OK, I gave in

and got myself a tumblr:

http://notyourexrotic.tumblr.com

I'm not sure if I'll keep this yet. Long form posts are hard and I was looking for something more scrapbooky. The experiment continues!

Starting and rethinking

I have just arrived in San Francisco for the MFA this blog is about. The MFA classes themselves haven't started yet; I am currently doing a Summer Bridge program geared for international students and anyone who wants to get back into US academic writing styles (though CIIS is admittedly not as traditionally academic as most places).

In the weeks since I last posted on here, I have mostly been preoccupied with getting the logistics together for my course and this epic huge move. The Blogger format doesn't lend itself easily to short snippets of inspiration; I have tried to find non-Tumblr microblogging alternatives but none are well-supported. (My past experiences with Tumblr, while a great platform for microblogging, was so mired with drama and echo-chambering that it became too toxic to stay.) Also I was experiencing a lot of personal emotional shifts - and still am - and wanted to keep them private rather than (over)share with the world as I would normally do.

I do feel that I likely need to loosen the focus of my project, since I am not even sure what sort of work I will be doing or what my opportunities are. I do suspect that sexuality and culture (and their uncomfortable intersections) will make up a large part of my eventual MFA, but I also want the opportunity to grow and explore pathways that I can't even imagine now, letting the final project take up whatever form it needs to rather than being so didactic so early.

It will definitely be very personal, even if I don't explicitly make it so. Art was always a means of expressing some issue or idea about myself and my experiencesl even the more superficial of my acts relate to a personal deep interest (such as my Darren Hayes fangirling, which also informs a lot of my creative and emotional processes as well as ideas on mentorship and guidance).

The challenge then would be to not let my personal matters be carved up and destroyed in a degree setting, as it happened in my Bachelors, where my more heartfelt creative writing pieces were told off for "unrealistic characters" (the characters DO exist! they're me!). As it is I'm going through a huge mess of culture shock + depression + illness (a persistent respiratory infection; doctors seem to be booked up till October) + uncertainty. I live a little further out from city centers or hubs, necessitating a multiple-block walk or public transport to get to anywhere non-residential; I would explore more, but my current residential area has a reputation for danger after dark, and I'm unwilling to go somewhere unplanned just yet. (Today on the bus a young woman sitting in front of me wielded a knife, ready either to attack or defend. My naive foreign softy self was chilled.)

I was heartened to have been remembered by Robert, one of the caretakers of the Center of Sex and Culture and a father figure to me the last time I was in SF (especially after a really bad accidental-dosing incident where he and his partners Carol and Dina housed & cared for me); I dropped by the Center to say hi and he offered the keys to the place if I wanted to come in to study (their library looks AWESOME) or rest. It's not far from CIIS and is a hell of a lot more convenient than going all the way back home and then back again; I may take him up on the offer. (I wonder if I could get a locker to keep my stuff for late-night jaunts. And maybe a bed.)

If anyone has better ideas on a Tumblr-esque blogging platform, I'm all ears. Also if you are in San Francisco or the East Bay and want to hang out or chat or have suggestions, do tell!

HIV/AIDS PSA features gay South Asian couples and messages of responsibility

The Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention in Canada has recently released a PSA video on YouTube with the message of HIV/AIDS prevention being a joint responsibility - in much the same way as respecting partners' last wishes, keeping them safe from harm, or even making sure their dinner doesn't boil over. Befitting the organisation, almost all the actors in the video are South Asian:

Responsibility and care-taking are strong tenets of South Asian relationships and families; from my experience, sometimes even more so than attraction or sexual compatibility. It's interesting to see this in a queer context, especially with men: there are some social stereotypes of the women in the family being responsible for people's well-being, but also a strong responsibility on the men to be the caretakers and safekeepers.

Thanks Queerty for the mention.

"Telling" by Laura Hershey

This is why I'm doing this.

