♪ Opening theme music ♪
[Diane:] Hello and welcome to this episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
My name is Diane Kolin.
I am a white woman with short brown hair, blue eyes and glasses,
and today I wear a grey top.
Behind me is a brown piano in a room with white walls.
This series presents artists, academics and project leaders
who dedicate their time and energy
to a better accessibility for people with disabilities in the arts.
You can find more of these conversations
on our website, artsably.com,
which is spelled a-r-t-s-a-b-l-y dot com.
♪ Theme music ♪
Today, ArtsAbly is in conversation with seeley quest,
a trans disabled environmentalist, arts and equity educator,
living in Toronto in Canada.
You can find the resources mentioned by seeley quest during this episode
on ArtsAbly’s website, in the blog section.
[seeley] Originally, sand comes from mountains and cliffs.
So, erosion wears down rock faces, boulder pieces become pebbles.
Rain, snow, wind and gravity move them
into springs, into rivers, into lakes and oceans.
In deserts, extreme day versus night temperature
shifts stress rocks that crack.
Wind gusts keep abrading pieces over millions of years.
Sand as wind-scoured in deserts
instead of water-scoured takes a different shape,
a geometry that doesn’t stick together well,
it just keeps slipping through our fingers.
One place where a lot of sand goes
is into glass.
Silicon dioxide, or silica,
is also a refining agent in
wine,
in cosmetics,
it's in toothpaste, hairspray,
powdered foods, in desiccant packets.
Many plastics, construction alloys,
paints, tires.
Sand also goes into sandboxes,
aquariums, terrariums, sandbags.
As well, silicon is used to make microchips
for our tech devices.
Crystals conduct electric charges, transmitting data.
We might ask:
what subtle vibrations echo now, between our microchipped devices,
and sand kin elsewhere?
[Diane] Welcome to this new episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
Today, I am with seeley quest,
a trans disabled environmentalist, arts and equity educator,
living in Toronto, in Canada.
Welcome, seeley!
[seeley] Hi, happy to join.
[Diane] Thank you for joining! And I love your background, you're gonna tell us a little bit about
what is in your background right now, but
would you mind presenting yourself and giving a visual description, maybe?
[seeley] Sure.
I'm a white
androgynous trans person who has
fairly short cut hair, that's
a lot of silver color showing in it.
I'm wearing a black t-shirt with a
black polka dot patterns
button shirt over it.
I have some light facial hair
right now, and I'm in a,
a room that's…
that's white, but has a view of some large
banner art behind me, so I will
move a moment so there's more of a full view of this image.
So, it says,
across this banner, which is black,
in big capital letters that are
very multicolorful:
Access is love.
It's fabric-based.
So, uh…
Something that's maybe not as easy to perceive from this view
on the camera is
it also has a tactile component, so under each of the letters
as well, there's a series of buttons, which spell the words in braille.
And I have no credit for this work, I just really admire it.
My coloc and comrade Brennan Roy, who's also a disabled artist,
is a lead creator on this piece that I believe
was created a bit in a…
as an ensemble project.
As well, there's a view of
a little bit of some of the green vine peeking out from a plant in
the room here.
[Diane] Thank you.
I wanted to know a little bit about your background, your story, how did you get to work in art?
[seeley] My parents both worked in arts and education, so
I grew up
with this from the beginning, really.
Specifically,
my mother in costume design,
and my dad in
music education, actually, voice.
But, as well, he would
teach, like, stage, voice, and diction classes in his
educational role, this is with a,
a small college in upstate New York.
And would lead directing a musical theater production with the campus
theater department every spring.
My mother also was
doing, like,
kind of a summer stock, theater
costume design outside of
other campus-based
theater department work as well.
Reader's theater, kind of a,
more of a dramatic
reading, staged reading of scripts.
That format is something that my dad did in a duo with a working partner
for years as well.
So…
Yes, and even more people.
My mother's second husband, and,
working in stage design, and…
you know, et cetera, et cetera. So, I was really raised by
people who,
you know, committed seriously to arts as a life and a professional practice.
And that enabled me to…
to absorb and to just fundamentally understand that it's…
that it makes sense as a life passion.
[Diane] So did you start with theater, with music? Did you start writing? What did you do?
[seeley] Some of all of it. You know, it was really…
There was a lot of encouragement, I would say, that I just…
was not particularly pushed, but just very…
I was introduced to multiple disciplines, you know, all at the same time,
and was celebrated in what I might want to explore.
So, I think,
creatively, I
probably very first started with
creating
alternative fairy tales and folktales, you know, just like
stories that were
type of bedtime stories that I started enjoying early on as a child, and then
starting to create some of my own,
tell them to my younger sister.
And a first kind of mentor figure who also really helped raise me a lot,
my dad's good friend and working partner in the reader's theater project,
had me dictate, once she realized that I had -
was starting to make up some of these stories,
she had me dictate them to her, she typed them out and created a first little,
very small chapbook.
I was probably 7, 8 years old.
So
I think that was the first space
of practice for me, but…
Also, you know, encouraged in singing,
learning dance, getting to start
initial dance classes and training as a kid…
Yeah.
[Diane] So when you were getting older, you're like, okay, I have all these
artistic practices around me. Did you go to art school, or did you decide to do something else?
[seeley] I've been adjacent to a lot of people in art schools
but I have not ended up
directly in that space.
I…
I felt very keen on
creative writing as a life pursuit.
and, you know, I initially went into
an undergraduate study focusing on
English, you know, literature being…
being a big focus point,
and
eventually was not
satisfied with,
the lack of
attention to other politics
that was offered in my…
In my academic experience there.
It took a while, but I
changed major at a certain point to Women's Studies.
I got politicized regarding feminism, that was very necessary.
And that didn't end up
quite the fit for me,
either, but continuing in a certain
arc, eventually I
finished bachelor's
with a dual focus,
I had moved to the West Coast by this point, so I had a
pretty radical
small institution I transferred to in San Francisco,
where I was able to finish a BA in
gender studies and performance studies.
Later on, coming into Canada, I
eventually finished a communication studies graduate diploma
in Montreal.
And I've done quite a bit of other…
you know, my own continuing education pursuits. I did
conservatory classes with the Berkeley Rep School of Theatre and so forth,
as well.
[Diane] So when you were in San Francisco, that's…
I know that you worked with
a famous group over there called Sins Invalid.
Can you tell us a little bit about how you got there, and what work you did with them?
[seeley] Yes. I had been
initiating my own
performance projects
since...
2001, I'll say,
so I…
I'll back up a bit. I moved
to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1998,
and ended up
finishing my last year of
classwork for my BA
2000-2001
with the performance studies focus, it was
a very fruitful time for me to create, like,
both material for my classes, but also just
everything was
dynamically
inspiring me at that point. I got connected with
community folks
in this kind of larger
space I began living in in the East Bay area,
and hosting a
short-form
mixed-medium
cabaret
type of presenting showcase once monthly over the course of a year.
So that was 2001 and 2002.
In 2002 as well, there was the first
- so far only - International
Queerness and Disability Conference
organized that was hosted at
San Francisco State University.
I got to
present a…
like an excerpt of
my sort of thesis solo performance project I had developed by that point,
which was very much,
you know, like a lot of…
a lot of us in the community. It was
essentially autobiographical
solo performance work
that dealt a lot with my…
some of my experiences with disability, and
the way I was understanding
this in my history alongside…
Like, shifting relationship with gender, as well.
In any case, this is just to say, like,
that occasion, the conference, which was
very meaningful, and also, you know, fraught, had its challenges,
but connected a lot of people
to a certain extent at an international level, together.
So, 2006, several years later,
I saw on a local,
you know, San Fran Bay Area,
email listserv,
a notice of
the first proposal of a show
that folks were organizing,
called Sins Invalid, and calling for
work from disabled artists
that would engage with
our relationships with sexuality and with embodiment
in some kind of
bold way. That was the initial invitation.
