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.

Gift from J. Graydon

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.

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 member

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, monolingual English-speaking, cis, straight woman of European descent who is not actually an extrovert.

Contact  tashadiamant@gmail.com

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

MONTHLY vulnerability action/#NUD/vigil Mon Feb 26 3-4pm BC leg

For February's MONTHLY vulnerable action in the streets, I will be Naked Ugly Dancing #NUD in the vicinity of the black Queen Victoria statue on the BC legislature lawn. 

(Because capitalism, feminism, imperialism, colonialism and probably other isms.)

#NUD
Near the black Queen Victoria statue on the lawn of the BC Parliament
Monday, Feb 26
3-4 pm

People can join (dressed or not) if they like. #uglydancing in public is vulnerable even with clothes on.

For me, it all started with pain and the extra awareness of motherhood.

I see my work as pushing back against the most damaging culture in history (my culture).

I have refused to allow myself to be diagnosed as mentally ill, my "mental illness," which is emotional pain, is that I feel this: none of us has made it until all of us has made it.

The Naked Ugly Dancing is about dancing out the ugly, showing up in vulnerability, not having to be pretty and MORE! Because I can do, think, and feel more than one thing at once!

Facebook event
humanbodyproject.org

CANCELLED

CANCELLED

The next MONTHLY action will be near the black Queen Victoria statue on the BC Legislature lawn
3-4 pm
NEW DATE: Feb 18, 2018 (NOT Feb 17)

I will do some #nakeduglydancing 
People can join me if they want.


It’s my version of embracing vulnerability, dealing with desperation, creating a portal to a new paradigm, pushing back against a damaged/damaging culture, dancing out the ugly, and MORE!

Check out my latest video if you haven't already https://youtu.be/hGWAhxZK3VA

Women's March #yyj Jan 20, 2018

Women's March #yyj Jan 20, 2018

#NUD at Women's March

I'll be #NakedUglyDancing at

The Victoria Women's March
Saturday, January 20, 2018
11am-1pm
Centennial Sq (Victoria City Hall)

"We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Anyone welcome to join me dressed or un.
#NUD at Women's March Facebook event


Also, I'll be in Herstory presented by Riot Grrrls Burlesque Revue on Saturday, Feb 3. Tickets at Eventbrite  
Herstory Facebook event

Last month's action. 6th anniversary of Vulnerability Vigils/monthly actions. Photo by David Howell.

6th Anniversary of Vulnerability Actions+New Video

I'm not the highest functioning person since ye olde Stage 4 Kanker wake-up call... but I do get out and about once a month to disturb the masses.

Here's my latest YouTube video of last month's street action. By chance, I caught a lot of audio of police (even more than the month before). I like to think that I provided some education.

Also, on New Year's Eve Day, December 31, 2017, I'll do a 6th Anniversary Monthly Action (aka Vulnerability Vigil)
3-4 pm
BC Legislature Grounds (Victoria) or nearby
Everyone welcome. Dressed or not.
Link to Facebook Event

For this piece of shamanic street performance, I plan to cover my naked body with "HELLO my name is" labels.

As most of you know, I started monthly Vulnerability Vigils on January 1, 2012. I've held at least one public vigil monthly, except when I was very ill. Vigils have evolved.

But I continue to use my naked body as a medium to share vulnerability and as a cultural/political statement.

Loneliness+futility, I've found, are part of the art.

#NUD in #yyj (Oct 14 2pm "Odeon Alley")

Naked Ugly Dancing

#NUD in #yyj

Saturday, October 14

2 pm

"Odeon Alley"

700 Block of Yates St

Victoria, BC

-- Part of Open Actions Monthly

Everyone welcome.

Photo by Miyoko Caubet, #NUD in #yyj September 2017

I will ugly dance naked.

Why? •Healing ritual. •Cultural antidote. •Humanization. •I am a human canary ("in a coal mine") and Stage 4 cancer survivor. As a longtime performance artist using my own naked, vulnerable body/self, I share and create space for vulnerability. •I am dancing the ugly out on behalf of myself and my dehumanizing, destructive culture. •The casual violence of our dominant culture is systemic, structural, and we learn to tolerate it pre-verbally. So, in my art (and life), I explore purposeful, visceral vulnerability. Facebook event link

AnthropoScene #1 + Blog Post Reading #3

Announcement! 

I've decided to join the nascent AnthropoScene Collective and, instead of Vulnerability Vigils, commit to creating collaborative AnthropoScenes once a month.

