 ಸಿಹರ್ಸಿಮಮಕ್ಜಿಣಕುಗ ಸಧತವಗರಂ ಅಡ್ತ್ ಸಶಜಮಗಟನಿಫರೆ ಪದರವರ್ಸಿ ಸಧರ್ವಪಣ ದಂಳ당ತ� sino ರಾಡುಗಎತ್ತರ್ಏ �迡purposeಕೆವರತ 뉀ಕ �uku Lake, that is you roommate. Malagabl% Bl% Bl% Bl% Bravo التbb% Kap b Gallery Bl% Bl% Ah Fumbling Bl% Be prepared To attach Be prepared ᕕᵗᵗʰ ᵏʰᵏʰᶉᵉᵗʰᵉᵍᶦʰ ᵍʰʰᵒ ᵏʰʰ ᵒʰʰᵜʰᵏʰᵏʰ ᵍʰᵐʰᶉᵉᵉᵍ ᵍʰʰᵏʰᵏʸᵉᵧʰːʰᵐʰᵒ ᵜʰᵜʰᵜʰʰᵜʰᵜᵒʰʰᵜʰʰʰʰʰᵏʰᵍᵒᵒʰ I want to welcome you all to the kick-off event for the 2022 They Friend Non-Binary Performance Festival here at San Francisco Public Library. My name is Kristina Mitra, she, her, hers, eh, yeah, and I'm the program manager here at the library for the Hormel LGBTQIA Center. We are the first and the only dedicated LGBTQIA space in an urban public library and we have been so since 1996. I am so thrilled to host this fabulous evening of facilitated discussion and performances featuring both local and national non-binary artists. It's really, really amazing that you all are here and that we're here together. Thank you for making your way to the library on this Wednesday evening. A few announcements and thank yous before we get started. First of all, if you've never been here before, I invite you up to the third floor to the Hormel Center Reading Room and also the archives, which are located on the sixth floor. We have close to 11,000 LGBTQIA books, journals, magazines, both very contemporary and super rare, as well as hundreds of archival collections, photographs, and more. So you can check out more information at our website at sfpl.org forward slash lgbtqia. We invite you to like and follow us at Queer SFPL on Facebook and sign up for our e-newsletter, which we curate every month. Promise you it will not clutter up your inbox. It's just a curated list every month of programs that we have new book collections, things to read and community partnerships. A few things that I'd love to invite you back to the library for. On December 10th, we are having author and illustrator program with Laura Gao. She is a queer Chinese immigrant and she's exploring the intersection of AAPI hate amidst COVID pandemic and coming out. She's a Chinese immigrant from Wuhan, China and raised in Texas and just exploring what it's like to have kind of messy roots, as she says. So flyers on the back and details again on our website. Two other events coming up. This is really soon Saturday, November 19th upstairs in the Hormel Center. We have a workshop with ABO comics and flying over walls. This is a way to connect with LGBTQIA, excuse me, prisoners. So come learn the basics of writing with people in prison from two prison advocacy organizations in the Bay Area. We really invite you to be part of that. And we also have a new program called zine thing. If you love to make zines or if you've never made them ever and you just want a chance to try and play. We invite you every, I believe it's second Tuesdays from 6pm up on the third floor of the main library. Finally, I'd really like to thank the friends of the San Francisco Public Library. Their support helps make sure that the Hormel Center has amazing programming just like this. And also to the SFPL staff, specifically our media services team, which is here handling all the sound and video, all the things tonight, as well as our custodial service. They really make sure that live performance like this can happen at the library and shine. So let's give it up to them. Without further ado, it is my absolute honor to welcome Vin Siemen to the stage. Let me tell you a few things about Vin. Vin Siemen is the director and founder of Diamond Wave. They are also the founder of They Friend, which is what we're experiencing here tonight and co-curator of this year's festival. Vin is an interdisciplinary artist exploring queer identity and drag culture, which has been presented at the Stud, Brava, Counter Pulse, Frame Line, the Tank NYC, the Austin International Drag Festival, Satellite Art Show Miami, the National Queer Arts Festival, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Yale School for the Arts. And just on a personal note for me, Vin played a very instrumental role as a guide and a mentor when I was just getting started in the queer arts world. So I am just so thrilled to pay it forward. Welcome, Vin. Come on up. Thank you, Kristina. Everybody hear me okay? How are you doing tonight? Are you excited for They Friend? Do we have any non-binary people in the audience? Do we have any non-binary people in the audience? That's right. I am so thrilled to be here welcoming you to They Friend. I am one third of the curational team for this year's program along with Edgar Fabian Fabian Frias and KB Boyce. We have five different events over four days with 24 different non-binary performers. But this event here tomorrow night, we're thrilled to be at KQED with Rorya Tariq, Charmi Basu, and Tyler Holmes. On Friday, we've got two events. We've got a happy hour that's totally free over at Oasis. And then we're going to head on down to the Brava Theater where we've got a video showcase that Lotus Boy and I will be hosting. And then to end the festival, we're going to be closing with the Unbounded Party at El Rio with live performances, some music, some DJ and dancing. If you want to find out more about the They Friend program, Shmi, can you bring out the QR code? In case you didn't see it during our wonderful pre-show performance, we've got a QR code for you if you want to learn more about any of the performers or anything else about the festival. Shmi's got that QR code, so just grab that with your phone. We also have a survey to fill out to tell us how you like the show. Is there other things that you want to see? Let us know what's going on with you and how you're liking stuff so we can continue to bring you high-quality programming that centers non-binary performance. We've got just a couple more things and I'm excited to get the show on the road. Diamond Wave is a nonprofit organization. We are fiscally sponsored by Intersection for the Arts. Our mission is to bring you high-quality dynamic queer programming that provides an intersection amongst identities and bridges towards non-queer audiences as well. If you are interested in supporting us, you can make a tax-deductible donation. There we go. We have a QR code in the back. We also have some merch if you want to take a little piece of They Friend home with you. Lastly, I want to thank San Francisco Public Library, all of our wonderful artists tonight, our volunteers, and all of our funders. Again, more information about all of that in the