For most of July and August almost 80 hours of footage have been logging and capturing for Travel Queeries. The editing has been very successful and on August 16th in Seattle with was a focus group screening of the first rough cut, which mostly focused on issues around Pride in Poland and Serbia. On Aug. 23rd there was an additional focus group screening in London in partnership and as a fundraiser for the London Transgender Film Festival. There will be additional focus group screenings in Berlin and Brisbane as well in late Septmeber. Progress on other aspects of the project have been coming together well also. Gathering music for the soundtrack has been very successful and there are a great number of exciting artists and new projects that will be a part of the album, planning on a release in 2009 on Crunks Not Dead (Olympia, usa) and Emancypunx (Warsaw, Poland). In October there will be two fundraiser cabarets under the name Dirty Bird, in Seattle and Olympia, and in partnership with the touring musician Rae Spoon.
This past week Elliat also received notice that she the accepted applicant for the position of Site Coordinator for the National Performance Networks Annual Meeting, which is taking place this December in Seattle, WA. She will also be working as the venue manager for the Vera Project during this years Bumbershoot Festival. She has also gotten back involved as a staff member with Keeping the Faith’s transitions program for women who were formerly incarcerated as the video documentarian. As an organizational consultant, she has been working with Frances Popstojanovic in organizing and developing promotional material for her painting series King Poppy based on a ‘feline fantasy’ of her late cat and his day dream adventure personas (website soon to be launched).
Late September will kick off attendance as a student at Goddard College with a week and a half long residency at the schools campus in Plainfield, Vermont. This first semester will mostly focus on completing Travel Queeries, documenting work with the National Performance Network and also the video work currently being done with the Keeping the Faith prison transitions program with the Pat Graney Company. In addition, a new project based in the organizational arts community will most likely be incorporated into the school focus as well. The project is called Emerging Arts Leadership Initiative, with the project focus in having an ‘Art Leadership Lab’ that look at What are the Major Opportunities of our Time? and How can Arts Practitioners be Effective Partners in Pursuing them? This project came out of a discussion at the America for the Arts conference and is hosted and funded by 4 Culture.
In other news, Elliat just celebrated her 25th birthday on Aug. 19th with a fabulous tea party. She has also been having lots of baking time this summer with banana bread and scones (with tea).
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August 24th, 2008
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The 6th Bend-It Extravaganza had a very successful turn out over the sunny Pride Weekend (June 27th-29th) this year in Seattle. The arts festival’s programming all went really well- bands fill Cal Anderson Park as queer young kids and their friends lay in the grass with critical mass circling behind and Vain hair salon doing make-overs in the back. The fashion/drag show, workshops, films and spoken word were also very successful and the festival registered over 400 people, who were also all fed throughout the weekend for free. The organizing group has started to debrief and begin to restructure for next year, which Elliat will be bowing out of. Although she does plan on writing a manual/guide on the festival as a school project this upcoming year. Image above from article in The Stranger: Queer Bandits.
Travel Queeries has recently gained some new amazing collaborative artists and production team members including Vagina Jones (Berlin, Video/Music) and Ryan Rothermel (Motion Graphics/Titles). In Addition, the first focus group screening of a rough cut of the film will be on August 16th at 5pm at the Northwest Film Forum. The event is free and you must RSVP. Please contact us to register: travelqueeries@gmail.com. There will be additional focus group screenings in Berlin and London in August and September as well.
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July 5th, 2008
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Travel Queeries has recently obtained all the necessary equipment for doing the editing self-sufficiently, made possible through a great fundraiser in mid April. The Travel Queeries fundraiser , called Dirty Bird, consisted of local queer performers including Sir La Muse (Elliat’s Bio Drag Queen Performance Persona), Stella Rose, Christopher Darling and Cowgirl Annie- special thanks to The Sunset House. The next event will take place in mid July/early August in Seattle, as well as possible shows in Vancouver, B.C. and Olympia, WA. Elliat and Margaritte have been holding production meetings to develop storyboarding and Sid Peterson, working remotely from NYC, has been working as a project adviser while working towards passing the BAR exam. Elliat is heading capturing footage and making the first rough cut, in addition to putting on an additional fundraiser, which will allow the project team to hand off the making of the final cut of the film to a professional editor. Travel Queeries was recently awarded a space grant by the Northwest Film Forum to present a focus group screening in their main theater space, taking place in mid August in Seattle (and there will be two other focus group screenings in Berlin and London, hosted by Sid Peterson, Associate Producer). The project currently has a crew of four volunteer/interns transcribing and four translators working on interviews in Italian, Polish and Spanish. Elliat will also be producing a new podcast interview with Pike, a queer traveler based out of San Fransisco, about her recent travels through South America and her experiences with radical queers in Brazil.
