Slamposium
Mothers & Daughters – A Lesbian* and Trans* Bar* occupies the Kaaistudios with Slamposium, une célébration slam symposium et performance.
Slamposium is een internationaal feminist en queer slam event that brings together the thriving slam scenes in Brussels/Belgium with slam performers from autres parts of Europe, and internationally for two days of poetry, performance, workshops, music, moving image, smiles et plus.
Featuring poetry, performances, music and workshops by: A Frei & Izidora L LETHE, Aru Lee, Athena Farrokhzad , Joëlle Sambi, Kopano Maroga, La famille Scandale, Misha Verdonck, Olave Nduwanje, Pelumi Adejumo, Porsha Olayiwola and Silvana Imam.
Access to the Slamposium is free, with priority given to LBTQI+ audiences.
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FRIDAY 15 OCTOBER 2021
This evening is free, but when we are full we are really full!
We realise that not working with tickets could make this event hard to access for those in our community with access and mobility difficulties due to disability. To address this, we have 10 free pre-order access tickets available to those with mobility difficulties and their support people. If you need to make use of these tickets, please email: Geertje at geertje.terlaeken@kaaitheater.be by 11 October.
7pm: Doors and bar open
8pm: Performances start
Featuring poetry and performance by Aru Lee, Athena Farrokhzad
, Joëlle Sambi, Kopano Maroga, La famille Scandale, Pelumi Adejumo, Porsha Olayiwola. Hosted by the all-talented Olave Nduwanje.
Performances will be in français, Nederlands and English.
11pm: Bar open with “Speaking in Tongues”, a playlist by Marouchka Payen
1am: Close
SATURDAY 16 OCTOBER 2021
Workshops
These workshops are free to attend, but participation is limited to 15 people per workshop. These workshops are priority LBTQI+. If you do not identify as LBTQI+, please consider not booking a workshop. If you do identify as LBTQI+ and would like to join a workshop, register below.
11am to 1pm: Zine Workshop with Misha Verdonck
In this workshop we'll experiment with ways to shape your poetry on the page to end up with a collaborative zine, bringing all our stories together. After a short introduction about what zines are and how you can make one, we'll get to work with our own words using a range of materials.
This workshop will be in English, but you do not need to be fluent to participate. Misha speaks English and Dutch, some French and some Swedish.
1pm to 3:30pm: Auto-louange slam workshop avec La famille Scandale
Le slam, on l’assimile beaucoup au rap, bien que ce soient deux entités distinctes. Peut-être parce qu’ils ont beaucoup de points communs d’exclamation. Notamment l’exercice de l’égo trip, de l'autolouange, lors de battles et de championnats. Il existe aussi des battles de compliments. Voilà de quoi retourner comme un gant l’injonction à la performance, la compétition, la démonstration de force. Cellui qui remporte la manche, c’est cellui qui aura le mieux frotté la manche des autres. Dans cet atelier, l’exercice central sera celui de l’autolouange, mais pas dans le but de remporter quoi que ce soit de l’ordre de la récompense, ni de vaincre qui que ce soit. L’objectif est de se redorer une estime de soi, des sois, et de nourrir la compassion plutôt que la compétition. C'est comme une battle de compliment interne ou face à un miroir.
Cet atelier sera en français.
1:30pm to 3:30pm: ReMemory & Omission workshop with Porsha Olayiwola
Writers have the power to control what information filters onto a reader. This includes the power to omit information, or to position it in a sort of rememory and reimagination. Participants in this writing workshop will spend time looking at memory and at a particular memory’s relationship to absence and repetition. Rooted in futurism, participants will explore the power yielded when we build our own context or deconstruct the context surrounding who and what we are made of. This workshop will not only question what happens when we narrate our own stories but also invite participants to think about imaginative ways to reshape and un-shape “truth”.
This workshop will be in English.
Screening
This screening is free, but when we are full we are really full!
We realise that not working with tickets could make this event hard to access for those in our community with access and mobility difficulties due to disability. To address this, we have 10 free pre-order access tickets available to those with mobility difficulties and their support people. If you need to make use of these tickets, please email: Geertje at geertje.terlaeken@kaaitheater.be by 11 October.
4pm: Doors and bar open
4.30pm to 6pm: Screening of SILVANA: Wake Me Up When You Are Awake
Documentary, Sweden 2017
Runtime: 90 min.
Directors: M. Gustafson, O. Kastebring, C. Tsiobanelis
Production: Mantaray Film
With her uncompromising lyrics against all forms of oppression, Swedish rapper Silvana Imam has taken Scandinavia by storm. She uses her razor-sharp tongue to spotlight movements taking place in today’s society, embodying the voice of a new generation along the way. This film follows Silvana from underground artist to icon, as she wins several major awards and forms an almost mythical relationship with Swedish pop-artist Beatrice Eli.