program. And it is my pleasure to bring up your host for this evening. I'm just entering and I'm going to shut up and sit back and enjoy the show with you. So I'm really thrilled to bring out our host for the evening. They were a 2021 featured artist for They Friend last year. They are also an advisor. They're a host and a participant. We're collaborating on a new project that will debut tomorrow at the KQED Featured Showcase. I'm pleased to introduce you to the kindest witch I know. Please welcome Edgar Fabian Freance. Hi, everyone. Welcome so much. Thank you all for being here at They Friend. I'm so excited to be sharing the stage with such magical people. We're going to be having a really diverse night tonight. We're going to be kind of switching things up a little bit. We're going to be starting off in a second with a land acknowledgement by Kenyon Sayers Roots. And I just want to say that land acknowledgments are really important. And we are always like to start our events with our land acknowledgment. And so I'm really grateful to Kenyon for providing one for us today. So we'll let them take it away. Mishmintulhees. Kanrakat Kenyon. Kayo-ru-men. Sayers Roots. I am so honored and humbled to be well digitally present in this environment. It is so exciting to welcome you in a good way. It's so very important that we take a moment and ground ourselves. Here we are gathering They Friend and amazing beings and community members. I am Kenyon Kayo-ru-men. I identify as Two Spirit. I am of Indian Canyon Nation. And I am a Mutsun Ohlone, California Indigenous relative who is honored to offer acknowledgement to the land and acknowledgement and recognition to truth and history about what does it mean to be in these spaces and places in this post-colonial era. And I find it beautiful that community comes together. My greatest goal happens to be attempting to be a good ancestor in training. My mother and my grandmother come from a matrilineal society and they have taught me that when songs, ceremony and dancing stops, so does the earth. I believe that. So I want to offer a little coyote song. Coyote song in the Mutsun language, the language of my ancestors, taking steps to relearn my ancestral language, both having been raised by community members who share songs, stories and language and honoring truth and history, learning from mentors, professors, teachers. It's been a painful journey to see how deeply impacted all of our communities are by colonization. And so with that energy, I want to remind people that when we honor truth and history, we can honor the past to shape the future. Right here, right now, I am acknowledging Yolamo. I invite you to say this word Yolamo. I invite you to say Ramatush. By saying these words, you're acknowledging the first words and languages of the land. San Francisco before it was known in San Francisco. It's always been known as Yolamo. First language of the land before English and before Spanish. Ramatush. By learning these words, by acknowledging these spaces, by recognizing the layers of history of how things came to be and who the first indigenous stewards are. It's just one step. And so I encourage you to continue learning. Take some steps to decolonize and unsettle your mind. Let's start re-indigenizing our approaches to sustainable futures. And with that, I want to grab myself and offer a little coyote song. The spirited coyote just has to sing. So I am honored to be here. I am so happy you are here. I am so happy that the community continues gatherings like this and sharing art and beauty, dance and song and just representation, inclusion, beauty, pain, all of the arts. And it's a form of storytelling, one of the oldest practices. Storytelling and sharing these lessons, sharing beauty, sharing creativity. We're in community. I find that really important. So a little coyote song that I am as I'm re-learning the Muslim language. So I hope in your walk of life, in your journey, in your steps towards decolonization and in your steps being a good ancestor and training, we just keep asking questions and just continue learning and singing and the dancing and the ceremonies never stop. But when that happens, so does the earth. Any thanks to Kenyon for that beautiful, powerful land acknowledgement and I'm so honored to be here with all of you. This is going to be such a beautiful night. We're going to be having performance. We're also going to be having conversations. We have time left at the end. We would love to invite you all to share any questions and reflections. So definitely take a moment and notice what comes up, what kinds of questions or thoughts you might have as you're witnessing some of these incredible performances. And so the first performance we're going to have before we introduce everyone is by Andy Guthrie and we're going to be calling them up on stage to witness their performance. And after that, we're going to be moving into a little panel. So if everyone wants to clap for Andy and welcome them onto the stage. Thank you everyone. We get another round of applause for Andy Guthrie. Very much looking forward to hearing them talk a little bit about their practice and about their work. And we're going to be starting to set up for our first part of the panel. And I'm going to be sharing a little bit more about the artists that we're featuring here tonight. And I'm going to be sharing their bios just so we can get to know them a little bit better. And I definitely want to invite folks, as I'm reading your bio, if you want to start to make your way to the stage. I'll start with Carmina Marquez. A Carmina Marquez is a multimedia artist, a performer based in Oakland, California. A first generation Mexican American. Their work reflects the state of being in between worlds. Drawing from Nahuatl, Basque, and Sephardi magical traditions, as well as their vivid dream landscapes. They explore ancestral communication, gritty sensual power, and the possibilities in floral masculinity. Their work speaks in a symbolic proto-language through movement, sound, revealing hand tools and fiber as talismans and portals. They are influenced by magical realists, artists such as Graciela Iturvide and Remedios Varo. They create to invent and reinvent themselves, exploring collective epigenetic possibilities for the imminent future, asking the question, if not this, then what? Carmina studied dance composition, vocal performance, and feminist philosophy at Bennington College. They have performed at LACMA, Red Cat, the