Jackson V Krisp

The Cornman Cometh.

Louis Esme Cruz

Samonte Cruz

Samonte Cruz is a fierce trans, mixed race Pilipino, educator, organizer, singer/songwriter, audio engineer, and video editor. He has performed at various arts festivals in Canada and the US, including the Anti-Beauty Pageant, Seattle WA and Roots, Rhymes and Resistance, Vancouver BC. His curatorial work includes queer and trans specific events at Western Washington University: Brown Pride's Queer People of Color Film Festival, The Night After Judy Garland Died (Best Program, 2001/02, WWU) and Just Us: a queer youth art show at Allied Arts Gallery. He received technical training at Ground Zero Teen Centre, 2001 and Video In Studios, 2004 and is now teaching hands-on audio engineering and video production to marginalized youth.

Samonte organizes and teaches with Ugnayaan ng Kapatang Pilipino sa Canada/Filipino Canadian Youth Alliance, on Squamish & Musqueam territories (Vancouver). Salamat to our generous hosts! Mabuhay to Indigenous Queers out there!

William Maria Rain

William Maria Rain is a genderQueer mixed-race mizrahi/sephardi artist, currently living in chemically induced exile on the outskirts of olympia, washington. a survivor of multigenerational historical and "personal" trauma, incest, ritual torture, and non-consensual experimentation, billie lives with the consequences of history in a profound every-day kind of way, and s/he mostly does not believe in capital letters. also, william has multiple personalities and multiple chemical sensitivities, two things for which s/he is simultaneously enraged and grateful. also, billie is an insomniac. also, william is sick and stress makes hir sicker, so if you meet hir this weekend, please be kind.
You can find out more about hir work at Billie's Blessings.

Bobbi Kozinuk

Pardon me? Excuse me! Please don’t call me Sir! You can call me artist, I have had shows you know, yes, including Diffractions, in Venice and Lancaster. Call me performer, as I’ve explored gender in venues across Canada. You can call me technician, for I have aided many artists to create their vision, formerly at Western Front, at ECIAD and as an independent consultant. Call me a teacher, as I’ve taught hundreds to build their own low-power FM radio transmitters. You can even call me hostess as I’ve hosted, for several years, the radio art show Soundscapes on community radio CFRO, who released a CD of my sound art, Echo Locations. But when I am standing here in a skirt with my best make-up, Please don’t call me sir, even if you can only see the man that I was.

Earl

Earl currently lives in Montreal, Quebec, and is trying to learn more than corny-french since it’s such a limiting dialect. Sometimes she makes films and videos.

Connor McCollum

Connor McCollum is a dashing trans man bear fag living in polluted Toronto, loving his family and community but dreaming of cleaner/greener places. He works at a prisoner's rights organization providing support, counselling and education to men and trans women held in federal prisons in Ontario, living with/affected by HIV and Hep C. He is also involved in community organizations (PJAC-Prisoners Justice Action Committee) working to raise awareness around prisoners rights issues and related issues of immigration detention. He is amused to be refering to himself in the third person. He hopes folks get something from his flick, and that shit isn't still as bad for Trans people in Vancouver as it used to be.

Aiyanna Maracle

Aiyyana Maracle is many and different things to many and different audiences. She's coming back to Vancouver from her new home in Montreal, newly ensconced in McGill University as a Research Associate with the Centre for Research and Teaching on Women. Aiyyana is a multi-disciplinary artist; she's Mohawk; she's a grandmother.

Aiyyana has just finished working with a project titled "Queers and Careers", a joint initiative between McGill, CBC, and la Ville Montreal. Aiyyana will be returning to a short series of lectures, as she finalizes a porposal to teach a course in Native Art History at McGill and Concordia.

Colin Kennedy Donovan

Colin Kennedy Donovan is an anti-racist Irish/English/German/Spanish "white" physically (dis)abled genderqueer trans activist, performer, educator and writer. S/he has performed and facilitated workshops throughout the Pacific Northwest, including Against Patriarchy (University of Oregon--Eugene), Sluts Against Rape (Portland, Oregon), Bumbershoot and Seattle Poetry Festival.

Combining a sharp sense of humor with an astute analysis of politics and culture, Colin is the author of the radical (dis)ability zine Fuck Pity and the creator/performer of the Handi-Capable-Bi-Queer-Slut of the World, the in-your-face (dis)abled advice columnist.

Nation of Two

The guitar and drums duo Nation of Two was formed seven years ago in Seattle by Darius Morrison and Lauren Vignec. They learned how to play their instruments, sing, and write songs together and they have become each other’s major musical influence. Their patron saint is the inimitable high priestess, Nina Simone. Like her and like their other favorite musicians (the ferocious seventy-five year old drummer Elvin Jones and the beautiful firestorm PJ Harvey) they aim to create music that sounds the way they always wanted music to sound.

Darius, a female-to-male transgender Asia-American Queer, could have been cast as an outsider everywhere. Instead he has drawn strength from and given support to several diverse communities (feminist musicians, queer positive performance artists, Asian American activists, and artists of all stripes who respect his passion and commitment). Lauren seems to identify most strongly with musicians a generation (or two or three) older than herself. They have learned the lessons of the past from those who lived them (they are not trying to recreate some romanticized era). They are quite unapologetic about who they are, and they do not need to tokenize themselves or their music.

“The Kingdom” is their first CD and though they might be a new band to most, they have been together for some time and they are going to be around for quite a while. They genuinely hope you like their music.

You will find their CD’s in the local NW section or perhaps the Rock section of most major music stores.

Qwo-Li Driskill

Qwo-Li Driskill is a Cherokee Two-Spirit/Queer poet, essayist, activist, and popular educator also of African, Irish, Lenape, Lumbee, and Osage ascent.

From hir groundbreaking presentations on mixed race identities to hir skilled facilitation of the "Theater of the Oppressed" liberation movement for social justice, Qwo-Li's multi-issue approach to education gives a refreshing view of the cutting-edge concerns of the new milennium.

Kai Ling Xue

Kai Ling Xue was born in Hualien, Taiwan and moved to Vancouver in 1997 to pursue her dream of becoming an interdisciplinary artist. Her work explores women’s issues, race and sexuality. Her work has been shown at festivals and Biennales in Asia, Europe, the US and Canada. ArtMachine@gmail.com