Author: rconrad

I recently made the move to Montréal to begin my PhD in Concordia’s Interdisciplinary Humanities program.  I will be pursuing my degree through a self-designed sexuality studies curriculum with a heavy studio arts component.  Be expecting lots of written and visual work from me over the next five years from one of Canada’s most exciting queer cultural centers!

Carlos Motta‘s We Who Feel Differently database documentary project launched this past May and includes a journal article I co-authored with Yasmin Nair on gay marriage, neo-colonialism and re-imagining what global queer solidarity could look like.  I was also interviewed about my involvement with Against Equality as part of WWFD.  A transcript, audio mp3 and the full video can be accessed here.

Work with Against Equality continues on.  I toured the west coast and mid-west this past April, bringing the the total number of events since the book’s launch this past October to 21.  I am currently editing the collective’s next archival anthology focused on critiquing gay and lesbian investments in overturning Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell titled Against Equality: Don’t Ask to Fight Their Wars, due out Fall 2011. The cover will be designed by Chris Vargas and the introduction will be penned by none other than Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore.  A KickStarter campaign will be launching in July to fund the project!

The annual Lewistunning Dragapalooza this past May pulled in just over $3000 dollars for Outright L/A‘s drop in program for LGBTQ young people in central Maine.  Stage managing the show was a blast and it was wonderful to be part of a project that allowed for so many first time youth  performers to share the stage and shake what they got alongside some of Maine finest Kings and Queens.  Next year’s Spring show will surely sell out like this one did, so be sure to get your tickets in advance!

The Against Equality book tour continues on the west coast this April as I make my way from Seattle to L.A.  I will be will be lecturing, work shopping, and q&a’ing (along with a few other A.E. related folks here and there) at colleges, autonomous youth spaces, cooperative cafes and bookstores.  Books, postcards, pins, and stickers will be available at all events.  Click here for a list of tour dates.

Carlos Motta‘s We Who Feel Differently multi-media online journal launches in May.  The ambitious project includes a piece Yasmin Nair and I co-authored on imaging what an international radical queer and trans politic might look like.  I was also interviewed on video for the project which will become available when the site launches in coordination with an exhibition opening in Norway this spring.

The Domestic Queens Project, a group exhibition at the FOFA Gallery in Montreal curated by Evergon, included the collaborative film project between Liam Michaud, REB and myself titled Everything About You Son, Is Because of Me (chapter one of eight).  The show opened with a half day symposium where I sat on a panel, discussing the work in the exhibition along with JJ Kegan McFadden, Larry Glawson, Eduardo Ralikas, and Evergon.

For the third year in a row I will be stage managing the annual Lewistunning Dragapalooza benefit for Outright L/A, a queer and trans youth empowerment project in Lewiston/Auburn Maine, on May 7th 2011 at Schaeffer Theater on the Bates College campus.  More information about the show is available on Outright’s website.

I also just got word that the anthology Queering Anarchism is tentatively scheduled to be released by AK Press in the fall of 2012.  My piece on the use of affect to mobilize queer and trans subjects in relation to the national gay marriage campaigns in the United States titled (Gay) Marriage and (Queer) Love, will appear in this anthology.

My 2009 video, b. 1983, is now available for viewing on youtube!

Domestic Queens, a group exhibition curated by Evergon at the FOFA gallery in Montreal at Concordia University opens in March 2011.  The show will feature work from Ryan Conrad, Liam Michaud, Richard E. Bump aka REB, Jim Verburg, Zachari Logan, and more!

I will be presenting on behalf of the Against Equality collective at the College Art Association’s annual conference in New York this year.  Our work will be part of the Queer Caucus for Art’s panel discussion, Creating in the Queer Diaspora, scheduled for Thursday February 10th from 12:30-2pm.

I am collaborating with other Against Equality collective members on a written and visual critique of the national gay marriage campaigns in the U.S. and the non-profit mega-corporations that maintain the prioritization of the issue for the debut publication of the We Who Feel Differently Journal, a project initiated by New York based artist Carlos Motta.

Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage has been selling well (already distributed over 700 copies!) and we have just begun our first shipments to queer and trans prisoners at no cost.  We also just released a new set of 1″buttons that have been causing quite a rumble!  I will continue touring with the book in February in New York, Virginia and North Carolina before making my way to the west coast in April, traveling from Seattle all the way down to San Diego.