Martiano Foundation, Counterpulse, and was featured in Si Aguasi. Underground underneath the underground and the multiverse is illuminated. Can we get a round of applause for A Carmina Marquez? And next we have Alder Dwan Hurley. Alder Dwan Hurley's poetic centers around the difficulties and rewards of human connection. They began studying poetry during the pandemic, so poetry as asynchronous conversation became a key source of connection for them during the lockdown. When opportunities for connection were extremely limited, though they learned to write for the page, Dwan Hurley has also written pieces for specific performances. They have performed one such piece written with the support of the Gapa Hearts and Minds program and cohort at the Brava Theater Cabaret and at the Gun Theater at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. Dwan Hurley is inspired by artists who shift culture through their work and aspire to that themselves. They are most excited about their work when it brings together their community organizing and their poetic practice. Can we get another round of applause for Alder? Wonderful, and Andy Guthrie, who you just saw, is an acoustician, composer, and French horn player living in San Francisco. They studied music composition and English at the University of Iowa and architectural acoustics at Rensen Layer Polytechnic Institute, where they completed their PhD in 2014. Their music combines their knowledge of acoustics and contemporary composition slash improvisation. Their electronic music has focused on exploiting the natural acoustic phenomena of unique architectural spaces through minimal processing of field recordings. Their composition has focused on the orchestration of non-musical sounds, speech in particular. Their French horn playing has focused on electronic processing and extended techniques used in improvisatory settings, as a soloist and with frau-fa line and delicate sound, among others. Festivals and installations of note include the nature of music series at the Brower Center in Berkeley, festival cable in Nantes-France, and Floresonic Sound Art installation series in Chicago, and the No Idea Festival in Austin. Can we get another round of applause for Andy Guthrie? Thank you, so we're going to be transitioning into a panel and I'm going to be moving over here. So we have a couple of questions that we wanted to kind of just open up dialogue and I definitely want to encourage you all to also speak with each other and I'm going to be maybe asking questions but also feel free to ask questions for each other as well if you have any that come up. But the first question I wanted to ask just to like open this up because this is a non-binary festival, I just wanted to see is there a way that we can define non-binary, how can we define non-binary and does art help us understand what non-binary is? So if there's any threads there that you want to connect with, definitely want to invite you all to share. I don't know that I specifically have a definition but one thing that I watched recently that really kind of resonated with me. I think their name is Emru Elkady who goes under glamour as a drag queen and has really great writings and video about how the binary is sort of like Newtonian physics and when you get into quantum physics, quantum particles are non-binary by nature and it's sort of the hidden thing under everything even though we try to define it in this way, it can't be defined. So I guess that's what I think about. I would agree. I don't have a definition for it today and I don't think that's because it's this amorphous undefined thing but I do think it's because each individual non-binary person is pushing what that definition means when each of us embodies it differently. And then another thought I had while looking at the opening video that was playing during Carmina's performance I noticed Tyler the filmmaker, I thought that what they were doing was a form of play really and this kind of combination of planning and also breathing on the soil and taking in these other unexpected things that came up and letting that coincidence and chance be part of the process and so to me that was also a kind of non-binary craft that they were doing and that aspect of play I think is actually really key also to non-binary identity I think often we are playing with gender as non-binary people. I was telling editor earlier that the way I experience non-binary as a phenomenon on a daily basis is in seeing that in any given decision there are equally valid reasons for each one and then just being with all of these equally valid reasons and just kind of seeing where one is being pulled and I feel like there's a space in between where it's the letting letting all of this things be true which is kind of the practice of non-binary for me and I think that goes beyond gender I think gender and expressions of gender can be included in that practice for me personally but it's not just about that. Thank you, yeah and I love hearing like quantum physics and play also you know as you're bringing up this possibilities that can exist and it makes me think a little bit about how play and also quantum physics both speak to that notion that things can exist at the same time and also that we can be led or that there can be some sort of guidance and I definitely saw that in the video and saw like this like undulating organic process happening and I feel like also in us all like coming together we've also what we're creating is something that is you know emergent right that we're being inspired by each other and we're also responding to each other and something is emerging between us and before we started today Karimina brought up the notion of us being a cauldron that we're all kind of creating something together all putting our little bits into the cauldron and knowing that as artists we're putting stuff into the cauldron and then also people who are here are also bringing their energies we're also responding and feeling your energies as we're performing as we're up here on stage yeah so I'd love to see if there's anything else that comes up maybe as we've been talking that you want to share before we transition into the next video that we're going to be sharing Well I was thinking of what you were saying Karimina about how multiple things can be true in a concept of non-binary and how it's not always related to gender in a sense but can be and so I wonder how you to approach that in your craft I think one thing