And I was like…
This calls me. Really, it felt, it felt very
aligned with some work I'd already been,
been sharing on my own.
However,
the timing didn't quite work out there.
I had a conflict. I had actually committed to
performing in a tour with another
group of trans people,
going and doing a little performance tour around the U.S.
when the first Sins show was going to happen. So
it was on my radar at that point, and I was very sad to miss the first year, and
really thrilled to learn that
they had gotten enough, you know, good, receptive
response, the first time that
they came around to the next year, 2007.
We want to organize something further, who's interested, get in touch.
So at that point, I did.
I basically went to have
a pretty low-pressure
audition slash interview, you know, discussing with
Leroy Moore and Patty Berne,
the two initial organizers.
They said:
your idea, you know, it lines up.
Let's put it together.
It was
truly
profound, how
meaningful the impact of
putting forth this work on stage ended up
being, not just for
the artists involved, but for
just how far the impact ended up going to audiences.
So, yeah, I feel
very personally lucky that I was able to,
to a certain extent, be in the right place at the right time, be in, kind of, the cultural milieu,
where people
reached a critical point of motivation
to bring work together and really
elevate it as well, on the kind of
international stage.
Yeah, I've done some writing about...
Like, some unique things about how Sins Invalid ended up emerging.
as a larger project, in terms of its
contributing factors,
to how it's emerged.
And I'm happy to share a link to the little bit of writing I've done on that so far.
But yeah, I…
For people who are not familiar, I really do encourage
looking into the website, and
other media that's available
about projects the organization has ended up fostering so far.
And I was, you know,
kind of an early part, but only one part of the overall
history of work at this point. I was,
I would say, considered part of the core collective of contributing folks
between 2007 and 2015.
That's the year that I ended up moving
out of California, from the Bay Area.
[Diane] There is one very important piece of literature or text
that is on the website of Sins Invalid.
And it's actually highlighting 10 principles of Disability Justice. This notion of Disability Justice
is really important and is used in a lot of…
When you study Disability Studies today.
I mean, I studied. Critical Disability Studies in Canada,
but speaking with my colleagues in the US, it's the same.
The 10 principles of Disability Justice, which you co-edited, right? You co-wrote this part?
[seeley] Yeah, I was one of…
a number of folks in a great collective of us,
who did contribute to
a collectively structured editing process.
So, Aurora Levins Morales is one of the folks who
came up, particularly with a lot of the language,
and Patty Berne as well, and
Leroy, you know, everybody had a part.
Yes, so I was one of
a number who
worked through how we wanted to
fine-tune the articulations.
And I'm really…
grateful for getting to be part of that process.
[Diane] Disability Justice is a really important part of Disability Activism,
and it's a really important part of
what it is to be an artist, with the notion of these Disability Culture and Disability Activism.
With the work you've done in disability justice,
which is a part of what I consider disability activism,
and which is a part of what is important for us as artists when we carry these stories and these narratives.
What is it for you to be part
of people who are
considering disability justice and disability culture and disability activism
as a core in their work?
[seeley] I'm proud, and I recognize, again, that I'm lucky to have
had the resources, and also had the motivation that I did
to connect myself into
the cultural space, the multiple spaces,
in the San Francisco Bay Area that
I don't think I would have been enabled otherwise to
build my understanding of my own self
and my lineage, even,
my connections within larger disabled culture.
That was a really…
life impactful
politicization for me
early on in my living there.
Absolutely.
And the connection with
space to explore this
identity,
dimensions of identity experience in arts.
Because
Disability Rights,
the disability rights movement
kind of, as it became initially framed out of the US,
has done very critical work, and
calling for disability rights
has been a key foundational
call, certainly.
And, within broad disability
focused spaces, it
can still be too easy to,
to neglect the
experience of
intersecting identities that many
disabled community folks do have,
that Leroy and Patty were really keen to
to build an intervention.
to that…
the space of omission and repression
of other experiences.
