Tranny Hotel at Exchange Radical Moments Festival

EXCHANGE RADICAL MOMENTS!
LIVERPOOL CHOSEN TO TAKE PART IN EUROPE WIDE ARTS FESTIVAL WITH TRANNY HOTEL

Liverpool has been chosen as the only British city outside London that will feature in the European-wide Exchange Radical Moments! Live Art Festival, to take place on Fri 11 November, or 11.11.11, across the continent.

Liverpool was chosen due to its successful Capital of Culture year in 2008 and because of the unique event that organiser Mandy Romero wishes to produce. The event, named Tranny Hotel, is a weekend-long celebration of Transgender arts, which will take place at the city’s Adelphi Hotel from Fri 11 – Sun 13 November. Tranny Hotel Liverpool is also a UK premiere and forms part of this year’s Homotopia Festival of Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender culture.

Organiser Mandy Romero said: “I’m so excited that the Tranny Hotel project is going to be open to so many people. Not many projects made it into “Exchange Radical Moments” which is such an important Festival and I’m sure that our weekend of performance and events will be a good thing for Liverpool, for the arts and for the transgender community. It’s time that the presence of transgender people and the performers who express their world had the positive attention and appreciation they deserve and for three days in Liverpool we will do our best to advance the cause.”
The Exchange Radical Moments festival is a massive Live Art event that will see 11 distinct events taking place across Europe in countries such as Belgium, Austria, Germany, Sweden and Moldova. All of these events will take place simultaneously on Friday 11.11.11 and will all be beamed onto the web to create one large virtual festival.  The aim of the Exchange Radical Moments festival is to use extraordinary Live Art projects such as Tranny Hotel, which interrupt our usual routines and thinking patterns, leading us to pause and ask new questions of ourselves. The festival asks a number of questions of its audience, are we ready to engage extraordinary moments of exchange, moments of real meetings?  Live Art projects have been created over the last 18 months by more than 30 participating international artists.
Tranny Hotel will see a plethora of Transgender artists from across the globe perform a wealth of different works in numerous spaces around the hotel, from bedrooms and suites, to staircases, hallways and function rooms. The three day event will also see concert style performances taking place on Fri 11 November and Sun 13 November featuring some of the world’s best Transgender artists.

Renowned Transgender performers and artists will be flying in from across the globe to perform at the event which is the biggest Transgender event in the UK for 2011. Acts include accomplished Scottish transsexual playwright Jo Clifford, who brings her highly controversial piece ’The Gospel According to Jesus Queen of Heaven’, an early version of which was originally performed at the Glasgay festival in 2009. The piece will see small audiences meeting and interacting with Queen Jesus in a hotel room throughout the weekend. Spanish artist REgina Fiz will perform her critically acclaimed piece ‘The Ritual Wedding’ which also demands an intimate audience in an intimate space. The ritual wedding draws on tradition and precise ritual, and will leave the audience taking away a completely personal encounter through evoking memories and past emotions.

Norwegian artist Ane Lan brings the most personal of experiences to the hotel with her piece ‘Irma’s Room’, which is inspired by Sigmund Freud, Irma being the famous patient of Freud. Small audiences of just one or two people will experience the piece at a time, making it completely unique each time it is performed.

Other artists include Canadian folk performer Rae Spoon, unique drag, cabaret and performance artist Jonny Woo, Tom Shaw, whose piece ‘Drag Mountain’ will see the stairways and halls covered in a string of dresses, before Shaw wears them simultaneously and American artist Lazlo Pearlman, will perform his piece Dance Me To The End of Love, which explores intimacy, love, partnering and the transgender body. A full line up of performers and acts will be announced shortly.

Mandy continues “It’s always good when Liverpool welcomes artists to the city and, like the Biennial here, we have a great line-up of performers in all sorts of unusual and stylish locations for everybody to discover. They’re coming from far afield, but we also have trans performers with local connections. Plays, concerts, strange and wonderful encounters in hotel rooms, most of them in the famous Adelphi Hotel – there’s something for everyone in “Tranny Hotel”. Thanks to our partnerships with “Exchange Radical Moments” and Homotopia we’re able to offer a really rich programme and I can’t wait to see how it all turns out. I hope that this will be one of those moments when transgender art moves to a new level and I’m proud that it’s all happening in Liverpool”.

Gerald Harringer Exchange Radical Moments! Festival Co-Ordinator said: “On 11th November you can experience a thing or two! We’ve long been seeking ways to turn “onlookers” into participants on an equal footing with “the creators”. To make them co-producers. Fellow cast members. Give and take on the same level, exchange and encounter.

Together with others who share this vision, we’ve launched the EXCHANGE RADICAL MOMENTS! European Live Art Festival—a celebration of art that defies compartmentalization. Somewhere at the nexus of theater, performance, art in public spaces and intervention is the site we’ve staked out. There is, nevertheless, something all these works have in common: Everything happens live, is physical, real, manifests itself in action, takes place without airbags and safety nets, amidst real life”.
FESTIVAL INFORMATION
TRANNY HOTEL
Fri 11 – Sun 13 November
Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool
Weekend Pass £20
How To Book: Go online to www.tranny-hotel.com 

EXCHANGE RADICAL MOMENTS
Fri 11 November
11 Cities across Europe
For more information go to: www.11moments.org

For more information go to www.11moments.org or http://tranny-hotel-liverpool.11moments.org

Published: 27-Oct-2011: (869)