Image Credit: Daniela Silva, @danielasilvatrujillo
Toronto Queer Film Festival’s 2021 Symposium
Toronto Queer Film Festival, Archive-Counter/Archive, and The ArQuives present:
Panel: Queering the Web
April 24, 6:00pm
RSVP to industry@torontoqueerfilmfest.com for the event link.
Archive/Counter-Archive is excited to co-present a panel at the upcoming Toronto Queer Film Festival's Symposium, Queer Emergencies, entitled “Queering the Web.”
Panel Description:
Although we have long been seduced by the reveries of the Internet, virtual space has acquired a whole new meaning amidst the pandemic. At the time of crisis, digital spaces have become havens for community organizing, mutual care, and pleasure seeking. While the Internet has affected each one of us differently during the past year, the queer community has been able to collectively adapt and then prolifically maneuver the capitalist mechanisms behind the pandemic era cyberspace. By taking a close look at a live-streaming platform and an online party phenomenon, this program will decipher the way that queer, trans and Two-Spirit people have been employing the commercialized web technologies to care for each other and ourselves.
The program will include two presentations: Introduction to Twitch as a Queer Broadcasting and Socializing Space by Robin Gaudreau and “Club Culture Is Our Healing”: Club Quarantine’s Queer Uses of Zoom for Mutual Aid and Communal care by Anne-Marie Trépanier and Dr. Stefanie Duguay. Followed by an open discussion facilitated by Dr. Jonathan Petrychyn.
Introduction to Twitch as a Queer Broadcasting and Socializing Space
Social media platforms are now seen as being “public space,” especially with the current restrictions on public gatherings. They are, however, private spaces, much akin to shops, bars, or theaters. As such, the users are expected to follow a set of rules, which can be changed for legal reasons or for the financial benefit of the platform’s user. Twitch is a live streaming service with a particularly steep learning curve for creators and a surprisingly diverse array of content. Robin Gaudreau’s workshop explains the basics of streaming non-gaming content to Twitch, and the functionalities that allow the viewers to interact with the creators, including plug-ins to increase accessibility and avenues of monetization. During the workshop, Robin will also showcase a selection of queer Twitch streamers.
SPEAKER
Robin Gaudreau is a grad school dropout, a stage performer, and an internet addict.
“Club Culture Is Our Healing”: Club Quarantine’s Queer Uses of Zoom for Mutual Aid and Communal care
This presentation investigates how queer communities and queer people are appropriating digital technology in the new circumstances of the pandemic. More specifically, it focuses on a case study of Club Quarantine, a series of online queer dance parties based on the videoconferencing platform Zoom, to ask how virtual clubs such as Club Q appropriate and queer the affordances of Zoom in order to foster communal care and mutual aid. Through analysis of media coverage and Club Q’s promotional social media, along with an examination of Zoom’s videoconferencing software, our research identifies how certain features and functionalities of Zoom are used in order to “digitize” the queer party. Using a hybrid analytical lens drawing from Sara Ahmed’s conceptualization of “queer use” and theories of technological appropriation, we observe how queer counterpublics appropriate corporate platforms such as Zoom in order to deploy resilient, alternative infrastructure for community building in times of emergency.
Presented by Anne-Marie Trépanier and Dr. Stefanie Duguay.
SPEAKER
Anne-Marie Trépanier is an artist-researcher and MA student in Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University (Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, Canada). Informed by feminist and queer critique of media and technology, her research and practice focus on alternative information infrastructures and economies of care in relation to digital technologies.
SPEAKER
Stefanie Duguay is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University (Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, Canada). Her research focuses on the influence of digital media technologies in everyday life, with attention to the intersection of sexual identity, gender, and social media. This has included studies of queer people’s use of social media, dating apps, and multiple platforms for digital self-representation.
MODERATOR
Dr. Jonathan Petrychyn is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender, Sexuality, and Digitality in the Department of Recreation & Leisure Studies at the University of Waterloo. His research is situated at the intersections of activism, sexuality, and media industries and is interested specifically in how queer and feminist communities use media technologies to build communities.
More information: https://torontoqueerfilmfest.com/symposium-2021/queering-the-web/
About TQFF:
The Toronto Queer Film Festival is a collectively-run, artist-centered, not-for-profit festival that showcases contemporary, innovative, queer, and trans film and video art. Our foremost goal as an organization is community building: creating space for queer and trans filmmakers and audiences to come together in the spirit of art and activism.
In 2019, TQFF hosted its first symposium, reflecting on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and Canada’s supposed 1969 “decriminalization” of homosexuality. This year’s theme is Queer Emergencies, with programs featuring workshops, panels, presentations, performances, and keynotes from artists, scholars, and performers from around the world.
COVID-19 is disproportionately impacting marginalized communities, and queer, Two-Spirit, and trans* people - many of whom are also Indigenous, people of color, disabled, an/or poor - are some of the hardest hit by this public health and economic crisis. As such, the Queer Emergencies symposium is designed to create spaces for artists, critics, and audiences to document, reflect on, and dream of ending the hardships queer, Two-Spirit, and trans* communities are facing today under capitalism and colonialism.