Transcript Episode 53 with seeley quest

[Opening theme music]

[Diane:] Hello and welcome to this episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation. My name is Diane Kolin. I am a white woman with short brown hair, blue eyes and glasses, and today I wear a grey top. Behind me is a brown piano in a room with white walls. This series presents artists, academics and project leaders who dedicate their time and energy to a better accessibility for people with disabilities in the arts. You can find more of these conversations on our website, artsably.com, which is spelled a-r-t-s-a-b-l-y dot com. 

[Theme music]

Today, ArtsAbly is in conversation with seeley quest, a trans disabled environmentalist, arts and equity educator, living in Toronto in Canada. You can find the resources mentioned by seeley quest during this episode on ArtsAbly’s website, in the blog section. 

[Excerpt of "Through Our Fingers"]

[seeley] Originally, sand comes from mountains and cliffs. So, erosion wears down rock faces, boulder pieces become pebbles. Rain, snow, wind and gravity move them into springs, into rivers, into lakes and oceans. In deserts, extreme day versus night temperature shifts stress rocks that crack. Wind gusts keep abrading pieces over millions of years. Sand as wind-scoured in deserts instead of water-scoured takes a different shape, a geometry that doesn’t stick together well, it just keeps slipping through our fingers. One place where a lot of sand goes is into glass. Silicon dioxide, or silica, is also a refining agent in wine, in cosmetics, it's in toothpaste, hairspray, powdered foods, in desiccant packets. Many plastics, construction alloys, paints, tires. Sand also goes into sandboxes, aquariums, terrariums, sandbags. As well, silicon is used to make microchips for our tech devices. Crystals conduct electric charges, transmitting data. We might ask: what subtle vibrations echo now, between our microchipped devices, and sand kin elsewhere? 

[Interview]

[Diane] Welcome to this new episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation. Today, I am with seeley quest, a trans disabled environmentalist, arts and equity educator, living in Toronto, in Canada. Welcome, seeley! 

[seeley] Hi, happy to join. 

[Diane] Thank you for joining! And I love your background, you're gonna tell us a little bit about what is in your background right now, but would you mind presenting yourself and giving a visual description, maybe? 

[seeley] Sure. I'm a white androgynous trans person who has fairly short cut hair, that's a lot of silver color showing in it. I'm wearing a black t-shirt with a black polka dot patterns button shirt over it. I have some light facial hair right now, and I'm in a, a room that's... that's white, but has a view of some large banner art behind me, so I will move a moment so there's more of a full view of this image. So, it says, across this banner, which is black, in big capital letters that are very multicolorful: Access is love. It's fabric-based. So, uh... Something that's maybe not as easy to perceive from this view on the camera is it also has a tactile component, so under each of the letters as well, there's a series of buttons, which spell the words in braille. And I have no credit for this work, I just really admire it. My coloc and comrade Brennan Roy, who's also a disabled artist, is a lead creator on this piece that I believe was created a bit in a... as an ensemble project. As well, there's a view of a little bit of some of the green vine peeking out from a plant in the room here. 

[Diane] Thank you. I wanted to know a little bit about your background, your story, how did you get to work in art? 

[seeley] My parents both worked in arts and education, so I grew up with this from the beginning, really. Specifically, my mother in costume design, and my dad in music education, actually, voice. But, as well, he would teach, like, stage, voice, and diction classes in his educational role, this is with a, a small college in upstate New York. And would lead directing a musical theater production with the campus theater department every spring. My mother also was doing, like, kind of a summer stock, theater costume design outside of other campus-based theater department work as well. Reader's theater, kind of a, more of a dramatic reading, staged reading of scripts. That format is something that my dad did in a duo with a working partner for years as well. So... Yes, and even more people. My mother's second husband, and, working in stage design, and... you know, et cetera, et cetera. So, I was really raised by people who, you know, committed seriously to arts as a life and a professional practice. And that enabled me to... to absorb and to just fundamentally understand that it's... that it makes sense as a life passion. 

[Diane] So did you start with theater, with music? Did you start writing? What did you do? 

