Queer Performance Camp

“What emerged as a motor beneath our desires as guest curators of this year’s edition of Queer Performance Camp was a need for a place for queers to congregate, reconnect and rekindle through these trying times of isolation.

With closures of queer spaces and restrictions on social distancing, we aim to adapt and reimagine ways of coming together in hopes that queer communities can continue to thrive, heal and persevere together.

For this year’s QPC we are holding on to the DIY spirit, which is so intrinsic to queer identity and politic. We ask ourselves: What does a DIY space look like on the virtual plane? With this, we are delighted to present our events ‘QueerCutPro’, ‘Chosen Family Feud’ and ‘2:59s’ as our performance platform exploring this question.

A desire that has remained consistent for the past 4 editions of QPC was to stimulate intergenerational dialogue amongst queer kin. And for year 5, we wanted to continue that line of discourse through an event we call ‘Ask an Elder.’ Having an elder is such a rich experience, but only a few possess. With this initiative, we hope to inspire and reinvigorate more queer-elder bonds and connections for future generations to come.

We are absolutely thrilled to share what we’ve been cooking up for this year’s edition and feel incredibly lucky to be able to assemble such a stellar group of queer artists, each diving into the unknown with us. We cannot thank them enough.

And a huge thank you to the team at Studio 303 and Miriam Ginestier whose hard work made it all possible for this to happen.”

– Justin de Luna + Winnie Ho

Lenore Claire Herrem is an interdisciplinary artist based in Montreal. She is the artist behind the personality that is the versatile & comedic Sandy Bridges. The Sandy Bridges Show exists both live on stage (when there’s not an ongoing pandemic) as well as online. Interviewer, journalist, wide range specialist, and domestic goddess, Sandy Bridges serves at the behest of the community. For Queer Performance Camp 2021, she is looking forward to hosting the first online edition of Chosen Family Feud! Think quick and tune in or you’ll miss it!

Laureen Blu Waters
2S Métis elder Laureen Blu Waters: Istchii Nikamoon: Earth Song, (Cree/Metis/Micmac) Wolf Clan, is a member of the Metis Nation of Ontario. Blu’s family is from Big River Saskatchewan, Star Blanket Reserve and Bra’dor Lake, Eskasoni First Nations, Cape Breton Nova Scotia. 
Blu was a grandmother to one of the commissioners on the national inquiry into murdered and missing women, and traveled with the inquiry to the hearings and testimonies. Previously, Blu was the national caucus Representative for the Toronto urban aboriginal strategy for 5 years working with the community of Toronto and the Government.
Blu grew up with her grandmother and learned about traditional medicines performing healings, and care of the sick and teachings. Her teaching comes from community elders such as Rose Logan, Pauline Shirt, Harry Snowboy, and others. Blu is a mother of 3, a grandmother of 3, a Sun dancer, and a pipe carrier.

Moe Clark
âpihtawikosisâniskwêw (Métis / nêhiyaw / French / Norwegian / British) multidisciplinary artist Moe Clark is a 2Spirit Singing Thunderbird. Weaving together vocal improvisation with multilingual lyricism, Moe creates meaning that is rooted in personal legacy, ancestral memory and embodied knowledge. As a contemporary indigenous artist, she asserts her position to reclaim, restore and rematriate feminine and queer knowledge into cultural and creative practices. Originally from otoskwanik, at the meeting of the Bow and Elbow rivers in Treaty 7, Moe has situated her practice in tio’tiá:ke (Montreal) for over a decade. Her work as an artist, educator and activist aims to remember and reconnect belonging to territories of land, body and voice through creative continuums of language immersion, ceremonial practice and song creation.

Elle Barbara
Elle Barbara is a Montreal-based avant-garde singer-songwriter, song selector (TS Ellise), pinup, speaker, writer, director, curator, and intervention worker whose musical output combines elements of soul, psychedelia, jazz, and underground. A lover of the odd, dark, or overlooked elements in pop music, Elle rose from artist-run spaces at the turn of the 2010s and has seen their work soar to enduring acclaim in a career whose highlights include duets with Laetitia Sadier and R. Stevie Moore. In recent years, Barbara’s efforts have been mainly centered around trans community organizing – including contributions in Montreal’s emerging ballroom scene as the Iconic Mother of the Idiosyncratic House of Barbara. The House of Barbara, in addition to throwing balls, is a collective whose transdisciplinary practice encompasses performance, activism & DJing. Elle’s current musical incarnation (Elle Barbara’s Black Space) aims to re-center blackness & reject anti-black tropes within the city’s art and music spaces.

Lucinda Catchlove
Lucinda Catchlove is a Montreal-based arts writer and cultural critic with a passion for the people and culture of Montreal. An Australian immigrant who grew up Anglophone in Montreal, Lucinda has a particular appreciation for how cultures intersect and interact, and how the liminal spaces created between cultures become rich territories for creative innovation and explorations of identity. This interest in liminal spaces and how we construct identity, both personal and collective, and how biology is and isn’t malleable and how it affects our lived experiences of ourselves, is also informed by her queerness and the experience of living with an autoimmune disorder. Lucinda studied studio art at Concordia University and her many adventures over the decades have included playing saxophone and building ridiculous props for art punk bands My Dog Popper and Shlonk!, writing a weekly gossip and culture column under the nom de plume Miss de Meaner for the Hour weekly, working in media relations for Ninja Tune Records and Mutek, and writing production notes for film. Now aging somewhat disgracefully into her mid-50s, much to her own surprise at having survived this damn long when so many of us haven’t, Lucinda remains voraciously curious about people and the world.