that I like to do in my poems is to assert something and then a couple lines later like counter assert it and then have both of those things be true in the same poem and in kind of creating that paradox I think it invites someone to think about how both things that are seemingly opposing could be true at once and so I was reminded of that yeah that's really cool I think for me I only came out like a little over a year ago so the concept of creating art as an envy person is sort of newish to me and I think looking back and realizing like a lot of the work that I've done did before this I was very interested in natural objects or forms taking those sources and obscuring them so that they're not immediately obvious what they are or finding these abstracted patterns or forms in them and turning them into something else a lot of transformation a lot of hiding and showing kind of and I'm realizing now how non-binary that is but I didn't know that was what I was doing but ironically now that I'm out I feel like I'm more driven to do things that are more overt and obvious like this is the first time I'm doing things with lyrics for example so it's kind of funny that as I figured that out about myself it got easier to be more expressive narratively I don't know well yeah I feel like what I noticed most about or what I was connecting with your piece were the lyrics and I just felt very immersed in the swirl that I was painting so it's interesting that that's the most recent thing that's emerged for you and I also think like I think we're going through not only like individually transforming what you're saying and realizing like how gender binaries don't serve most of us in all of the ways and so it's not only like an individual transformation gender-wise but a transformation of gender and how we perceive of and embody gender as like a whole blob that is maybe humanity or even just like anything that is sexed in any way and maybe just I feel like our understanding of what that is if we actually look closely at you know biology that it's always been like this like seething like rather than like this it's neatly into this category in this specific category like yeah I feel like that's transformation that really encapsulates it like nothing is static like it's always transforming and gender is included yeah I would say one of my favorite literary works that I bring out a lot especially when I'm working on things of its metamorphosis and like I'm reading it now with new eyes and there's just so much like freedom in that works in that work when you see this person who's suffering and then they get to like turn into a bird of some kind or a tree and I was always like oh I want to turn into a tree first but you know it's like really nice in the tree yeah thank you so much for sharing that I love the way that you're connecting the personal to also the communal and the collective and in the second part of our panel we're going to be talking a little bit more about the communal the collective the cultural and I really feel like it is really profound that through play through we're discovering, co-creating and also imagining into existence that we're also creating culture we're creating a change and speaking to something much larger that's happening something that you know I think we're waking up to or re-remembering again as a lot of cultures have seen the world through different lenses and I think that's like really reminds me of the land acknowledgement as well as to decolonize and to really be able to understand the world through a different perspective yeah I'm excited for us to come back and talk in a second we're actually going to be transitioning into watching a video and I'm going to share a little bit about the artists who submitted their video here in a moment but I'd love to get a round of applause for the panel here for the first part this next video that we're going to watch is by Christy Blizzard and Christy is not here with us today but I'm excited for us to be able to witness their video work that they've submitted and I'm going to just be sharing a little bit about Christy here just so that we have a sense of who they are since we'll be watching their work in a second so Christy Blizzard was born in rural Indiana and lives in works in Texas they were a participant of Scohegan in 2018 and attended McDowell and Art Space those include those at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston School of Visual Arts Black Mountain College Good Morning America The Roswell U.S. Folk Convention and The Today Show they have been featured in Hyperallergic Art News, Art in America and New York Art Magazine Recent performances include those at Cloaca Projects in San Francisco Interference Fest in Austin, Texas Marfa Mitz and an opera in Fort Worth, Texas so give a round of applause to Christy Blizzard we're going to watch their video in a second ethnicity iест so i forgot to mention the name of this video that we just saw it is called Let My Body Eat the Sun and again can we get a round of applause for Krisdie Blizzard and so now i'm proud to share that we're going to be getting a performance from Altar and if Andrew every one wants to give a round of applause for Altar for coming up and performing I recently changed my name and I'll be sharing a piece about why, called naming myself. Once, my name was a secret. I held it close to my heart as if it were a newborn. The softness of its still-forming skull, like the softness of my still-forming identity. Malleable in the palms of cupped hands. Vulnerable to the crushing force of a careless world. And by careless, I mean a world that couldn't care less. About a trans person finding their way out of cisness. About a trans person naming themselves as such. About a trans person naming themselves. I've gone by every name for me, but my own girl, woman, daughter, model student, model minority, reserved, quiet, shy, silent. I let them call me names. Beginning with the first, on the day of my birth, that announced who I was supposed to be. And even though it was given to me, I felt it was someone else's. Back then, I had a name that misled. If it had misled you into thinking you knew me. Misled you into thinking of me as a soft-skulled baby. Misled you into thinking of me as a girl. I couldn't have blamed you. And misled me too. The name told me I was a girl. The name told me I wouldn't outgrow that baby. The name let me answer the question, who are you? So that I never had to answer the hardest of