However, after just one year in the limelight, it all came to a sudden halt. Silvana crashes under the pressure, fed-up with the implications of being labelled a “strong female”. She decides to start showing new sides of herself “because there are no super-heroes, just human beings.”
SILVANA is in Swedish with English subtitles.
6:30pm: Close (in order to allow as many people to enter for the evening process as possible, we will close the doors and open them again at 8pm)
Book Signings and Performance
This evening is free, but when we are full we are really full!
We realise that not working with tickets could make this event hard to access for those in our community with access and mobility difficulties due to disability. To address this, we have 10 free pre-order access tickets available to those with mobility difficulties and their support people. If you need to make use of these tickets, please email: Geertje at geertje.terlaeken@kaaitheater.be by 11 October.
8pm: Doors and bar open
8pm to 9pm: Publication and Book Signing Event
Many of the Slamposium participants have published work. Come and take a look, buy a book or zine and have it signed by the author/s. Cash only!
9pm to 10pm: A performance by A Frei & Izidora L LETHE
More info coming soon!
11pm: Close
ABOUT THE ORGANISERS
Mothers & Daughters – A Lesbian* and Trans* Bar* is a collective project and itinerant community space in Brussels by and for lesbian, trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming people, and their friends and allies. The project focuses on creating safer spaces for learning, celebration, creativity, political solidarity and representation from an intersectional queer and feminist perspective. Mothers & Daughters is organised by Alice Versieux, Ben Pigeard-Benazera, Byrthe Lemmens, Claire Gilder, Jessica Gysel, Joëlle Sambi Nzeba, Katja Mater, Marnie Slater, Mia Melvær, Misha Verdonck, Nyira Hens and Robin Brettar.
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS
Aru Lee is a poet and workshop coordinator with a background in interior architecture. They use poetry to raise awareness about cultural differences. They express their emotions and journey as a black, queer African diasporic person through personal observation, experiences and facts. Their work talks about what it means to look for meaning in ourselves when growing up in different environments. What defines home and how our mental health is affected by our history. They explore concepts of self-love through the deconstruction of everything learnt. Aru also leads workshops around the concept of Safer Spaces.
A Frei is a non-binary sound artist, relational listener, sonic community organizer, collaborator, sonic researcher, record store co-operator, graphic designer, experimental DJ and fungi enthusiast based in Zürich, Switzerland. They organize concerts, experimental audio formats and collaborate on listening performances and collective listening settings. A Frei works as freelance graphic designer focussing on sound related projects, small editions and art books and gives weekly risograph workshops. They are the co-founder of OOR Records/OOR Saloon (one’s own room) in Zürich.
Athena Farrokhzad is a poet, playwright, translator and literary critic. She was born in Tehran in 1983, grew up in Gothenburg and lives in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2013, she published her collection of poems titled Vitsvit (White Blight, 2015). Her second book, Trado (2016), which she co-authored with Romanian poet Svetlana Cârstean, was awarded the Romanian Cultural Radio Prize, and her latest collection of poetry, I rörelse, was published in 2019. In her work, Athena addresses violence, language, desire and heritage, in the context of revolution, war, migration and racism. She teaches poetry and theory at Biskops-Arnö writing school and has translated authors such as Marguerite Duras, Juliana Spahr, Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich to Swedish. Athena is a 2021 guest of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.
Izidora L LETHE is a transdisciplinary and conceptual artist currently living in Zürich. Their practice spans choreography, sculpture and video, accompanied by correspondent writing and drawing processes. Aiming at undermining naturalized hierarchies, LETHE develops works with and through the body, allowing space for it to access and “speak” its own vocabulary. In particular, LETHE aims to uplift queer, female, non-binary/trans*, postcolonial and post-migrant epistemologies, which have systematically been overlooked and undervalued. Transmitting their practice into educational frameworks, LETHE teaches embodied classes, art history, critique seminars, amongst others.
Joëlle Sambi is an Afrofeminist lesbian activist, author, poet, performer and filmmaker. She just published her first book of poetry, Caillasses, with L’arbre de Diane (2021) and is currently working on her first documentary Pinkshasa Diaspora, a political poem that draws the landscape of the Congolese homosexual diaspora. Her writing is closely tied to her activism. Caught between several identities that merge, Joëlle writes and raises questions about identity, norms and belonging. She performs in the slam and Krump show Fusion, which evokes police violence with the Krump dancer Hendrickx Ntela, and has directed and co-wrote two slam shows: Angles Morts with Sarah Machine and Koko Slam Gang, which gives the stage to a group of Congolese grandmothers between 65 and 88 years old. Joëlle is the co-chair of the EuroCentralAsian Lesbian Community, co-founder with many other activists of the Belgian Network For Black Lives, a collective that organized the first big protest against state racism and police violence in Belgium which gathered 20,000 people on the 7 of June 2020 in Brussels.