I guess I would say what it means to me
to be connected to this is,
it's a space where I feel some,
some pride, and definitely gratitude, and also really,
the ongoing opportunity
and the call to continue
highlighting this, putting my own attention
focused on these things, circulating that out to others
to the extent I can.
[Diane] And that work you carried from the West Coast to the East Coast at a certain point.
And today, you continue this work.
So when did you move Canada and to the East Coast?
[seeley] Yeah, I moved back East in 2017.
I left living in the Bay Area at the start of 2015, and
at that time, moved up the West Coast a bit further, and
still stayed in the U.S. a while, but…
Eventually, 2017, I
had found
a graduate school program that called me to…
I'd been thinking about going back to school, and
I'd been visiting, making some more connections in Montreal over the past few years.
So, I got into the Communication Studies program
at Concordia University there, and
ended up living in Montreal my first 5 plus years
in Canada.
Unfortunately, I found the French requirement a bit of a challenge to
stay anchored in Quebec, and eventually
went to go live in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for
another over two year period,
and most recently, I've come to live in
Toronto now for just over a year.
I would say my…
my art projects have…
Theater is certainly one big focus, but
I've continued to
have interdisciplinary interests and,
Yeah, I've been pursuing
projects at small and sometimes larger scales
in all the places that I have,
I've gone as an adult.
[Diane] So let's talk about this intersectional work.
So, I...
What's the ecological part, the political part, the artistic part?
How do you coordinate that in your work today?
[seeley] I'm following my passions.
I will add a little bit of a context note.
Although, as I said, I
grew up really immersed in,
in arts across disciplines, and
an education in them.
As well,
valuing the human
and ecological experience.
And really investing in
environmental
preservation and restoration
was something that…
that I absorbed early on in youth as well.
I took a role in a student club in my high school that was called the Earth Club.
My interest, you know, in adulthood
has just kind of grown and followed different directions over time.
So,
multiple projects of mine at this point have
an ecological focus. I really feel that
arts is such a
critical vehicle and tool
for connecting with people
at a level beyond just encountering
the factual details
of a circumstance.
So,
the aesthetic qualities
that come with an artistic experience, the
manner in which
it can reach people at emotional levels.
I have a, you know, a
kind of a growing practice in,
in education as well,
in terms of
having already led
more than two dozen
workshop sessions on,
again, mostly,
kind of arts-focused
stuff, and a lot of that has been writing
type
workshops, but
some of it has also been,
you know, leading, like,
basic, like, voice practice and kind of
vocal exploration 101 workshop once upon a time,
and just a lot that I learned from
my dad teaching voice.
I did some, you know,
kind of theater games, you know,
improv for actors
workshop facilitating at a certain point.
Other, you know, craft,
like, how to…
how to work with things in a tactile way,
some of that as well, so…
I'm just following wherever the interests end up
really growing for me, but…
I have on the plate at the moment a
a plan to start kind of a short-form workshop, three sessions,
that is focusing on
solarpunk-oriented
creative, speculative writing, specifically.
Looking forward to seeing who,
you know, gets
engaged with this in Toronto.
Also,
I have,
I'd say kind of a medium
size project that is
a multimedia installation-based,
something that could fit well in
an art gallery type of space, potentially,
that has components of both
three-dimensional, like, assemblage
work, as well as a performance component that is interactive,
with audiences, as well as educational workshop component, so…
Oh, sorry, there's a fourth component,
which I am motivated to
eventually
organize some kind of
programming this material, this kind of multimedia
piece of mine
that is very ecologically focused in…
I would really like to gather it alongside
work of other
disabled artists who are
more in visual arts
practice, potentially.
Although, again, I have a
performance component with mine, so,
very open to,
you know, finding collaborators who would want to share…
work in different kind of mediums. I've also,
you know, curated…
I think in majority, live performance,
kind of short-form showcase
material before, but also, like,
video film, etc.,
visual-audio work.