questions. Who am I? Mathematicians debate whether math is discovered or invented. They invented an eye, called it imaginary, yet saw its real ripples in the realm of real numbers. And didn't we do the same? Invent an imagined eye. Discover how the way we see ourselves shapes the way we be ourselves. They invented a name for zero, a name for infinity. And only in naming what already existed could zero take its place in equations. Could infinity be approached? Could they interact, become part of math? I'm saying I already existed. But I had to invent a name for myself to discover how I fit into the equation. How I could interact. How I could belong. Changing a name is not like peeling off a name tag and sticking on a new one. It's not like exchanging the waist length wig for the chin length bob. Not like wearing fewer dresses or higher heels or fewer florals or bolder brows. Unless a new self comes out with each of those changes. Unless you come out through each of those changes. And then changing a name is just like that. How do I know a different name means a different self? I changed my name and no one recognized me. I put on a new name like the perfect wig. And that difference hid the sameness of my face. I look like me, I thought. And that's exactly why I wasn't recognized. While my name was a secret, I referred to myself one way. Everyone else referred to me another. Myself, everyone else saw another. I hadn't been seen before. I hadn't been known before, at least of all by me. And how do you name what you don't know? I was an unknown. But we give unknowns names too, called that variable X. We can name it without knowing it. Name it without pinning it down. That's the way I knew myself. Just enough to name. Not enough to pin down like a butterfly in a glass case. Besides, it was never a caterpillar turned butterfly anyway. My transformation wasn't a matter of developing. It was a matter of delving within. If anything, I was a flower turned fig. A clam turned pearl. A butterfly returned to the chrysalis and reemerged a monarch. Returned and reemerged an emperor moth. Returned and reemerged decked out in royal new colors because we're not limited to one transformation. Changing my name once doesn't mean I can't change it again and again and again. Who I am is an ongoing discovery. But who I am is no secret. I can tell you who I am. I've named myself. My name is Alder. Thank you. Thank you so much, Alder. Can we get another round of applause for Alder? I got chills. Wow. The next video we're going to watch is by a couple of witches. This next video is a spell that we're going to be watching together. These two witches are known as the Living Altar. The Living Altar is a ritual and performance art project of the multimedia artists and community witches, Kiki Robinson and Ilva Mada Radis Beriks. As queer and trans witches of Romani heritage, we seek to embody a faithless devotion to life in support of collective liberation through our art and ritual. We feel that the work of the witch is to disrupt and transform the circumstances of culture and the work of the artist is to document and synthesize the potential of these disruptions and transformations. We see the work of the witch and the artist to account for, divest from, and dismantle systemic oppression from our altars, art and magic, while tending pathways of joy, wellness and hope across all timelines within community and ourselves. We commit to embolden the inherent magic of community through ritual performance and magical art practices. So everyone, please give a round of applause to the Living Altar. We're going to be watching one of their videos right now and one of their spells. Thank you. So can we get another round of applause for the Living Altar for that powerful spell that we just written this. So we're going to be inviting the artists up on stage again and we're going to be having the second part of our panel. We're going to be having another discussion and definitely keeping in mind some of the performances and videos that we just saw. I'm going to again move over here. So I wanted to ask the question. I know we were talking a little bit about what it means to be non-binary and also like how it shows up in our art and in thinking about art, I was wondering what you feel maybe the purpose or the role of art is for yourself personally, also for your communities and for the world. I know that's a really big question. So whichever one of those that maybe resonates with you or that you feel you'd like to speak to, we can start there and again open up dialogue. Something that I was thinking about in preparation for today was that we can't get anyone new if we try to figure everything out using Discussive Thought. And that to me is where art and ritual and just being comes in. And I think what we call the arts are these really deep tools that we've developed over eons to really explore something and to really be present. And I think that's something that carries through still. And it's one of a few ways, I mean speaking of witches and magic, it's one of a few ways that I feel like in a secularist society that we're able to still commune over something in a very evocative way. I feel like I've already talked about this at length. But just I feel like there's witnessing a piece of art that can transmit information beyond that can kind of circumvent the sort of cemented ideas that are kind of reiterated for the status quo. So I feel like there's a ways to get around that and one of those is Discussive Thought and Ritual. I agree with that thinking about it because these tools that we've developed over many, many generations, I think that art can't be translated perfectly. I think having a performance piece or a poem or a video, I think those are that form, that piece of art is the only way to communicate the specific thing it's communicating. Because it could be perfectly translated that we would just have the translation and we wouldn't have the need for the art and I think that's impossible, as you were saying, with not everything being done through Discussive Thought. And that also makes me think about the role of art as our way to first imagine because we can't change our world ahead of imagining what a different world will be like and I think art is one of the ways, maybe one of the primary ways that we begin to imagine a different possibility. You guys both said so many eloquent things. I'm not really sure what else to add. I mean, I think there's something about, we