[Filmfestivalresearch] CFP: Queer Emergencies online symposium

[Jonathan Petrychyn]

Dear friends and colleagues,

Sending along this CFP from the Toronto Queer Film Festival for a symposium
they are organizing in the spring. Any questions can be forwarded to Maya
Bastian industry at torontoqueerfilmfest.com


CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

Queer Emergencies

An online symposium organized in conjunction with the Toronto Queer Film
Festival

April 24 & 25, 2021

Proposal deadline: *Jan 5, 2021*  Submit proposals here.
<https://forms.gle/3AuxbacvM9sEFcgy7>

Everyone is welcome to apply. All participants will be paid.



Confirmed keynote speaker:  Dean Spade with more TBA

The Toronto Queer Film Festival is seeking proposals for a symposium on the
theme of Queer Emergencies that aims to address queer, trans, and
two-spirit experiences and challenges in response to the COVID-19 pandemic
and beyond.

This is a landmark time for humanity. Homebound and with resources
dwindling, many of us continue to create art and engage in solidarity
practices from within our communities. Queer Emergencies celebrates the
resilience, resistance and creativity of our community in its response to
the intense pressures and transformations wrought by the global pandemic.
It seeks to engage work that is vital in this moment, speaking to the
unique challenges that precarious and marginalized queer and trans
communities are facing today.

We’ve noticed a prevailing capitalist logic to the disbursement of
resources, while artists are incurring losses of incomes and/or assets due
to the economic contraction caused by widespread social distancing
measures. Current structuring of funds prioritizes the privileged among us,
leaving most people who were already struggling with few to no resources.

The Queer Emergencies 2021 Symposium asks the question: what are our
current limitations and how can we work within them in creative ways?  What
are the issues facing queer, trans and two-spirit communities in the
current moment and how can we allow them to radicalize our collective
future?

As ever, TQFF’s mandate remains to decolonize queer and trans art and media
histories and practices. This symposium seeks projects with a unique
perspective who frame their work in a critical, anti-oppressive and
future-bound model.

We are interested in papers, workshops, roundtables, readings, performances
that critically engage and reckon with and through media and the arts.

Topics could include, but are not limited to:



   -

   Queer and/or Indigenous histories of organizing and reisistence to
   public health crises
   -

   Anti-racism/decolonization in artistic practices and/or arts
   organizations
   -

   Unpacking inclusion & building social/class alliances and solidarity
   -

   Queer and/or Indigenous perspectives on climate emergency, both locally
   and beyond
   -

   Mutual aid & food justice
   -

   Solidarity & allyship both within the queer/trans/2S communities and
   beyond
   -

   Community resilience & self-care
   -

   Envisioning the future of queer and trans resistance
   -

   Queer and trans organizing and activism before, during and after COVID
   -

   Mental health and artistic production/practices during and after COVID
   -

   Queer/trans pandemic crip time: living and working with chronic illness
   and disability
   -

   Essential and abandoned: intersectional (anti-racism, decolonial,
   disability justice) approaches to the disproportionate impact of economic
   and public health failures on our queer/trans/2S communities
   -

   Coalitional organizing and solidarities: defunding the police,
   abolishing prisons, workplace safety, and envisioning a world where public
   health and art are prioritized over property, police, prisons, and imperial
   global militarism
   -

   Combatting, strategizing/organizing against, and documenting the present
   and future of genocide (pandemics, climate emergency, structured
   institutional/infrastructure neglect and abandonment)
   -

   Queer migrant justice: open borders, mass migration, and worldwide
   worker solidarity
   -

   Rent strikes, mass evictions, kangaroo “housing courts,” and housing for
   all


While papers, roundtables, workshops, and other typical academic conference
formats are welcomed, we especially encourage more creative formats
including but not limited to: arts-based research, poster presentations,
poetry, performances, music, readings, artist talks, and other presentation
formats that innovate and encourage online participation. As a symposium
organized with a film festival, we are particularly interested in
contributions that engage in some way with queer and trans media and/or art
practices.



As a grassroots organization embedded within our communities, the Toronto
Queer Film Festival encourages contributions from folks across our
community – not just academics embedded within universities, but also
independent scholars, activists, artists, community members, and other
people with lived experience that would provide valuable perspectives to
discussions on global queer liberation art and media.

Everyone is welcome to apply.



Please submit the following information via our online form
<https://forms.gle/3AuxbacvM9sEFcgy7> by Jan 5, 2021

   -

   Name
   -

   Institutional or other affiliation (if applicable)
   -

   Presentation format (i.e. paper, roundtable, workshop, creative)
   -

   Presentation title
   -

   250 word abstract
   -

   Email address you can be contacted at
   -

   Accessibility needs


This symposium will be held online. We are particularly interested in
submissions that take full advantage of the capabilities of online
platforms. Individual papers and presentations should be no more than 15
minutes. Roundtables, workshops, panels, should be no more than 1 hour,
including opportunity for Q&A. We will also accept submission for proposals
with shorter durations (i.e. lightning talks, microsessions, etc).

Only selected participants will be notified.

Selected participants will be notified of their acceptance by January 30,
2021

ABOUT THE TORONTO QUEER FILM FESTIVAL

TQFF is a registered not-for profit organization formed and run by an
ad-hoc collective of artists and arts professionals who came together in
2016 to launch the Toronto Queer Film Festival. We began this project out
of an urgent need to provide screen space in Toronto for media by and about
marginalized queer and trans people.

We have three primary mandates:

1) to exhibit queer independent and experimental film and video art;

2) to support the production of alternative queer film and video art
through community-based arts education and professional development; and

3) to foster community engagement with the arts by welcoming all attendees
to our accessible venues with “pay what you can” pricing for events, ASL
interpretation, and closed captioning of all programs.

TQFF distinguishes itself from other Toronto cultural events that serve the
LGBT community by focusing on experimental time-based media that challenges
and expands social, political, and artistic conventions. Our curatorial
mandate is to centre the programming of work by and about queer and trans
people of colour, Indigenous people, and people with disabilities, as well
as the work of local artists, low-income, DIY filmmakers, and emerging
artists.

You can read more about TQFF on our website:
https://torontoqueerfilmfest.com/about/

-- 
Jonathan Petrychyn, PhD (He/Him)
Postdoctoral Fellow, Gender, Sexuality, & Digitality
University of Waterloo
jonpetrychyn.com

Co-chair, Film & Media Festivals Scholarly Interest Group
Society for Cinema and Media Studies
www.cmstudies.org  <http://www.cmstudies.org>