[seeley] Some of all of it. You know, it was really... There was a lot of encouragement, I would say, that I just... was not particularly pushed, but just very... I was introduced to multiple disciplines, you know, all at the same time, and was celebrated in what I might want to explore. So, I think, creatively, I probably very first started with creating alternative fairy tales and folktales, you know, just like stories that were type of bedtime stories that I started enjoying early on as a child, and then starting to create some of my own, tell them to my younger sister. And a first kind of mentor figure who also really helped raise me a lot, my dad's good friend and working partner in the reader's theater project, had me dictate, once she realized that I had - was starting to make up some of these stories, she had me dictate them to her, she typed them out and created a first little, very small chapbook. I was probably 7, 8 years old. So I think that was the first space of practice for me, but... Also, you know, encouraged in singing, learning dance, getting to start initial dance classes and training as a kid... Yeah. 

[Diane] So when you were getting older, you're like, okay, I have all these artistic practices around me. Did you go to art school, or did you decide to do something else? 

[seeley] I've been adjacent to a lot of people in art schools but I have not ended up directly in that space. I... I felt very keen on creative writing as a life pursuit. and, you know, I initially went into an undergraduate study focusing on English, you know, literature being... being a big focus point, and eventually was not satisfied with, the lack of attention to other politics that was offered in my... In my academic experience there. It took a while, but I changed major at a certain point to Women's Studies. I got politicized regarding feminism, that was very necessary. And that didn't end up quite the fit for me, either, but continuing in a certain arc, eventually I finished bachelor's with a dual focus, I had moved to the West Coast by this point, so I had a pretty radical small institution I transferred to in San Francisco, where I was able to finish a BA in gender studies and performance studies. Later on, coming into Canada, I eventually finished a communication studies graduate diploma in Montreal. And I've done quite a bit of other... you know, my own continuing education pursuits. I did conservatory classes with the Berkeley Rep School of Theatre and so forth, as well. 

[Diane] So when you were in San Francisco, that's... I know that you worked with a famous group over there called Sins Invalid. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got there, and what work you did with them? 

[seeley] Yes. I had been initiating my own performance projects since... 2001, I'll say, so I... I'll back up a bit. I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1998, and ended up finishing my last year of classwork for my BA 2000-2001 with the performance studies focus, it was a very fruitful time for me to create, like, both material for my classes, but also just everything was dynamically inspiring me at that point. I got connected with community folks in this kind of larger space I began living in in the East Bay area, and hosting a short-form mixed-medium cabaret type of presenting showcase once monthly over the course of a year. So that was 2001 and 2002. In 2002 as well, there was the first - so far only - International Queerness and Disability Conference organized that was hosted at San Francisco State University. I got to present a... like an excerpt of my sort of thesis solo performance project I had developed by that point, which was very much, you know, like a lot of... a lot of us in the community. It was essentially autobiographical solo performance work that dealt a lot with my... some of my experiences with disability, and the way I was understanding this in my history alongside... Like, shifting relationship with gender, as well. In any case, this is just to say, like, that occasion, the conference, which was very meaningful, and also, you know, fraught, had its challenges, but connected a lot of people to a certain extent at an international level, together. So, 2006, several years later, I saw on a local, you know, San Fran Bay Area, email listserv, a notice of the first proposal of a show that folks were organizing, called Sins Invalid, and calling for work from disabled artists that would engage with our relationships with sexuality and with embodiment in some kind of bold way. That was the initial invitation. And I was like... This calls me. Really, it felt, it felt very aligned with some work I'd already been, been sharing on my own. However, the timing didn't quite work out there. I had a conflict. I had actually committed to performing in a tour with another group of trans people, going and doing a little performance tour around the U.S. when the first Sins show was going to happen. So it was on my radar at that point, and I was very sad to miss the first year, and really thrilled to learn that they had gotten enough, you know, good, receptive response, the first time that they came around to the next year, 2007. We want to organize something further, who's interested, get in touch. So at that point, I did. I basically went to have a pretty low-pressure audition slash interview, you know, discussing with Leroy Moore and Patty Berne, the two initial organizers. They said: your idea, you know, it lines up. Let's put it together. It was truly profound, how meaningful the impact of putting forth this work on stage ended up being, not just for the artists involved, but for just how far the impact ended up going to audiences. So, yeah, I feel very personally lucky that I was able to, to a certain extent, be in the right place at the right time, be in, kind of, the cultural milieu, where people reached a critical point of motivation to bring work together and really elevate it as well, on the kind of international stage. Yeah, I've done some writing about... Like, some unique things about how Sins Invalid ended up emerging. as a larger project, in terms of its contributing factors, to how it's emerged. And I'm happy to share a link to the little bit of writing I've done on that so far. But yeah, I... For people who are not familiar, I really do encourage looking into the website, and other media that's available about projects the organization has ended up fostering so far. And I was, you know, kind of an early part, but only one part of the overall history of work at this point. I was, I would say, considered part of the core collective of contributing folks between 2007 and 2015. That's the year that I ended up moving out of California, from the Bay Area. 