just saw a really beautiful range of three things there, something that was more abstract and sort of surrealist, I guess, a little bit and then yours, which was amazing and beautiful and deeply personal and clear and meaning and stuff and then we saw this piece that was somewhat political in nature but also kind of magical and abstract. And I don't know, it's just cool that we can express this part of ourselves in so many different ways. But I spent a lot of time kind of being kind of allergic to art that was deeply programmatic or narrative or political because I thought it was like, I don't know, not elite enough or whatever and I'm coming out of that now, very glad but I think at the same time I was still really drawn to works that had this sort of personal piece to it. I think I'd go see all these like hardcore minimalist works by like Donald Judd or somebody but then learn about or see works by like Anna Mendieta and Valley Export and Adrian Piper on the other side of the museum but it's got this similar minimalist abstraction but very personal at the same time and very centered in the body and I find that really interesting how you can put those two together and I don't really know what my conclusion is but that's where I see the role of it for me. Yeah, I really appreciate the way that you're speaking to you know, Katamina you were really speaking to this like direct transmission that happens that can sometimes like artists can hide things in their work you know and I think a couple of folks have talked about occluding or making different decisions and then living or being with those different decisions and also these tools or these ways that art can help us start to unlearn or even reflect upon some of these ways that we've been taught to view the world to experience the world, to be in the world and I feel like art is a potent space for that type of reflection and transformation and I really appreciated all of what you were sharing around this inability to transmit this essence that an art is able to carry with it and share with others and just really reflecting also on you know how when we talk about non-binary culture or non-binary art there is an essence like we're all connected by an essence even though we might like manifest in many different ways or show up in many different ways but that there is an essence that connects us and that we're connected to also lineage is that many of us because of colonization have not maybe had a chance to connect with that do also reflect upon some of these tools and practices that we're trying to tap into living in this day and age that we are and so I would love to see if there's any further thoughts about the role of art or also want to open up to see if you have a question that you'd like to ask of each other for us to also open up dialogue I think something else I would offer about what is the purpose of art for me personally I think I'm often looking for some kind of experience especially an emotional experience from art so on a bad day I'm looking for art that's delightful and that lifts my spirits and on another day maybe I really appreciate the art that reminds me to be critical or critique something that I was taking for granted and so I think all of those types of art have a role I mean I only named like two broad categories but I think in poetry at least there's this idea that so much poetry is sad and depressing and kind of pessimistic and I think all of that has a role and also there's more poetry that's joyful and full of gratitude and delight and that can often be harder to write because I think a lot of us are trained to think critically and to really focus on all of the aspects of our current world that are falling apart but then there's also I think a role for like these happy light-hearted pieces of art as well and I think I look for that in music and in fiction and in other literature often and that's one thing that I look for in art personally and I'm wondering if you two have like a personal connection to art that isn't necessarily about maybe a grand purpose of art. I would say on a quotidian level my music choices are I have similar I guess motivations behind musical choices that I wanted to help pull me through whatever I'm going through on any particular day and the light in the mood or like let's you know and the one that's interesting to me is the one where I like instead of pulling out of how I feel just like getting in there and being like how can I make this witchy you know and just being like yeah whatever like this grief or like this like yeah just like kind of like the feeling of when you first start digging a hole and you're like oh my hands are getting dirty like I don't know if I want to like get my clothes dirty and then you just like kind of lean into that and you're like yeah like digging a hole so I feel like not just music like any kind of art that feels like digging a hole to me I feel like if there's a certain mood I get into where I'm like yeah let's do this and like actually really explore this space like to me this last film was kind of like that both in its aesthetic and also and just kind of like for me like reflecting on like my Stockholm syndrome to what the American flag represents I mean like I live here but also like that's like something that's been imposed on to whatever here is you know and like kind of letting go of you know like starting to like detach this like very sticky octopus that is like America you know and like I like that they were like braiding of limbs on this like America creature just became something else which is kind of interesting yeah I want to ask Andy what yeah I guess like who is your persona that your persona that you're inhabiting in your piece and like like yeah maybe sneak more up on that yeah I mean I got it's a little embarrassing actually because like the image so I have a tendency to like hyper fixate on things and that's actually something that I am really drawn to in other people's art and what I like to do in mine is I really love when someone just like hooks on to this particular object like a like a I kind of spent two years obsessed with deep sea glass sponges and like was obsessively like 3D printed them and things like that and just kind of then it was gone one day and it'll come back but just like I love when you see someone's art where that they've just really gone down a rabbit hole and created this thing that's very immersive and so I long story to say that I became sort of hyper