UJ Set to 'Genderquery' the Arts with THATSOQUEER

UJ Arts & Culture's REVOLUTION MMXIV programme comes to a colourful culmination in THATSOQUEER: a three-week festival of "genderquerying the arts."

UJ Arts & Culture launches THATSOQUEER on 7 October at 19:30 with a concert in the Arts Centre Theatre (Kingsway Campus) featuring Freschi, who is an acclaimed baritone, and Christopher Duigan on the piano. The duo have thrilled audiences nationwide with their particular blend of classical and popular music for over a decade, and recently performed to critical acclaim on the main programme of the 2014 National Arts Festival. With a focus on songs by Noël Coward and Cole Porter, the launch concert will also include the vocal gymnastics of Rossini and popular songs and hits from Broadway musicals, interspersed with virtuoso pieces for the piano.

The following day Robert Hamblin's solo exhibition entitled THE COLONY opens in Arts Centre Gallery. Hamblin's cutting-edge photography has played an important role in gender politics nationally and globally. The exhibition includes 260 dated ocean images representing the working days of the Western monetary system, a series of Western masculine characters with their reflections in the water at low tide and three videos exploring constructed identity within systems of patriarchy, masculinities and money.

According to Festival Producer, Grace Meadows, the Festival programme also includes a range of events presented by UJ student society Liberati, queer tours of Joburg and workshops by GALA and queer rugby by Wham! Performing arts highlights include the cabaret BOYLESQUE, directed by Alby Michaels; a staged reading of LOOKING FOR NORMAL by Jane Anderson, directed by Jade Bowers; and a staged reading of Jonathan Harvey's BEAUTIFUL THING, directed by Ashalin Singh. The Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative rounds off the programme with an original dance work entitled H28 in memory of Ugandan gay rights activist, David Kato.

According the Artistic Director of the Festival, Alby Michaels, who was also responsible for READING GAY in 2011 as well as the 2012 and 2013 instalments of THATSOGAY, the initial plan for the 2014 instalment was to evolve the name of the Festival to THATSOLGBTI in an effort to make this year's festival as inclusive as possible:

When we sat down with our partners from Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action (GALA) to talk through our programme for this year, we were prompted to consider the term "queer" instead to the acronym we planning to incorporate. Since queer in the current lexicon is use to describe lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender identities without anyone getting into fisticuffs, we decided THATSOQUEER served our warm and fuzzy intent even better. In fact nowadays queer is even used to describe unconventional cisgendered heterosexual identities.

Professor Federico Freschi, the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture (FADA) at UJ and an Ambassador of #TSQ, explains the context in which THATSOQUEER is presented, looking especially at the rationale behind UJ's ongoing support of the University's annual LGBTI offering in 2011:

THATSOQUEER or #TSQ, is not the only South African festival to celebrate the diverse nature of the LGBTI community - in fact, it is a relatively new kid on the block in relation to festivals such as Out in Africa, the Pink Loerie, Drama For Life's Sex Actually and Wits Pride - it is possibly the only South African festival with a distinctly arts and culture focus.

One does not have to dig too deep beneath the surface of our constitutionally enshrined right to 'difference' to find a cold, vicious core of homophobia: its dark pathology lurks in 'corrective' rape; in the continued incidences of gay bashing; in the rising tide of fundamentalism throughout the world; whose sanctimonious embrace of religious or ostensible 'family values' is often little more than thinly-veiled prejudice and intolerance.

THATSOQUEER (#TSQ) is presented by UJ Arts & Culture in partnership with UJ LIBERATI, UJFM 95.4, Gala and Lesbian Memory in Action (GALA), the Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative (FATC) and WHAM! Mambaonline is the official media partner of the Festival. For full festival details, download the Spring/Summer 2014 issue of ART MUCH? at www.uj.ac.za/arts or e-mail preciousm@uj.ac.za to request a copy.

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