I'm not healthy enough to do both. And this new venture, for me, is a welcome (collaborative!) continuation of explorations in global/individual vulnerability since starting the Human Body Project more than 10 years ago.

Here's our first invitation:

Hey everybody living through the Anthropocene Epoch and 6th Extinction so far! 

The AnthropoScene Collective invites you to join us in our first public action on Boxing Day.

The action begins at 2pm on Boxing Day at the giant Sequoia tree

On the north side of Centennial Square (Douglas Street)

And proceeds south through downtown Victoria

Looping back to the Sequoia by 3pm

We are artists/activists committed to staging an "AnthropoScene" at least once a month in a public place.

AnthropoSceneCollective.ca

AnthropoScene #1 Facebook event

AnthropoScene Collective Facebook page

Also, here's me reading "The Menstrual Paradigm," my third blog post written on March 17, 2006

Vulnerability Vigil for Keith, Sun, Sept 18, 3-4 pm, Government&Wharf Sts, Victoria

Keith Jenkins at a Vulnerability Vigil, December 2015

Vulnerability Vigil for Keith
Sunday, September 18
3-4 pm
Government and Wharf Streets--where Keith often dances
Victoria

Keith Jenkins is in the Royal Jubilee Hospital about to undergo open heart surgery. He was on his way to work out when his doctor phoned him to say he needed to admit himself immediately. They told him they didn't know why he hadn't already keeled over kaput!

Thanks to the pressing of his girlfriend, Emilie, he had gone in for an electrocardiogram earlier. He hadn't felt too bad, just a little dizziness and shortness of breath. For the workout, he was planning to do "75%." Only Keith!

Over the years, hundreds of people have participated in Human Body Project performances and Vulnerability Vigils on the street. But there is no one who embodies the spirit of the project more than Keith Jenkins. I could summarize the project is to say everybody should be like Keith.

Keith is part Cree and grew up in an orphanage. One way I explain to myself how Keith is Keithlike is that maybe he was let be enough to raise himself as himself without the various expectations that hinder most of us. I have never met a person so untainted by the ego regulations of this culture.

Maybe you know Keith as THE artist model of Victoria. The man in thousands of drawings and paintings. Or maybe you've seen Keith downtown in one his costumes, dancing in the street. This is a guy who will make every day a festival. Or maybe you've seen him joining me for Vulnerability Vigils. Then you know he is a man of great heart.

On Sunday, I'm holding a Vulnerability Vigil to honour and send healing energy to that great heart.

Keith won't be able to work for a while after his surgery. Besides himself, Keith also has two sons in their 20s whom he helps support. A funding page is in the works (created by another friend), so stay tuned. We will collect money at the vigil, as well.

Please join me to honour and support Keith Jenkins:

Vulnerability Vigil for Keith
Sunday, September 18
3-4 pm
Government and Wharf Streets--where Keith often dances
Victoria

What is a Vulnerability Vigil?

Cancerversary Vulnerability Vigil

Cancerversary Vulnerability Vigil
Friday, August 26, 2016
5-6 pm
Government + Yates St.
Victoria, BC

Everybody welcome. Dressed or not.

Last year, on August 26, I was admitted to hospital because it looked like I had a malignant tumour in my left ovary or thereabouts. A few days later I learned I did indeed have stage 4 ovarian cancer. Dang. Bad prognosis.

I was due for a breakdown. The paradigm I believe in and try to live is about healing. But I had been working in an environment where healing is not part of the vocabulary and most of the words are pretty lies, like "community," "support," "transformative," etc.

I had made the mistake of being honest and caring too much. I didn't have the necessary boundaries. It hurt me. I found my job as a university instructor deeply rewarding and extremely painful.

Pain has been everpresent. I am extremely sensitive. For most of my life I had NO IDEA what it was or how to deal with it, except to feel ashamed.

I can honestly say I don't want to be here, living on this earth in the culture we have created. I don't have the necessary boundaries. I have suffered immense emotional pain. Unconsciously, which looked like boozery, promiscuity, irony, etc., and then consciously, caused by motherhood, mostly.

A great thing about my cancer is that I realized that if I was going to survive, and I do want to survive because I have 9- and 14-year-old kids, I needed to stop fantasizing about dying. So I took another stab at trusting Western pharmaceutical hooha and, what do you know?! I find Cymbalta very helpful. I never think hopeful thoughts about dying anymore. 

I would never have started the Human Body Project on Cymbalta, that's for sure!

Last month's Vulnerability Vigil in Toronto at Yonge and Bloor.

What is the Human Body Project? It's me intersecting my culture, a culture that really does not work for me... even though I am undeniably privileged. I have never felt safe here. 

So in this work, whether I do it on the streets or in performance, as my public self, or even private self, I am always working with my state of vulnerability, which, interestingly, mirrors the vulnerability of humanity at this unfortunate juncture.

Our culture does not understand or respect vulnerability. Our way of dealing with vulnerability is learned in a pre-verbal state. We don't have words to help us. By we, I mean especially us Western humans, who have created a weirdly visible situation: Syria! Yemen! Global climate change! Rape rape rape! Debt debt debt!

Which is also a weirdly invisible situation: far away or on a screen or she asked for it or, the worst, this is how it's all set up so what are ya gonna do?

IT'S A FUCKING DISASTER.

So anyway, at least once a month I do this thing I call a Vulnerability Vigil where I stand on the street naked. I hold a sign in front of my body because, God forbid the good people creating the 6th extinction should see a naked lady whose body is not selling something. This month I will probably hold the extinction symbol, as I have often done.

Back when I had more hair

My 54-year-old, baby-producing, cancer-surviving, naked female body is there to honour, share and express vulnerability. I work within the spacious form of performance art to present a non-violent, non-rhetorical, feminine, indigenist, healing response to an insane world. I am white and very privileged. This is also about showing up and using my privilege.

A Vulnerability Vigil is a ritual; it's about being the change; it's about being an ally; it's art. Holding vigils (and performing the Human Body Project) continues to be the only sane response I can come up with.

Please consider joining me this Friday. My friend and longtime Vigil partner, Keith Jenkins, will be out of town and I'll be extra-vulnerable without that dear man.

Cancerversary update: Chemo is done but it hurt my joints pretty bad, especially my knees, and either the chemo or the Cymbalta has caused my brain to process less sharply. I need a lot of sleep and rest. That bliss stage I went through for a while last year... I LOVED everyone! It was like being permanently in the early stages of a nice drunk... went away. 

My digestion is good, though. I taught a painting class. We had a great family trip to Ontario. I've been swimming in lakes almost every day this summer. I'm part of the group creating and performing the William Head on Stage play this year at William Head prison. And I'm happy to say my kids are driving me crazy. 

I don't think about the statistics.

Please, when you think of me, say: it's gone, Tasha, and it's not coming back.

humanbodyproject.org 
vulnerabilityvigils.org
Link to Facebook event

First Vulnerability Vigil in Toronto! Fri, July 15, 2016, Yonge+Bloor, 4:30

I am thrilled to announce that I'll be holding the First Vulnerability Vigil in Toronto!

Friday, July 15, 2016

4:30-5:30 pm

Yonge and Bloor

Everybody welcome, dressed or not.

Please share with Toronto friends!

Maybe you understand or have an inkling that our old structures are not working. This includes cultural ways of being (the water we swim in), which are pretty much invisible to most of us.

I have been using the spacious form of performance art for more than 10 years to present a non-violent, non-rhetorical, feminine, indigenist, healing response to an insane world.

I use my 54-year-old, baby-producing, cancer-surviving, naked female body to honour, share and express vulnerability. 

I am white and very privileged. This is also about showing up and using my privilege.

A Vulnerability Vigil is a ritual; it's about being the change; it's about being an ally; it's art. Holding vigils (and performing the Human Body Project) continues to be the only sane response I have.

Yes, it's small. It could be big. Consider holding a companion vigil. Consider joining me. (I'm the only one committed to being naked; it's completely optional.)

humanbodyproject.org 

vulnerabilityvigils.org

Link to Facebook event

June 2016 Vulnerability Vigil in Victoria.

Free. Real. The Opposite of Violence.

Vulnerability Vigil
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
5-6 pm
Pandora and Broad St, Victoria, near the rainbow crosswalks

I've written about this before. I'll be brief.

Maybe you understand or have an inkling that our old structures are not working. This includes cultural ways of being that, because that's the water we swim in, are largely invisible to most of us.

I have been using the spacious form of performance art for more than 10 years to present a non-violent, non-rhetorical, feminine, indigenist, healing response to an insane world.

A Vulnerability Vigil is a ritual; it's about being the change; it's about being an ally; it's art. Doing vigils (and the Human Body Project) continues to be the only sane response I have.

Yes, it's small. It could be big. Consider holding a companion vigil. Consider joining me.

http://www.humanbodyproject.org/p/vulnerability-vigils.html

Facebook event

(REVISED) FIRE: A #VulnerabilityVigil, Sun, May 8, 1pm, Gov't & Yates, Victoria

Announcing...