fixated on a particular show over the pandemic which is called the magicians and so the character from that show is sort of the person that I was personifying when I came out with the robe and everything on but as I was writing that song I sort of started it with that in mind and then it became about me and then it became about how because actually wrote it before I came out and like I don't know if I I mean I clearly knew sort of what was happening but it didn't like and so I kind of came to understanding it by writing it and so that's sort of how it merged more with who I am and what my person is just like kind of like just me I guess so you said it a lot better in your but like that there's just like that thing that you're that you always know is there and nobody else sees it so I mean that really speaks to this thing I've been exploring where I'm like oh I'm going to set about like getting birth to this art item and then it's like nope I'm giving birth to you and you're like okay like the number of times the final product looks like what I think it's going to is like zero so I really love this idea that art is a place like you know like a whole or also you know art being place where we can imagine or create ourselves or create our reality and really also sitting with how art is also a place where we can transform our emotions or be with our emotions or transmute our emotions and art is definitely a resource a resource that we can lean into and it doesn't mean that we have to show our art sometimes it feels good to show it but sometimes when it comes out a certain way or when we realize that it's really more about the process too that's also really important for art making as well and I'd love to see do we have time for any questions I just I want to do a time check yeah we do okay yeah so if we have a couple of questions I saw a couple hands maybe going up I know we have a mic that we can send out to folks and yeah there's a person in the back if you want to raise your hand I would love to hear a question yeah the mic's coming can everybody hear me okay okay one of my questions and I think you guys were talking about it a little bit on stage but I feel like for me as a trans person part of the whole deal is like getting to build your own self back up again like there's this like also the tower in the video I'm like into terror a little bit but for people who don't know the tower is this card of destruction and like about the tower coming down and sort of like the end of like the society as we know it but like how much of that is resonant like within your own work as an artist I know like some people can really explore their identity like before they come out or like know themselves before they come out but how much of like your work helped you build like the identity that you're building now or like the communities that you're building now hopefully that question makes sense well I was thinking about the last thing that you said Karmina about how you set out to birth the work of art and it ends up birthing you I've definitely felt that with poems where it feels like me and the poem are co-creating something as in I am making the poem but the poem is also making me and for me there's a lot of unconscious processes that are also part of making a poem and so there's something very therapeutic where like you it's almost like dream analysis or something where it's like where did that come from in my head and like what does it mean and if I build on it and think about it what will I learn about myself in that process yeah yeah I think it's interesting that the two cards in that film were the tower and the hanged one and I feel like how this relates to my practice specifically the weaving practice which just witnessed me like cut off it's tether so I no longer right now have a weaving practice right so I'm like in this like hanged man hanged one place right now but also like the specific practice of backstrap weaving which is you know indigenous to Turtle Island is a way of you know it can be interpreted as like building a tower to the stars and like through like you know instead of a pole like usually it's tether to a tree and like you know ask the tree to help you like bring down the stars and you anchor it with your with your hips to create like what is in between which is you know to me an analogy for life like the weaving itself like between the stars and the like you know underworld lord that eats all the K like is you know this this like refracted rainbow that is life itself and I feel like I feel I feel a little bit like both like the tower is a place to fall down from but it's also a place to ascend to or like you can climb to then ascend would yeah it's an interesting it's an interesting duality and I feel like yeah I don't have a way to wrap that in but something about our conversations about art feel feel like that that's leading somewhere I think I don't I think for me I'm really just at the beginning of it so I haven't really deconstructed that kind of stuff about my work and as I'm creating it I just you know I went from years of making these things without like question without investigating myself and just kind of not being part of it at all and I'm seeing now how much of that was like deliberate like I was I was seeing it or whatever and now that it's out there the first thing I did was swung around and wrote an album of songs and so I'm now I'm like that was kind of like my cathartic moment and now I'm like what do I do with this in my art and so I'm definitely just kind of trying to pull that apart and think about it now yeah and I just wanted to share with you bringing up the tower card another interpretation I heard recently about the tower card is that it also revolution that exists or happens in your life and I really feel like art can be that revolution where sometimes as you're saying we might begin working on something and then only later come to understand that we were really birthing ourselves that we were really creating space for ourselves to maybe come to another realization or come to another place of understanding and I definitely feel like it's iterative and collaborative that art works where we are really creating each other and I think that's also how it works in community is that we also get inspired by others and we are creating community with each other and that's how we also like really learn about ourselves is through others as well and so I really love that question because I think it is