Handheld is a video collage centering on our changing relationship with touch. Through
the use of consumer-based technology and distanced collaboration, this project conveys our shared feelings of fear and loss towards physical intimacy. In eliciting visceral reactions to texture, sound, and touch, Handheld provides a sensory experience for the sense-starved viewer.
We are a young artist collective consisting of Kimberly Ho, Montserrat Videla, Jen Sungshine, Santana Berryman, Thuja Quickstad, and Zhanger. Our process was focused on non- hierarchical, lateral creation, but with an additional challenge: in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, we were all in varying degrees of isolation. Thus, our WhatsApp video relay process began as a method for creating content and responding to one another using the accessible film medium of smartphone recordings. The film focuses on queering our preconceived ideas of smartphone filmmaking – rather than obscure our varying video quality, we chose to aesthetically embrace it. We were tickled by creating multidisciplinary work within the limitations of physical distancing, as well as implementing new modalities of distanced collaboration.
In the absence of linear narrative, Handheld elicits affective memory through images and
sound. Affect, in this case, refers to an instinctual reaction to sensory stimulation that occurs before complex thought. Much like videos in the ASMR genre, this film is focused on the somatic experience of the viewer. What does yearning for “new touches” say about our desire to build new realities and worlds? Queerness carries an inherent sense of isolation – much like queer youth sending secret Snapchats to each other, we built this film from small pieces of our lives. This film also captures the distortion of reality that comes with prolonged isolation. We held our world tenderly, in hands we wish could hold each other.
In the socio-political context of 2020, touch was intertwined with danger, and tactility became a forbidden indulgence. How does limitation create or force new desires? What are the unexpected pleasures that we discovered in this moment of restricted touch? How much of this reflects a nostalgia and hope to return to moments in which a wider range of touch was possible?
Artists Biographies
Jen Sungshine speaks for a living, but lives for breathing art into spaces, places, cases. She is a queer Taiwanese interdisciplinary artist/activist, facilitator, and community mentor based in Vancouver, BC, and the Co-Creative Director and founder of Love Intersections, a media arts collective dedicated to collaborative filmmaking and relational storytelling. Jen's artistic practice is informed by an ethic of tenderness; instead of calling you out, she wants to call you in, to make (he)artful social change with her. In the audience, she looks for weirdos, queerdos and anti-heroes. In private, she looks after more than 70 houseplants and prefers talking to plants than to people. www.jensungshine.com
Thuja Quickstad makes collaborative, participatory, community based theater. As a non-binary queer living on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and Tseil-waututh peoples, I strive to make theater that is relevant to and involves the local communities that I am part of. My work in theater is motivated by a deep love of the form and a belief in its ability to be a transformative force for both audiences and participants. I am fascinated by how our lived experiences find unexpected forms of expression in theater through devising processes and hope to bring this interest and curiosity into my work. Right now I am pursuing a BFA in Theater Performance at Simon Fraser University. Prior to this I studied Forestry at the University of British Columbia and Conservation and Land Management at Bangor University (Wales, UK). A strong interest in environmental justice continues to inform my work.
Zhanger is a third culture, multiple-time transplanted human creative, who has resided for a small majority of their lives on the stolen lands of the Coast Salish people. They are a multidisciplinary visual artist and are excited to contribute to their first film and performance project. Zhanger takes inspiration from radical queer life experiences and their love for multi- faceted, intersectional activism. The focus of their art and praxis is to subvert oppressive and colonial systems so that we live as our wildest, most unapologetic selves.
Montserrat Videla (Mexico City, 1997) is a Colombian-Mexican actor and theatre maker living on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and Tseil-waututh peoples, known as Vancouver, BC. She works both in English and Spanish. Recent performing credits include: New Societies (Re:Current), 1991 (Guilty by Association), The Wolves (With A Spoon/Rumble/Pacific Theatre), Corazón del Espantapájaros (Audain Gallery). Montserrat has participated in several film and performance festivals, including SummerWorks (Toronto), RISER Project (Toronto), PuSh (Vancouver), e-Volver (Vancouver), ChinookSeries (Edmonton), and NextFest (Edmonton) and was nominated for a Jessie Richardson Award along with her ensemble for The Wolves. She has a BFA in Theatre Performance from SFU. She is currently collaborating with Ghost River Theatre on a sensory dome projection experience about borders and migration.
Santana Berryman is a multidisciplinary theatre artist from Whitehorse, Yukon, traditional territory of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and the Ta'an Kwäch'än Council. Her artistic practise focuses on equitable collaboration, game-ifying work and delving into the uncomfortable. She graduated from Capilano University’s Acting for Stage and Screen program in 2018. Currently, she works as an Instructor with Carousel Theatre for Young People, and a Front-of-House Supervisor at The Cultch. Selected performance credits include Peter and The Starcatcher (Cap U Theatre), The Shape of Things (The
Guild), and a cross-Canada tour of Map of The Land, Map of The Stars. (Gwaandak Theatre). Directing credits include Society of Transformative Zoology (IGNITE! Youth-Driven Arts Festival) and co- direction of The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (Vancouver Fringe). Santanaberryman.com
Kimberly Ho (何文蔚) is a multidisciplinary artist, performer, and collaborator based on the unceded ancestral lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and Tseil-waututh peoples, known as Vancouver, Canada. In her practice, she seeks to explore and decolonize the intersections of queerness, the physical body, and ancestral history and habits, primarily in the context of Chinese diaspora. Select credits include House and Home (Firehall Arts Centre), Theory (Rumble Theatre), Marathassa (Dance, Vines Festival), No More Parties (Film, Natalie Murao), and A Query (Video installation, VIVO Media Arts Centre), and her short film Dumplings / 餃子 premiering this September 2020 at F-O-R-M (Festival of Recorded
Movement). kimberly-ho.com