Ecofeminist, inconvenient prophet, artist, activist, cancer survivor, mother. Radical vulnerability on behalf of the collective. Using nakedness—literal+figurative. Processing my pain.
Showing posts with label Cultural Criticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cultural Criticism. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Thursday, December 5, 2019
Montreal Massacre Memoir+Passing the Baton
I've written an article-length memoir about my time working as a fact-checker at Maclean's magazine during the Montreal Massacre, 30 years ago.
You can read it here https://medium.com/@
So I've been doing the performance art and activism that falls under the umbrella of the Human Body Project since 2006.
For many of those years, I was committed to showing up once a month naked, or nearly naked, on the street, primarily as a way to disrupt cultural norms and share and create space for vulnerability at a time of grave vulnerability. I started to use the Extinction Symbol when I learned about it in April 2014 (see photo). I think it's a pretty good bet that I was the first person on the planet out on the streets, naked, holding the symbol to equate my vulnerable body with all of our vulnerable bodies in this Extinction Crisis.
Now, all over the world, in acts of protest, hope, and rebellion, millions of people use the Extinction Symbol (created and shared in 2011, btw, by a still anonymous London artist known as ESP, for anyone to use to raise awareness of the rapidly accelerating approach of the finale of the Anthropocene). Here in Victoria there are regular actions taking place where people use the symbol.
At the very first Human Body Project event in Lethbridge, Alberta, people left me art and notes. I wanted to find a particular one tonight to read again but couldn't dig it up. It was from a woman, probably about the age I am now, whose first language wasn't English. I still remember the wrench and gratitude I felt reading the first line: "You are a woman who do too much."
I'm passing the baton on the monthly actions. I'll still show up wherever and whenever I feel called. For instance, someone in my neighbourhood put hearts and Extinction Symbols on over 40 Garry Oak trees last week. These mature trees are mentioned in a development proposal submitted to the District of Saanich and will be cut down if the development is approved. These are a "protected species." This is "normal practice."
The hearts lasted less than a week. Whoever put them up will have to make some more.
In other news, I found out tonight that I'll be in the Winnipeg Fringe in July! I've never been to Winnipeg (except briefly one February, long story) and I'm excited to put on a show there!
So if you'd like to consider being my patron to on Patreon, I could for sure use some help getting to the Peg! https://www.patreon.com/
Thank you for your attention, love, Tasha
ps Here is the article
A Montreal Massacre Memoir
by Tasha Diamant
Wednesday, December 6, 1989, the day Marc Lépine targeted, shot, and killed 14 young women at a Montreal engineering school, I was a 28-year-old researcher-reporter at Maclean’s, “Canada’s national newsmagazine.”
The magazine’s deadline was Friday night, it went to print on the weekend. In my four years at Maclean’s there were only minor copy changes to the magazine on Saturdays unless there was a late-breaking story. I don’t recall a single instance of going home late on a Friday night and coming in Monday morning to see a different cover. Except on December 11, 1989.
The Montreal Massacre was and still is the deadliest mass murder committed by an individual in Canadian history. It was incredibly shocking.
You might think that the murder of 14 women (he also wounded 14 others, including four men, then shot himself) by a disturbed man who declared that he was motivated by his hatred of feminists would be a no-brainer for the cover of the nation’s weekly. But until the Saturday after the massacre, the chief editor of the magazine, Kevin Doyle, was firm that this was not a cover-worthy story.
That was pretty shocking too.
The murders had set off a national discussion around male violence against women, which became (still is–see Wikipedia) a faux “debate” because many preferred to label Lépine a madman. Working with a reporter that week, I asked him why he kept using phrases like “women’s groups are horrified.” First of all, women’s groups? Like the Girl Guides? And, did they have to be the only ones who were distressed?
As a subordinate researcher-reporter, or fact-checker, I was not privy to editorial meetings. But according to various colleagues at the time, Doyle was unwilling to accept that there was an underlying culture of male dominance and misogyny that had helped create Marc Lépine.
I remember a former editor telling me that in one of the meetings that week, apropos the existence, and statistically arguable prevalence, of male violence against women, Doyle opined, to various nods, that he had never known of any women who had suffered from domestic abuse. That editor did not feel safe enough to tell him that she had been such a person.
Doyle was of the camp that saw the murders as a one-off by a nut-bar. This contention apparently clouded his view regarding the newsworthiness of the dead and wounded.
Many people tried to convince Doyle that he needed to put the story on the cover. I may have been the one who swayed him.
The culture of the magazine was white, male, rigidly hierarchical, with a vibe of 1970s-era Presbyterianism thrown in. (Doyle was Irish-Catholic, but no matter. As a friend of mine used to say about grey and buttoned-up Toronto, which wasn’t always the hipster haven it is now, “It doesn’t matter who comes here, Jamaicans, Italians, whatever, they all become Scottish Presbyterians.”)
Think of me as a slightly more grown up and less feisty Nancy Wheeler (Stranger Things) at a slightly fancier publication with slightly more contained Canadian chauvinism. I was a young woman of half-Greek heritage from, in some ways, the more freewheeling city of Calgary. When I left journalism in the early 1990s, I pursued a career as an artist. In 1989, except for our receptionist of Indian ethnicity — i.e. India. I never saw a single visibly Native person in that office tower — I was close to as exotic a person as had ever worked there.
It took a lot of guts for me to go into Kevin Doyle’s office to tell him that I felt very strongly that the Montreal Massacre needed to be on the cover of the magazine. I had to speak to his personal secretary to ask for an audience. I was ushered to a chair outside a closed door until I was allowed to enter. The office was a somber, important-looking chamber with its dark wood paneling and royal blue velvet curtains, quite dissimilar to the generic cubicle where I worked. Though I had been in Doyle’s office before in the role of minion, to drop off a document or some such task, I had never been invited to sit there except briefly at the time I was hired. There was absolutely no question that I might pop by to chat. Maclean’s was a boys’ club and Doyle was a very shy and repressed man.
My colleague Victor, who is still a good friend, says he remembers clearly: “You went into Kevin’s office to argue for it, and cried much of the time, and he was won over.” My own memory doesn’t include the winning him over part.
It was late on Friday when I spoke to Doyle. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t yet changed his mind. I know I felt very emotional. To me, not putting the story on the cover was equivalent to an insult to the dead women and, by extension, any woman who had suffered violence at the hands of men. And Lépine was a madman. It wasn’t an either/or.
Victor added: “My memory is that the Christmas party at Kevin’s house was the Sunday between closing the issue and its appearance on the stands. So I guess December 10. And there was much relief that he had been swayed.”
I remember the Christmas party at his house quite vividly. But I don’t remember that sequence!
Kevin Doyle was only ever “friendly” to me once. Under the influence at that Christmas party, two days after I had been in his office making my passionate appeal, he grabbed me from behind and held my body against his. I, politely, quietly, not saying a word, slunk out of the clutch and manoeuvred into another room.
He sort of apologized. There had been other breaches of propriety that night and, in a mass memo to staff the following week, he mentioned accidentally mixing alcohol and medication.
It’s interesting to me now to realize that I don’t remember the convincing of Doyle or whether the party incident had happened before or after the Montreal Massacre. In other words, in terms of who I was at the time, it doesn’t matter.
Doyle was my boss. I don’t think I would have been more or less uncomfortable going into his office to talk to him about the importance of putting the massacre on the magazine’s cover whether the inappropriate hugging incident plus lame apology had or hadn’t occurred. My attitude would have been something like this: Sometimes old guys (much younger than I am now!) get drunk and paw young gals that work for them. Sure, it was gross, but it was part of the world of work and the world period.
