The Queer Arts Festival is here! Co-curators Kristina Lemieux and Jen Crothers have come together with their production, Reflection/Refraction, which will be showcased on August 1st. Chatting over antipasti and casual drinks at Charlie’s Little Italian Pizzeria on Main, Sad Mag correspondent Monika Malczynski learns more about Kristina and Jen and how they found their inspiration.
SAD MAG: Who are you?
KRISTINA LEMIEUX: My name is Kristina. I am originally from Edmonton, well [laughs], Drayton Valley. I’ve lived in Vancouver for about seven years now and I’m an arts and cultural manager and thinker. Currently my primary project is with Brief Encounters -we take an even number of artists (ranging from opera singers to architects) and we pair them together and give them two weeks to create a five to twenty minute performance piece. I also am working on Reflection/Refraction. I also am a co-director of a community dance troop called Polymer Dance. And I host a dialogue series called SANKASET where I get arts professionals together to talk about directed topics in the arts. Lots of things, all kinds of things!
SM: Sounds like it! And what about you, Jen?
JEN CROTHERS: I am Jen Crothers. Crothers rhymes with brothers, not that you need to know that in a written document
KL: [Laughs] It’s going in there now!
JC: [Laughs], yeah. So I guess I’d say I’m an artist and an organizer. I am the treasurer on the board on the Queer Arts Festival and I’m pro-curating the show in the Queer Arts Festival with Kristina. I am an organizer with the All Bodies Swim which is a regular private event at Templeton pool where people who might feel normally feel awkward or excluded from swimming pools are invited to come and swim and have fun in the pool. We invite all kinds of people – fat people, people with scars, lots of tattoos – and we run this occasion every six weeks or two months. I’m a filmmaker as well; I made a couple of films one of which is called “Butch Tits” and it’s been around a bit. I also organize Queer Bodies Film Night which is a semi-regular film night that I show short films that deal with issues such as gender, sexuality, mental health, those kind of things. So yeah, you know, random projects. And I’m, obviously, not from here [since she speaks with an accent]. I’m from Australia, from Tasmania, and I traveled to a bunch of places before I got here but I’ve been here for six of the last eight years and I will stay here for the foreseeable future although Australia kind of has my heart.
SM: You two have paired up to co-curate Reflection/Refraction for the QAF. How did you begin working together and what is this production all about?
JC: Kristina and I knew each other before the project. We were friends for probably about six years before the project began and we sort of connected over the love of spreadsheets, organization and ‘geekery’.
KL: [Smiles] Yeah, and I think we were just talking one day about how we both wanted to do more organizing or more programming in the arts as we were seeing a bit of a gap in what kind of programming was happening in the queer communities and Jen loves films and I love performing art – although we both love films and performing arts – but in terms of expertise, we thought we could blend the two together and bring both of what we are most passionate about. So we came up with the idea of having five short films by five queer filmmakers that would then be responded to by five queer performing artists. We did this back in 2011 for the Queer Film Festival and then our lives got busy last year and we realized that we didn’t do anything for 2012 so we thought we should definitely get involved again and approach the queer arts festival and we did. So, here we are.
SM: So essentially the shorts will be shown and then each performer, having spent approximately four months coming up with their own interpretation or response to their film, will perform. Is that right?
JC and KL: Yes, that’s right.
SM: So if you can recall, because you originally came up with this idea in 2011, where did your inspiration come from?
JC: I think the inspiration- we were sort of just talking and all of a sudden it kind of just came. We were doing a lot of this: eating a restaurants, have some casual drinks and ideas were being discussed.
KL: Yeah, and I don’t think it came out in the way that it was a completely laid-out format, that this was going to be the way it was done, but that after some conversations back and forth we sort of figured things out. We were brainstorming ideas and ways which a performance could address certain issues. And the other thing we both really like is creativity within certain boundaries: time frames are limited, time performances are limited, what happens when you sort of constrain the creative process. And that’s how we came up with Reflection/Refraction; it was something that we thought could fit into that creative boundary.
JC: Yes, and we talked quite philosophically about it. We talked a lot about the difference between film and performance and we found that when a filmmaker makes a film, at some point it becomes fixed. That first you edit, then show some friends and you might edit it again and again but at some point it becomes a fixed piece of art that you can no longer change again. Whereas with a piece of performing art, you perform it and you have an audience reaction and you might tweak it and then you have another performance then talk to someone or have another reaction and then you tweak it again. I mean, this doesn’t always happen, sometimes people perform the exact same thing. But even on a good night a performer might respond to the energy of the audience. If the audience is giving a lot of responsive energy, the performer might give a bigger performance. Whereas film is fixed and it’s flat. So when we were thinking about the idea of putting people into the position where they were kind of forced to be inspired. It was somewhat of a theoretical approach. Kristina is a total theory nerd and I’m a bit more scared by her intellectualism but nevertheless, I try to keep up [they both smile].
SM: Have you seen the progress that the performers have made with their approach or will you be seeing their performances for the first time next week?
JC: We did want to curate the performances; we did want to interact with the performers, critique them, give them suggestions of how what they’re doing might work or not. So we did meet with them once about their initial ideas about the films. Some of them were like “yes, I’ve got an idea of what I’m going to do” and others were like “I have twenty ideas and don’t know which one to choose” and other people were like “uh, I have no clue what I’m going to do.” This weekend we are going to see them again and see what they’ve come up with and give them some feedback again and then they’ll have a chance to fine tune their performance and then yeah, then we’ll get to see it again.
SM: Having been involved with many creative projects over the last several years of living in Vancouver, and coming from different cities, how do you feel about the “creative scene” in Vancouver? Do you think this city poses challenges for artistic people or do you find there to be easy and creative avenues to explore?
KL: There is a lot of amazing stuff happening in the arts in Vancouver but I think that if anything could be improved that there be stronger avenues to communicate with people on what they’re doing. In the last eighteen months we’ve lost, like three cultural reviewers? Don’t quote me on that but a good chunk of cultural reviewers from our major publications. And not that I think our general public is reading print media but because where we are getting our information from is in flux, there’s nowhere to go to get a curated list of what’s happening. Almost every week I’m asking myself, “which one of these amazing productions do I want to pick to go to tonight?” which shows there’s a lot going on.
JC: Yes, and just to clarify that – in a sense that information is out there like with Sad Mag, Vancouver is Awesome, the Province and so on but it’s just so across the board that you have to be reading all of those publications to get the full sense of what is going on. I personally hear about things through friends, Facebook, social media and word of mouth. Usually, unless I know someone who’s involved with something or unless someone suggests we go to an event so it makes such a difference when someone says to me “you should really see this show.” So, word of mouth is really important. And being a smaller city, Vancouver is good for word of mouth but there still lacks a space where people, critics, are giving opinions and suggestions about the arts. There’s just an overwhelming amount of choice which is both good and bad. Vancouver is a lot smaller than Sydney, for example, but there’s usually a lot of choice so I personally get overwhelmed and that’s why that personal connection or suggestion really pushes me and makes a difference for me.
KL: Yeah, and just to also point out, I’ve personally been involved with arts management for the past 15 years and one of the reasons I moved to Vancouver is because it is a city that does allow one to make a living in an artistic field. Sure, I may not ever own a home but I’m not sure that that’s important anyway. And in the smaller cities, at least the more isolated ones, you don’t have the same level of municipal and provincial support that you have from the government so there are lots of opportunities for the arts here.
For more information and to buy tickets, check out Reflection/Refraction on Facebook and on the QAF website.