A #VulnerabilityVigil responding to the FIRE in Fort McMurray

Sunday, May 8

1 pm

Corner of Government and Yates

Victoria, BC

All welcome.

I have revised the theme of this month's #VulnerabilityVigil in response to the fire and mass evacuation in Fort McMurray.

I will stand naked on the street with a sign that says: FIRE. 

(See http://www.humanbodyproject.org/p/vulnerability-vigils.html for more info about #VulnerabilityVigils)

Why would a shy, cranky, basically misanthropic, not to mention dumpy, mother of two be doing this work? On Mother's Day even? For more than 10 years?

The answer to me is so obvious: I feel such a strong sense of URGENCY!!!

My sense of urgency and vulnerability has been heightened because of the fire. I have to address the terrible awareness that this kind of disaster is probably part of the "new normal."

I feel solidarity with the people of Fort McMurray. If I had a son, he might be working there, like so many other sons, brothers and dads who need to make a living. 

I feel solidarity with the people of Fort Chipewyan and other First Nations people on the front lines whose lands and rivers have been badly harmed by the extraction of oil. 

It's obvious to me that both "groups" have been brutally hurt by consequences of a global oil economy. 

None of us has the ability to remove ourselves from this economy. 

You don't believe in it? Neither do I. But I'm asking you to understand that you're still part of it.

You do believe in it? Probably because it works for you? I'm asking you to understand the harm it does, not just to others who you'd prefer to forget, but all of us.

Do you use money? Do you have a paycheque? Do you work at a job? Where maybe what you're doing contributes to the marginalization of others? (If you don't, please let me know where this type of job exists.)

Do you shop at stores? Do you eat food that wasn't grown in your neighborhood? Do you have material goods that don't come from a faraway land? Do you have a pension? Do you invest? Do you go places in motor vehicles? Have you been on a plane lately? Et fucking cetera. 

We are all connected and complicit--and, at least currently, stuck with a broken system. To pretend the Fort Mac fire is a "natural disaster" or, conversely, "just desserts," helps no one. 

We are all in this together. The sooner we get that, the sooner we move forward.

The ethos of the Human Body Project and #VulnerabilityVigils has always been about how we are all in this together. I use my body and my own vulnerability to, on a small level, walk the talk. 

People are always welcome to join, dressed or not.

Thanks, Tasha

P.S. I still encourage everyone to see Rape is Real and Everywhere at a city near you: http://www.rapeisreal.com/shows

Here is the info for the show in Victoria:

Rape is Real and Everywhere 

Victoria Event Centre

May 17, 8pm

Tickets $15 plus service charges

Website: rapeisreal.com

RIR&E Victoria show tickets:

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/rape-is-real-everywhere-a-comedy-show-in-victoria-tickets-24792306456

RIR&E Victoria Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1585960195027541/

The sign for this month's #VulnerabilityVigil will say RAPE. For a #VulnerabilityVigil I stand naked on the street (often with supporters, dressed or undressed) holding a sign with a word that draws attention to our mutual vulnerability as humans.

I use nakedness as a way to embody vulnerability.

As a mother of two daughters, I think about how rape is real and everywhere at least daily. I created the work of the Human Body Project and #VulnerabilityVigils because of my kids (see http://www.humanbodyproject.org/2012/10/to-my-beautiful-daughters-attempt-to.html). 

Our culture would like to be blind to rape in all its forms. The unfortunate truth that most sexual assault is committed by men in positions of trust parallels the way our institutions create and uphold the structures that threaten humanity's survival. 

Why do the perpetrators think it's ok? Because, on some level, they feel entitled. Way too often--as the news stories and statistics show, and as survivors know--they are.

#VulnerabilityVigils are part of an ongoing art/activism project and were created:

-To "be the change"

-To share / express / create space for vulnerability

-To stand in some solidarity with those who are most vulnerable

-To hold ourselves in some accountability for the atrocities our culture perpetrates and perpetuates

See http://www.humanbodyproject.org/p/vulnerability-vigils.html for more info

Other artists who are working to get conversations started about rape include Emma Cooper and Heather Jordan Ross, co-producers of the comedy show Rape is Real and Everywhere. It features seasoned stand-up comedians who are rape survivors. They use humour as a celebration of resiliency, an antidote to violation. This explosive show puts faces and stories to a taboo epidemic with nameless victims and is coming through Victoria on a national tour.

-30-

Earth Day Vulnerability Vigil at Tent City, April 23, 2016, 1pm, Quadra btwn Courtney&Burdett, Victoria

An Earth Day Vulnerability Vigil to draw attention to the connections between harms. Harming of the planet is caused by the same forces that create homelessness and poverty--locally and globally. 

