Curators Nima Esmailpour and Jordan Arseneault in person
Since 2006, the Queer Media Database Canada-Québec Project (QMDCQ) has worked to resuscitate a rich heritage of queer moving-image makers and their works. Curated by the QMDCQ in partnership with the Montréal-based collective Taklif: تکلیف, Disorienting Diasporas is a migrant mixtape par excellence. Spanning nearly two decades with stops in South Asia, the Middle East, and the Maghreb before passing through Canadian border controls, this program brings together work by Brown diasporic artists who elude the logic of either/or in favor of the neither/nor of unbelonging. In their play with media and expectations, these artists open the way to a lucid, radical, and unyielding reflection on the marginalized trajectories of Brown diasporas in Canada since the 1990s. Featuring works by Atif Siddiqi, Hejer Charf, Ari Nooranii, Kevin d’Souza, Farrah Khan, Sharif Waked, Fawzia Mirza, 2Fik, and Safiya Randera.
1998–2015, various artists, Canada, multiple formats, ca 60 minutes followed by discussion
Presented in partnership with the Queer Media Database Canada-Québec Project. Introduced by Nima Esmailpour from Taklif: تکلیف and Jordan Arseneault from the QMDCQ
The Queer Media Database Canada-Québec Project aims to maintain a dynamic and interactive online catalogue of LGBTQ Canadian film, video, and digital works; their makers; and related institutions. The website, mediaqueer.ca is a bilingual online research and curatorial tool that provides researchers, students, artists, academics, curators, cinephiles, critics, and community members free access to a rich array of art historical and biographical information about queer moving image works from the 1930s to today.
Taklif : تکلیف is an imaginary space and a traveling library for radical imagination dedicated to learning, unlearning, and relearning practices through art and dialogue and an artist-run initiative formed with the ambition to rigorously bridge our intellectual activities with our emotional embodied intuitions, within and beyond institutional settings.