Lesbian "Artivists" in Ottawa!

Originally published in Rain and Thunder: A Journal of Radical Feminist Discussion & Activism, Northampton, MA, Winter, 2017.

I just returned from a three-day lesbian conference at the University of Ottawa, “Lesbian Artivisms in the Age of Globalization/ Artivismes lesbiens à l’ère de la mondialisation.” It was LESBIAN.

The organizers—Dominique Bourque, Johanne Coulombe, and Vanessa Plante—are to be congratulated for their courage and their vision in daring to produce a lesbian-specific symposium in the age of queer.

The conference was bilingual and featured over thirty artists, activists, and researchers from a dozen different countries. The two objectives were:

To promote the sharing of experience, expertise and knowledge.
To permit the establishment of transnational and interdisciplinary solidarity networks.

I attended with Boston actor Julia Reddy, who was performing my play The Second Coming of Joan of Arc. I was also presenting a workshop on “Interrupting Racism: An Interactive Technique.” Because of my involvement in these presentations and also because of the need to leave early on the final day, I can only give a report on my personal experiences and impressions of this remarkable gathering.

The opening panel was titled “An ARTivists Round Table: Development of Solidarity through Art and Culture.” Sabreen Bint Loula, a French immigrant from Djibouti, was one of the panelists. A courageous activist against female genital mutilation, as well as against sexism, racism, and lesbophobia, Loula spoke poignantly about her struggles with identity as both a lesbian and as an immigrant and woman of color.

The panel was intended to include lesbian artivist Zanele Muholi from South Africa, but unfortunately the US refused to allow her to board her flight. (In order to fly to Ottawa from South Africa, it was necessary to book a flight into the US.) This was a loss to the conference, as Muholi is doing daring and dangerous work, making lesbian lives visible in her country at a time when they are being especially targeted for “corrective rapes” and murders. A documentary by Human Rights Watch about Muholi and her art, however, was shown. The title is “We Live in Fear.”

Muholi founded the collective Inkanyiso, which, in their own words “works to document the lives of black lesbian women around the country; publish the work of their artists: and build skills in the use of art as an advocacy tool within their marginalized communities. What Zanele Muholi does as a visual and gender activist and artist, is to explore black lesbian identities through portraiture.”

The first afternoon featured a panel titled “Historical Contextualizations.” From London, Ilana Eloit sent her paper via video, which was summarized in English: “Happiness Was In the Pages of This Monthly: Lesbian Press and the Construction of the Lesbian Subject in France (1976-1990).” I had only sporadic contact with the publications in Eliot’s paper, Lesbia and Amazones d'Hier, Lesbiennes d'Aujourd'hui (Amazons of Yesterday, Lesbians of Today), but I certainly resonated with the transformative and life-giving power of early lesbian publications prior to the age of the Internet. Dr. Bonnie Morris was also on this panel, which was timely, because the hardcover edition of her book The Disappearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture has just been published. (The paperback version is out in January.) Morris spoke on “The Women’s Music Movement: Documenting Artivism in the Era of Lesbian Erasure.” She spoke passionately about her work as archivist of the women’s festival culture at a time when this movement is being shunned and stigmatized, noting the irony that, as the women who created this radical and historically unprecedented cultural phenomenon are dying out, there is a near-total failure to interview them/us, to secure their/our papers, and to recognize the significance of their/our lives.

Laurence Leroy, Hélène Morvan, and their dog Surprise

On the first night of the conference, two theatre pieces were presented. The first was a reading by playwright Marie-Claude Garneau of her dramatic poem Lieu(x) possible(s). The work was a monologue based on the writings of lesbian author Violette Leduc.

The second was my own play about a lesbian Joan of Arc. This was the first professional performance by Boston actor Julia Reddy, and it was very well received. The French translation by Parisian translator Céline Pomès was read simultaneously by Dominque Bourque and transmitted through headsets to francophone audience members. This was the first time this translation had ever been used, and I was gratified by the positive feedback.

On the second day of the conference, a remarkable film was screened: Cerveaux mouillés d'orages (“Storm Wet Brains”) by filmmaker Karine Lhémon. The film documents the lives and the love of two lesbians, Hélène et Laurence. Both of these women suffered severe brain injuries in their twenties—Hélène Morvan from a car accident and Laurence Leroy from an incident involving a cerebral hemorrhage that was left untreated for nine hours in the hospital. The film opens with the two lesbians making preparations with friends on their wedding day—a segment filled with the playful details of getting dressed for the occasion, the logistics of transportation, and the service itself. Later in the film we discover the more urgent and political dimension of this ceremony, as Laurence’s family took aggressive steps to oppose the relationship and to regain guardianship of Laurence.

The two lesbians live in the country, Hélène tending their gardens and Laurence creating her paintings. Both women were present for the conference, joining the filmmaker for the talk-back. I experienced every frame of the documentary as radical, visionary, and revolutionary in terms of anti-patriarchal values. One of the most radical aspects was the pace of life. Watching the film, I felt the frenetic RPMs of my own life slowing down to match the rhythms of the filmmaker and her subjects, and that was a revelation.

On the second night of the conference, Myriam Fougère’s film Lesbiana: A Parallel Revolution was screened. I was attending the conference with longtime lesbian-feminist scholar and activist Dr. Morgne Cramer, and watching the film together was like watching home movies. We kept pointing and whispering, “I was there!” “Oh, look… Bloodroot Café!” “I know her!” “The Pagoda!” The film is available in both a French and English version.

The Women Make Movies catalog describes the film as “... a road trip through the United States and Canada” where Fougère revisits “the activists of the time who sparked this revolution to define their own culture.... Told through photographs, archival footage, and contemporary interviews, Fougère’s film serves not only as a testament to the politics of the era, but also as a living yearbook and virtual reunion of these remarkable women, who laid the groundwork for generations to come.”

I was unable to attend the final half-day, and I regretted missing a panel that included Marion Page’s paper on one of my first mentors, French author Michèle Causse, and a paper by Delphine Cézard, a trapeze artist who was addressing the political and feminist aspects of being a female circus artist.

I also regret that I missed visual artist Pamela Dodds' talk about her series of woodcuts, “Memory’s Witness.” These were on display, and although I had viewed images of them previously, seeing the actual woodcuts was an entirely different experience. She also brought several linocuts from her series “Ebb.”

The conference highlighted the incredible richness of global lesbian-feminist history and art, while at the same time shining a light on the ongoing dangers of living a lesbian life in patriarchy, especially where lesbian oppression intersects with other oppressions. Conspicuous in their absence were the dozens, even hundreds, of young women identifying as queer inside and outside the University, for whom the word “lesbian” is anathema. The threats of marginalization and erasure were palpable, at least to me, and the most effective response to these threats is exactly the kind of courage, determination, and pride demonstrated by these organizers.