For my work friends and I, ironists all, and on lower rungs of the ladder, it was another log on the fire of hilarity fuelled by our seniors. None of us used the word I used above, “inappropriate,” or the word “disrespectful.” He didn’t threaten me or hurt me. We didn’t take it seriously. Bosses, like fathers and school principals, had their reasons. Different rules applied to them. And we had the comfort of believing we were cool. Poor Kevin Doyle, with his ironed jeans on weekends, he was the farthest thing from cool.
I had never experienced domestic violence. But it was an issue that I knew to be grossly hidden, and its victims, mostly women, unfairly treated by partners and society alike. It was around me, even in my privileged circle. My best friend Suzan had been slugged unconscious by her lawyer boyfriend earlier in the 80s. He was given an absolute discharge on account of his good standing in the community. Also in the 80s, a woman, who had been a school friend and grew up two doors down on our prosperous street, was murdered by her husband who then killed himself, as is the style. In my later life, I befriended an older woman who in the 1970s and 1980s lived on a farm where her then husband raped, beat, and chased her with a gun. She often slept in the chicken coop. Her ex-husband has never been charged with a criminal offense. Her grown children don’t or won’t or can’t acknowledge what she went through. It’s a story she rarely tells.
I strongly resonated with the issue. It was fully on my emotional radar. Still, I wasn’t yet at a stage to articulate why it was so painful to me. Abuse against women being in the category of menstruation and other terribly dangerous taboos. Nor was I able to see how so many of my own personal struggles were caused by being a feminine, creative being in a competitive, masculine world. (Suzan killed herself in 2013. I’m sure lawyer-hitter was not the reason but I’m also sure that her inability to find peace in this iteration of culture was.) Like the female engineering student survivors at École Polytechnique in Montreal who said that they were just going to school and weren’t “feminists,” I did not think of myself as a feminist.
I don’t exactly wish to vilify Kevin Doyle (now deceased). As I recall him, I see a man struggling with measuring up to the required standards for a person of his gender, time, and place. I was 28, female and “artsy,” nowhere near being a confident or comfortable person. He was the boss, a middle-aged man and “powerful,” also nowhere near being a confident or comfortable person.
For about two of my four years at Maclean’s, I was the main writer and editor of the “People” section, a page of mostly cutesy, gossipy items. The “People” editor, as part of the job’s mandate, had to contrive to feature a photo of a comely lady in revealing garments every week. I made sarcastic comments to my friends about what was euphemistically known as the “glamour shot” but hadn’t once made a real complaint about the demeaning nature of the whole exercise. It never occurred to me to do so. Just as it never occurred to me to believe I had influenced the editor-in-chief to change the cover.
From my current perspective, I realize Kevin’s attitudes should not have been such a surprise. But I also realize that the “surprise” wasn’t his attitude but the outing of it. I went from familiar, normal, unquestioned discomfort around a male authority figure to understanding that he was actually blind and indifferent to a reality lived by women. If anything has changed since 1989 — and I would argue that not much has even in the #metoo era, except, you know, the imminent demise of humanity due to patriarchy and capitalism — it’s that there is a lot more outing.
The magazine’s deadline was Friday night, it went to print on the weekend. In my four years at Maclean’s there were only minor copy changes to the magazine on Saturdays unless there was a late-breaking story. I don’t recall a single instance of going home late on a Friday night and coming in Monday morning to see a different cover. Except on December 11, 1989.
The Montreal Massacre was and still is the deadliest mass murder committed by an individual in Canadian history. It was incredibly shocking.
You might think that the murder of 14 women (he also wounded 14 others, including four men, then shot himself) by a disturbed man who declared that he was motivated by his hatred of feminists would be a no-brainer for the cover of the nation’s weekly. But until the Saturday after the massacre, the chief editor of the magazine, Kevin Doyle, was firm that this was not a cover-worthy story.
That was pretty shocking too.
The murders had set off a national discussion around male violence against women, which became (still is–see Wikipedia) a faux “debate” because many preferred to label Lépine a madman. Working with a reporter that week, I asked him why he kept using phrases like “women’s groups are horrified.” First of all, women’s groups? Like the Girl Guides? And, did they have to be the only ones who were distressed?
As a subordinate researcher-reporter, or fact-checker, I was not privy to editorial meetings. But according to various colleagues at the time, Doyle was unwilling to accept that there was an underlying culture of male dominance and misogyny that had helped create Marc Lépine.
I remember a former editor telling me that in one of the meetings that week, apropos the existence, and statistically arguable prevalence, of male violence against women, Doyle opined, to various nods, that he had never known of any women who had suffered from domestic abuse. That editor did not feel safe enough to tell him that she had been such a person.
Doyle was of the camp that saw the murders as a one-off by a nut-bar. This contention apparently clouded his view regarding the newsworthiness of the dead and wounded.
Many people tried to convince Doyle that he needed to put the story on the cover. I may have been the one who swayed him.
The culture of the magazine was white, male, rigidly hierarchical, with a vibe of 1970s-era Presbyterianism thrown in. (Doyle was Irish-Catholic, but no matter. As a friend of mine used to say about grey and buttoned-up Toronto, which wasn’t always the hipster haven it is now, “It doesn’t matter who comes here, Jamaicans, Italians, whatever, they all become Scottish Presbyterians.”)
Think of me as a slightly more grown up and less feisty Nancy Wheeler (Stranger Things) at a slightly fancier publication with slightly more contained Canadian chauvinism. I was a young woman of half-Greek heritage from, in some ways, the more freewheeling city of Calgary. When I left journalism in the early 1990s, I pursued a career as an artist. In 1989, except for our receptionist of Indian ethnicity — i.e. India. I never saw a single visibly Native person in that office tower — I was close to as exotic a person as had ever worked there.
It took a lot of guts for me to go into Kevin Doyle’s office to tell him that I felt very strongly that the Montreal Massacre needed to be on the cover of the magazine. I had to speak to his personal secretary to ask for an audience. I was ushered to a chair outside a closed door until I was allowed to enter. The office was a somber, important-looking chamber with its dark wood paneling and royal blue velvet curtains, quite dissimilar to the generic cubicle where I worked. Though I had been in Doyle’s office before in the role of minion, to drop off a document or some such task, I had never been invited to sit there except briefly at the time I was hired. There was absolutely no question that I might pop by to chat. Maclean’s was a boys’ club and Doyle was a very shy and repressed man.
My colleague Victor, who is still a good friend, says he remembers clearly: “You went into Kevin’s office to argue for it, and cried much of the time, and he was won over.” My own memory doesn’t include the winning him over part.
It was late on Friday when I spoke to Doyle. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t yet changed his mind. I know I felt very emotional. To me, not putting the story on the cover was equivalent to an insult to the dead women and, by extension, any woman who had suffered violence at the hands of men. And Lépine was a madman. It wasn’t an either/or.
Victor added: “My memory is that the Christmas party at Kevin’s house was the Sunday between closing the issue and its appearance on the stands. So I guess December 10. And there was much relief that he had been swayed.”
I remember the Christmas party at his house quite vividly. But I don’t remember that sequence!
Kevin Doyle was only ever “friendly” to me once. Under the influence at that Christmas party, two days after I had been in his office making my passionate appeal, he grabbed me from behind and held my body against his. I, politely, quietly, not saying a word, slunk out of the clutch and manoeuvred into another room.
He sort of apologized. There had been other breaches of propriety that night and, in a mass memo to staff the following week, he mentioned accidentally mixing alcohol and medication.
It’s interesting to me now to realize that I don’t remember the convincing of Doyle or whether the party incident had happened before or after the Montreal Massacre. In other words, in terms of who I was at the time, it doesn’t matter.
Doyle was my boss. I don’t think I would have been more or less uncomfortable going into his office to talk to him about the importance of putting the massacre on the magazine’s cover whether the inappropriate hugging incident plus lame apology had or hadn’t occurred. My attitude would have been something like this: Sometimes old guys (much younger than I am now!) get drunk and paw young gals that work for them. Sure, it was gross, but it was part of the world of work and the world period.