[Diane] There is one very important piece of literature or text that is on the website of Sins Invalid. And it's actually highlighting 10 principles of Disability Justice. This notion of Disability Justice is really important and is used in a lot of... When you study Disability Studies today. I mean, I studied. Critical Disability Studies in Canada, but speaking with my colleagues in the US, it's the same. The 10 principles of Disability Justice, which you co-edited, right? You co-wrote this part? 

[seeley] Yeah, I was one of... a number of folks in a great collective of us, who did contribute to a collectively structured editing process. So, Aurora Levins Morales is one of the folks who came up, particularly with a lot of the language, and Patty Berne as well, and Leroy, you know, everybody had a part. Yes, so I was one of a number who worked through how we wanted to fine-tune the articulations. And I'm really... grateful for getting to be part of that process. 

[Diane] Disability Justice is a really important part of Disability Activism, and it's a really important part of what it is to be an artist, with the notion of these Disability Culture and Disability Activism. With the work you've done in disability justice, which is a part of what I consider disability activism, and which is a part of what is important for us as artists when we carry these stories and these narratives. What is it for you to be part of people who are considering disability justice and disability culture and disability activism as a core in their work? 

[seeley] I'm proud, and I recognize, again, that I'm lucky to have had the resources, and also had the motivation that I did to connect myself into the cultural space, the multiple spaces, in the San Francisco Bay Area that I don't think I would have been enabled otherwise to build my understanding of my own self and my lineage, even, my connections within larger disabled culture. That was a really... life impactful politicization for me early on in my living there. Absolutely. And the connection with space to explore this identity, dimensions of identity experience in arts. Because Disability Rights, the disability rights movement kind of, as it became initially framed out of the US, has done very critical work, and calling for disability rights has been a key foundational call, certainly. And, within broad disability focused spaces, it can still be too easy to, to neglect the experience of intersecting identities that many disabled community folks do have, that Leroy and Patty were really keen to to build an intervention. to that... the space of omission and repression of other experiences. I guess I would say what it means to me to be connected to this is, it's a space where I feel some, some pride, and definitely gratitude, and also really, the ongoing opportunity and the call to continue highlighting this, putting my own attention focused on these things, circulating that out to others to the extent I can. 

[Diane] And that work you carried from the West Coast to the East Coast at a certain point. And today, you continue this work. So when did you move Canada and to the East Coast? 

[seeley] Yeah, I moved back East in 2017. I left living in the Bay Area at the start of 2015, and at that time, moved up the West Coast a bit further, and still stayed in the U.S. a while, but... Eventually, 2017, I had found a graduate school program that called me to... I'd been thinking about going back to school, and I'd been visiting, making some more connections in Montreal over the past few years. So, I got into the Communication Studies program at Concordia University there, and ended up living in Montreal my first 5 plus years in Canada. Unfortunately, I found the French requirement a bit of a challenge to stay anchored in Quebec, and eventually went to go live in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for another over two year period, and most recently, I've come to live in Toronto now for just over a year. I would say my... my art projects have... Theater is certainly one big focus, but I've continued to have interdisciplinary interests and, Yeah, I've been pursuing projects at small and sometimes larger scales in all the places that I have, I've gone as an adult. 

[Diane] So let's talk about this intersectional work. So, I... What's the ecological part, the political part, the artistic part? How do you coordinate that in your work today? 

