Saturday October 12 2015
11:15am–12:45pm
YES! Association / Föreningen JA! (2005-ongoing) in collaboration with Sooz Romero.
YES! Association / Föreningen JA! exhibition (art)work(sport)work(sex)work (2015) emanated from an invitation by curator Julia Paoli to think critically about the impact of the Toronto 2015 Pan Am & Parapan Am Games on the urban redevelopment ambitions of the city of Toronto and how this affected the site of The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery.
(art)work(sport)work(sex)work aimed to map how ideologies, socially accepted norms, and legislations govern the conditions of work and participation within the fields of contemporary art, multi-sports events, and sex trade. In an effort to triangulate these fields and situate them within the urban space of Toronto, a series of bus rides took place each Saturday throughout the duration of the exhibition (planned in collaboration with Emy Fem).
The bus rides were hosted by Sophy Chan, Michèle Pearson Clarke, Emy Fem, Savoy ”Kapow!” Howe, Maria Hupfield, Amanda De Lisio, Elene Lam together with Butterfly–Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network, Frances Mahon and Megan Ross, Leslie McCue and Lindy Kinoshameg, Hazel Meyer and Cait McKinney, Malin Arnell and Åsa Elzén from YES! Association / Föreningen JA!.
September, 2015. Now I’m here in Stockholm, activating this effort that was rooted in a different place and time. Here, other events, other ideologies, socially accepted norms, and legislations govern participation within society and its institutions. The current situation is calling for other questions, other stories. Right now many refugees arrive in Europe and in Sweden, asking to be safe, asking to become part, asking to stay for a while, or to be able to make a new home away from starvation, persecution, the war, the threat, the violence.
For this presentation, Malin Arnell and YES! Association / Föreningen JA! will share (art)work(sport)work(sex)work by inviting Sooz Romero to host a 90 min bus ride with the title A bus ride on a tale about invisible people whose existence was mentioned but remains invisible...
Sooz Romero writes:
LGBTQI immigrants’ existence is filtered through the voices and shapes of white supremacists, their norms, their total control and their succulent profit. They made us illegal.
A real hell in your own home, hell in your country, hell throughout the quest for a chance to be who you are and love yourself entirely. Hell through the oceans and infinite wires and walls. Hell because of a million words without meaning. Hell through-out the sleepless nights and emptiness of the stomach. Hell in the crowded rooms in the refugee camps. Hell in the white-cis heteronormative streets. Hell living in the body you and everyone else hates. Hell being seen as uneducated, unreliable and dangerous. Hell when I don’t hear or see what they say to me. Hell when I hear terror wh sen they talk about what I believe in. Hell when the people who help me see me as a charity project. Hell because I cannot be loved by anybody ‘cause I am just an asylum seeker, I am a burden, I am a no-one ‘cause my existence was mentioned but I am still invisible.
Migration in Sweden, they do not believe in hell therefore that story does not exist.
Presentation of ‘(art)work(sport)work(sex)work’ (2015), real time documentation as part of the choreographic process, Sugar Rush Productions.
Presentation of ‘(art)work(sport)work(sex)work’ (2015), real time documentation as part of the choreographic process, Sugar Rush Productions.
Presentation of ‘(art)work(sport)work(sex)work’ (2015), real time documentation as part of the choreographic process, Sugar Rush Productions.