Queering Digital Space

Queer artists are resourceful, dynamic, and resilient, and the forced closure of our spaces is not a new experience. Today, LGBT2Q+ artists are creating brilliant artistic content online in order to bring communities together, to engage in challenging conversations, and spread joy and celebration. Some of the artists who have been making moves in the digital realm locally are The Darlings, Continental Breakfast, Rose Butch, Maiden China and P.M., four nonbinary drag performers who have been bewitching, confusing and stunning Vancouver audiences for years now. In moving to a digital platform in the pandemic, they encountered censorship and homophobia, and will share their struggles and successes, as well as excerpts from their recent online performances on this engaging panel.

The Darlings are a multidisciplinary, non-binary drag performance collective based in Vancouver, BC. Their work challenges the boundaries of conventional drag, and explores genderqueer, non-binary, and trans experience through the use of movement, poetry, performance art, theatre, and immersive/interactive installation. The Darlings are Continental Breakfast (Chris Reed), PM (Desi Rekrut), Rose Butch (Rae Takei) and Maiden China (Kendell Yan). As an emerging collective, they have mounted four full-length installations in September 2018, October 2018, and March 2019 as well as features at Here For Now Volume 2 dance showcase (December 2018), the PuSH International Performing Arts Festival (January 2019), and full-length features in the Transform Cabaret Festival (October 2020) and Intrepid Theatre’s OUTstages Festival (February 2020). They also produced a digital Live Broadcasted Quarantine-Friendly show during the COVID-19 outbreak (March 2020).