Representaciòn
June 9, 8:00pm
Performance & Readings
Femina Potens
Tix: $7 – $15Info: www.feminapotens.com
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| Irina Contreras Photo: Camryn Bustamante |
Meliza Bañales Photo: J.Waite |
Luna Maia photo: Luna Maia |
Nico Dacumos Photo: Maria Christina Rangel |
When does the relationship with our culture/s become a performance? When do we choose to perform culture to pass? When do we choose to subdue our culture/s to pass? When do we not have a choice? Through word and performance art, we will explore passing, assimilation, appropriation/reclamation, and the queerness of being mixed.
Join award winning bay area poets Meliza Bañales and Luna Maia, Los Angeles Artist Irina Contreras and East Bay Writer and Performer Nico Dacumos
Curated by Luna Maia
BIOS
Meliza Bañales
Meliza Bañales is the author of Say It With Your Whole Mouth (Monkey Press, Poetry Center Book Award Nominee, 2004) and was the 2002 winner of the People Before Profits Poetry Prize. Her poems and short-fiction (dirty and otherwise) have appeared in Lodestar Quarterly, Without A Net (Seal Press) edited by Michelle Tea, and in the forthcoming Baby, Remember My Name: New Queer Girl Writing also edited by Michelle Tea. Her short film with Mary Guzman “Do the Math” was the winner of a 2006 Frameline Completion Grant and received an Honorable Mention in the 2006 Fusion film festival in Los Angeles. She is currently adapting a script and will direct for the 2007 Twilight Zone Play Festival in San Francisco in March, has six entries in the first ever Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Change out Spring 2007.
Nico Dacumos
Nico Dacumos is a Special Education teacher in Oakland, a performer, and writer. He has developed workshops exploring race, queerness, sex, and love for UC Davis, Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges, Sistersong, Georgians for Choice, Body Positive Atlanta, and Femme Conference 2006. He has performed at venues such as City Lights Books, Highways Performance Space, TMI Queer Salon, and is part of the Mangos with Chilis QTPOC Floating Cabaret. His written work appears in the anthology Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity. Stalk him at http://nicoelrico.blogspot.com.
Irina Contreras
Irina Contreras is a maker of sorts from video to writing (most recently published in the anthology Nobody Passes) to public performance. She received her BFA from Otis College of Art and Design in New Genres. Currently acting as editor in chief for LOUDmouth Magazine, she is particularly interested in different ways to look at distribution and insertion as a way of systematic disruption. A lover of Franz Fanon, her grandmother Dolores and the way her prima?s hair held so much nicer with the scent of 1987 flavored Aquanet, it would be shame to pass on trouble making with her. Send her hate mail, dirty pictures or questions at [email protected]
Luna Maia
Luna Maia is a San Francisco based queer artist-innovator who focuses on issues of mixed heritage, feminism, and gender identity. Her most recent chapbook Valentine conveys these topics with a vulnerable honesty while brimming with intensity. Her poem ?A Love of the Ancestors? won the 2007 Xochiquetzali Honorable Mention Award, for Latina and Native Women. She is honored to make her second appearance at National Queer Arts Festival. For more information check her out at www.lunamaia.com