Sheroes

About
Sheroes was a monthly limited-run art party series that brought together on and offline works that playfully and performatively explore the iconography and cultures of fandom surrounding the "League of Legendary Ladies": Joni Mitchell, Chaka Khan, Tina Turner, Madonna, Yoko Ono, Erykah Badu, Etta James, Marianne Faithfull, Dolly Parton, Grace Jones, Dusty Springfield & Nina Simone.


Sheroes is presented by salonnière reeraw (Rea McNamara). Based in Toronto, the series curates specially commissioned performances, sounds, installations & visuals.


All Sheroes events are brainstormed and archived online at fuckyeahsheroes.tumblr.com, uniting digital communities with real-time audiences in an ongoing exploration into fan culture and collaborative content creation.


Virtual Season — our culminating presentation of new and past Sheroes on/offline works & performances — is currently gearing into its first international reunion tour. We will be announcing soon tour dates. (If you would like to book a Sheroes event, please contact us.)


Videos Event GIFs Facebook Google+

McNamara chatted with me briefly about the reasoning behind the termination of the series: “It was never intended to be a monthly [event] that would still be going a year or two or even three down the line. We were never interested in our audience becoming spectators. We are, however, considering when will be the appropriate time in which we can release the box set and announce our next reunion tour.” McNamara assured me that for now, nail art appointments and hair treatments are at the top of her to-do list: “It takes a lot of work to do this salonnière business.”

(via sheroesvirtualseason)

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Many thanks to Kevin Ritchie of NOW for the Sheroes #11: Dusty Springfield write-up, as well as featuring Sally McKay’s wonderful GIF from our Collective Lesbo Consciousness group GIF show. http://www.nowtoronto.com/daily/music/story.cfm?content=187569

Many thanks to Kevin Ritchie of NOW for the Sheroes #11: Dusty Springfield write-up, as well as featuring Sally McKay’s wonderful GIF from our Collective Lesbo Consciousness group GIF show.

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Trashy!

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prostheticknowledge:

Rhizome: Prosthetic Knowledge Picks - The Female Pixel 

A digest of links on the idea of ‘The Female Pixel’, including (on Tumblr) FM Towns Marty, Sheroes, V5MT, PartyTime! Hexellent.

It also features Lillian Schwartz, Waldemar Cordeiro, Jovi Xu, and Christian Zander.

You can read the whole thing here

Many thanks to Rich for including Sheroes as one of his Prosthetic Knowledge picks on Rhizome!

Click to see featured GIFs from Andrew Benson, Jennifer Chan, Haruko Hirukawa & Yoshi Sodeoka.

(The featured event GIFs by Lorna Mills & Tony Halmos include live documentation of GIFs in action by Grace McEvoy, Sarah Weis & Emilie Gervais, as well as past performers Lido Pimienta & BizZarh.)

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“The concept of Sheroes is in line with the web communities that define themselves by their fandoms; throw a rock on Tumblr and you’ll hit a dozen blogs dedicated to dissecting the minutiae of pop culture, from TV-inspired fanfiction to artwork based on song lyrics. Call them niche, even geeky, but the sheer number of such communities proves that there is market for turning obsession into expression. Sheroes turns fandom into a party, a glitzed-up version of Comic Con that’s more stiletto than Star Wars.” https://twitter.com/rosariodawson/status/205743901649272835

“The concept of Sheroes is in line with the web communities that define themselves by their fandoms; throw a rock on Tumblr and you’ll hit a dozen blogs dedicated to dissecting the minutiae of pop culture, from TV-inspired fanfiction to artwork based on song lyrics. Call them niche, even geeky, but the sheer number of such communities proves that there is market for turning obsession into expression. Sheroes turns fandom into a party, a glitzed-up version of Comic Con that’s more stiletto than Star Wars.”

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If you live in Toronto, pick up Offerings Magazine for their Q&A w/Sheroes salonnière reeraw. Many thanks to Kristel Jax for the insightful dialogue.

(They asked that we make the below mixtape for ‘em, based on a particular discussion in the interview regarding “unrepentantly fucked up” lady anti-heroes.)