The Bend-It Extravaganza, the free arts festival led by-and-for queer young people and their friends , which Elliat is founder and currently managing director of, has become a major focus of her work this spring. She has been working with co-lead Anne O’Dowd, Operations Manager, on overseeing a collective of 15 or so organizers for this three day long arts festival, taking place over Pride weekend in Seattle, WA. With the help of Anne and Zeyah, who headed facilitation, the mid-organizing retreat for Bend-it took place in late April, focusing on the goals, values and the mission statement of the festival. A majority of the venues and programming for the festival have been confirmed and the most up to date schedule can be found at the festivals website: www.benditbandits.org. The Bend-It Extravaganza, coming up on it’s 6th and final year, will take place June 27th-29th, 2008 in Seattle, mainly in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. In mid May, Elliat announced her retirement/resignation from the organizing of future festivals, as well as the retirement of the Bend-It Extravaganza, so as to allow for new space for to be created for the re-visioning and naming of the festival by the current collective, so they are able to move forward and take up leadership for the future direction of the festival.
Other recent news is Elliat’s application to Goddard College for Fall 2008 for B.A. completion in Individualized Studies, will begin with a residency in mid August in Vermont. The focus of the degree is Leadership Development and Organizational Structures with an Artist Mentality/Lens and a Cross-Cultural and International Focus. The direction for Fall ‘08 will be on basic studies and research in group and organizational structuring, reports on past projects (to gain credits), as well as work on the National Performance Network’s annual meeting, taking place in Seattle, December 2008. Future plans and site specific research for the degree includes Berlin, Germany for 2009-2010, as well as researching and visiting organizations in Brazil and Japan in 2010-2011.
Ellen Bromberg, an associate professor of the University of Utah in Dance and Media and recent Guggenheim Fellow, is the lead video artist for House of Mind, the new performing arts instillation by Pat Graney. Elliat is currently working as Ellen Bromberg’s assistant for the video work in the project, including planning and assistance for film shoots during Spring-Fall 2008. House of Mind will be touring Nationally in 2009-2010 in Houston, Miami, NYC and Minneapolis, and is scheduled to premier in Seattle in November 2008.
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June 3rd, 2008
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Travel Queeries is being editing into a rough cut, with the technical support of Ruby and story boarding and arch development headed by Elliat and Margaritte. The extended trailer is now online and can be seen on Youtube. Sid Peterson, our Associate Producer is moving to NYC in April, but will be working on the film by helping to promote and network the film in NYC and then Berlin this summer. The production is still aiming for October 2008 for our final cut so we can submit to Berlinale for a premier. Travel Queeries also just screened our extended trailer at Post Alley Film Festival at the Pike Place Market.
The Bend-It Extravaganza has gained an amazing group of organizers for this years festival (June 27-29). Elliat has been writing grants and confirming facilities for the festivities and heading up organizational structure and management with Anne O’Dowd. The festival is very lucky to have the amazing partnerships also of Youth Speaks Seattle and Hip Hop Period, along with other great community organizers.
Sir La Muse (Elliat’s performance name) has been in the process of developing new pieces with collaborative artist Cowgirl Annie. Sir La Muse will be performing at the Femmitasia! a night of Queer Femme art and performance (Hosted by the Von Foxies) on Saturday, March 15th @ the Rainier Cultural Center. Elliat is also putting together a queer performance showcase at The Sunset House (a housing co-op on Capitol Hill, Seattle) that will be happening in early April, consisting of a lineup of new Seattle performers, including Cowgirl Annie, Stella the trash drag queen, Christopher the fag go-go dancer, MC Glammor and others! Sir La Muse’s new performances deal with body accessorizing and lip syncing birds and drag from multiple angles.
Elliat is also working as a consultant in the artistic and production development/polishing of Stonewall Youths Annual Drag Show, happening March 29th at the Historic Capitol Theater in Olympia, WA. The show is made up of a script written and performed by the young people involved with Stonewall Youth and is based around the story of a queer youth going to school and the discovery of Super Queeros.. and much more!
Elliat has also been working with a very talented group of untrained dancers, choreographed by Pat Graney, in a new series “Living Room Ballet,” which is a video project posted online and will hopefully be integrated into House of Mind (Pat Graney’s new artistic project).
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March 2nd, 2008
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The Bend-It Extravaganza will be having an open community eval meeting on January 14th to kick off the organizing and collaborations that will make the festival possible for this June. I am currently writing for funds and setting up meetings with community partners, as well as meeting with the ‘Bend-It Bandit’ organizers. (See Projects page for more information).
Travel Queeries is holding production meetings to work on the creative development of the project, leading up to editing and focus group screenings. We currently have a Production Inter, translators, 4 Producers and a possible editor. Animation sequences and visual art collaborating artists are sending in work and sketches so we can start to build our storyboarding.
Keeping the Faith: The Transitions Program has been having bi-weekly meetings, working on developing the timeline and project structures and working on creating drafts that can serve as presentation models. Currently there is a lot of legal and services research to do, which we hope to find an intern for.
I recently became a member of Artist Trust and Women in Film: Seattle and plan on being actively involved in both of these organizations throughout this next year, becoming more networked into the local arts organizational community. I am also in the process of getting a business licenses for these projects (Travel Queeries and Bend-It) and will have the main name as Elliat Creative (also learning more about taxes and financial aspects of running small business). I am in the process of applying to Goddard College and researching projects and learning tracks for “Leadership Development and Organizational Structures with an International and Cross-Cultural Focus” (hope to work with the National Performance Network and some other organizations based in Europe).
During the last weekend in January, I will be attending Guiding Lights mentoring network as a part of developing mentoring programming and knowledge for my current projects (namely the Transitions program).
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January 7th, 2008
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