For my work friends and I, ironists all, and on lower rungs of the ladder, it was another log on the fire of hilarity fuelled by our seniors. None of us used the word I used above, “inappropriate,” or the word “disrespectful.” He didn’t threaten me or hurt me. We didn’t take it seriously. Bosses, like fathers and school principals, had their reasons. Different rules applied to them. And we had the comfort of believing we were cool. Poor Kevin Doyle, with his ironed jeans on weekends, he was the farthest thing from cool.
I had never experienced domestic violence. But it was an issue that I knew to be grossly hidden, and its victims, mostly women, unfairly treated by partners and society alike. It was around me, even in my privileged circle. My best friend Suzan had been slugged unconscious by her lawyer boyfriend earlier in the 80s. He was given an absolute discharge on account of his good standing in the community. Also in the 80s, a woman, who had been a school friend and grew up two doors down on our prosperous street, was murdered by her husband who then killed himself, as is the style. In my later life, I befriended an older woman who in the 1970s and 1980s lived on a farm where her then husband raped, beat, and chased her with a gun. She often slept in the chicken coop. Her ex-husband has never been charged with a criminal offense. Her grown children don’t or won’t or can’t acknowledge what she went through. It’s a story she rarely tells.
I strongly resonated with the issue. It was fully on my emotional radar. Still, I wasn’t yet at a stage to articulate why it was so painful to me. Abuse against women being in the category of menstruation and other terribly dangerous taboos. Nor was I able to see how so many of my own personal struggles were caused by being a feminine, creative being in a competitive, masculine world. (Suzan killed herself in 2013. I’m sure lawyer-hitter was not the reason but I’m also sure that her inability to find peace in this iteration of culture was.) Like the female engineering student survivors at École Polytechnique in Montreal who said that they were just going to school and weren’t “feminists,” I did not think of myself as a feminist.
I don’t exactly wish to vilify Kevin Doyle (now deceased). As I recall him, I see a man struggling with measuring up to the required standards for a person of his gender, time, and place. I was 28, female and “artsy,” nowhere near being a confident or comfortable person. He was the boss, a middle-aged man and “powerful,” also nowhere near being a confident or comfortable person.
For about two of my four years at Maclean’s, I was the main writer and editor of the “People” section, a page of mostly cutesy, gossipy items. The “People” editor, as part of the job’s mandate, had to contrive to feature a photo of a comely lady in revealing garments every week. I made sarcastic comments to my friends about what was euphemistically known as the “glamour shot” but hadn’t once made a real complaint about the demeaning nature of the whole exercise. It never occurred to me to do so. Just as it never occurred to me to believe I had influenced the editor-in-chief to change the cover.
From my current perspective, I realize Kevin’s attitudes should not have been such a surprise. But I also realize that the “surprise” wasn’t his attitude but the outing of it. I went from familiar, normal, unquestioned discomfort around a male authority figure to understanding that he was actually blind and indifferent to a reality lived by women. If anything has changed since 1989 — and I would argue that not much has even in the #metoo era, except, you know, the imminent demise of humanity due to patriarchy and capitalism — it’s that there is a lot more outing.
x
Saturday, September 14, 2019
Global Climate Strike Vulnerability Vigils Sept 17-27
This work has always been my own doing-what-I-can-do response to the unrespondable... like how does one person logically and self-preservationally make any difference to systemic-cultural mass brutality and destruction? I still don't know. Hence, an artistic-spiritual response. (See further below for a story about responsibility and the inability to respond.)
It's been pretty lonely but the climate has changed. Haha, sad pun. Ya, because of climate change the urgency to create real change is sweeping the globe.
There's a Global Climate Strike September 20-27.
As part of those and other mass extinction-related events, I've decided I'm going to do my very best to show up in my Extinction Symbol outfit at the following actions below. I'll bring extra Extinction Symbols.
Climate Crisis Media Action - Demanding Better Journalism
Tuesday, Sep 17 · 1420 Broad St, Victoria, BC
12-2 pm
Facebook Media Action event
Student Strike And Die-in
Friday, Sep 20 · British Columbia Parliament Buildings
Victoria, BC
12-1pm
Facebook Student Strike and Die-in event
And maybe I'll stay for part of the
Global Climate Strike - Intersection Occupation Party
Friday, Sep 20 · Starts @ Victoria Info Centre - Party at Government and Belleville
2-10pm
Facebook Intersection Party event
Strike 4 Forests and Climate!
Tuesday, Sep 24 · Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, 525 Superior Street, Victoria, BC
7:30-10am
Facebook Strike 4 Forests event
Global Climate Strike: March and Street Party
Friday, Sep 27 · Legislative Assembly of British Columbia
12 noon
Facebook Climate Strike March event
So, now a story about responsibility. Waaaay back in 2006 when I was writing the artist statement I wrote "we need to take responsibility for our actions." But, as I was telling my Victoria Fringe audience recently, I only really connected respond and responsibility. I mean we can't really respond to atrocity. You only have to go downtown and see the humans who don't get to participate in "beautiful indoor spaces," "healthy lifestyles," or "fulfilling careers" because they're too busy trying to survive severe trauma. They're just the tip of the iceberg of people I can't help.
Last week, my youngest daughter, her best friend (both 12) and I were driving, turned a corner and had to slow down because there was a woman beating up the pavement with her backpack. She had tears and snot running down her face and she was screaming something. I rolled down the window and asked her if she was ok (obviously she wasn't but that's our stupid language, too).
She kept repeating her agonized statement: "They took my kids. They took my fucking kids. They won't let me see my kids."
You know what I did? I said: "I'm so sorry." Then I rolled up my window and drove away.
It might be best for those kids that they're not with her right now. But at the same time that woman needed help and she is probably not going to get it. I couldn't give it to her. I had to feed those kids in my van, walk my dogs, deal with my own shit. I couldn't even listen to her for a while because I wasn't prepared or able to take the time.
I tried to talk to the girls and explain what happens when a parent can't look after their kids. How they end up in foster care or group homes. How it might be very hard for them. How heartbreaking it can be for the parent even if they're doing drugs or not looking after the kids properly or whatever is going on.
I told them how sad I was that I couldn't help her and how sad that we don't have good help for people and families like that.
They were shocked by the rawness of her emotion but so kind about it. One of them said: "I hope she gets the help she needs." The other quietly wondered if she would ever be able to see her kids.
It was such a strong moment of being UNABLE TO RESPOND, except that at least the girls and I engaged our emotions.
If we are here to love and look after each other, as I believe humans were created, then it was a moment where I could not take responsibility and support this devastated human. Because there is pretty much nothing in my culture or state that would support me supporting her. And I am not a fucking village!
I think through the millennia of dehumanizing brutalizing INSANE violations and oppressions so that one king/lord/alpha-dick or another could consolidate power, it has been a VERY USEFUL survival tactic to not respond. Hence the current century of consequences due to lack of any king/lord/alpha-dick or anyone else taking responsibility.
Also, YouTube suspended my channel. FFS.
It's been pretty lonely but the climate has changed. Haha, sad pun. Ya, because of climate change the urgency to create real change is sweeping the globe.
There's a Global Climate Strike September 20-27.
As part of those and other mass extinction-related events, I've decided I'm going to do my very best to show up in my Extinction Symbol outfit at the following actions below. I'll bring extra Extinction Symbols.