[seeley] I'm following my passions. I will add a little bit of a context note. Although, as I said, I grew up really immersed in, in arts across disciplines, and an education in them. As well, valuing the human and ecological experience. And really investing in environmental preservation and restoration was something that... that I absorbed early on in youth as well. I took a role in a student club in my high school that was called the Earth Club. My interest, you know, in adulthood has just kind of grown and followed different directions over time. So, multiple projects of mine at this point have an ecological focus. I really feel that arts is such a critical vehicle and tool for connecting with people at a level beyond just encountering the factual details of a circumstance. So, the aesthetic qualities that come with an artistic experience, the manner in which it can reach people at emotional levels. I have a, you know, a kind of a growing practice in, in education as well, in terms of having already led more than two dozen workshop sessions on, again, mostly, kind of arts-focused stuff, and a lot of that has been writing type workshops, but some of it has also been, you know, leading, like, basic, like, voice practice and kind of vocal exploration 101 workshop once upon a time, and just a lot that I learned from my dad teaching voice. I did some, you know, kind of theater games, you know, improv for actors workshop facilitating at a certain point. Other, you know, craft, like, how to... how to work with things in a tactile way, some of that as well, so... I'm just following wherever the interests end up really growing for me, but... I have on the plate at the moment a a plan to start kind of a short-form workshop, three sessions, that is focusing on solarpunk-oriented creative, speculative writing, specifically. Looking forward to seeing who, you know, gets engaged with this in Toronto. Also, I have, I'd say kind of a medium size project that is a multimedia installation-based, something that could fit well in an art gallery type of space, potentially, that has components of both three-dimensional, like, assemblage work, as well as a performance component that is interactive, with audiences, as well as educational workshop component, so... Oh, sorry, there's a fourth component, which I am motivated to eventually organize some kind of programming this material, this kind of multimedia piece of mine that is very ecologically focused in... I would really like to gather it alongside work of other disabled artists who are more in visual arts practice, potentially. Although, again, I have a performance component with mine, so, very open to, you know, finding collaborators who would want to share... work in different kind of mediums. I've also, you know, curated... I think in majority, live performance, kind of short-form showcase material before, but also, like, video film, etc., visual-audio work. Yeah, I have a whole other bit of focus and practice in media, and especially, like, film, film screening facilitating that I've done, so... In any case... Yeah, I would, you know, for that particular project, I would like eventually to organize a group show that is thematic, of... of other artists who identify as disabled who also are creating work and come up with a way for us to kind of share this together in ensemble that... that is ecologically attentive, and that specifically presents a more optimistic perspective. I do feel that space for representing eco-grief, you know. Or rage about ecological loss and and threats. This is all really valid, and space for this is needed, absolutely. Yet it's also just very important to me, and I think something that I haven't seen mobilized publicly as much yet. You know, a space for artists to reflect on what our disabled perspectives bring to a conversation about what we're looking... what we feel there is to look forward to in this space, what there is to be hopeful regarding what we can contribute in generative and productive ways in our work, to coexist well with a shifting ecology. And specifically, artists who are based in, in Canada; they're--I'm find, some I'm finding internationally who, whose work are kind of touching on this, and I'm interested to research a bit more, and maybe do some writing as a dramaturge, about looking at cases of some other artists kind of working in this space that I've found, but... Yeah, really looking forward to bringing in... In general, I would say just more collaborative projects, period. Like, that's... That's a big motivator for me at this time. And that are... and where there can be some elements of interactivity with audience. 

[Diane] You also have a project called 'Modeling.' Would you mind telling us about that? 

