Lesbian Liberation Across Media: A Sonic Screening

The SpokenWeb Podcast

This episode of The SpokenWeb Podcast is a little different than episodes you’ve heard from us before. It is a kind of “feminist memory-work” - An audio collage, a method, an approach to community building which aims to honor lesbian-feminist collective histories and renewed public attention to lesbian feminist culture.

Episode producers – Felicity Tayler, Mathieu Aubin and Scott Girouard - cordially invite you into their feminist sonic memory world: A three-part audio collage of “Lesbian Liberation Across Media”. A virtual film screening and discussion held Summer 2020 in partnership with SpokenWeb, and featuring three iconic lesbian feminist films: “A Working Women’s Collective” (1974), “Labyris Rising” (1980), and “Proud Lives: Christine Bearchell”(2007). Through a weaving together of the voices of over 60 participants in attendance, along with original music scores, archival clips and more - we ask, how do we listen to Canadian lesbian liberation movements across media? Whether it’s a feature length film or a spirited virtual chat session, this audio collage episode invites you to experience a citational politics that makes audible the intergenerational relationships, conflicting concerns, nostalgic reveries, and a sense of togetherness while apart in the pandemic-related time of crisis.

Episode Producers:

Felicity Tayler is the E-Research Librarian at University of Ottawa with a portfolio in Research Data Management and currently the PhD Interim Head, Research Services Arts & Special Collections uOttawa. She is an occasional visual artist and curator, and has published scholarly writing related to literary archives in anthologies, in Journal of Canadian Art History,Canadian Literature, and Mémoires du livre / Studies in Book Culture.

Mathieu Aubin is a scholar on print and performance cultures in Canada. He completed his PhD at UBC and is now an Horizon Postdoctoral Fellow at Concordia University where he holds a leadership position within the “Oral Literary History” research component of the SpokenWeb project. As part of this project, he is working towards recuperating queer people’s contributions to Canadian literary culture. His work on queerness, literary communities, and Vancouver has been published in the journal Canadian Literature.

Scott Girouard is a Front-End Developer based in Toronto, Canada with a lifelong background in music and creative practice.

Acknowledgements:

Additional Voiceover by Emma Middleton

Music by Scott Girouard and Mathieu Aubin

Thanks to Stacey Copeland, Hannah McGreggor, Jason Camlot, Katherine McLeod, Constance Crompton, Michelle Schwartz, Rachel E Beattie, Raegan Swanson, May Ning, Jake Moore, Becki Ross, Amy Gotlieb, Rachel Epstein, Maureen FitzGerald, Marusya Bociurkiw, Baylee Woodley, Elspeth Brown, Stark (pseudonym) .

Humanities Data Lab at U Ottawa, SpokenWeb, Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada Project, University of Toronto Media Commons Archives, ArQuives , VTape, VIVO Archives

References:

• Anger, Kenneth, director. Scorpio Rising. Ruban VHS, 1964.
• Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. Routledge, 1993.
• Godard, Baraba. Gynocritics: Feminist Approaches to Canadian and Quebec Women’s Writing.
• ECW P, 1987.
• Media Mothers, directors. A Working Women’s Collective. 1974.
  Moores, Margaret, director. Labyris Rising. V Tape, 1980.
• Navas, Eduardo. Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling. Ambra Verlag, 2014.
• Nicol, Nancy, director. Proud Lives: Chris Bearchell. V Tape, 2007.
• Ross, Becki. The House that Jill Built. U of Toronto P, 1995.