Climate Crisis Media Action - Demanding Better Journalism
Tuesday, Sep 17 · 1420 Broad St, Victoria, BC
12-2 pm
Facebook Media Action event
Student Strike And Die-in
Friday, Sep 20 · British Columbia Parliament Buildings
Victoria, BC
12-1pm
Facebook Student Strike and Die-in event
And maybe I'll stay for part of the
Global Climate Strike - Intersection Occupation Party
Friday, Sep 20 · Starts @ Victoria Info Centre - Party at Government and Belleville
2-10pm
Facebook Intersection Party event
Strike 4 Forests and Climate!
Tuesday, Sep 24 · Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, 525 Superior Street, Victoria, BC
7:30-10am
Facebook Strike 4 Forests event
Global Climate Strike: March and Street Party
Friday, Sep 27 · Legislative Assembly of British Columbia
12 noon
Facebook Climate Strike March event
So, now a story about responsibility. Waaaay back in 2006 when I was writing the artist statement I wrote "we need to take responsibility for our actions." But, as I was telling my Victoria Fringe audience recently, I only really connected respond and responsibility. I mean we can't really respond to atrocity. You only have to go downtown and see the humans who don't get to participate in "beautiful indoor spaces," "healthy lifestyles," or "fulfilling careers" because they're too busy trying to survive severe trauma. They're just the tip of the iceberg of people I can't help.
Last week, my youngest daughter, her best friend (both 12) and I were driving, turned a corner and had to slow down because there was a woman beating up the pavement with her backpack. She had tears and snot running down her face and she was screaming something. I rolled down the window and asked her if she was ok (obviously she wasn't but that's our stupid language, too).
She kept repeating her agonized statement: "They took my kids. They took my fucking kids. They won't let me see my kids."
You know what I did? I said: "I'm so sorry." Then I rolled up my window and drove away.
It might be best for those kids that they're not with her right now. But at the same time that woman needed help and she is probably not going to get it. I couldn't give it to her. I had to feed those kids in my van, walk my dogs, deal with my own shit. I couldn't even listen to her for a while because I wasn't prepared or able to take the time.
I tried to talk to the girls and explain what happens when a parent can't look after their kids. How they end up in foster care or group homes. How it might be very hard for them. How heartbreaking it can be for the parent even if they're doing drugs or not looking after the kids properly or whatever is going on.
I told them how sad I was that I couldn't help her and how sad that we don't have good help for people and families like that.
They were shocked by the rawness of her emotion but so kind about it. One of them said: "I hope she gets the help she needs." The other quietly wondered if she would ever be able to see her kids.
It was such a strong moment of being UNABLE TO RESPOND, except that at least the girls and I engaged our emotions.
If we are here to love and look after each other, as I believe humans were created, then it was a moment where I could not take responsibility and support this devastated human. Because there is pretty much nothing in my culture or state that would support me supporting her. And I am not a fucking village!
I think through the millennia of dehumanizing brutalizing INSANE violations and oppressions so that one king/lord/alpha-dick or another could consolidate power, it has been a VERY USEFUL survival tactic to not respond. Hence the current century of consequences due to lack of any king/lord/alpha-dick or anyone else taking responsibility.
Also, YouTube suspended my channel. FFS.
Sunday, August 11, 2019
ATROCITIES 'R' US at #YYJfringe 2019
Press Release
Winner of the 2018 Montreal Fringe Creativity Award (and Re-nominated in 2019)
Performance Artist Tasha Diamant returns to #YYJfringe
Fringe Venue Site C
Heart & Hands Health Collective
851 Cormorant St.
18+ Nudity
Aug 22 Thu 8:15-9:30 pm
Aug 23 Fri 8:15-9:30 pm
Aug 24 Sat 8:15-9:30 pm
Aug 29 Thu 8:15-9:30 pm
Aug 30 Fri 8:15-9:30 pm
Aug 31 Sat 8:15-9:30 pm
ATROCITIES 'R' US at the Victoria Fringe
ATROCITIES 'R' US Facebook event
Tasha Diamant has been exploring radical vulnerability as a form of art and activism since starting the critically acclaimed Human Body Project in small-town
Alberta more than 13 years ago. Unscripted, without a conventional narrative, honest and naked, Diamant shows up as vulnerably as possible to mirror humanity's state at this terrifying moment in history.
Raw, yes, but she can also be pretty funny. Comedian Maria Bamford has joked: "Weakness is the brand." Riffing, Diamant says: "Pain is the brand."
Diamant self-deprecatingly shares challenging truths about herself, such as struggling with severe emotional pain; surviving Stage 4 ovarian cancer; spectacularly failing to thrive in the cult of academia; mothering in isolation; etc.
The baring of body and self is also about reflecting the culture. Her work falls in the Shamanism and Elderhood Department, if Westernized, globalized consumer-people had
such a thing. Diamant is white, educated, and privileged. She has often spoken about her work as a way to use her privilege and pain to interrogate and criticize her culture.
And as a way to model vulnerability and show solidarity with those who are most vulnerable. In fact, Diamant takes her art to the streets. For years, often alone,
she has held regular "Vulnerability Vigils," standing naked in public, in some cases holding the Extinction Symbol. (Vulnerability Vigil on August 18, 2019)
By exposing herself and leaving herself open to judgment, audience members' issues—through their projections—may also become disclosed. Diamant is
subverting audience expectations of who is responsible for what and, yes, it's uncomfortable. But necessary.
In performance and in public, Diamant hopes to offer a form of cultural healing for a civilization that renders older women invisible, has no shamanic tradition, and
is destroying the world. For Diamant, who began naked performance art/activism in 2006, the need for a cure has gone far beyond urgency.
Tasha Diamant, 57, lives in Victoria, BC, and is married with two daughters, 17 and 12. Work she has been paid for: waitress, journalist, visual artist, yoga teacher, university
instructor. She has participated in several community and prison theatre projects. This is her 10th anniversary as a fringe performer. Diamant is a privileged, cis, straight woman of European descent who is not actually much of an extrovert.
"In a space with no limits, we nonetheless carry limits in ourselves, play roles and seek confirmation. Our winner is a show that isn't comfortable in its contradictions and cares so deeply it just can't give a fuck! Fierce nonchalance and the full power of extreme vulnerability: it challenges everything we believe about theatre and undermines all hierarchies. It is the ultimate feminist act and the ultimate act of fringe."
— Geoff Agombar, Montreal Fringe juror
"You are a role model."
— audience member
"When confronted with work to which I've had a visceral reaction I need to go deep within to confront the part of me that’s mirrored. Although there are many solemn moments, the performance is surprisingly life-affirming, with moments of laughter... Profoundly moving and relevant."
— Janis La Couvée
"The definition of sincerity."
— audience member
"You connect all the dots."
— audience member
tashadiamant@gmail.com humanbodyproject.org
Winner of the 2018 Montreal Fringe Creativity Award (and Re-nominated in 2019)
Performance Artist Tasha Diamant returns to #YYJfringe
Fringe Venue Site C
Heart & Hands Health Collective
851 Cormorant St.
18+ Nudity
Aug 22 Thu 8:15-9:30 pm
Aug 23 Fri 8:15-9:30 pm
Aug 24 Sat 8:15-9:30 pm
Aug 29 Thu 8:15-9:30 pm
Aug 30 Fri 8:15-9:30 pm
Aug 31 Sat 8:15-9:30 pm
ATROCITIES 'R' US at the Victoria Fringe
ATROCITIES 'R' US Facebook event
Tasha Diamant has been exploring radical vulnerability as a form of art and activism since starting the critically acclaimed Human Body Project in small-town
Alberta more than 13 years ago. Unscripted, without a conventional narrative, honest and naked, Diamant shows up as vulnerably as possible to mirror humanity's state at this terrifying moment in history.
Raw, yes, but she can also be pretty funny. Comedian Maria Bamford has joked: "Weakness is the brand." Riffing, Diamant says: "Pain is the brand."
