![]() NYFA: Do you have any projects already out in the world or coming up that you’d like to share? If you go out there looking to be loved, make sure you are present enough to accept it when it is offered. People are drawn to you simply for being you, and if you let them, those people become your family. ![]() I think one’s authentic life has its own gravity. As a queer person, I’ve struggled so much with trying to earn the love of my birth family that I shaped myself into whatever form I knew they would approve of, which was silence, obedience, and eventually absence. WC: In many ways I think queer family chooses you. ![]() What has involvement with a collective meant for your art? What would you tell someone looking to join one? NYFA: As you mentioned, you’re a member of Switch n’ Play. In all, the pandemic is not only pushing me to consider new ways of sharing work, but to question my understanding of how my work connects to a world that is in deep suffering, and how to create out of an impulse to connect with that reality. In the end, we did a group drag performance over Zoom that was unbelievably touching. We talked about beauty, poetry, and mothers in a digital room of 40+ undergrads who were following along, painting themselves, and listening in a shared boudoir moment. Yesterday, I Zoom-visited an “Introduction to Studies of Race, Migration, and Sexuality” class at Dartmouth taught by Eng-Beng Lim, and conducted a two-hour long experimental makeup tutorial and artist talk with novelist Alexander Chee. Creating new drag for the video format has been a bright blessing, heralding projects that involve wrangling my roommate and neighbor as a tech crew, climbing a ladder to dance on my roof in a gown, and dress-setting my living room in a silk forest of sheets for projections. The creative outlet of drag has always saved me in times of shock and duress. The world of performance has moved online: from Zoom rooms to Twitch TV, I’m lucky to have a drag collective ( Switch n’ Play) with whom I can perform twice a month for our friends, fans, and following. What does it mean to center artists and the arts as a community resource? I think this is important and ever-evolving work. We’re no longer dancing, but we’ve held fundraisers to buy and home-deliver groceries for our senior citizens who are stuck far away from markets, missing the Chinese ingredients that they are familiar with. As a teacher, I’ve seen my class shift into a site of grief work, offering poems and space to young students who are suffering so much loss. ![]() I think the challenge is-and in some ways always has been-finding the means to stay flexible and responsive to our community’s deeper needs. My after school teaching program has moved to Zoom and Discord. The plaza dancing lessons in Brooklyn stopped, as the Homestead church basement (usually full of Chinese grannies playing Mahjong) suddenly emptied, and then the high school closed. When venues shuttered in mid-March, I found myself no longer able to do any of my work. The other half comes from performance work in nightlife and other cultural institutions around the city. Wo Chan: I’m a poet and a drag performer who makes half their living from teaching poetry and plaza dance. NYFA: Can you tell us a bit about how you’ve continued to perform and showcase work during the COVID-19 outbreak? Learn more about Chan’s drag practice as Pearl Harbor and other people-centered engagements below. In the spirit of Asian and Pacific Island American Heritage Month in May and LGBTQ Pride Month in June, we spoke with NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow Wo Chan (Poetry ’17) about cultivating kinship with artists and performing during the pandemic. “What does it mean to center artists and the arts as a community resource? I think this is important and ever-evolving work.”
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