For more info about Vulnerability Vigils visit http://www.humanbodyproject.org/p/vulnerability-vigils.html

All welcome. I commit to expressing vulnerability and all-in-the-same-boatness by showing up naked. Others can dress or undress as they choose.

Earth Day Vulnerability Vigil
Saturday, April 23, 2016
1 pm
Tent City
Quadra St, between Courtney and Burdett
Victoria, BC

Human Body Project 10th Anniversary Vulnerability Vigil

10th Anniversary of the Human Body Project
"Retrospective" Vulnerability Vigil
All welcome.
Saturday, March 26, 2016
1:00 PM
Revised location: Dallas Rd. walkway between Cook and Cambridge
South end of Beacon Hill Park (near flagpole and Camas Circle, across from Dallas Rd.)
Victoria, BC
If you've ever wanted to take part in a public performance project or a flash mob or a Vulnerability Vigil, please consider coming out for this one!! (Dressed or undressed.)

___________________
I started the Human Body Project ten years ago, as a performance art event, in a very conservative place, Lethbridge, Alberta. An undercover officer came to the first performance because a concerned citizen had called. (The cop left saying, "That was very beautiful.") I had the idea two years earlier but it took me those two years to get the courage up to be naked.
People like to say nakedness isn't a big deal. Ha. You try it. On the street. In any case, it's a big deal to me. It's very challenging for me to show up naked.
I do so in the Human Body Project, which is an ongoing performance art/activism project, to provoke a serious consideration of individual and humanity's vulnerability. Nakedness is a metaphor for and embodiment of vulnerability. I use my naked body and naked self. I also use this blog/website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as other spaces to share.
When I started I was the mother of a 4-year-old whose birth changed my life more than anything before or since. Her presence in my life awakened me to the denying I'd been able to do before she was there. I had responsibilities, to her and to myself. I felt so much opening, love, and pain. I finally felt like an earthling.
I couldn't and still can't explain it all. Or that's not right. I have explained, in many different ways, in my writing and in performance. It's difficult, however, to explain succinctly and in a way that many people can access. I'm pushing against so many dominant narratives and vulnerabilities. People react very personally.
Still, after 10 years of viscerally and publicly coming up against our culture's ideas of vulnerability. And after becoming a woman with gynecological cancer, yes, I will connect misogyny, fear of femininity, and our culture's need to place ego above love to what I'm slogging through.
My mother self couldn't accept that the world was going to treat my daughter like it treated me and so, not logically or rationally, but with a sense of calling that has been a burden and a challenge, I embarked.
It has been too hard and I don't doubt that the toll it's taken on my body has been a reason I have cancer. Some of us process the shit of a damaging culture. I'm one of those people. It does not come with pay.
Now I'm 54. Because of chemo, I look 74. I have two daughters now. One is 9! My oldest is 14! I'm alive!
I use the word vulnerability as a key to entering this work. All of us have vulnerabilities, all of us are living at the most vulnerable time for humanity that has ever existed in history. This is directly related to how we treat women, children and feminine energy. To shift this WE as a culture have to shift. It has to be a visceral, non-verbal shift because we need to waylay the ego self, which is very attached to words.
It can only happen with experience. "Be the change" is a useful phrase, one that continues to simplify the reason I do this.
I must repeat this though: I don't pretend to be good at it.
On Saturday, March 26, 2016, at 1 pm, in Victoria, BC, which is where I expanded the Human Body Project work to include Vulnerability Vigils, I am holding the 10th Anniversary Vigil along the Dallas Rd. walkway between Cook and Cambridge.
Over the more than four years since I started holding vigils, I have stood naked on the street more than 50 times (behind a sign as a gesture of gentleness to those who are deeply affronted by nudity). In solidarity with those who are most vulnerable. To share and express vulnerability. As a creative antidote to the isolation and detachment of our society. Etc. I'm doing more than one thing!
For the 10th Anniversary Vulnerability Vigil I will place all of the signs I have used on the slope of the hill. Words like: VULNERABLE, PRIVILEGE, SYSTEMIC, HEAL, FIX, PARADIGM, MOTHER. Also the Extinction Symbol.

Keith Jenkins and I holding the Extinction Symbol, February 2015.

It would be thrilling if lots of people came (dressed or not) and joined me. As an art project, people holding the signs (there are more than 20) would be such a beautiful statement!

Links to the event on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/events/229958677341052/

https://www.facebook.com/events/506020046252691/