Co-curated by Nawang Kinkar & Marusya Bociurkiw and hosted at Glad Day Books, our 5th Laboratory of Feminist Memory offers our communities space to gather, reflect, and feel amidst a time of global conflicts.

Since Russia’s re-invasion of Ukraine on February 24, women, LGBQ+, trans and non-binary Ukrainians have been particularly impacted. Feminists have always spoken up against war and this event brings together feminist artists, writers, researchers, and activists to share feelings they have manifested through art that speak to the condition of war. How does war impact the feminist imagination? What is a feminist archive of war? Tracing connections between memory and imagination, LFM: Wartime Edition responds to a collective need for embodied feeling, activism and solidarity.

This cabaret-style event takes an intersectional feminist approach to war, with poets and musicians of Ukrainian, Palestinian, Iranian and Caribbean descent, including such literary luminaries as renowned Canadian poet NourbeSe Phillip, disabled/queer/transmasculine multidisciplinary artist Charlie Petch, lesbian singer-songwriter Ferron (via Zoom), Palestinian spoken word poet Sarrah Ghadeer Malek, and BLISK, an all-female Eastern European musical ensemble.

Other performers include poet and curator Bänoo Zan, writer/drummer Jody Chan, poet Ghadeer Elghafri, and filmmaker Marusya Bociurkiw, screening an excerpt from “This Is Gay Propaganda: LGBT Rights & the War in Ukraine.” Recent messages from some of Ukraine’s foremost feminist activists were also read aloud.