TransForming Community 2


TransForming Community 2 was curated by Michelle Tea with a generous grant from The Haas Creative Work Fund. Qcc On-line shares with you some excerpts from this groundbreaking event.	TransForming Community 2 explores the friction at the intersection of contemporary trans and queer communities. With a burgeoning transsexual community growing in tandem with a genderqueer movement, what are the issues that arise when non-trans queers share cultural space with transpeople and genderqueers? With distinctly different needs and identities, what needs to be worked out between the transsexual and genderqueer communities?

Zak Szymanski is an all-purpose artist with a musical theater fetish and solid writing career. His creative and journalistic work has been published and featured in anthologies, books, newspapers, magazines, television shows, and films worldwide	Ryka Aoki de la Cruz is a trans goth dyke who has been published most recently in Beyond the Valley of Contemporary Poets, Girlchick.com, Grand Street, FEM Magazine, the Southern Poetry Review, Lodestar Quarterly, and Tsur. Ryka has work in the forthcoming anthology Poetry is Not a Luxury: Poems by L.A. Women of Color. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University, is a founder of Cornell University's Asian American Playhouse, and head coach of Cornell's Ivy League Judo Championship Team. She is the recipient of a University Award from the Academy of American Poets. She teaches writing at Santa Monica College and serves on the Transgender Advisory Board for APIHR (Asian Pacific Islanders for Human Rights)

Tre Vasquez, aka Rigomortis, was born & raised in Aztlan ( 5-2-0, what?). He currently works as a youth educator/organizer in the Bay. When he is not busy puttin it down in the classroom, he is puttin' it down on the mic using hip hop as a tool to mobilize and get folks hyped on some freedom of mind. He has toured nationally with the Sex Worker's Art Show 2004 and 2005 performing music and spoken word about survival as a young 2spirit person in the underground economy. He is also part of a projekt called "The We That Sets Us Free: Building a World without Prisons" a compilation CD honoring the works of artists and prisoners who reprezent and work for the freedom to be thru the abolition of prisons. This excerpt is from Qcc's TransForming Queer Community 2 which explored the intersection of trans and queer communities.	Keith Hennessy is an award-winning performer, choreographer, teacher and organizer. He lives in San Francisco and tours internationally. His interdisciplinary research engages improvisation, public actions and alchemy/shamanism as tools for investigating political realities. Hennessy directs CIRCO ZERO, a contemporary circus, in intimate spectacles for stage and street. He was a member of the collaborative performance companies: Contraband (85-94), CORE (95-98), and Cahin-caha, cirque bâtard (98-02). His work is featured in several books and documentaries, including How To Make Dances in an Epidemic (David Gere, Univ of Wisconsin: 2004), Gay Ideas (Richard Mohr, Beacon: 1992), and Dancers in Exile (RAPT Productions, 2000). Hennessy is a co-founder of 848 Community Space/CounterPULSE a thriving performance and culture space in San Francisco.

Juba Kalamka: A recording artist since 1988, Chicago native Juba Kalamka (a.k.a. Pointfivefag) is most recognized for his recent work as a founding member of "homohop" crew Deep Dickollective (D/DC) and his development of the label Sugartruck Recordings. Through Sugartruck, Kalamka has coordinated the release and promotion of four critically successful D/DC albums. Noted for his dialogues on the convergences and conflicts of race, identity, sexuality and class in pop culture, Kalamka has written and illustrated articles for Kitchen Sink, Colorlines, and the now-defunct bisexual issues magazine Anything That Moves. Additionally, he has been a speaker, panelist, and curator for numerous organizations and conferences, among them the San Francisco Black Gay/Lesbian Film Festival, and GLAAD. This excerpt was part of Qcc's TransForming Community 2 which explored the friction at the intersection of contemporary trans and queer communities.	Sherilyn Connelly is a San Francisco-based writer. She's featured at shows throughout California such as K'vetch, The Unhappy Hour, Writers With Drinks, Poetry Mission, Siren, Ladyfest Bay Area, the TGSF Cotillion, and The Vagina Monologues. Her writing can be found on paper in It's So You: 35 Women Write About Personal Expression Through Fashion and Style by Seal Press, I Do / I Don't: Queers on Marriage by Suspect Thoughts, Good Advice for Young Trendy People of All Ages by Manic D Press, the upcoming More Five Minute Erotica by Running Press, publications such as Girlfriends, Instant City, Holy Titclamps, Morbid Curiosity, her own self-published chapbooks, and online at medialoper.com and eros-guide.com. She curates Bad Movie Night at The Dark Room. This excerpt is from Qcc's TransForming Community 2 which explored the friction at the intersection of contemporary trans and queer communities

Joan Jett Black is a writer, performance artist, and activist who lives and works in San Francisco. His claim to fame may well be his run for President of the United States in the early 90s. Joam Jett Black continues to provoke and entertain audiences nationalwide.	Simone de la Ghetto: Performer and founder of Harlem Shake.