Kopano Maroga is a performance artist, writer, cultural worker and co-founding director of the arts organization ANY BODY ZINE. They are currently living in Brussels and working as a curator and guest-dramaturge at Kunstencentrum Vooruit in Ghent. Their debut anthology of poetry, Jesus Thesis and Other Critical Fabulations, was released through uHlanga press in December of 2020. They very much believe in the power of love as a weapon of mass construction.
La famille Scandale fait du slam, du cabaret et de l'illustration. Iels créent des poèmes et des chansons hybrides destinées à la performance. Il y a Nestor, c'est lui qui écrit la plupart des textes, où se confondent musique et théâtre, autofiction et sur-jeu, humour et tragédie. Il y a Josie, présentatrice de cabaret, interprète d'un one-human-show et interprète de numéros en chanson, notamment avec le collectif Not Allowed - Glitter's time. Il y a Pierre Rococo, occupé actuellement avec plusieurs beatmakers sur un projet musical, dont le premier album “Divinités” sortira dans le courant de 2022. Et puis il y a Alice et Alphonse qui rejoignent le récital “Je est l'un des nôtres”. Cette pièce musicale raconte l'histoire de leur cohabitation dans un même corps. Autrefois connu.e.s sous le nom civil Camille Pier, la famille Scandale déplie sur scène ses petits détails.
misha verdonck (they/them) is a zinester and poet from Belgium. With birdbeakbeast press, they explore radical kindness and queer feminism and centre underrepresented voices. It’s an experiment in thoughts and actions of how to make community-based knowledge and creativity accessible.
Pelumi Adejumo is schrijver. In haar teksten werkt ze met zang en klank, verzonnen talen en untranslations. Meest recent schreef Adejumo de performancetekst ‘Soms ik voel mij zombie.’ Een reeks gedichten zonder metaforen, een monoloog zonder structuur, een manifest dat amper gelezen of verstaan kan worden, een verlangen naar de dood, verwarring, gestamel en gestotter van de jongeman Joy. Waarvoor ze genomineerd werd voor de afstudeerprijs van De Nieuwe Oost. Ze schreef o.a. voor De Gids, Mister Motley, Het Nationale Theater en de film ‘Hier’ voor Sonsbeek 20-24.
Marouchka Payen is a DJ and a type designer. She is part of the French-Belgian Bye Bye Binary collective which works on inclusive and non-binary writing, with an opensource approach. As a DJ, she is a resident on The Word, Kiosk and Lyl webradios, where she loves finding and sharing lost post punk, new wave and electro wonders, with a focus on womxn and queer musicians. In her Lyl Radio show All we have to be Thankful for, Marouchka highlights the contribution womxn, trans and non-binary people made and make to musical scenes and histories. She also records collective sets and organises parties with the all-feminine* (womxn-identifying people) Poxcat Crew in Brussels.
Burundi-born Olave Nduwanje identifies as a non-binary trans femme (pronouns: she/her/hers). She is a published author, legal scholar, activist (anti-racism, LGBTQI+ rights, anti-capitalism, disability rights, anti-ecocide, etc.). She has provided literary contributions to the following titles: ZWART. Afro-Europese literatuur uit de Lage Landen (2018), De Goede Immigrant (2020) and Being Imposed Upon (2020). She has been based in Brussels since 2019.
Black, poet, queer-dyke, hip-hop feminist, womanist: Porsha Olayiwola is a native of Chicago who now resides in Boston. Olayiwola is a writer, performer, educator and curator who uses afro-futurism and surrealism to examine historical and current issues in the Black, woman, and queer diasporas. She is an Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and the founder of the Roxbury Poetry Festival. Olayiwola is BROWN Brown University's 2019 Heimark Artist-in-Residence and a poet laureate fellow with the Academy of American Poets. She is an MFA Candidate at Emerson College, the author of i shimmer sometimes, too published by Button Poetry and Olayiwola is the current poet laureate for the city of Boston. Her work can be found published with TriQuarterly Magazine, The Boston Globe, Essence Magazine, Redivider, The Academy of American Poets, Wildness Press, The Museum of Fine Arts and elsewhere.
Access to the Slamposium is free (without reservations) with priority given to LBTQI+ audiences.
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