The baring of body and self is also about reflecting the culture. Her work falls in the Shamanism and Elderhood Department, if Westernized, globalized consumer-people had
such a thing. Diamant is white, educated, and privileged. She has often spoken about her work as a way to use her privilege and pain to interrogate and criticize her culture.
And as a way to model vulnerability and show solidarity with those who are most vulnerable. In fact, Diamant takes her art to the streets. For years, often alone,
she has held regular "Vulnerability Vigils," standing naked in public, in some cases holding the Extinction Symbol. (Vulnerability Vigil on August 18, 2019)
By exposing herself and leaving herself open to judgment, audience members' issues—through their projections—may also become disclosed. Diamant is
subverting audience expectations of who is responsible for what and, yes, it's uncomfortable. But necessary.
In performance and in public, Diamant hopes to offer a form of cultural healing for a civilization that renders older women invisible, has no shamanic tradition, and
is destroying the world. For Diamant, who began naked performance art/activism in 2006, the need for a cure has gone far beyond urgency.
Tasha Diamant, 57, lives in Victoria, BC, and is married with two daughters, 17 and 12. Work she has been paid for: waitress, journalist, visual artist, yoga teacher, university
instructor. She has participated in several community and prison theatre projects. This is her 10th anniversary as a fringe performer. Diamant is a privileged, cis, straight woman of European descent who is not actually much of an extrovert.
"In a space with no limits, we nonetheless carry limits in ourselves, play roles and seek confirmation. Our winner is a show that isn't comfortable in its contradictions and cares so deeply it just can't give a fuck! Fierce nonchalance and the full power of extreme vulnerability: it challenges everything we believe about theatre and undermines all hierarchies. It is the ultimate feminist act and the ultimate act of fringe."
— Geoff Agombar, Montreal Fringe juror
"You are a role model."
— audience member
"When confronted with work to which I've had a visceral reaction I need to go deep within to confront the part of me that’s mirrored. Although there are many solemn moments, the performance is surprisingly life-affirming, with moments of laughter... Profoundly moving and relevant."
— Janis La Couvée
"The definition of sincerity."
— audience member
"You connect all the dots."
— audience member
tashadiamant@gmail.com humanbodyproject.org
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Vulnerability Vigil: The Trees are Our Elders Aug 18, 4-5pm, Duncan, BC
Date is now Sunday, August 18.
The old trees are our elders. The forest is our family.
Vulnerability Vigil
Trans-Canada Highway in Duncan, BC
Right by the Cowichan Region Visitor Centre
Also right by the "BC Forest Discovery Centre"
Sunday, August 18
4-5 pm
All welcome.
I do what I can.
In this case, I will stand for an hour to hold a Vulnerability Vigil on behalf of our forests. I use my bare or nearly bare body in these vigils as a way of sharing vulnerability literally and figuratively and as a way of showing some solidarity with those who are most vulnerable. The vigils are art, expression, and a way of shifting energy or disrupting status quo.
I will wear a "cover-the-bits costume" of Extinction Symbol tree-rings (pictured). Please consider joining me. People who join can hold a sign; wear the signs (I'll bring some); or dress as they wish.
I will wear a "cover-the-bits costume" of Extinction Symbol tree-rings (pictured). Please consider joining me. People who join can hold a sign; wear the signs (I'll bring some); or dress as they wish.
Our majestic old growth rainforest is on the verge of extinction, only 4% remains. People from all around the world come here to see those trees. Not clearcuts.
Forestry practices make fires more likely. All of this while global temperatures are at the highest in the history of the planet. Standing forests are recognized as one of our best defences in the climate crisis.
Yet what we have remaining is "harvested" daily, for pulp, chips, or to ship raw logs offshore. Lumber workers are striking. There is no more lumber industry in BC. Only lumber barons and their profiteer shareholders.
I've been doing (mostly) monthly public Vulnerability Vigils using my naked or nearly naked body since January of 2012.
Link to Facebook event
Monday, April 29, 2019
ATROCITIES 'R' US at Montreal Fringe 2019
ATROCITIES 'R' US
At Montreal Fringe
June 5-June 16, 2019
Venue 8
Black Theatre Workshop Studio, 3680 rue Jeanne-Mance
75 minutes
16+
Nudity
in English/en Anglais
$8-$12
Thursday Jun 06 7:30 pm
Friday Jun 07 5:30 pm
Saturday Jun 08 4:00 pm
Sunday Jun 09 8:45 pm
Thursday Jun 13 11:15 pm
Friday Jun 14 6:00 pm
Saturday Jun 15 9:15 pm
Press Release
for ATROCITIES 'R' US
Montreal Fringe 2019
Tasha Diamant has been exploring radical vulnerability as a performance art form since starting the critically acclaimed Human Body Project in small-town Alberta more than 13 years ago. Unscripted, without a conventional narrative, honest and naked, Diamant shows up as vulnerably as possible to mirror humanity's state at this harrowing moment in history.
Raw, yes, but she can also be pretty funny. Comedian Maria Bamford has joked: "Weakness is the brand." Riffing, Diamant says: "Pain is the brand." Diamant self-deprecatingly shares challenging truths about herself, such as struggling with severe emotional pain; surviving Stage 4 ovarian cancer; spectacularly failing to thrive in the cult of academia; mothering in isolation; etc.
The baring of body and self is also about reflecting the culture. Her work falls in the Shamanism and Elderhood Department, if Westernized, globalized consumer-people had such a thing. Diamant is white, educated, and privileged. She has often spoken about her work as a way to use her privilege and pain to interrogate and criticize her culture.
And as a way to model vulnerability and show solidarity with those who are most vulnerable. In fact, Diamant takes her art to the streets. For years, often alone, she has held regular "Vulnerability Vigils," standing naked in the open, in some cases holding an Extinction Symbol sign.
By exposing herself and leaving herself open to judgment, audience members' issues—through their projections on her—also become somewhat disclosed. Diamant is subverting audience expectations of who is responsible for what and it's uncomfortable.
In performance and in public, Diamant hopes to offer a form of cultural healing for a civilization that renders older women invisible, has no shamanic tradition, and is destroying the world. For Diamant, who began naked performance art/activism in 2006, the need for a cure has gone far beyond urgency.
At Montreal Fringe
June 5-June 16, 2019
Venue 8
Black Theatre Workshop Studio, 3680 rue Jeanne-Mance
75 minutes
16+
Nudity
in English/en Anglais
$8-$12
Thursday Jun 06 7:30 pm
Friday Jun 07 5:30 pm
Saturday Jun 08 4:00 pm
Sunday Jun 09 8:45 pm
Thursday Jun 13 11:15 pm
Friday Jun 14 6:00 pm
Saturday Jun 15 9:15 pm
Press Release
for ATROCITIES 'R' US
Montreal Fringe 2019
Tasha Diamant has been exploring radical vulnerability as a performance art form since starting the critically acclaimed Human Body Project in small-town Alberta more than 13 years ago. Unscripted, without a conventional narrative, honest and naked, Diamant shows up as vulnerably as possible to mirror humanity's state at this harrowing moment in history.
Raw, yes, but she can also be pretty funny. Comedian Maria Bamford has joked: "Weakness is the brand." Riffing, Diamant says: "Pain is the brand." Diamant self-deprecatingly shares challenging truths about herself, such as struggling with severe emotional pain; surviving Stage 4 ovarian cancer; spectacularly failing to thrive in the cult of academia; mothering in isolation; etc.
 |
| Gift from J. Graydon |
And as a way to model vulnerability and show solidarity with those who are most vulnerable. In fact, Diamant takes her art to the streets. For years, often alone, she has held regular "Vulnerability Vigils," standing naked in the open, in some cases holding an Extinction Symbol sign.
 |
| Diamant, 2014 "Vulnerability Vigil" |
By exposing herself and leaving herself open to judgment, audience members' issues—through their projections on her—also become somewhat disclosed. Diamant is subverting audience expectations of who is responsible for what and it's uncomfortable.
