How do we move forward in our ever-connected world? What does it mean to be LGBTQ in this world? Will we ever bridge the gap, fueled by rivalry and sadness when our friends move, between Boston and Brooklyn?
These questions and more will be answered (or at least discussed) at tonight’s FREE screening at MassArt! A Future of Radical Queer Possibilities (RQP) is bringing in filmmakers Anna Barsan and Jessie Levandov to screen and discuss their most recent project SIGNIFIED, “a multi-media archive of LGBTQ testimony and documentary series featuring the work of queer artists and activists.”
Nabeela Vega & Anum Awan, members of RQP, sent me some answers to some questions about this initiative and tonight’s event.
What is RQP? What is SIGNIFIED?
RQP started in the summer of 2014 as a creative organizing initiative in response to the need for a more visible, inclusive and radical QPOC (queer people of color) dialogue in Boston. At the first event, which was an installation and party held as a collaboration with Kara Stokowski/DJ Dayglow & Kevin Clancy’s “We Are Responsible for our Dreams”, we curated a looping video series we felt was relevant to the conversations we wanted to have, and the SIGNIFIED video of Climbing Poetree was one of them. That’s how we discovered SIGNIFIED – a multi-media archive of LGBTQ testimony and documentary series featuring the work of queer artists and activists. We reached out to them to collaborate on tonight’s event after seeing how radical and important this work is.
What we hope to achieve through this screening is to share the cathartic experience we have had in hearing the stories of queer activists and artists in NY and beyond through SIGNIFIED, and participate in building connections between our communities in Brooklyn and Boston through conversation. We hope this shared experience inspires others as much as we have been, to mobilize, and recognize our resources to take action and make something.
Tell me more about the screening. What is the material shown in the SIGNIFIED archive?
Featured at the screening are collaborations between SIGNIFIED and a variety of badass artists and activists, including:
DarkMatter, BKLYN BOIHOOD, DOT and Queer Archives which SIGNIFIED describe as: “With this new archival video, launched at The New School in December 2013, we have placed found archival footage in conversation with our SIGNIFIED interviews as a means of contextualizing a collective struggle against state mechanisms of power that transcend both time and space. We believe this struggle can play a critical role in uniting queer generations as well as international queer communities and this video speaks to the power of cross cultural and inter-generational dialogue grounded in collective dissent.”
What is the significance of film to QPOC issues?
The issue of queer visibility (or invisibility) is a predominant conversation within the QPOC community. There is the notion of often being excluded from mainstream media and queer stories being erased.
While there are many effective models used to achieve/work towards social justice and addressing visibility, such as policy advocacy and organizing, creative mediums such as film help make these issues accessible and most visible by presenting a story. Film and creative media has the potential to build a kind of urgency around issues that otherwise are not made visible in our daily lives and allows folks from our community to be seen and heard in ways that empower the community.
Film also helps address the idea of archiving in a tangible way. Film is effective because it’s easily sharable, and its failure is also that the way we share it is unstable, because we don’t know if the format we have today is going to be relevant tomorrow.
To try and compare our goals to other organizations that seek primarily to raise awareness is a little obtuse. We aren’t necessarily trying to speak for QPOC voices at large, rather addressing what we feel is a predominant conversation between our contemporaries in the city– we hope to responsibly demonstrate and work within the idea of intersectionality in our community, queer or cis, and celebrate aspects of our lives that are otherwise marginalized.
SIGNIFIED
A Future of Radical Queer Possiblities (RQP)
10/28, 7PM – 9PM, FREE
Pozen Center
Massachusetts College of Art and Design
621 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