What you risk telling your story:
You will bore them.
Your voice will break, your ink will
spill and stain your coat.
No one will understand, their eyes
become fences.
You will park yourself forever
on the outside, your differentness once
and for all revealed, dangerous,
the names you give to yourself
will become epithets.
Your happiness will be called
bravery, denial.
Your sadness will justify their pity.
Your fear will magnify their fears.
Everything you say will prove something about
their god, or their economic system.
Your feelings, that change day
to day, kaleidoscopic,
will freeze in place,
brand you forever,
justify anything they decide to do
with you.
Those with power can afford
to tell their story
or not.
Those without power
risk everything to tell their story
and must.
Someone, somewhere
will hear your story and decide to fight,
to live and refuse compromise.
Someone else will tell
her own story,
risking everything.

- Telling, Laura Hershey (via 1000 Reasons Not to Start Making Art)

Filmmaking Workshops for Queer Women of Color in SF - applications open!

The Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (QWOCMAP) is now taking in applications for a number of filmmaking workshops to run from August to December 2012. According to QWOCMAP:

Want to create your own film?
Want to rock your skills to create social justice?
Want to develop your leadership as an artist-activist?
Through this intensive, fun and transformative 16-week Introductory Workshop, you will learn the technical, artistic and leadership skills to create your own film.
Each participant will create, write, direct and edit a 5-minute video project.
You will develop a story idea, write a script, draw storyboards, create shot lists, operate cameras and compose shots, set-up lights & sound, direct actors and manage crew, edit, and send your film to film festivals and beyond.

Applications are due August 3rd 2012 and there are options for Mondays and Thursdays. Send in your application now! 

GO Magazine's 100 Women We Love includes queer South Asian leaders & POC artist trailblazers

GO Magazine's 100 Women We Love showcases a wide range of LGBTQ women (mostly based in the US & Canada) across fields & occupations making a big impact on society. I'm going through the list right now and am happy to see a strong POC presence, including from South Asian backgrounds. Here's a selection (I've added links to the projects quoted):

Gauri Manglik
At 23, Gauri Manglik is already making her mark on the predominantly male tech startup scene. After graduating from NYU, where she majored in computer science, the young entrepreneur quit her job in finance to start her own company. She is now the CEO and co-founder of Fondu, a growing social network for sharing “bite-size restaurant reviews” with friends. [...] “Being a lesbian and an Indian in a leadership role is really cool,“ she says. “I’m proud to bring my unique perspective to the startup scene where a diversity of ideas is important when trying to create innovative solutions. I’m glad I can do this, so that other people can do it too.”

Kim Crosby
Trinidad-born, Toronto-based artist Kim Crosby is a queer survivor, multidisciplinary artist, activist, consultant, facilitator and educator who has plumbed society’s inequalities and transformed her experiences into potent tools for empowerment.[...] Today Crosby is a core member of T-Dot Renaissance, a collective of emerging artists of color; and a part of the nationally touring Les Blues group, an ensemble of black queer folks committed to decolonization through performance. She is the co-founder of The People Project, a movement of queer and trans folks of color toward empowerment through alternative education and activism; and the NYC-based Brown Grrlz Project of “femme of center” individuals. “It's not our differences that separate us, it is our inability to embrace and respect difference,” Crosby affirms. “Freedom does not come at the expense of another group of people. We must fight for each other; it's either all of us or none of us.”

Mariko Tamaki
“Lesbians are superheroes. Everyone knows this,” claims Mariko Tamaki, the Toronto-based author and performer known for injecting her work with autobiographical, queer outsider characters. This energetic artist won critical accolades for her collections of snarky observational essays, True Lies: The Book of Bad Advice and Fake ID; and for her live storytelling at Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and on the CBC’s DNTO radio series. [...] Tamaki draws inspiration for her work directly from her own life. “[Lesbians] are the grease that keeps the wheels moving in every arts and activist community,” she tells GO. “I am even more awesome at what I do because I know I am part of an incredible, talented, sexy community. Being a lesbian has set the bar.”

Madeleine Lim
"Art is activism—it’s an important part of any social justice movement. Artists need to be seen as leaders, not just the entertainment,” Madeleine Lim says. When she was 23, Lim fled her native Singapore to escape government persecution. Ten years later, she created and directed Sambal Belacan in San Francisco, a documentary film about queer Asian emigrants that is still banned in Singapore. The film’s impact, and her position as one of few queer women of color on the international film scene, prompted her to found Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (QWOCMAP). “I decided that by training other queer and transgender women of color, we could get more films out into the world. If our community creates our own films, then we have honest representations of who we are instead of destructive stereotypes. It empowers us to tell our own stories.”