something really important to explore and I think it does really I think we all have our own process and how we get to our sense of self and sense of art so thank you so much for that question I'd love to see if I think we have room maybe for one more question there's another person that wants to ask a question see ya in the back Hi, I'm segueing perfectly from what Edgar was just saying I as an artist really value community and belonging to me I feel like community and belonging are two sides of the same coin and they mean everything to me and as someone really new to living out here in the bay I was wondering where you all find your sense of community and belonging and maybe how that relates to your art practice I mean I spend a lot of it online and various discord groups and being able to find people who share interests and share ideas about gender and things like that has been really helpful but out in the real world of the bay I'm still working on finding that I think about belonging as something that I'm and community something that I'm working to create for myself and I think about creating belonging for myself in the bay as through community so by building relationships then maybe I will belong and I have found that in the bay in part through an org called Lavender Phoenix which is for trans and queer Asian Pacific Islanders and some of them are here which is lovely and I never realized before that group that I could bring like these multiple identities that are very important to who I am could be together in the same space I didn't have to choose one over the other and for me that has related to my art because actually the first public reading that I ever did of my work was at a Lavender Phoenix event and it was a vigil and maybe I spoke to this in earlier in our conversation but at that vigil I felt like my art could create an experience or hold a space and so when my how to put it it was so important to me to be part of that vigil in that community gathering because it felt like my art could hold a space for people in that community to grieve and so for me that was a point of my art my community being in sync and having their purposes really aligned and so I think that is like all I can ask for from my art yeah when you first asked that question I really drew blank because I feel like I mean I moved here right before the pandemic not right before like yeah maybe a year or so or two year and a half before the pandemic and then since then it's just been like very like closed up it's very slowly opening but one thing I will say aside from like finding specific people and you know turning into friend groups that are like you know a crucible is the bay area block and band punk fest of which there have been three brought me here and I was like when I first went a friend of mine invited me before I lived here I was like this is the audience that I want to make work for and I mean I don't think it's a coincidence that the names of it have been the universe is lit, the multiverse is illuminated the 143rd dimension in the last one because it really is like kind of both or many things including like prioritizing fem and trans and black and brown voices primarily in music but also like in multimedia painting and you know performance art and it wasn't until the third iteration of it that I was like okay I have something to offer and I feel like that that was the first space that I ever witnessed and co-created that could actually like hold the entirety of how I wanted to interact in a in a fest space and yeah that was really it was really meaningful to find and I feel like that's it's pretty unique to the Bay Area yeah and I you know I actually had the honor of performing at the first of these festivals and this was like a few years ago and definitely agree that art is a space that does bring people together and so I really do want to you know shout out to all the incredible folks who are creating community with art and I definitely want to shout out to this amazing festival too for creating community here and also as folks know we have many more events for the rest of the week where we can meet other folks too and connect with other trans non-binary gender expansive folks as well and so I just want to thank you all so much and thank you to the artist and panelist for today for sharing so much of your work and your words and your wisdom and thank you all so much for being such a generous audience as well and for asking your questions too so we'll stick around if folks want to chat for a moment but I do think we have to leave at some point soon because they close in a little bit they're going to kick us out no they're not no no no we're slowly going to be wrapping things up but here let me come up to the front and just say thank you all so much for your perspectives your thoughts on everything for your audience again for being so generous yeah we're just going to wrap it up here come up and say hi there we go we got it we got it thank you for coming out as Edgar said we have four more events so if you like what you've seen here you want more non-binary belonging you have four more opportunities tomorrow at KQED at 7 o'clock Friday at Oasis we're doing a free non-binary happy hour that one is 21 plus though to soon know after that Lotus Boy and I are going to be hosting Dan at Brava for a video night and then we'll wrap up with Unbounded our closing night party at El Rio with live music some drag performances also hosted by Lotus Boy anything else y'all want to say for our parting closing thoughts here thanks everyone for coming thank you for coming also answer the last question this is a creation of like a place where people can connect about this and like the futures of what non-binary means and in all the respects that we were talking about this festival really came out of a fact like we didn't have a specific place of belonging there's things that continue to pop up there's little pockets that happen but also I would encourage you it's up to us to create that space as artists like we have the power to create those spaces and to bring folks in to our sense of belonging as well alright let's get a round of applause for our wonderful moderator Edgar Fabian Priyas our performers and panelists Andy Guthrie, Alder Ron Hurley and A. Karmina Marquez thank you to the library Christina and Kevin for having us all of our wonderful funders and sponsors that are helping us co-host this festival and thank you for coming out we'll see you again soon