In performance and in public, Diamant hopes to offer a form of cultural healing for a civilization that renders older women invisible, has no shamanic tradition, and is destroying the world. For Diamant, who began naked performance art/activism in 2006, the need for a cure has gone far beyond urgency.
"In a space with no limits, we nonetheless carry limits in ourselves, play roles, seek confirmation. Our winner is a show that isn't comfortable in its contradictions and cares so deeply it just can't give a fuck! Fierce nonchalance and the full power of extreme vulnerability: it challenges everything we believe about theatre and undermines all hierarchies."
— Geoff Agombar, Mainline juror
"You are a role model."— audience member
"Powerful medicine...When confronted with work to which I've had a visceral reaction I need to go deep within to confront the part of me that’s mirrored. Although there are many solemn moments, the performance is surprisingly life-affirming, with moments of laughter...Profoundly moving and relevant."— Janis La Couvée, Dispatches from the Victoria Fringe 2017
"The definition of sincerity."— audience member
"You connect all the dots."— audience memberTasha Diamant, 57, lives in Victoria, BC, and is married with two daughters, 17 and 12. Work she has been paid for: waitress, journalist, visual artist, yoga teacher, university instructor. She has participated in several community and prison theatre projects. This is her 10th anniversary as a fringe performer. Diamant is a privileged, monolingual English-speaking, cis, straight woman of European descent who is not actually an extrovert.
Contact tashadiamant@gmail.com
Monday, October 8, 2018
Tent, A Monthly Action in my own neighbourhood hood, Oct 14 3-4
Tent, A Monthly Action
Across the street from my house.
Sunday, October 14, 2018
3:00-4:00 pm
Almost every month for the last seven years I've held a monthly action in public as a way to explore vulnerability, expand discourse, disrupt status quo, resist cultural lies, etc.
For this month's action, I will pitch a tent in the field across from my house and hold a sign that says: WE COULD LET PEOPLE DO THIS.
I welcome supporters or reporters. Email me at tashadiamanthuman@gmail.com for my address.
Link to Facebook event
humanbodyproject.org
Thanks, Tasha
ps Last month's action was cancelled due to illness.
pps CBC: Homeless tent cities play life-saving role and should be embraced, not battled, expert says
Across the street from my house.
Sunday, October 14, 2018
3:00-4:00 pm
Almost every month for the last seven years I've held a monthly action in public as a way to explore vulnerability, expand discourse, disrupt status quo, resist cultural lies, etc.
For this month's action, I will pitch a tent in the field across from my house and hold a sign that says: WE COULD LET PEOPLE DO THIS.
I welcome supporters or reporters. Email me at tashadiamanthuman@gmail.com for my address.
Link to Facebook event
humanbodyproject.org
Thanks, Tasha
ps Last month's action was cancelled due to illness.
pps CBC: Homeless tent cities play life-saving role and should be embraced, not battled, expert says
Friday, September 21, 2018
Grinding Groundedness + Birthday Action Sept 29 CANCELLED
I've gone from feeling crappy to feeling full-on shitty so I'm cancelling tomorrow's action.
Tasha's Birthday
Act of Disruption and Resistance
Pro All Kids
September 29, 2018
CHANGED TIME AND LOCATION:
10:45-11:45 am
BC Legislature
Victoria, BC
12 noon-1 pm
Across from the Empress Hotel
There are actually people who take time out of their days to protest educational resources that support kids of all genders and sexualities. They will be at the BC Legislature protesting these resources on September 29 and I plan to be there to disrupt them (in a peaceful way).
All welcome to witness or participate.
Tasha's Monthly Action Facebook event
Pro-SOGI 123 Rally Facebook event
__________
Grinding Groundedness
I signed up to do a fun thing but I woke up that day and I felt shitty so I cancelled. Cancelling also felt shitty.
Aside: I have a confession to make. I almost never go back and read past blog posts so I probably repeat myself and for that I apologize for anyone who reads this stuff. Anyway, I do know that even before the schmancer, I have often written about my susceptibility to illness and emotional pain. And I've written about it in relation to the MOST DESTRUCTIVE CULTURE THAT EVER EXISTED that I live in and am complicit in creating. That's what this post is also about but I hope I'm covering some new ground.
In the last week or so I've had two very vivid dreams. Dreams from HELL (i.e. EARTH), you might say. You would think you cannot make this shit up. But here is my brain...
The first dream consisted of me sort of accompanied by what could hardly be called a following, maybe like a small loosely organized class, or even just a random raggedy group of people who had nowhere else to go and looked even more lost than me. Except for being near each other, we seemed to have no comprehensible connection. For the duration of the dream, which felt interminable, I was trudging around a cityscape with few open spaces; where the spaces available were cramped and the ground was all ditchy or really steep. Everywhere, I had some sort of entourage and it was very difficult or impossible to stand without slipping or needing to find new footing.
And, I'm not kidding, for the WHOLE dream as we painfully wandered in this way, I kept asking myself: Why am I here? Why am I here? Why am I here? Why am I here?
If there is a distillation of my struggle in this existence this dream is it. Thanks Mr. Sandman.
Dream number 2. Definitely the work of the same auteur. I went to bed, disappointed with myself that I felt so unwell and would probably not be able to attend the thing that I had to cancel.
Again, this dream had the interminability and repetitive qualities of the previous one. In this case, the "star" was a woman I am acquainted with who bears a strong resemblance to the neighbourhood mother of my youth who, in my critic brain, represents the apex of judgmental, white, upper-middle-class, Calgarian, 1960s-1970s, NARROWNESS that I grew up in. And she played this role in my dream simply by showing up with her harsh, crabby face (a resting bitch face, as the lovely expression goes and as I, myself, at the age of almost 57, now sport as well or, perhaps better, than Mrs. X. ever did.)
I'm not kidding about this dream, either. For almost the whole dream, I was crying and apologizing to this apparently unyielding lady for missing an important event I had promised to go to. For a LONG time. This one had more of a conclusion, however.
Somewhere in my desperate remorse, literally sobbing on her bosom, her shirt came off (no, of course, it did not turn into a fun sexy dream) and exposed an atrocious sight. Her breasts were there but covered or simply composed of red, raw-looking scar tissue, as if burned with oil or acid. Her nipples no longer existed. Witnessing the brutality of the damage was traumatic!
I know I am often a buzzkill kinda gal. You should get into my brain people! Never a buzz!
It's challenging to find a nugget of hope from these "messages." But what I have gleaned is an ever deeper and pointed groundedness in the grinding here and now. (I know I wrote that alliterative phrase last month, but it still rings my writing bell.)
And by GRINDING, I still mean, as I have written about and spoken about for years: in my body and self. I.e. I get sick a lot, whether it's mental illness or physical or both or I can't tell the difference. Many days I feel like I have a cold in my head, which also feels like I have no energy. Or, as I tell my kids, I am not able to function as an adult today. I will make you macaroni and wieners and watch Netflix with earphones. They don't want the macaroni? I have no idea what they eat. We have food.
Have I mentioned my low bar, which I need to remind myself of now and then? Keep the kids alive. (Living pets are a bonus.)
"Grounded" is an interesting word. It often means that someone is stable and functions well. But I wouldn't describe myself that way. I use extreme amounts of emotional energy in the adult functioning and interacting that I either have to do or choose to do. More than anything, that's why I get sick a lot.
It's not that I have to interact with awful people. On the contrary, I am fortunate enough to interact with many lovely and engaged people. It's just that I don't know how to do it in a way that works for me in this language and culture. My inside me is wide open and vulnerable but also filled with rage and grief and my outside me has resting bitch face and Canadian-English conversational and relationship skills honed in the excellent years of the latter decades of the 20th Century, i.e. crusty and awkward.