[seeley] Sure. So, 'Modeling' has been in development a good while now. I first had just the very seed ideas back in 2008, when I was active with Sins Invalid productions. And some ideas emerged through other peer artists I was connecting with at that time. 'Modeling' is a, a theater piece featuring two characters, a model and a photographer, meeting to do a first photo shoot together. And... There is some experimentalness in the design, in that I am writing the script, I have about a full half hour scene set of material to this point, but I have a goal to finish this script. And potentially, this is part of the bit of interactivity and a factor of collaboration that feels very important to me at this point. I do know that consent amongst the, the performers involved is very central to this project. And so their interests, their input, and where the storyline goes is going to, you know, influence the ultimate decisions. So let me be clear. The characters, the model and photographer, both have different physical disabilities. And, so, the actors as well as, ideally, all the creative team members at a point of building a production, do experience disability as well. The characters are not being ridden with assigned genders. So, something that's important to me in the design is that... that there be a communication to audiences that there is also a rotating of cast. That there will be multiple people asked to take on these different roles of the model and photographer. These could be performers with different genders. They will certainly have different types of embodiments. And the whole point of this is to highlight the... how power dynamics may land differently. as, for example... Let's say someone who identifies as female playing the role of the photographer one night, who is negotiating some... spicy dynamics with the, the character of the model. If that model is, on a particular occasion, played by someone presenting as male, the way the material, the engagement feels, is simply going to be different. than if it's two people identifying as female who are in these, these power dynamics. You know, there could be some element of crip joy in the production of this work, a space of very active and exploratory playfulness amongst the people getting into these roles, and what that could impart for audiences, too. Hopefully some joy, and hopefully some real provocation as well, because my point also is to bring attention to not just an erotic potential of... of... you know, very enticing energy that could potentially develop between two artists who are doing a shoot for a first time, and doing very intimate type of work, you know, like, featuring the body and portraiture. But to do this as people who also, you know, experience physical disability, there's a lot of potential for, like, edgy, edgy energy to be kind of sparked off. And a lot of that could be in, I think, really good... let's say hot directions. And at the same time, I feel like it's really important to be putting forth work that, you know, gets into nuance, gets into some more complicated space about ways that even people who share a certain extent of a peer experience, a relationship, in terms of, they both experienced stigmatizing as disabled people. that it's still possible that sometimes one or both of them in this kind of situation might behave badly. Maybe not everybody is, like, recognizing where to respect consent. you know, 100% of the time. I think bringing in the realism of our imperfections, and even the, you know, kind of invoking the edge of discomfort of needing to face that breaching of boundaries and consent, you know, it happens, it really can happen, more than we want to admit. And, you know, how can repair be navigated, potentially, in these contexts, when there's multiple feelings and factors at stake. So... I could go on, but hopefully that gives a bit of a nugget of this being a... I feel quite juicy project that I hope could get to a debut opportunity, and really... Yeah, hold some meaningful impact for the, the disabled community and our, our peer audiences. 

[Diane] Yeah, it's, it's really interesting because of course, this also triggers some conversations about identity and about the way we see ourselves and the way others see our identities, whatever the identity is. So, I think that your project, it has really a potential of also engaging with the audience before or after, probably after, so that they can reflect themselves. And so that they can tell about their own experience of these narratives. 

[seeley] Yeah, absolutely. I have spent a while imagining ways to... to... bring out audience input, questions, and to potentially work on development opportunities with disabled people in a given city, a given municipal region, who may not have, maybe professional level performance-based training, or script writing, but whose lived experience is rich, and is, you know, something that would enable them to, you know, consider, maybe like a play-shop more than a workshop kind of space, if that makes sense. I really... Again, this is where I've been thinking about, well, is it something that will eventually would ultimately work well, to be devised by, you know, again, maybe non-professional actor community members. I think there could be different versions, where different... different community groups will kind of take the narrative to a direction of their own choice. You know. And that that is... That has value, right, to kind of take up the premise idea, and see, like, which it could generate for them, but exactly. I think there's... Probably there will eventually be a published version of this script, but I very much want to invite people to, to take up discussing what it means for them, and to have that be part of some community conversations, hopefully for, perhaps important social change regarding our, our liberties and our obligations towards, you know, respecting our space of sexuality and kinship and care in different ways with each other. 

[Diane] Well, these are fascinating projects, so yeah, I wish you all the best in these. And I wanted to end this interview by asking you a question about people who have counted in your career, people who have motivated some parts of your work. If you have one or two people to think of, who would it be and why? 

[seeley] Thank you. I'll just go ahead to say that Patty Berne, specifically, is who really came first in my mind for a motivator in disability and arts focused work. Patty's amount of work like, behind the scenes, both for kind of Sins Invalid's project as a whole, is truly outstanding, but also, in particular, her really long-term movement building, cross-issue community coalition building and connecting work I think is still not recognized that fully by a lot of folks who are only just familiar with Sins as kind of this arts-focused organizational space. I think what I want to say about that is... Patty's work to reach out, figure out how to just make a phone call, send an email, to people, you know, across the U.S. and internationally, that they identified could be partners in some way, toward expanding intersectional, political education and movement. That's truly foundational to, to how far Sins Invalid, and also many other political networks have ended up going, you know, just like the amount of work that she contributed in that way, and so... So, Patty's, their modeling. For me, and many others. Yeah. Lifelong impactful. 

[Diane] Well, thank you so much, and we will publish some of the sources and resources that you mentioned today, so that people can have a look at your work and. have a look at your website, your projects. And yeah, again, I wish you all the best for everything that you're accomplishing right now, which are fascinating projects. Thank you so much for being here today with us. 

[seeley] Merci beaucoup Diane. 

[Diane] Thank you. And, yeah, have a good one, and maybe see you around on the Toronto scene. Bye! 

[Closing theme music]