TQ Live! presents a queer evening of dazzling performance, dance, poetry, comedy, resplendent fantasies, music, and more. This sixth annual performance series features artists and performers from the many LGBTQIA communities in the Pittsburgh region. This program is produced by Scott Andrew, Joseph Hall, and Suzie Silver. Hosted by Joseph Hall, this year’s line-up includes performances by Anna Azizzy, Amelia Bande, Tsohil Bhatia, Jesse Factor, Princess Jafar, Dani Janae, and Ginger Brooks Takahashi, with additional surprise video and performance works.
Please note this performance contains adult subject matter and strong language.
Doors open at 7:30 p.m.
This project is supported in part by the Carnegie Mellon University School of Art, the Center for the Arts in Society, the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry and the Sylvia and David Steiner Speaker Series, and additional support from the 5801 Video Lounge & Café’s ‘Ladies Who Drag Brunch’ and Richard Parskian.
Artist Bios
Scott Andrew
Scott Andrew is a multimedia artist, working in video, installation, performance, and new media. He creates speculative fantasies that peer into otherworldly portals and voids and has most notably exhibited with the Institute for New Feeling at MoMA’s PopRally (New York City), Recess (New York City), Ballroom Marfa (Marfa, Texas), Whitechapel Gallery (London), Black Cube (Denver, Colorado), the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), and the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles).
Anna Azizzy
Anna Azizzy processes their identity by performing absurd and hilarious exaggerations of their life and wishes. Their practice spans many mediums, including performance art, video art, experimental music, and gymnastics–most often working with wonky green screen animation, flamboyant characters, and soft sculpture. Anna is from Pittsburgh, where they earned their BA in Experimental Theater and Sculptural Performance at Carnegie Mellon University, work various art gigs, coach gymnastics, and host the Side Split Variety Show.
Amelia Bande
Amelia Bande is a Brooklyn-based artist, writer and performer from Chile. Her work has been shown at Artists Space, The Poetry Project, Storm King Arts Center, Tang Museum, MoMA Library, MIX NYC, Participant Inc., BOFFO Performance Festival, and more. She has been an artist in residence at WORM Filmwerkplaats, The Shandaken Project, Yaddo and FIAR. Her chapbook The Clothes We Wear was published by Belladonna in 2017. Amelia also teaches Spanish at CUNY and NYU.
Tsohil Bhatia
Tsohil Bhatia is an interdisciplinary artist working with the ghost of their performance practice. They received their professional diploma in Performance Studies working with identity, nationalism, and conflict at the Srishti School of Art, Design, and Technology and are currently an MFA candidate at the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. Tsohil currently makes installation, photographs, and video to investigate natural mechanisms and passage of time. These studies aid their current thesis of the thingness of ‘nothing’.
Jesse Factor
Jesse Factor’s solo work is consistently recognized for physical virtuosity, dramaturgical rigor, and creative audacity. In Pittsburgh, Jesse has presented work at PEARLpresents (New Hazlett), Fail-Safe Performance Series (Glitter Box) and DONATELLA Queer Variety Show (Arcade Comedy Theater). Factor’s ongoing Marthagany: The Spectre-Acle series has been presented at House of Yes (New York City), Boston Contemporary Dance Festival (Boston), City Center Studios (New York City), Flyover Festival (Iowa), Midwest RADfest (Michigan), and OUTsider Fest (Texas).
Joseph Hall
Joseph Hall is the TQ Live! host, and a black, queer, transracial adoptee, podcast lover, creator, critic, and youngest of five. He is Deputy Director at BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance as well as a producer, curator, and performer working in New York City and Pittsburgh. As a performer, Joseph has worked with choreographers Staycee Pearl, Maree ReMalia, Lida Winfield, and Jasmine Hearn, and video artist Suzie Silver.
Princess Jafar
Princess Jafar, supervillain and media mogul hot off the heels of a 6-city European tour is excited to bring her saccharine pop singles and hypnotizing visual art back to Pittsburgh. Buy her single “Daddy” on bandcamp and stream the video on Instagram today!
Dani Janae
Dani Janae is a poet living and writing in Pittsburgh. She earned her BA in Creative Writing from Allegheny College. Her poetry deals with the physical and emotional legacy of trauma, and the intersecting history of her identity as a black, lesbian, woman through themes of the grotesque, incantations, and folklore. Her work has been published by Argot Magazine, Public Source, Palette Poetry, and Slush Pile Magazine. When she is not writing she enjoys having intimate conversations with the things that puzzle and delight her, admiring spiders, watching horror movies, and hunting for figs.
Suzie Silver
Suzie Silver creates art that alludes to the capacity for desire to disrupt social boundaries and imagine new futures. Her well-known early videos, Freebird and A Spy are canonical works of queer video art. Silver’s videos have been screened at over 100 festivals on five continents. Her ongoing collaboration, Fairy Fantastic! a fairy and folk tale video series for gender non-conforming kids of all ages, has screened at festivals in Belarus, London, Portugal, Romania and Australia.
Ginger Brooks Takahashi
Ginger Brooks Takahashi’s collaborative project-based, socially enraged practice is an extension of feminist spaces and queer inquiry, actively building community and nurturing alternative forms of information distribution. She is co-founder of queer and feminist journal LTTR; projet MOBILIVRE BOOKMOBILE project; the touring musical act MEN; and General Sisters. She has presented work at the Oakland Museum of California, 2019; Jewish Museum, 2016; Tensta Konsthall, 2015; Brooklyn Museum, 2013; Museo Tamayo, 2010; New Museum, 2009; and Serpentine Gallery, 2008. She received her BA from Oberlin College and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2007.