A.V.A.T.A.R.
 (Anglos 
Valiantly 
Aiding 
Tragic 
Awe-inspiring
 Races) is 
a 
fast‐paced 
media 
mashup 
that 
highlights 
the overplayed 
racial 
tropes 
of 
Hollywood 
cinema 
using James 
Cameron’s 
multimillion‐dollar 
epic 
Avatar as 
its visual 
anchor. This project is a collaboration between myself and Craig Saddlemire and was submitted to the Washington Project for the Arts’ Experimental Media Series CFP.  The Experimental Media Series will be curated by DJ Spooking and we should be hearing back any day now…

The Against Equality Collective has published their first book, Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage, which I edited.  The book includes written work by  some of today’s foremost and emerging queer voices: Kate Bornstein, Eric Stanley, Dean Spade, Craig Willse, Kenyon Farrow, Kate Raphael, Deeg, John D’Emilio, Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, Martha Jane Kaufman, Katie Miles, and Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. The book also includes a set of postcards from our series designed by Beth Slutzky, Liz Kinnamon and Chris Vargas (who also designed our book’s fabulous cover).  Since the book’s release in mid-September it has shipped to four continents (north america, europe, africa and australia) and has nearly gone out of print!

To support the release of Against Equality’s book, I will be touring down the east-coast from Maine to Virginia and then onward to the mid-west starting in Chicago.  The Marriage = Death Tour will include potlucks, panel discussions on alternatives to marriage, debates between for/against gay marriage advocates and public lectures.  Touring will continue in Canada and the west-coast this winter and spring.

The College Art Association‘s Queer Caucus for Art will be hosting a panel themed “Creating in the Queer Diaspora” at the CAA’s annual conference in February 2011 in New York. I will be presenting with Yasmin Nair on behalf of the Against Equality Collective.

The Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles is hosting the archival exhibition Out of the Closets, Into the Streets: Posters of LGBTQ Struggles and Celebration. A handful of posters I have designed will be in the show including the infamous “No Faggots Allowed” poster used in a spoof postering campaign to expose the Red Cross’ homophobic gay blood ban.  The show will be up from July 3rd to September 26th at the ONE Archive and Gallery with an opening reception on July 3rd from 5-8pm.

Liam and I will be facilitating a workshop at the Robert’s Street Social Center in Halifax on July 6th from 7-9pm.  Combining Liam’s work with the Prisoner Correspondence Project with my own work on queer historiography and inter-generational queer affect/bonds we will be presenting a workshop about queers and criminalization.

“Solidarity in the Archives,” is a written account of my most recent trip to South Africa and the work I did with the folks at Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action based out of Johannesburg.  It has been published in print by UltraViolet and online at the Bilerico project.

Against Equality: Queer critiques of gay marriage, the anthology I am editing, is in its final copy edit stages before being sent off to the printers.  A.E. Collective members will be working on a speaking/book across the north east, mid-west and west coast this October/November with a kick off event at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Portland, Maine on October 2nd.  More details coming early fall!

“(Gay) Marriage and (Queer) Love,” my chapter contribution to the forth coming international anthology Queering Anarchism has been accepted and is now in the hands of a number of fine editors.  More details on the anthology forthcoming.

b 1983 was shown as part of Edmonton Pride at Queer Images, a two night film series curated by Ted Kerr June 16th and 17th.  This film will also be shown at the DIY queer film festival Entzaubert in Berlin from July 1st – 4th along with a slew of other really great stuff!

Cruising the Cartography, my immersive research laboratory installation focused on Portland Maine’s public sex cultures over the last fifty years, opened as part of the Maine College of Art’s Graduate Student show last month.  Documentation of the exhibition is now available online as both still images and video.

b.1983 will be showing at in + body, Concordia’s 16th installment of its annual HIV/AIDS art show, from Monday March 29^th to Friday April 9^th at the VAV Gallery in Montreal.  An opening party will be held April 1^st from 7-9pm at the gallery with performances by Coral Short, RPM, and Kathleen Patricia Lamothe.

Cruising the Cartography, my immersive research laboratory installation on queer public sex cultures in Portland Maine, opens at the Maine Institute for Contemporary Art on May 7^th.  This piece is part of a group exhibition of graduate students at Maine College of Art that will be up through June 6^th.  An accompanying catalog will be available soon.

Liam Michaud-O’Grady and I will be installing seven site-specific broadsheet in Montreal the week of April 15^th & 16^th as part of the Concordia graduate studies conference, Resistances: counter-conduct, inter-disruptions, and compromising acts, for our project Queer Cartography: Mapping Public Pleasures, Safety, Risk.  A .pdf of our postcard map is available here.

I will be stage-managing the 2^nd Annual Lewistunning Dragapalooza on May 8^th at Schaeffer Theater on the Bates College Campus in Lewiston Maine.  This totally wild drag show benefit raises money for the queer and trans youth advocacy organization Outright L/A.

From May 12^th to 27^th I will be in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa on a post-graduate research trip thanks to the Roderick Dew Travel Fellowship at the Maine College of Art.  Primarily I will be working with folks from the Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action Archive at the University of Witwatersrand in Jo-burg.

here you will find an archive of my radical queer cultural and activist work focusing on queer self-determination and self-representation. not only does this website situate my own work (activist, artist, academic, etc), it also acts as compass point directing you to the vital work of collaborators and contemporaries. lastly, you will be able to find a lot of information linking my work to the legacy of those who have come before me.

more project updates coming down the road. till then!

xo/conrad