Curatorial Statement
It’s been a lonely time. Sometimes, loneliness is a thing to sink deep into, like a bath that steams your ears and heats you past the point of comfort. It invites a wallow. Sometimes, under the right circumstances, it moves you to create—to step into that voidspace, eyes wide, arms out, ready to connect, or at the very least, feel your way into the next thing.
The films in DYKE NEWS / DYKE FILM are well-acquainted with loneliness, and the isolation which comes from inhabiting a social position forced into invisibility—whether as a baby dyke in the prairies, a lonely city lesbian, a dyke mom. The power of these films lies in their ability to thoughtfully, playfully, angrily, honestly, and quietly probe the conditions of their aloneness, ask questions, and offer themselves up to the viewer as companions through the muck of it all.
“Can a lesbian actually exist in a televisual space?” ask two lines of text that run across the screen of Mo Bradley’s Queer Across Canada (1993). It’s a good question, one I think about often. Can a dyke actually exist in a cultural space? A public space? A contemporary queer space? The questions reverberate as a perpetual echo of the themes running through these films. The works featured in this program by TJ Cuthand, Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan, Laurel Swenson, Shani Mootoo, and Mo Bradley offer us a salve, a witness, a spark—and a resounding yes.
Curated by: Kara Stanton
The power of these films lies in their ability to thoughtfully, playfully, angrily, honestly, and quietly probe the conditions of their aloneness, ask questions, and offer themselves up to the viewer as companions through the muck of it all.