I'm grounded. I'm just grounded in a parallel reality.
I saw this video of Zoë Dodd speaking passionately for thousands of people dealing with the opioid crisis, especially people who are disadvantaged. It spoke to me so deeply.
https://www.facebook.com/DarrylJGebs/videos/10156474807990729/UzpfSTQzMDEwMTk6MTAxMDA1NTIyNTg4NDA2OTQ/?fb_dtsg_ag=AdxjRZEoxzwlAhuoblS3G6xWZK3mpalFrr7Z7XIzr0IWuQ%3AAdzHiYTWb9KvC_Yh7zX_0GNQBiTsfGP-MSDjR6dlpizkbw
If the link doesn't work, basically a woman named Zoë Dodd is speaking with authentic emotion, as well as intelligence, clarity, and volume, about the urgency of acting on the crisis of people dying on our streets in the thousands. A roomful of people not used to authentic communication looks on awkwardly and a platform of politician-types gaze out uncomfortably and respond with platitudes.
This is how I feel about everything. I feel like I'm grounded in an emotional reality similar to what Dodds is expressing in the video. URGENCY. And those people on the platform are not necessarily evil or unfeeling, but they are probably grounded in a different reality.
There are actually people who take time out of their days to protest educational resources that support kids of all genders and sexualities. They will be at the BC Legislature protesting these resources on September 29 and I plan to be there to disrupt them (in a peaceful way).
All welcome to witness or participate.
Tasha's Monthly Action Facebook event
Pro-SOGI 123 Rally Facebook event
 |
| Atrocity Cheer. Aug 26, 2018. |
__________
Grinding Groundedness
I signed up to do a fun thing but I woke up that day and I felt shitty so I cancelled. Cancelling also felt shitty.
Aside: I have a confession to make. I almost never go back and read past blog posts so I probably repeat myself and for that I apologize for anyone who reads this stuff. Anyway, I do know that even before the schmancer, I have often written about my susceptibility to illness and emotional pain. And I've written about it in relation to the MOST DESTRUCTIVE CULTURE THAT EVER EXISTED that I live in and am complicit in creating. That's what this post is also about but I hope I'm covering some new ground.
In the last week or so I've had two very vivid dreams. Dreams from HELL (i.e. EARTH), you might say. You would think you cannot make this shit up. But here is my brain...
The first dream consisted of me sort of accompanied by what could hardly be called a following, maybe like a small loosely organized class, or even just a random raggedy group of people who had nowhere else to go and looked even more lost than me. Except for being near each other, we seemed to have no comprehensible connection. For the duration of the dream, which felt interminable, I was trudging around a cityscape with few open spaces; where the spaces available were cramped and the ground was all ditchy or really steep. Everywhere, I had some sort of entourage and it was very difficult or impossible to stand without slipping or needing to find new footing.
And, I'm not kidding, for the WHOLE dream as we painfully wandered in this way, I kept asking myself: Why am I here? Why am I here? Why am I here? Why am I here?
If there is a distillation of my struggle in this existence this dream is it. Thanks Mr. Sandman.
Dream number 2. Definitely the work of the same auteur. I went to bed, disappointed with myself that I felt so unwell and would probably not be able to attend the thing that I had to cancel.
Again, this dream had the interminability and repetitive qualities of the previous one. In this case, the "star" was a woman I am acquainted with who bears a strong resemblance to the neighbourhood mother of my youth who, in my critic brain, represents the apex of judgmental, white, upper-middle-class, Calgarian, 1960s-1970s, NARROWNESS that I grew up in. And she played this role in my dream simply by showing up with her harsh, crabby face (a resting bitch face, as the lovely expression goes and as I, myself, at the age of almost 57, now sport as well or, perhaps better, than Mrs. X. ever did.)
I'm not kidding about this dream, either. For almost the whole dream, I was crying and apologizing to this apparently unyielding lady for missing an important event I had promised to go to. For a LONG time. This one had more of a conclusion, however.
Somewhere in my desperate remorse, literally sobbing on her bosom, her shirt came off (no, of course, it did not turn into a fun sexy dream) and exposed an atrocious sight. Her breasts were there but covered or simply composed of red, raw-looking scar tissue, as if burned with oil or acid. Her nipples no longer existed. Witnessing the brutality of the damage was traumatic!
I know I am often a buzzkill kinda gal. You should get into my brain people! Never a buzz!
It's challenging to find a nugget of hope from these "messages." But what I have gleaned is an ever deeper and pointed groundedness in the grinding here and now. (I know I wrote that alliterative phrase last month, but it still rings my writing bell.)
And by GRINDING, I still mean, as I have written about and spoken about for years: in my body and self. I.e. I get sick a lot, whether it's mental illness or physical or both or I can't tell the difference. Many days I feel like I have a cold in my head, which also feels like I have no energy. Or, as I tell my kids, I am not able to function as an adult today. I will make you macaroni and wieners and watch Netflix with earphones. They don't want the macaroni? I have no idea what they eat. We have food.
Have I mentioned my low bar, which I need to remind myself of now and then? Keep the kids alive. (Living pets are a bonus.)
"Grounded" is an interesting word. It often means that someone is stable and functions well. But I wouldn't describe myself that way. I use extreme amounts of emotional energy in the adult functioning and interacting that I either have to do or choose to do. More than anything, that's why I get sick a lot.
It's not that I have to interact with awful people. On the contrary, I am fortunate enough to interact with many lovely and engaged people. It's just that I don't know how to do it in a way that works for me in this language and culture. My inside me is wide open and vulnerable but also filled with rage and grief and my outside me has resting bitch face and Canadian-English conversational and relationship skills honed in the excellent years of the latter decades of the 20th Century, i.e. crusty and awkward.
I'm grounded. I'm just grounded in a parallel reality.
I saw this video of Zoë Dodd speaking passionately for thousands of people dealing with the opioid crisis, especially people who are disadvantaged. It spoke to me so deeply.
https://www.facebook.com/DarrylJGebs/videos/10156474807990729/UzpfSTQzMDEwMTk6MTAxMDA1NTIyNTg4NDA2OTQ/?fb_dtsg_ag=AdxjRZEoxzwlAhuoblS3G6xWZK3mpalFrr7Z7XIzr0IWuQ%3AAdzHiYTWb9KvC_Yh7zX_0GNQBiTsfGP-MSDjR6dlpizkbw
If the link doesn't work, basically a woman named Zoë Dodd is speaking with authentic emotion, as well as intelligence, clarity, and volume, about the urgency of acting on the crisis of people dying on our streets in the thousands. A roomful of people not used to authentic communication looks on awkwardly and a platform of politician-types gaze out uncomfortably and respond with platitudes.
This is how I feel about everything. I feel like I'm grounded in an emotional reality similar to what Dodds is expressing in the video. URGENCY. And those people on the platform are not necessarily evil or unfeeling, but they are probably grounded in a different reality.
Monday, August 20, 2018
Fires+Cancerversary Action Sun Aug 26 3-4 pm Quadra near Pandora
Fire$, tree$. $orry, not $orry.
I hope everyone who is reading this can breathe.
August 26th will mark the third anniversary of being admitted to hospital with what turned out to be Stage 4 ladybits cancer (ovarian, fallopian, too difficult to be sure).
So I'm holding a...
Cancerversary+Fires Action
Sunday, August 26
3-4pm
Quadra St near Pandora, Victoria, BC
This action will entail a performance of what I'm dubbing an Atrocity Cheer.
I'll be in my version of cheerleader garb, complete with pompoms.
All are welcome.
Facebook event
I'm still breathing.
