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Don’t Believe the Hype! [screening + discussion] Ryan Conrad, Tom Hooper, Ummni Khan, and Darrah Teitel
6:30 PM on Tuesday Aug. 20th, 2019
Knot Project Space, 2 Daly Ave.
Price: FREE

Join SAW Video Media Art Centre for an artist talk and panel on the mythologies and realities of the 1969 Criminal Code reform and its impact on the lives of queers, sex workers, and those seeking abortions. Artist and activist Ryan Conrad will screen and talk about his commissioned video projection Don't Believe The Hype!, which will also be on display in Ottawa’s gay village throughout Pride week as part of Knot Projections 2019: Imagining Publics, an extended public projection series involving five local artists. Conrad's talk will be followed by context-setting commentary from Tom Hooper, Darrah Teitel, and Ummni Khan.

Ryan Conrad is an artist, activist, and scholar based in Ottawa. He is currently a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow in the Cinema and Media Studies Program at York University where he is working on a manuscript entitled 'Radical VIHsion: Canadian AIDS Film & Video.' Darrah Teitel is currently the campaigns officer for Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights. Previously, Darrah worked on Parliament Hill as a legislative assistant for the official opposition critics for the Status of Women and Indigenous Affairs. Tom Hooper is a historian who researches the criminalization of LGBTQ2 communities in the decades following the 1969 criminal code reform. He also works as contract faculty in the Law and Society Program at York University. Ummni Khan, S.J.D., is an Associate Professor in Legal Studies at Carleton University. Her scholarship addresses the legal and cultural construction of sexual deviancy in relation to gender, racialization, class, and disability along with other axes of difference and identity.

Don’t Believe the Hype! is a silent looping video that claims public space for queer intimacy and political imagining at a time when Canadians are being encouraged by both the federal government and LGBTQ civil society organizations to celebrate the so-called 50th anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexuality.