Trans-positive event to be held in Helmsdale over Easter weekend
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Helmsdale will play host to a weekend of talks, performances and lunches on Saturday and Sunday with the first ever "Ēastre Weekend".
The event, which will be held at Timespan on April 8 and 9, will celebrate the release of Lina Pallotta's Porpora, Italian photographer Lina Pallotta’s first photography book featuring trans activist and writer Porpora Marcasciano.
Over the course of the weekend, talks, performances, a DJ set and communal lunches will explore experiences of transition, resistance, community, joy and love. Ēastre is the pagan Anglo-Saxon goddess of dawn, spring, fertility, rebirth and storms: a figure apt to embrace the themes of this weekend, according to organisers.
Marcasciano said: "I look forward to taking part to see a collective dimension, where we can share, exchange, and speculate. Where art meets politics, philosophy, and personal experiences. I see it as a moment where we can take stock of the situation from many different points of view.
"I am thrilled to participate in the Ēastre Weekend, because the collective coming together revitalizes my life and the photos that Lina took. I believe these moments are fundamental in giving us the occasion to discuss the here and now. The past should always be mended with the present because the past cannot be mummified. The past is our story, and there is no interruption."
The event will begin on Saturday, April 8 at 3pm with the launch of Porpora, chaired by publication curator Michele Bertolino, PhD researcher Sophie Sexon, Porpora Marcasciano and the artist, Lina Pallotta.
Ms Pallotta said: "It is a project that, without heaviness, has accompanied me since the early 90s. It certainly has a symbolic value linked to my close friendship with Porpora. But it also embodies my expectations and aims with respect to photography and my growth within the medium. Basically, it is an affirmation, a conclusion and an adhesion to life choices, and to the visual process."
Marcasciano added: "Lina's publication is an important and fundamental restitution of my life, and of a collective path. It is like she put together a necklace of precious pearls, each of which is a moment, a situation, an experience, a meeting, a person that has enriched a path that has become collective.
"Lina not simply portrays my life, she weaves plural relations, showing our way of seeing the world."
A Q&A session will follow with local author and Highland Pride member Roz White about trans rights and the recent Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) bill.
The day will conclude with a southern Indian dinner prepared by Shirley Kobiela, offered at the River Café from 6.30pm.
On Saturday evening, artist Sgàire Wood will perform her Sgàireoke: an evening of music and performance welcoming all to join them in a karaoke night. Following up will be DJ sets from Memoirs of An Imperfect Angel & MS. NICEBOY, who will invite all participants to "get loose" on dance, garage, pop, house and disco tunes.
Then, on Sunday, April 9, the programme will continue with Dingwall-based author Roz White sharing her experiences as a writer and reading excerpts from her trans-fiction novels.
She said: "I think this event will be a wonderful occasion to bring people together from all sorts of backgrounds who may well find that they share common bonds of Highland life that they had no idea about previously.”
To complete the programme, Porpora Marcasciano will share for the first time excerpts from the video documentaries about her everyday life which she began shooting after receiving a camera as a gift in 1987.
These videos include late-night meetings with her comrades and protests as well as intimate footage of her dressing up, dancing and singing, capturing her body changing over time.
A complete programme of events is available on the event's website here.