Related: [mixtape] Mythic Woman Power Chorus Mixtape

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Tell us a bit about your latest or ongoing project. What about Sheroes #9: Dolly Parton?  First of all, Sheroes is the invention of the extremely generous and multi-talented salonnière, Rea McNamara. It’s a monthly limited-run performance event series that frolics in the aesthetic playground of media fandom such as fan fiction, fan art, fan videos, fan costume play etc. http://fuckyeahsheroes.tumblr.com/tagged/sheroes-9%3A-dolly-parton Rea had already produced the first two in the series, when she approached me about programming projections of animated gifs. I admit that I was unsure of the project at first, there’s a part of me that cringed at expressions like ‘sheroes’, ‘herstory’ and ‘mythic female’, all that debased coinage from a previous generation of feminists, but she won me over when I saw how she was embracing it with so much smart humour and energy. I think we only invited about six artists for the first gif projections, but they were so enthusiastic after seeing the event documentation that I got the confidence up to invite more gif artists to participate. Eventually Rea just left the GIF aspect of the events in my hands. What we now have is an ever expanding crew of gif makers, (we are up to 29 for Sheroes #9) that includes many well known active net-artists, as well as younger artists, both male and female, from all over the world. Previously, my own taste in exhibitions/events was more towards small tightly focussed curatorials. Inviting serious artists to participate in fan culture has had some surprising results, though no one should be surprised that serious artists want to do their best work no matter what, or that the work gets better and better.  http://www.triangulationblog.com/2012/04/lorna-mills.html

Tell us a bit about your latest or ongoing project. What about Sheroes #9: Dolly Parton? 
First of all, Sheroes is the invention of the extremely generous and multi-talented salonnière, Rea McNamara. It’s a monthly limited-run performance event series that frolics in the aesthetic playground of media fandom such as fan fiction, fan art, fan videos, fan costume play etc. http://fuckyeahsheroes.tumblr.com/tagged/sheroes-9%3A-dolly-parton
Rea had already produced the first two in the series, when she approached me about programming projections of animated gifs. I admit that I was unsure of the project at first, there’s a part of me that cringed at expressions like ‘sheroes’, ‘herstory’ and ‘mythic female’, all that debased coinage from a previous generation of feminists, but she won me over when I saw how she was embracing it with so much smart humour and energy. I think we only invited about six artists for the first gif projections, but they were so enthusiastic after seeing the event documentation that I got the confidence up to invite more gif artists to participate. Eventually Rea just left the GIF aspect of the events in my hands. What we now have is an ever expanding crew of gif makers, (we are up to 29 for Sheroes #9) that includes many well known active net-artists, as well as younger artists, both male and female, from all over the world. Previously, my own taste in exhibitions/events was more towards small tightly focussed curatorials. Inviting serious artists to participate in fan culture has had some surprising results, though no one should be surprised that serious artists want to do their best work no matter what, or that the work gets better and better. 

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Given Bizzarh’s affinity for Baduisms, and despite never having seen them live, they were the obvious suggestion when Rea McNamara inquired about performers for her bi-monthly Sheroes tribute party. Especially so, since the latest installment of Sheroes, held last Thursday at the Beaver, was in praise of the b-girl earth mother herself, Badu. Despite a brief speaker-related snag, Bizzarh – still relatively unseasoned performers – were unruffled and pulled off a short but intriguing set including, of course, their rendition of “Bag Lady.

— The Toronto Standard’s music critic Anupa Mistry on BizZarh’s Sheroes #6: Erykah Badu performance.

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If it’s not evident by now why I love this party—and why you should—or why I’ve said there’s not much like it, let me be clear: The Sheroes raison d’être, and the reason it succeeds, is that it’s cerebral while remaining fiercely emotional and devoutly connected to, as reeraw would put it, “herstory.” But don’t describe this as something “by women, for women”—it’s so much more than that. “From the start, it’s been an inclusive collaborative effort involving women and men,” reeraw says. “But the ideas are there for sure, in particular this playful exploration of the iconography and cultures of fandom surrounding our ever-expanding League.

— The Grid’s Night Shift columnist Paul Aguirre-Livingstone on Sheroes #6: Erykah Badu.

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‎”Known for its all-inclusive, queer-friendly environment, Naco was never short of experimental in its offerings. Last Friday, for example, there was a Yoko Ono tribute thing as part of the latest Sheroes jam featuring installations & GIF art. (Dare you to find a tolerable party series like this somewhere else.)

— The Nocturne: Is DuWest the next frontier?

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