FORMERLY KNOWN AS, a Male Sex Worker Art Festival

By Kuono • Feb 18th, 2009 • Category: Blog

Charlice Byrd was taking about Male Prostitutes and it reminded me that I was going to spread the word here about FORMERLY KNOWN AS, a male sex worker arts festival. My friend Kirk Read (KirkRead.com) passed this along to me and it looks super exciting! This is taking place in San Francisco in June (Deadline is Mid-March!)

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Kirk Read San Francisco Performance Artist

FORMERLY KNOWN AS
a male sex worker arts festival

Army of Lovers seeks submissions for an arts festival that will feature visual art, video, dance, performance, writing and music by men who’ve worked in some area of the sex industry at some point in their lives.

This multi-night festival will take place in early June 2009 in San Francisco and will be part of the Queer Arts Festival. We are collaborating with Carol Leigh, the Sex Worker Film Festival and the Center for Sex and Culture to create programming that highlights work by and about male sex workers. There will be an evening of music. There will be several nights of multimedia cabaret where writers, performers and filmmakers come together to showcase their work. There will be a visual art show. And there will be film/video nights.

The reason we want to highlight male sex workers is because we know lots of men who are socially isolated from one another and from the broader world of sex workers. We see amazing female and trans sex workers leading the way in sex worker movements — politically, creatively and socially. We hope to provide men a space to come together so that we can meet one another and integrate our voices into the larger discussion. Trans sex workers are absolutely welcome and adored. People outside San Francisco are welcome as audience members and as contributing artists.

We seek work that reflects our lives. It doesn’t have to be limited to your experiences as a sex worker but we are extremely interested in art that addresses sex work. We want art by people who worked thirty years ago. We want art by people who worked five years ago. We want art by people who’ve spent time in jail. We welcome art that’s funny and confusing and sexual and political and bold and subtle and traditional and nontraditional. We want art by people are are currently working. We want art by street workers, porn stars, dancers, escorts, webcasters, dungeon masters and people who’ve done types of sex work that often go unacknowledged: people who work at sex clubs, people who work on porn sets, people with quirky stories.

We will pay people for their participation because we got some grant money, but don’t expect to quit your day (or night) job!

Please contact Kirk Read at mswfestival@gmail.com
Please share this email with anyone you know who might be able to help get the word out to male sex workers.

Please send work to:

Kirk Read
Army of Lovers
2261 Market St. #125
San Francisco, CA 94114

We welcome CDs, DVDs, printed stories, electronic files, raw ideas for performance art, links to websites…just get in touch and let us know what you have to offer!

Please get us stuff by MARCH 15!!
Deadline is not strict, but we will be curating the festival in mid-March, so submissions received after that will also be considered for future programming.