Yeah, I have a whole other bit of focus and practice in
media, and especially, like, film, film screening
facilitating that I've done, so…
In any case…
Yeah, I would, you know, for that particular project, I would like
eventually to
organize a group show that is thematic, of…
of other artists who identify as disabled who
also are creating work and come up with a way
for us to kind of share this together in ensemble that…
that is ecologically attentive, and that
specifically presents
a more optimistic
perspective.
I do feel that
space for
representing eco-grief, you know.
Or rage about
ecological loss and and threats.
This is all really valid,
and space for this is needed, absolutely.
Yet it's also just
very important
to me, and I think
something that
I haven't seen
mobilized publicly
as much yet.
You know, a space for
artists to reflect on
what our disabled perspectives bring
to a conversation about
what we're looking…
what we feel there is to look forward to
in this space, what there is to be hopeful regarding what we can contribute
in generative and productive ways
in our work,
to coexist well
with a shifting ecology.
And specifically, artists who are based in,
in Canada; they're--I'm find,
some I'm finding internationally who,
whose work are kind of touching on this, and I'm interested to
research a bit more, and maybe do some writing
as a dramaturge, about
looking at cases of
some other artists kind of working in this space that I've found, but…
Yeah, really looking forward to bringing in…
In general, I would say just more collaborative
projects, period. Like, that's…
That's a big motivator for me at this time.
And that are… and where there can be some elements of interactivity with audience.
[Diane] You also have a project called 'Modeling.' Would you mind telling us about that?
[seeley] Sure.
So, 'Modeling' has been
in development a good while now. I first
had
just the very seed
ideas
back in 2008, when I was active with Sins Invalid productions.
And some ideas emerged through
other peer artists I was connecting with at that time.
'Modeling' is a,
a theater piece
featuring two characters, a model and a photographer,
meeting to do a first photo shoot together.
And…
There is some experimentalness in the design, in that
I am writing the script, I have about
a full half hour
scene set of material to this point, but
I have a goal to finish this script.
And potentially, this is
part of the bit of interactivity and a
factor of collaboration that feels very important to me
at this point.
I do know that consent amongst the,
the performers involved is very
central to this project.
And so their interests, their input, and where the storyline goes
is going to, you know,
influence the ultimate decisions.
So let me be clear.
The characters, the model and photographer,
both have different
physical disabilities.
And, so,
the actors as well as,
ideally, all the creative team members at a point of building a production,
do experience disability as well.
The characters are not being
ridden with assigned genders.
So, something that's
important to me in the design is that...
that there be a communication to audiences
that there is also a rotating of cast.
That there will be
multiple people
asked to
take on these different roles of the model and photographer.
These could be performers with
different genders.
They will certainly have different types of embodiments.
And the whole point of this is to highlight the…
how power dynamics
may land differently.
as, for example...
Let's say someone who
identifies as female
playing the role of the photographer
one night, who is
negotiating some…
spicy dynamics with the,
the character of the model.
If that model is,
on a particular occasion, played by someone
presenting as male,
the way the material, the engagement feels,
is simply going to be different.
than if it's
two people identifying as female
who are in these,
these power dynamics.
You know, there could be
some element of crip joy
in the production of this work,
a space of
very active and exploratory
playfulness amongst the
people getting into these roles,
and what that could impart for audiences, too.
Hopefully some joy, and hopefully some real provocation as well, because
my point
also is to
bring attention to not just
an erotic potential
of… of…
you know, very enticing energy that could
potentially develop between
two artists who are
doing a shoot for a first time, and doing very intimate type of
work, you know, like, featuring the body and portraiture.
But to do this as
people who also, you know, experience physical disability, there's a lot of
potential for,
like, edgy, edgy energy to be kind of sparked off.
And a lot of that could be in, I think, really good...
let's say hot directions.
And at the same time, I feel like it's really important to be
putting forth work that,
you know, gets into nuance, gets into some more complicated space
about ways that
even people who share a certain extent of a peer
experience, a relationship,
in terms of, they both experienced
stigmatizing as disabled people.
that it's still possible that
sometimes one or both of them in this kind of situation might behave badly.
Maybe not everybody is, like,
recognizing where to respect consent.
you know, 100% of the time.
I think bringing in
the realism of our imperfections, and even the,
you know, kind of invoking the edge of discomfort of
needing to face that
breaching of boundaries and consent,
you know, it happens, it really can happen,
more than we want to admit.
And, you know, how can repair be navigated, potentially,
in these contexts,
when there's
multiple feelings and factors at stake.
So...
I could go on, but hopefully that gives a bit of a nugget of
this being a…
I feel quite juicy project that I hope could
get to a debut opportunity, and really…
Yeah, hold some meaningful impact for the,
the disabled community and our,
our peer audiences.
[Diane] Yeah, it's, it's really interesting because of course, this also triggers
some conversations about identity and about
the way we see ourselves and the way others see
our identities, whatever the identity is.
So, I think that your project, it has really a potential of also engaging
with the audience before or after, probably after,
so that they can reflect themselves.
And so that they can tell about
their own experience of these narratives.
[seeley] Yeah, absolutely.
I have spent a while imagining
ways to…
to…
bring out audience
input, questions,
and to potentially
work on
development opportunities with
disabled people in a given city, a given
municipal region,
who may not have,
maybe professional level
performance-based training,
or script writing, but whose lived experience
is rich, and is,
you know, something that would enable them to,
you know, consider, maybe like a play-shop
more than a workshop kind of space, if that makes sense. I really...
Again, this is where I've been thinking about, well, is it something that will eventually
would ultimately work
well, to be
devised by,
you know, again, maybe non-professional actor
community members. I think there could be different versions,
where different…
different community groups will kind of take the narrative
to a direction of their own choice.
You know. And that that is…
That has value, right, to kind of take up the premise idea, and
see, like,
which it could generate for them, but exactly. I think there's...
Probably there will eventually be a published version of this script,
but I very much want to invite people to,
to take up discussing
what it means for them, and to have that
be part of some community conversations, hopefully for,
perhaps important social change
regarding our,
our liberties and our obligations
towards, you know, respecting our space of sexuality and
kinship and care in different ways with each other.
[Diane] Well, these are fascinating projects, so yeah, I wish you all the best in these.
And I wanted to end this interview by asking you a question about
people who have counted in your career, people who have
motivated some parts of your work. If you have one or two people to think of,
who would it be and why?
[seeley] Thank you. I'll just go ahead to say that
Patty Berne, specifically, is who really
came first in my mind
for a motivator in
disability and arts
focused work.
Patty's amount of work
like, behind the scenes,
both for kind of Sins Invalid's
project as a whole,
is truly outstanding, but also, in particular, her
really long-term
movement building,
cross-issue community coalition building and connecting work
I think is still not
recognized that fully by a lot of folks
who are only just
familiar with
Sins as kind of this arts-focused
organizational space.
I think what I want to say about that is…
Patty's
work to
reach out, figure out how to just
make a phone call, send an email,
to people, you know, across the U.S. and internationally,
that they identified
could be
partners in some way,
toward expanding
intersectional, political
education and movement.
That's truly foundational to,
to how far
Sins Invalid, and also
many other
political networks
have ended up
going, you know, just like the amount of work
that she contributed
in that way, and so...
So, Patty's, their modeling.
For me, and many others.
Yeah. Lifelong impactful.
[Diane] Well, thank you so much, and we will publish some of the sources and resources
that you mentioned today, so that people can have a look at your work and.
have a look at your website, your projects.
And yeah, again, I wish you all the best for everything that you're accomplishing right now, which
are fascinating projects.
Thank you so much for being here today with us.
[seeley] Merci beaucoup Diane.
[Diane] Thank you. And, yeah, have a good one, and maybe see you around on the Toronto scene.
Bye!
♪ Closing theme music ♪