NATIONAL QUEER ARTS FESTIVAL 2010

Director’s Statement
Welcome to the 13th National Queer Arts Festival

I heard Alice Walker quote her father, saying, “If we do not write our history, they will say it never happened.” The Queer Cultural Center preserves our art and culture. If you examine the 13,000 pages of our website you will see that it documents every artistic discipline as well as emerging and established artists.

We want to share our history by showcasing real and re-imagined chronologies: Making History. And we do it in typical queer style: Queer Rebels of the Harlem Renaissance brings us a hybrid of performance and 20’s rent party; the history of SF Burlesque is told via the fire tassels of Satan’s Angel; and there are Rebel Grrrls, early bi activists and lesbians responding to the early days of the AIDS crisis. Radar writers go Old School while Guywriters look back at their hometowns. Our visual arts show, Chronotopia, asks artists to re/interpret the Past, Present and Future of Queer Histories.

Making History is what queer artists are doing every day. It is also what we and other queer organizations do and what you as audiences support: the presentation of queer art as authentically drawn from our many and varied queer perspectives. It is vital to share this art with people who are isolated from community or who can not come out because of life-threatening circumstances.

Come make history with us at the National Queer Arts Festival.

– Pamela S. Peniston, Artistic Director