Listen to new #SpokenWebPod episode “Lesbian Liberation Across Media: A Sonic Screening” wherever you get your #podcasts. Let this feminist memory-work bring you into the world of intergenerational lesbian-feminist collective history and community building. #queermedia pic.twitter.com/jw8kvi7Qqw
— SpokenWeb (@SpokenWebCanada) November 2, 2020
Lesbian Liberation Across Media: A Sonic Screening is a little different than episodes heard in the Spoken Web Podcast series before. It is a kind of “feminist memory-work” – An audio collage, a method, an approach to community building which aims to honour lesbian-feminist collective histories and renewed public attention to lesbian feminist culture.
SpokenWeb network members Felicity Tayler and Mathieu Aubin originally guided a SpokenWeb listening practice session in which they led a discussion of diegetic and nondiegetic sounds in clips from three queer films: A Working Women’s Collective (1974), Labyris Rising (1980), and Scorpio Rising (1963). After the event, participants in the Listening Practice enthusiastically desired an expanded event where we would collectively watch, listen to, and discuss these films in their entirety. This led to the organization of a second event “Lesbian Liberation Across Media” sponsored by multiple institutions of queer cultural history and community, such as Labo de données en sciences humaines/The Humanities Data Lab, SpokenWeb, Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada Project, University of Toronto Media Commons Archives, and the ArQuives.
Episode producers – Felicity Tayler, Mathieu Aubin and Scott Girouard – cordially invite you into their feminist sonic memory world: A three-part audio collage of “Lesbian Liberation Across Media”. A virtual film screening and discussion held Summer 2020 in partnership with SpokenWeb, and featuring three iconic lesbian feminist films: “A Working Women’s Collective” (1974), “Labyris Rising” (1980), and “Proud Lives: Christine Bearchell”(2007). Through a weaving together of the voices of over 60 participants in attendance, along with original music scores, archival clips and more – we ask, how do we listen to Canadian lesbian liberation movements across media? Whether it’s a feature length film or a spirited virtual chat session, this audio collage episode invites you to experience a citational politics that makes audible the intergenerational relationships, conflicting concerns, nostalgic reveries, and a sense of togetherness while apart in the pandemic-related time of crisis.
Felicity Tayler is the Research Data Management Librarian at University of Ottawa, and is currently the Interim Head, Research Services (Arts & Special Collections). She is an occasional visual artist and curator, and has published scholarly writing related to literary archives in anthologies, in Journal of Canadian Art History,Canadian Literature, and Mémoires du livre / Studies in Book Culture.
Mathieu Aubin is a scholar on print and performance cultures in Canada. He completed his PhD at UBC and is now an Horizon Postdoctoral Fellow at Concordia University where he holds a leadership position within the “Oral Literary History” research component of the SpokenWeb project. As part of this project, he is working towards recuperating queer people’s contributions to Canadian literary culture. His work on queerness, literary communities, and Vancouver has been published in the journal Canadian Literature.
Scott Girouard is a Front-End Developer based in Toronto, Canada with a lifelong background in music and creative practice.
Acknowledgements:
Episode Voiceover by Emma Middleton
Music/Score by Scott Girouard and Mathieu Aubin
Thanks to Stacey Copeland, Hannah McGreggor, Jason Camlot, Katherine McLeod, Constance Crompton, Michelle Schwartz, Rachel E Beattie, Raegan Swanson, May Ning, Jake Moore, Becki Ross, Amy Gotlieb, Rachel Epstein, Maureen FitzGerald, Marusya Bociurkiw, Baylee Woodley, Elspeth Brown, Stark (pseudonym) .
Humanities Data Lab at U Ottawa, SpokenWeb, Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada Project, University of Toronto Media Commons Archives, ArQuives , VTape, VIVO Archives
References:
• Anger, Kenneth, director. Scorpio Rising. Ruban VHS, 1964.
• Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. Routledge, 1993.
• Godard, Baraba. Gynocritics: Feminist Approaches to Canadian and Quebec Women’s Writing. ECW P, 1987.
• Media Mothers, directors. A Working Women’s Collective. 1974.
• Moores, Margaret, director. Labyris Rising. V Tape, 1980.
• Navas, Eduardo. Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling. Ambra Verlag, 2014.
• Nicol, Nancy, director. Proud Lives: Chris Bearchell. V Tape, 2007.
• Ross, Becki. The House that Jill Built. U of Toronto P, 1995.
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