WOMEN WHO ROCK: MAKING SCENES, BUILDING COMMUNITIES
“VIBRATIONS OF LOVE”
Meeting and Film Festival
Call for Workshop Facilitators, Call for Film Submissions
Submission Deadline: Â November 15, 2011
Meeting: March 2-3, 2012 at Washington Hall, Seattle, WA
THE INVITATION
We invite activists, scholars, musicians, filmmakers, and artists to submit proposals for topic-focused open workshops that will promote dialogue about women, music, and social justice, taking into account issues of gender, race, ethnicity, class and sexuality. Inspired by the influence of gospel singer and guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe and punk pioneer Alice Bag, we encourage workshops that explore the ways that Chicana and Black feminist thought have expanded “who†counts as women and “what†counts as rock.
THE SPACE
This year’s theme asks us to consider the possibilities and limitations of space in relation to musical performance, production, expression, transformation, and community building. We choose this topic to honor the space in which the conference will be housed this year: Seattle’s historic Washington Hall. Located in the Central District, Washington Hall’s community and immigrant roots are deep. This conference aims to honor the legacy of Washington Hall’s past performers and the Central District’s history of fostering music scenes and political organizing by exploring past and present spaces of women’s, queer and transgender musical performance.
Built in 1908 by the Danish Brotherhood in America, Washington Hall later became home in 1973 to the Sons of Haiti, an African American Masonic Lodge. All the while, from 1908-2001, the hall was used for musical and theatrical performances. The sonic vibrations of love generated by musicians and speakers such as Marian Anderson, Mahalia Jackson, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Jimi Hendrix, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Joe Louis reverberate in the building walls. The performing arts organization, On The Boards, left its trace by hosting artists such as Spalding Grey, Meredith Monk, Mark Morris and Bill T. Jones. Washington Hall is now the new home of progressive, community-based arts organizations such as Hidmo, Voices Rising, and 206Zulu. We have the opportunity to activate the building’s musical “vibrations of love,” created and sustained, enjoyed and shared across generations. How do these musical vibrations create a sense of home in a hostile environment, helping to disrupt, re-imagine and reinvent the social and physical structures that shape everyday life?
THE VISION
Washington Hall’s current renovation inspires us to think about the spaces we move in and the places where we make our dreams, desires, and hopes manifest. Though the hall is an unconventional conference space, we see its renovation as an opportunity to access the building in creative and unexpected ways, using spaces like the balcony, hallways, dressing rooms, and kitchen as meeting areas. Given the rich history of Washington Hall, we ask potential facilitators to consider the relationship between music, identity and space. What kinds of alternative or autonomous spaces are created by musical performance? How do past musical performances and expressions reverberate and echo in the space of the present? What echoes and reverberations of this history do we hear in particular musical scenes and spaces? How do musical vibrations change the feel of a room? How does music and performance shape and transform the dynamics of space, engaging tensions between community and gentrification, home and displacement, visibility and invisibility, voice and silence?
This year the Women Who Rock Project is excited to redefine words, music, genres, space, community, and love at the 2nd annual Women Who Rock: Making Scenes, Building Communities “Vibrations of Love†Meeting and Film Festival
n., pl, wom·en (wÄm’Än) a socially constructed category that includes but is not limited to women- identified, transgender and cisgender women, and other formations as well.
n., v., rock (rÅk)  rock is a verb, more than a genre, as in “rocking the mic.†As in, “rock with us on March 2-3, 2011, as we honor women that rock and change history.â€
THE LOGISTICS
We model this year’s conference after the idea of the “unconference.†The unconference is participant-driven; it transforms conventional ways of gathering. By structuring the conference around participant interest, keyed to the theme of space, we set the stage for dynamic dialogue and fortuitous encounters. We ask workshop facilitators to guide this experimental vision. We are particularly interested in creative, non-traditional, and/or musical session formats. The conference will also showcase and contribute to the Women Who Rock Oral History Project.
GUIDELINES:
1. We expect each workshop to begin with a presentation and/or performance of 5-10 minutes and then transition into a participatory workshop, driven by dialogue.
2.   Each workshop will run for 45 minutes.
GENERAL PROPOSALS (WORKSHOPS, PRESENTATIONS, PERFORMANCES, CONVERSATIONS):
1.   Names of facilitators, presenters and/or performers (along with other stage or nicknames) 2.   Name of organizations, institutions, or affiliations 3.   Your or your group’s bio (50 words max) 4.   State how you will participate (i.e. facilitator, musical performer, artist, scholar, activist, educator) 5.   A short, 250-word description of your topic or what your work demonstrates
6.   A list of the goals of your workshop and a plan for how you will achieve them. 7.   Proposals should be 500 words or less and include a description of the workshop format. 8.   Group and individual workshop proposals or performances will be considered.
For possible workshop topics go to:
https://womenwhorockcommunity.org/conference/call-for-workshop-facilitators/
Please submit your general proposals by November 15, 2011 through the Women Who Rock Community website: https://womenwhorockcommunity.org/conference/call-for-workshop-facilitators/submit-proposal-here/
FILM FESTIVAL SUBMISSIONS
We invite submissions of short films in any genre (documentary, music video, animation, fiction, etc.) by and about women (of all genders, transgenders, and sexualities) and their allies who are making social change, breaking rules, making scenes, building community and rocking all kinds of musics from hip hop to punk, salsa, son jaracho, and Afro-Peruvian. This year’s theme is “Vibrations of Love” with a focus on the ways women and their allies navigate and contribute to spaces that promote cultural production and the investigation, disruption, re-imagination, and reinvention of social and physical structures.
FILM SUBMISSION CRITERIA:
- Â Topic: Fits the broad theme of the Women Who Rock conference as described above
- Length: 15 minutes or less
- Include a Film Synopsis with the following: Director’s name; Contact information; Length of film; Year produced; Language; Country of production; Genre; A paragraph summarizing the film.
- For the submission, send a link to your film online. Filmmaker’s whose films are chosen for this year’s conference will be asked to send us their final films as full quality Quicktime files on a CD or DVD.
Please submit your films by November 15, 2011 through the Women Who Rock Community website: https://womenwhorockcommunity.org/film-festival/call-for-submissions/submit-film-proposals-here/
Registration: https://catalyst.uw.edu/webq/summary/mhabellp/144086
Questions? Contact Michelle Habell-Pallan, Sonnet Retman, Monica De La Torre, or Lulu Carpenter at
womenwhorockproject@gmail.com
This unconference and film festival is co-sponsored by Hidmo, Ladies First Collective, and the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington as well as Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies and American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington.