Archive for the 'Deanne’s Blog' Category

The Sad Mag team has been hard at work on our biggest project of the year: issue 7/8, a spe­cial dou­ble issue com­mem­o­rat­ing Vancouver’s queer his­tory from 1960-today. The new issue launches Thurs­day, Novem­ber 3 at the Cobalt, and we hope you’ll join us to hon­our Vancouver’s incred­i­ble artists, per­form­ers and com­mu­nity leaders.

Sad Mag Queer Cul­ture Awards and Show

Thurs­day, Novem­ber 3
The Cobalt at 917 Main Street
8:00pm — 1:00am
Tick­ets $6 / Door $8
Includes a com­pli­men­tary copy of the magazine.

Join us for an evening of LIVE enter­tain­ment in our queer artists cabaret hosted by funny woman Mor­gan Bray­ton, fea­tur­ing come­dian Dan Dumsha, drag artist Isolde N. Barron…and more to be announced!

Tick­ets avail­able at Red Cat Records and Lit­tle Sister’s Art and Book Empo­rium. See the event on Face­book.

About This Issue

Sad Mag’s first cover star was Isolde N. Bar­ron, East Van’s intre­pid drag queen, so it won’t come as a sur­prise that we’re fas­ci­nated and delighted by Vancouver’s vibrant queer artists. How­ever, what has sur­prised us in the past two years of pub­lish­ing was the pub­lic reac­tion to our queer con­tent. Peo­ple asked, was Sad Mag a queer mag­a­zine, then, by pub­lish­ing arti­cles about queer artists?

Sad Mag’s mis­sion is to cel­e­brate and pro­mote inde­pen­dent, acces­si­ble and community-oriented art and cul­ture in Van­cou­ver, BC. For our edi­to­r­ial team, it would have been a sig­nif­i­cant over­sight as an art mag­a­zine to ignore the force of cre­ativ­ity and expres­sion reflected in Vancouver’s queer com­mu­ni­ties. From drag stars to award-winning play­wrights, dancers to musi­cians, writ­ers, pho­tog­ra­phers and beyond—it has been our priv­i­lege to wit­ness the stun­ning cre­ativ­ity and sheer ambi­tion of our city’s queer artists.

We weren’t try­ing to make a state­ment by pub­lish­ing the sto­ries of queer artists. It would have been a state­ment not to.

In our Queer His­tory Issue, our edi­to­r­ial team and con­trib­u­tors have endeav­ored to explore the theme of queer art and cul­ture in greater depth. Made pos­si­ble by the City of Van­cou­ver as part of its 125th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions, the Queer His­tory Issue is a start­ing point: a place from where we can begin to under­stand the impact of the west coast LGBT move­ment on Van­cou­ver, and the impact of Vancouver’s queer com­mu­ni­ties on the world.

Joan-E, Robyn Graves, Symone, Raye Sunshine—Vancouver’s beloved drag queens were out in full force last week­end, united on stage at the Fit for a Queen con­cert, ben­e­fit­ing the Shoot­ing Stars Foun­da­tion. The sold-out event at Richmond’s River Rock Casino fea­tured stel­lar per­for­mances by twenty well-known female imper­son­ators includ­ing Syren, Milan, and the unstop­pable Conni Smudge, who met with Sad Mag back­stage after the show.

A past Enter­tainer of the Year (Celebri­ties Night­club) and Miss Odyssey 2006–2007, Conni has sup­ported Fit for a Queen for all of its nine years in exis­tence, and was part of the inspi­ra­tion for the knock-out event. “Car­lotta, Mandy Kamp and myself did one num­ber at Starry Night for the Shoot­ing Stars,” said Conni, “and that’s where they got the idea for hav­ing just one evening with drag queens. It was so spec­tac­u­lar, and I had such a great time.”

The Shoot­ing Stars Foun­da­tion plans spe­cial events that raise money for peo­ple liv­ing with HIV/AIDS. The foun­da­tion sup­ports orga­ni­za­tions such as the Dr. Peter Cen­ter and a Lov­ing Spoon­ful. An esti­mated 58,000 peo­ple in Canada live with HIV, and 1–2 peo­ple con­tract HIV in British Colum­bia every­day. The grow­ing need for AIDS ser­vices and sup­port often out­paces fund­ing pro­vided through tra­di­tional sources, such as the provin­cial gov­ern­ment. Community-sponsored events like Fit for a Queen help to fill the fund­ing gap.

The River Rock Casino’s show the­atre, a 1000-seat venue, was packed with sup­port­ers this year—and accord­ing to Conni, the inspired per­form­ers put on their best pos­si­ble show. “Stand­ing on stage is like stand­ing in a cereal bowl,” she said, “It’s such a steep audi­ence and there are just thou­sands of peo­ple. We’re used to per­form­ing in clubs—Celebrities, The Odyssey, et cetera—but being on that stage raises everyone’s cal­iber, and brings their A-game. And we’re all very sup­port­ive of each other.”

To learn more about the Shoot­ing Stars Foun­da­tion visit their web­site. For more drag per­for­mance, see Syren and Isolde N. Bar­ron tonight at Queer­bash.

Photo by McAvoy

I’m learn­ing to ride my bike. At twenty-three years old, this is a bold move. I can tell you there are a few good rea­sons that most peo­ple learn to ride a bicy­cle (and swim, and ice skate) when they’re shorter than five feet and lighter than 90 pounds. Not to men­tion, the unique humil­i­a­tion of being pushed off the side­walk by my boyfriend of two years is some­thing I don’t think any adult ego was designed to endure.

Despite this, I’m deter­mined to get on two wheels by the end of the sum­mer. As much as I would like to say that I’ve been swept away by a desire to reduce my car­bon emis­sions or dimin­ish my per­sonal depen­dence on fos­sil fuels, I have to admit that my pri­mary moti­va­tions are a bit more selfish.

What get me going are visions of bik­ing to the Trout Lake farmer’s mar­ket with friends, a sum­mer scarf whip­ping in the wind per­haps. I would like to bike the Van­cou­ver sea­wall down to Third Beach and feel the sun on my face. I want to bike to the foot of Main Street for art shows faster than you can say, “never wait­ing for a bus again.”

Sad Mag will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in Car Free Day on Main Street this year. I don’t ride a bike (yet) but our mag­a­zine knows a thing or two about “Liv­ing Your Life” that def­i­nitely jives with the spirit of Car Free. Sus­tain­abil­ity is about know­ing your neigh­bours, meet­ing the cre­ators of the foods and arts you con­sume, and enjoy­ing Van­cou­ver life fully.

Come say hi to us on Main Street tomor­row, Sun­day June 20, between the blocks of 29th and 30th avenues. We’ll have mag­a­zines to give away, and we’ll be draw­ing win­ners for a pair of tick­ets to DIM cin­ema at the Pacific Cinematheque.

Sad Mag is pleased to part­ner with the DOXA fes­ti­val, Vancouver’s doc­u­men­tary film fes­ti­val, this year. We are a screen­ing part­ner for Art in Action, a film directed by Mag­nus Isac­s­son. Isac­s­son, a for­mer pro­ducer for the CBC, has been cre­at­ing films about sig­nif­i­cant social and polit­i­cal issues since 1987. Art in Action is his look at the very per­sonal and all-encompassing life of the full time artist-activist.

The film fol­lows Annie Roy and Pierre Allard, founders of the artists col­lec­tive ATSA, that stage “urban inter­ven­tions,” includ­ing instal­la­tions and per­for­mances that call atten­tion to urban social issues. Isacsson’s cam­era fol­lowed the artist cou­ple for four years, doc­u­ment­ing their tri­umphs and dif­fi­cul­ties along the way.

Isac­s­son took a moment to answer some of our ques­tions about the film via email this week, and this is what he had to say:

Sad Mag: What was your first intro­duc­tion to ATSA, and what moti­vated the cre­ation of this film?

Mag­nus Isac­s­son: I had been aware of their work for sev­eral years because they get a lot of media cov­er­age in Mon­treal, but at first I didn’t have time, I was busy with other projects. It was five years ago that I had the time to go and hear Annie speak at an arts con­fer­ence, and found their approach fascinating.

I con­tacted them and lent them a cou­ple of my pre­vi­ous films. They liked them. Even though I told them that I was not inter­ested in putting them on a pedestal or doing PR for ATSA, but that I wanted to be in on the dif­fi­cult moments, they gen­er­ously accepted to be the sub­jects of a film.

I asked my friend Simon the be the Direc­tor of Pho­tog­ra­phy, and we started shoot­ing. Because of Simon’s very con­sid­er­able invest­ment in the project and his key role, I later asked him to also be an asso­ciate director.

SM: You fol­lowed Annie Roy and Pierre Allard and their fam­ily for four years to make this film. What sort of rela­tion­ship formed between you and your crew, and the sub­jects of your film? With a lengthy time in the field, did you strug­gle to rep­re­sent them fairly?

MI: For me, shoot­ing for sev­eral years is the key both to form­ing real rela­tion­ships of com­plic­ity and trust, for hav­ing enough dra­mat­i­cally inter­est­ing mate­r­ial to make a good film. The crew was just Simon on cam­era and myself doing sound, plus some­times an intern or stu­dent helper.

We became very close to Annie and Pierre, which wasn’t hard because we share a lot of inter­ests, we live in the same neigh­bor­hood, and although I’m quite a bit older we have chil­dren the same age.

One dif­fi­culty was how to cap­ture their cre­ative process, because they don’t have sched­uled meet­ings to make cre­ative deci­sions, their key dis­cus­sions can take place while they do the laun­dry, or walk to the cor­ner store, what­ever. Another one of the big chal­lenges was that their often con­flict­ual work­ing rela­tion­ship was of inter­est to us, and we did film many heated arguments.

After a while this became a source of many wor­ries for them, espe­cially Annie, and they some­times didn’t want us to film when things were too tense. We were very much aware of these con­cerns and we had to respect them – with all their gen­eros­ity, giv­ing us access to both their cre­ative process and their per­sonal life, we couldn’t let them down by mak­ing a film they wouldn’t like.

But I insisted on includ­ing some scenes where they argue, and sev­eral inter­view clips where they talk about their fights. They didn’t like it at the first screen­ing or two, but they got used to it, and saw that it didn’t take away from other people’s appre­ci­a­tion of their work.

SM: The film’s syn­op­sis reads that you focus the film on the domes­tic life and demands of the artists. How does this con­tribute to the film’s mes­sage? To the audience’s under­stand­ing of the artists?

MI: The main empha­sis [of the film] is on ATSA’s pub­lic instal­la­tions and the way they are received by the pub­lic, and on their intense invest­ment of energy and cre­ativ­ity in what they do.

But they are a cou­ple, and their work is tightly inter­wo­ven with their role as res­i­dents of a neigh­bor­hood, as lovers and as par­ents. I feel any time you can get behind the façade of things and see the real peo­ple, you are win­ning. I also found it impor­tant to show that the intense artis­tic activism they prac­tise, like any intense involve­ment, doesn’t come with­out a price.

It does have an impact on their rela­tion­ship and their par­ent­ing, and I find it very touch­ing when they talk about these difficulties.

SM: Fund­ing for the arts oper­ates quite dif­fer­ently in Que­bec as com­pared to British Colum­bia. I see that the artists are sup­ported by Coun­seil des arts de Mon­treal, Coun­seil des arts et des let­tres de Que­bec, and the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts. How do you think this con­tributes to their suc­cess? Is fund­ing essen­tial for groups with a polit­i­cal mis­sion, such as ATSA, to operate?

MI: I am no expert on arts fund­ing, but I would say that Que­bec does take arts very seri­ously, and Mon­treal is an incred­i­bly cre­ative place. (I see it of course in the domain of cin­ema – just look at how many Quebec-made films get the top nom­i­na­tions in Cana­dian film awards.)