30% to 50% of those in my schmancer boat are still alive after five years. I do plan to continue to be in that number even though I feel quite sure I landed on an incorrect planet, or at least an incorrect time period on this one. Having landed here though, I've made some heart connections and whatnot so I've gotta do the time.
To recap, I've been holding the Monthly Actions / Acts of Disruption+Resistance / Vulnerability Vigils for more than six years, doing the performance artwork under the umbrella of the Human Body Project for more than 12, and, while cancer sucked, the intense emotional pain that I've come to identify with being on the wrong planet has been a longer and harder road since about age 12 on.
When I had the idea for the Human Body Project in 2004 (it took me two years to get the courage up to be naked), the main reason I felt compelled to do the work and chose the overarching theme of vulnerability was because everything I felt was important and URGENT was nowhere to be found in any accessible discourse I could enter into.
Lately, many of the conversations that were impossible to imagine people having are finally happening in a much more open way: the severe pain and cost of capitalism; non-binary distinctions; systemic corruption, violence, racism and misogyny; the ongoing effects of colonialism; ongoing colonialism; etc. Or at least that's how it looks to me in my self-curated social media feeds.
Dots are finally being connected. Compartments are being pried open. The dark layers are becoming visible.
So I've been confused. Should I still follow the impetus that has taken me this far? Like, do I still have my unpaid, embarrassing job?! Haha.
NON-TRANSCENDENT. It recently dawned on me that this word describes my work.
It helped me realize it is still an important artistic statement in the sense that it's SUPPOSED TO BE grounding and extreme in the grinding and excruciating here and now.
I do still have my cop-magnet, buzz-kill job!
Link to Saanich News story about last month's action:
https://www.saanichnews.com/news/naked-roadside-protest-stopped-outside-camp-namegans/
Support? Hey, I recently won an award for my show Naked Ugly Dancing at the Montreal Fringe but the money from my award and ticket sales did not even cover my plane fare. If you'd like to support this work by, say, buying me the equivalent of a latte or two once a month or even once please consider checking out my Patreon site.
https://www.patreon.com/humanbodyproject
I hope everyone who is reading this can breathe.
August 26th will mark the third anniversary of being admitted to hospital with what turned out to be Stage 4 ladybits cancer (ovarian, fallopian, too difficult to be sure).
So I'm holding a...
Cancerversary+Fires Action
Sunday, August 26
3-4pm
Quadra St near Pandora, Victoria, BC
This action will entail a performance of what I'm dubbing an Atrocity Cheer.
I'll be in my version of cheerleader garb, complete with pompoms.
All are welcome.
Facebook event
I'm still breathing.
30% to 50% of those in my schmancer boat are still alive after five years. I do plan to continue to be in that number even though I feel quite sure I landed on an incorrect planet, or at least an incorrect time period on this one. Having landed here though, I've made some heart connections and whatnot so I've gotta do the time.
To recap, I've been holding the Monthly Actions / Acts of Disruption+Resistance / Vulnerability Vigils for more than six years, doing the performance artwork under the umbrella of the Human Body Project for more than 12, and, while cancer sucked, the intense emotional pain that I've come to identify with being on the wrong planet has been a longer and harder road since about age 12 on.
When I had the idea for the Human Body Project in 2004 (it took me two years to get the courage up to be naked), the main reason I felt compelled to do the work and chose the overarching theme of vulnerability was because everything I felt was important and URGENT was nowhere to be found in any accessible discourse I could enter into.
Lately, many of the conversations that were impossible to imagine people having are finally happening in a much more open way: the severe pain and cost of capitalism; non-binary distinctions; systemic corruption, violence, racism and misogyny; the ongoing effects of colonialism; ongoing colonialism; etc. Or at least that's how it looks to me in my self-curated social media feeds.
Dots are finally being connected. Compartments are being pried open. The dark layers are becoming visible.
So I've been confused. Should I still follow the impetus that has taken me this far? Like, do I still have my unpaid, embarrassing job?! Haha.
NON-TRANSCENDENT. It recently dawned on me that this word describes my work.
It helped me realize it is still an important artistic statement in the sense that it's SUPPOSED TO BE grounding and extreme in the grinding and excruciating here and now.
I do still have my cop-magnet, buzz-kill job!
Link to Saanich News story about last month's action:
https://www.saanichnews.com/news/naked-roadside-protest-stopped-outside-camp-namegans/
Support? Hey, I recently won an award for my show Naked Ugly Dancing at the Montreal Fringe but the money from my award and ticket sales did not even cover my plane fare. If you'd like to support this work by, say, buying me the equivalent of a latte or two once a month or even once please consider checking out my Patreon site.
https://www.patreon.com/humanbodyproject
Thursday, July 19, 2018
Montreal Fringe Award; Patreon; 31/7 Action
I had a super-duper time at the Montreal Fringe in June and I won the juried MainLine Theatre (hosts of the fringe) Creativity Award!
It was particularly meaningful for two reasons. One, because of the words the lovely Geoff Agombar, juror and G.M., spoke when honouring me:
I came home with pneumonia, though, and that is why my July offering is happening so late. (And I'm counting the Montreal Fringe as June actions!)
Also, I have created a page in the Patreon.com community, where artists get paid for their work. You could figuratively buy me a beer or two every month. Please consider subscribing! I will send you a t-shirt! https://www.patreon.com/humanbodyproject
Here is my Patreon video as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRoFfWbZJ4s&t=11s
Thanks for "listening," Tasha
 |
| Thank you Montreal Fringe! Funnest fringe! |
It was particularly meaningful for two reasons. One, because of the words the lovely Geoff Agombar, juror and G.M., spoke when honouring me:
"In a space with no limits, we nonetheless carry limits in ourselves, play roles, seek confirmation. Our winner is a show that isn't comfortable in its contradictions and cares so deeply it just can't give a fuck! Fierce nonchalance and the full power of extreme vulnerability: it challenges everything we believe about theatre and undermines all hierarchies. It is the ultimate feminist act and the ultimate act of fringe." (I feel a bit like Sally Field: You value me! You really value me!)And two, because the two shows that were runners-up were stellar; both deeply feeling and intellectual. Devon More's Flute Loops and Ulfet Sevdi and Nicholas Royer-Artuso's 4'33" in Baghdad. 4'33" in Baghdad is my favourite fringe show that I have ever seen. A sardonic but heartful academic addresses imperialism and atrocity through the lens of musicology. Dry wit and brilliant. Unfortunately their fringe run is over but Devon is bringing Flute Loops to Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver Fringes. If you have the chance, see it!
I came home with pneumonia, though, and that is why my July offering is happening so late. (And I'm counting the Montreal Fringe as June actions!)
Monthly Act of Disruption and Resistance (aka Vulnerability Vigil)July 31, 201812 noon-1 pm
Near Regina Park homeless camp (near Uptown Mall on the Trans-Canada highway), Victoria, BC
Our nation's continued persecution+prosecution of the vulnerable+impoverished is an atrocity. Showing up for my Monthly Act of Disruption and Resistance near Victoria's newest tent city is my artistic response to the disgust+despair I feel living as a privileged, complicit person in a money-laundering economy that creates brutal homelessness.
I will be wearing my new Monthly Actions uniform of inside out menstrual pads covering my genital area.
Perhaps you feel some of the extremity and intensity I experience and want to join me; all are welcome to join in the spirit of solidarity and respect for those who are most vulnerable. Wear what you want. (I can possibly change the time for later in the day if noon doesn't work for you.)
Facebook event
Also, I have created a page in the Patreon.com community, where artists get paid for their work. You could figuratively buy me a beer or two every month. Please consider subscribing! I will send you a t-shirt! https://www.patreon.com/humanbodyproject
Here is my Patreon video as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRoFfWbZJ4s&t=11s
Thanks for "listening," Tasha
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