30 Silver Street, Reading, RG1 2ST

Double Okay: Digital Slip //:embrace

Price: 
Free

Digital Slip //:embrace is an online, experimental performance and cabaret-style event - we offer a queer-centred space for artists who know what it is like to be othered, alienated or rendered invisible. //:embrace is a digital evening of performative reclamation and a right good laugh. 

The artists’ work are all tied together in a warm embrace. We are trying to navigate touch in a socially distanced time, reaching out to each other through sound and imagine ways we can be together.

Double Okay are ur dream queer and trans trio – Ollie Musson, G K Field and Oren Shoesmith. We live in Reading, and started putting on local queer events over a year ago. We did this to showcase our own performance work and build a community of local queer people.

Free access to the event will be available to watch afterwards on the Rising Sun Arts Centre website. This event will have closed captions and audio description throughout. It will be a relaxed performance, with an option for audience engagement in the comments.

//:embrace is a queer centred space; all genders, expressions, sexualities are welcome. Zero tolerance for harassment/discrimination. No transphobia, homophobia, racism, islamophobia, body shaming, whorephobia, fatphobia, sexism, disablism/ableism.

Any questions, please contact us at doubelokaygroup@gmail.com or call us on 0118 966 7644.
Find the Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/3236721196418493
 

THE ARTISTS

Ollie Musson/Sheer Obsession

Sheer Obsession is a Reading-based, Sheffield hearted drag artist. They're a performer, writer, organiser and all round dabbling legend. Sailing the gender bending seas, they shape shift somewhere between King and Queen. They reclaim traditional art methods through print, drawing and digital work. They use drag, spoken word, and costume to create personal narratives. These are often explored through live performances, sculptural installations and projected video.

Sheer Obsession wants to read you poetry and wear what they want. They want to be the Captain of the ship whilst you jump through a portal into other worlds. They want to travel communally, trying to pack and unpack their mental/physical health and gender all into your suitcases. They hope that you can help each other to drag your luggage carefully along the side.

Sheer Obsession's practice explores the mouth as a useful tool to travel through our pain. They look to the power of voice in the realms of bodily transcendence and transformation. As passages to the insides of our bodies, the mouth is a portal to ourselves, and to each other.

 

Mister Frank

Mister Frank is a non-binary Drag King, developed through real life stories and past lives. A Love Letter: Return to Sender is a work in progress spanning IRL and digital performances. Mister Frank's character is explored through multimedia. They lip sync,

mime, clown and use digital projections as a means to tell a story of love and heartbreak.

Through love songs from the 1950’s to present day, the audience is taken on a time travelling journey. Whilst also telling an emotional, personal history, Mister Frank confronts themselves. They also question how the world views romantic love.

Mister Frank creates digital landscapes in which the performance is set. They use trippy, edited footage of Reading landscapes, with personal scenery and surroundings. Mister Frank combines this with found footage from films. These visuals then interact with the musical narrative, and Mister Frank’s movements.

 

Luca Soudant

Luca Soudant (1993, The Netherlands) is an artistic researcher, independent curator, critical thinker, writer, teacher and DJ (Them Fatale) based in Rotterdam. They have an academic research background in noise theory, queer feminist methods of inquiry and new materialism. In addition to their academic research, they have developed a research-based art practice within the department of Critical Studies at Sandberg Institute Amsterdam. Their current practice consists of (academic) writing, performative lectures, tender listening practices, installations and sound pieces.

Troubling and blurring the line between theory and practice is the melodic rhythm they want to play by in all they do. Also, because the baseline of their work questions hierarchies of knowledge, the incorporation of embodied knowledges is an important to their work. At the moment they are continuing to develop their research into, what they termed, ‘sonic manspreading’, what it means to be (literally) touched by sound and how sonic thinking can offer transformative political models toward a more inclusive world. As part of their process, repetition and low frequencies are essential elements to healing and ways of queer world making.

 

Valeria Radchenko

I am a multimedia artist and music producer. I was born in Russia, but raised across London and Rotterdam. Working with sound, performance and video, I explore the relationship between personal narratives and wider patterns of life. I am particularly interested in the role of technology and sound in present-day practices of magic and spirituality. The potential of electronic music in effecting our states of consciousness and emotions is also very interesting to me. My practice explores sci-fi, technology, care, consciousness, ritual, relation, queerness, senses, and communication. In essence, I’m interested in vibration, movement, affect.

I think there is an urgent need for humans as a collective to address our relations with each other. This includes non-human life and the Earth. This process starts with addressing our relationships to ourselves. For this reason, my work often reflects the exploration of my relationship to myself. The unsustainability and oppression inherent to our systems of living, troubles and angers me, and this fuels my practice.

I am driven by the desire to assist in the reduction of suffering, and in creating a world in which we all thrive. I aim to share love and joy through immersive experiences, from the perspective that this is a radical practice. By dreaming up the world in which I wish to live in, and ways to be there now, I hope to contribute to the shifting of our systems of living from within.

Date(s): 

Volunteers for this event

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