The Sacred Arts Intensive: A week of transformation through the arts in Cleveland, Ohio, June 26 – July 3 2010 The Sacred Arts Intensive is an eight-day immersion offering artists the opportunity to work, to play, to create and conceive new works and practices with other artists.
Are you curious about who else is coming to the Intensive? I’ve invited participants to share about themselves, their work, and their intention for the week. Thanks to Dexter and Heidi for being the first brave souls to respond.
Introducing: Dexter Ico, Toronto
About my past work:
I’d say I’m a guerrilla filmmaker who experiments by mixing genres and playing with the notion of awareness, around media and the self.
What challenges you?
The concept of business and work, as opposed to the concept of purpose and play.
What would you like to explore next, take to the next level?
Vlogs. I want to say stuff as my self, considering the viewer but without the intention of amusing or educating them.
What projects, or works-in-progress are you working with?
Vlogs. I’m a work-in-progress.
What excites you about the intensive this summer?
Going to Dayton, never been. And playing with filmmaking for a week.
My website:
www.dexterico.com
Introducing: Heidi Madsen
Bio:
In 1996, the birth year of Toe B. (short for big toe), I slid across the stage as Tom Cruise in tighty whities, a striped oxford, tube socks and sunglasses lip-synching to Bob Seeger’s “That Old Time Rock and Roll”. Since then, I’ve been sliding across the stage as a drag king and gender activist to smear the rigid and socially constructed boundaries between sex, gender and sexuality.
Project:
Inspired by my Uncle Christian’s evolutionary journey from Ursuline nun to radical feminist lesbian to FTM transgender person, I celebrate him as a spiritually evolved person who is able to embrace both his femininity and masculinity. This transformative journey from embodying sisterhood to being Christian is not only an inspiration for those who feel alone in their transgender struggle, but a monumental educational tool for promoting tolerance to the masses. By sheer faith in the message of my controversial parody on organized religion and gender norms, I am determined not to stop at preaching to the choir. From Sister To Mister is a creed to live by promoting mass empowerment
The play From Sister To Mister to debut in a church near you Spring of 2011…
Intent For the Sacred Arts Intensive:
Together, cramped in the confessional of From Sister To Mister with sweaty palms, uneasily shifting between stiff knees we will find ourselves uttering in short breaths things we thought we never would hear ourselves say out loud. We will laugh with familiarity and cry in sympathy at the thought of how we ourselves feel like we are living in the wrong body at times; feeling socially awkward and waking up with an identity hangover not remembering who we were the day before. When we leave the theatre we will see Christian in our selves, our sisters, our brothers, our mothers, our fathers, our sons, our daughters, our friends, our teachers, our nurses, our doctors, our yoga instructors, our therapists and best of all our clergy. Through that lens, we will not tolerate anything but acceptance and strive for nothing less than authenticity.
My hope is that The Sacred Arts Intensive will be an opportunity for me to be cramped in a confessional with other edgy artists. I believe that if the intensive builds a safe and creative enough space, the confessional will foster the colliding of artistic energies to help each of us produce no less than the perfection of work we have been inspired to do. I’ve never given myself this opportunity. I believe there is a universe of untapped energy inside of me waiting to be confessed.
Find out more about The Sacred Arts Intensive at our blog here.