Date of Live Stream: 25.08.2020
Time: 8pm BST
Place: Online, via Youtube
This event is ticketed on a sliding scale. Please buy which ticket feels appropriate to you.
************************ALL TICKETS SALES WILL BE DONATED TO READING RED KITCHEN********************
Free access to the event will be available to watch after the live event on the Rising Sun Arts Centre website.
If you cannot pay for a live ticket but wish to attend, please contact us and we will arrange free entry. No-one turned away for lack of funds.
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Through support from the Rising Sun Arts Centre, we have programmed an online, video based event, showcasing the work of two Double Okay and two external artists. The artists’ work are all tied together in a warm embrace. We are trying to navigate touch in a socially distanced time, reaching out to each other through sound and imagine ways we can be together.
Digital Slip //:embrace is an online, experimental performance and cabaret-style event run by Double Okay, in collaboration with The Rising Sun Arts Centre. //:embrace is an adaptation of our previous IRL events, ‘u slip into’. Double Okay Slips are a queer-centred space for artists who know what it is like to be othered, alienated or rendered invisible. //:embrace is a digital evening of performative reclamation and a right good laugh.
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We are very excited to be working with Rising Sun Arts Centre to put on this digital event. We want to say a huge thank you to them for supporting us with their Arts Council emergency funding. It’s important to us to work with people and organisations that reflect our beliefs. We’re v glad to be supported by such an important community arts centre.
https://www.risingsunartscentre.org
“The Rising Sun Arts Centre is an award winning, independent arts centre, which for 27 years has been staffed and run by volunteers. The Rising Sun started as a squat, created by a group of intrepid artists who saw a need for ground-level arts development, for and by, the people of Reading. The centre gained charity status in the mid-90s, and has been at the heart of Reading’s cultural life ever since.”
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This event will have closed captions and audio description throughout. It will be a relaxed performance, with an option for audience engagement in the comments.
//:embrace is a queer centred space; all genders, expressions, sexualities are welcome. Zero tolerance for harassment/discrimination. No transphobia, homophobia, racism, islamophobia, body shaming, whorephobia, fatphobia, sexism, disablism/ableism.
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Any questions, please contact us at doubelokaygroup@gmail.com or call us on 0118 966 7644.
Find us on social media:
Instagram instagram.com/wearedoubleokay
Facebook facebook.com/wearedoubleokay
Find the Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/3236721196418493
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The Artists:
Ollie Musson/Sheer Obsession
Sheer Obsession is a Reading-based, Sheffield hearted drag artist. They're a performer, writer, organiser and all round dabbling legend. Sailing the gender bending seas, they shape shift somewhere between King and Queen. They reclaim traditional art methods through print, drawing and digital work. They use drag, spoken word, and costume to create personal narratives. These are often explored through live performances, sculptural installations and projected video.
Sheer Obsession wants to read you poetry and wear what they want. They want to be the Captain of the ship whilst you jump through a portal into other worlds. They want to travel communally, trying to pack and unpack their mental/physical health and gender all into your suitcases. They hope that you can help each other to drag your luggage carefully along the side.
Sheer Obsession's practice explores the mouth as a useful tool to travel through our pain. They look to the power of voice in the realms of bodily transcendence and transformation. As passages to the insides of our bodies, the mouth is a portal to ourselves, and to each other.
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Mister Frank
Mister Frank is a non-binary Drag King, developed through real life stories and past lives. A Love Letter: Return to Sender is a work in progress spanning IRL and digital performances. Mister Frank's character is explored through multimedia. They lip sync, mime, clown and use digital projections as a means to tell a story of love and heartbreak.
Through love songs from the 1950’s to present day, the audience is taken on a time travelling journey. Whilst also telling an emotional, personal history, Mister Frank confronts themselves. They also question how the world views romantic love.
Mister Frank creates digital landscapes in which the performance is set. They use trippy, edited footage of Reading landscapes, with personal scenery and surroundings. Mister Frank combines this with found footage from films. These visuals then interact with the musical narrative, and Mister Frank’s movements.
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Luca Soudant
Luca Soudant (1993, The Netherlands) is an artistic researcher, independent curator, critical thinker, writer, teacher and DJ (Them Fatale) based in Rotterdam. They have an academic research background in noise theory, queer feminist methods of inquiry and new materialism. In addition to their academic research, they have developed a research-based art practice within the department of Critical Studies at Sandberg Institute Amsterdam. Their current practice consists of (academic) writing, performative lectures, tender listening practices, installations and sound pieces.
Troubling and blurring the line between theory and practice is the melodic rhythm they want to play by in all they do. Also, because the baseline of their work questions hierarchies of knowledge, the incorporation of embodied knowledges is an important to their work. At the moment they are continuing to develop their research into, what they termed, ‘sonic manspreading’, what it means to be (literally) touched by sound and how sonic thinking can offer transformative political models toward a more inclusive world. As part of their process, repetition and low frequencies are essential elements to healing and ways of queer world making.
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Valeria Radchenko
I am a multimedia artist and music producer. I was born in Russia, but raised across London and Rotterdam. Working with sound, performance and video, I explore the relationship between personal narratives and wider patterns of life. I am particularly interested in the role of technology and sound in present-day practices of magic and spirituality. The potential of electronic music in effecting our states of consciousness and emotions is also very interesting to me. My practice explores sci-fi, technology, care, consciousness, ritual, relation, queerness, senses, and communication. In essence, I’m interested in vibration, movement, affect.
I think there is an urgent need for humans as a collective to address our relations with each other. This includes non-human life and the Earth. This process starts with addressing our relationships to ourselves. For this reason, my work often reflects the exploration of my relationship to myself. The unsustainability and oppression inherent to our systems of living, troubles and angers me, and this fuels my practice.
I am driven by the desire to assist in the reduction of suffering, and in creating a world in which we all thrive. I aim to share love and joy through immersive experiences, from the perspective that this is a radical practice. By dreaming up the world in which I wish to live in, and ways to be there now, I hope to contribute to the shifting of our systems of living from within.
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This event is supported by Rising Sun Arts Centre, who are funding us via the Emergency Response Fund from Arts Council England National Lottery Grant.