Crowdfunding my way through (and why I'm not doing that so heavily now)

In the search for funding for the MFA and for this project overall, a few people have suggested going the way of crowdfunding - putting up a pitch on Kickstarter or Pozible, including attendant video and interesting perks, and see the money roll in. This has become an especially popular suggestion since I am ineligible for most grants & scholarships due to my residency status (bridging visa in Australia, about to be an international student in the US).

I do not think I am at the point where crowdfunding is a strong option just yet.


There are two main factors that make a crowdfunding project successful, more so than anything else:

1. There is a sizeable crowd willing to contribute money.
2. There are tangible benefits or products - making the project more of a preorder.


Point 1: I do have a growing following, especially from those that knew me as Tiara the Merch Girl (my first burlesque iteration) and/or followed me on my relatively busy Tumblr & essays around various blogs. However, from my past experiences with crowdfunding, my crowd tends to not have a lot of money to spare. They have plenty of goodwill, and some spread the word, but for the most part they are themselves hard up on cash and would rather keep every cent.

I have also noticed that, at least in Australia, there isn't as strong a notion of personal philanthropy as there may be in the US. In Australia, people expect the Government to be the main source of funding, even if they deeply disagree with the current Government's politics. Even corporate funding was frowned on because of assumptions of loss of control. This was a major culture shock for me when I first arrived to Australia - in Malaysia (where funding options aren't that plentiful) it seemed that most artsy activist iconoclast projects would stay away from Government funding because that would mean being a puppet or mouthpiece for a ruling party with a lot of issues around bigotry, whereas private funding was often free(r) from that. In the US I notice more support for grassroots fundraising, such as the Awesome Foundation (a group of 10 trustees pool money together to fund an "Awesome" project every month in their city) - yet when I advocate for this in Australia, I have met deep resistance, including accusations of encouraging "neoliberal" ideas.

This frustrates me, because from my experience lobbying the Government on many issues (particularly immigration and bridging visas), whoever is in Government doesn't care. Some people tend to see it as one political party over another, but I've noticed that almost every party has its blind spots. I have no time to trust the Government to change its mind and consider me a viable avenue for funding, and no party will care. So I have to look for unconventional means...but there's still a lot to consider.

Point 2: People make a big deal about the perks because they want to feel like they got something for their support of Such-and-Such a project. Altruism can only go so far, and tax deductibility (which legally means you cannot provide gifts in exchange) isn't always accessible for everyone. People point to Amanda Palmer or Double Fine, both million-dollar fundraiser projects on Kickstarter (many griping that those two take away money from other projects - something I deeply disagree with but won't get into right now) as an example of altruistic generousity - forgetting that those two projects, and many others, were essentially shopfronts. You could buy music, art, games, services, miscellaneous merchandise, even personal attention - the difference here is there is a target goal, you can pay more than the perk requires, and you also get some involvement in the larger-scale project you're funding.

I'm really at the beginning stages of this project; I'm not even in California yet! I have some ideas about where I want to go with this, but so much of the course & project really depends on who my cohort members are, what they get up to, and what I explore in SF - things that can radically alter the course of my degree. I do not know what sort of resources I have up there yet, let alone work out if I can access them and have the time & money to make the items I need. My background is in performance art and writing, two fields that can be hard to create for presale and still have a concrete representation of your art. Thank you for funding my burlesque, here's a hair from the nipple tassel. In my last crowdfunding attempt I found that I couldn't really make some of the perks happen because I didn't know the resources available or just didn't have enough money/time.

By a year's time I should already have a tangible project in mind to end my MFA with, and whatever that project is likely will be much easier to crowdfund for. Tickets to a performance, recordings of music, published writing...there's something there for people to pick up and interact with. Right now, though, there's not a whole lot of money in crowdfunding for potential crowdfunding.

Once I have a following that is willing to put their money where their mouth is, and I have something to offer them, then I can think about crowdfunding in more detail. The very short deadlines do not help either; I'm just really thankful my parents are still willing to help. Right now, though, I need to concentrate on getting started.

That doesn't mean I don't appreciate support or have nothing to offer! Check out the ways to support Not Your Ex/rotic, and visit my official website to see more about me and what I do.