I think for Pierre and Annie the arts coun­cil fund­ing is essen­tial, and it comes from all three lev­els of gov­ern­ment. But because their work is so inspir­ing, and because it’s both cre­atively excel­lent and socially rel­e­vant, they get an awful lot of dona­tions and as you see in the film the recruit huge num­bers of volunteers.

Don’t miss DOXA’s screen­ing of Art in Action on Wednes­day, March 12 at 3:00 p.m.

The edi­to­r­ial con­cept for Sad Mag can best be summed up as “be sur­pris­ing.” We wanted young writ­ers and visual artists to draw on their own per­sonal inter­ests and expe­ri­ences to pro­duce con­tent for the mag­a­zine, so the con­cept hasn’t been dif­fi­cult to achieve.

Want to know about a gypsy musi­cian / vin­tage store owner and her role in the devel­op­ment of Main Street in the last 15 years? We’ve got that. How about, what a Chi­nese immi­grant thinks about life and perserver­ence? Yup. Got that, too.

Nobody is ask­ing Chi­nese immi­grants what they think of life. The piece that opens the mag­a­zine, “A Good Life,” was writ­ten and pho­tographed by Justin Mah and Jimmy Hsu (respec­tively). The friends and room­mates fre­quent the laun­dro­mat of their inter­view sub­ject, Jessie Li, a few blocks from their base­ment apart­ment in Burnaby.

Jesse Li at work. Pho­tog­ra­phy by Jimmy Hsu.

It’s an exquis­ite piece. The first of the sub­mis­sions we received, “A Good Life” was the first affir­ma­tion that our vision of pub­lish­ing uncom­mon writ­ing could be achieved.

I’ve said it before, but the kinds of writ­ing young peo­ple are going to pro­duce is nec­es­sar­ily dif­fer­ent from that of more estab­lished folks. Young peo­ple eek it out at min­i­mum wage, share apart­ments with friends, and rent in the dodgy areas that allow for pay­ing rent and hav­ing enough left over for beer. We use laundromats.

Jessie Li shares that she’s seen some hard times.

“I was once at the peak of my life, then sud­denly lost every­thing one day. It’s deter­mi­na­tion, I think, deter­mi­na­tion that kept me going—just think­ing on the bright side. When prob­lems come up, just face it and don’t give up. One should be hard­work­ing, kind and hon­est; this is my per­sonal philosophy.”

Keep your head up. Work hard. Don’t give up.

The dif­fer­ence between this arti­cle and some­thing you might read on eco­nomic hard times else­where is sim­ple, and it’s this: estab­lished writ­ers, skilled and con­nected as they may be, don’t hang out in laun­dro­mats. And I think we’re miss­ing out on some­thing really impor­tant as a soci­ety by rely­ing exclu­sively on politi­cians and talk­ing heads to give us moral guid­ance in times like these.

I’d rather speak to Jessie Li.

So, that’s our deal. We want unex­pected, uncom­mon writ­ing from young people—experienced or not. If you’re think­ing of devel­op­ing a pitch for Sad Mag, fol­low these three sim­ple steps first:

1. Grab onto an issue or a topic that inter­ests, even obsesses you. I’m super inter­ested in the preva­lence of bur­lesque among hip­sters. What’s the deal with the sud­den pop­u­lar­ity of faux-suppressed sexuality?
2. Con­sider how this issue or topic affects you per­son­ally. What about your posi­tion in life makes your take on the issue par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing? My room­mate started tak­ing bur­lesque classes last month, and now it’s all nip­ple tas­sels and feather boas. She says she feels more con­fi­dent, but I’m not so sure. As a fem­i­nist, can I endorse boo­bie shak­ing as a confidence-booster?
3. Do some research. How can you feed your inter­est, teach­ing your­self and oth­ers through some qual­ity time in the library, and out on the streets talk­ing to peo­ple? I’m going to do some research on the his­tory of bur­lesque danc­ing, inter­view my room­mate and her danc­ing friends, and what the hell, take a class myself. It’ll give my writ­ing some spice, or good jokes, at least.

Then bombs away to info@sadmag.ca and we’ll chat about mak­ing it a fit for the magazine.

Keep writ­ing,
Deanne