Mary Bunch and John Greyson launch Inaugural AMPD Queer Summer Institute
Inspired by radical new poetic methods of digital and intermedial performance storytelling, Transiting the Queer Uncommons: Queer Summer Institute in Research Creation (TQU) is dissecting the current queer/trans digital moment.
The summer session included two AMPD graduate-level courses, Performing the Queer (Un)commons taught by Canada Research Chair Mary Bunch and Global Queer Cinemas Confront the Pink Line with John Greyson.
The series of lectures, workshops, panels, and screenings featured international artists and scholars, including queer science fiction media artist and filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang; Columbian performance artist Nadia Grenados, and South African journalist and author of The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers, Mark Gevisser.
“The Queer Summer Institute in an exciting initiative that embodies the spirit of interdisciplinary and transnational inquiry that are an important part of graduate education in AMPD,” says Director of the Hemispheric Encounters Network, Dr. Laura Levin. “Our partnership grant team is delighted to support the organizers of the Queer Summer Institute in bringing some of the most innovative artists from across the Americas (graduate students and professional artists) to Toronto for cross-pollination of transborder, queer research-creation practices.”
Bunch and Greyson partnered with industry partners like the Toronto International Film Pleasure Dome, Buddies in Bad Times, the ArQuives, Hemispheric Encounters, Peripheral Visions Collaboratory (York University), Sensorium Centre for Digital Art and Technology (York University), VISTA at York University (Vision: Science to Application) and SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) to make the institute happen.
