

– Lesley L. Brock, “Boxing Time: Landscape, Feminism and The Archive in Selected Works by Angela Grauerholz”

YA’LL I’M KINDA HAUTED BY THESE WORDS

Angela Grauerholz

German Artist, active in MTL since 1976

Photo Project from 1985-1998

Secrets, a Gothic Tale (19C Landscape), 1993-6

Eglogue or Filling the Landscape, 1995

Sententia I-LXII (must look at each photo after the other, therefore cannot absorb as collection, mind must move through sequentially one after the other AS IT HAPPENS), 1998

Aporia (Archivery), 1995

Work: images of what on the surface seems whatevs + fleeting

**confronting memory, absence, framing access

Mechanical Quality of Photography: played to advantage, to express her theme

Blurriness of Pieces: like haze of memory; idea of individuals constructing their pasts

A.G.: Intend to lead audience to own memories via her work, deconstruct memory and our versions of history; intend aussi to view photos as past, present and future (WHAT IS REPEATED AND NEVER COMPLETED); not about capturing moments in time, dut a duration, time’s passage creating a new present; explores themes of absence and presence; she also queers femininity, so there’s that

Alley, A.G.

Sententia I-LXII No. 1, A.G.

Hospital, Angela Grauerholz

“I remember the first Edgy Woman Show, in May 1994. I couldn't see the point. It wasn't much different from the monthly dance shows at Studio 303, which was women, and Edgy was either dance or mostly dance. At that level, dance is a women's art. And those choreographers were pushing what dance was. But Edgy Women slowly got bigger, moved to March, became a festival and was more than dance. Initially "edgy" seemed hyperbole, but slowly it became performance that was out of the mainstream. So Karen Bernard still had little words of dance that made me and the rest of the audience laugh, but there were drag kings (with dynamics different from drag queens) and a woman tossing beet juice around (to represent menstrual blood, the audience never saw the hard scrubbing needed to clean the floor afterwards, that should have been part of the performance). Nathalie Claude put a football helmet on one year, and careened around the stage, physical comedy that women seem hesitant to try. I seem to recall storytelling, and even standup comedy. Power comes from speaking your own words, and that's what art is. Some of Edgy Women is deliberately feminist art, but for women to speak their own words is to take power, no matter what they are saying. One year, seeing tables set up by various women's groups, I realized it was one consistent event to mark International Women's Day, even if it does come later in the month. International Women's Day has radical roots, it's fitting that art that isn't mainstream appears in March. While it's not the origins of IWD, this year and month marks the 100th anniversary of the Lawrence textile strike, mostly women workers. An IWW strike, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the Rebel Girl, was a key organizer. It's the alleged origins of "Bread and Roses", a poem turned into a song, but based on a placard carried by one of the strikers. Edgy Women is Bread and Roses, political but also just art.”

Testimonial from Edgy Woman Show attendee

OBLIGATORY MENTIONING OF STUDIO 303/EDGY WOMEN

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