EDGY WOMEN and EDGY REDUX

Edgy Women and Edgy Redux are a feminist experimental art events devised by Miriam Ginestier and produced by Studio 303. Commemorating International Women’s Day, Edgy Redux continues the Edgy Women Festival’s mission to explore the complexity of contemporary feminisms, through fun, experimental, and community-building artistic events.

EDGY REDUX 2014 - TRANSITIONS
Tran·si·tion : a movement, development, or evolution from one form, stage, or style to another.

We are in transition. Studio 303, Edgy, feminists, artists, all of us. With Edgy Redux, we are responding to the constraints of significant funding loss; our strategy is inspired by the transformation that feminists (of all genders) and feminisms (of all stripes) have undergone since the dawn of the movement. This time of change offers a wonderful open departure point for rich exploration. Necessity is the … parent … of all invention and we are pregnant with potential.

In 2014 our goal is to hibernate the large format festival for the next 3 years while we regroup, take stock and plan for an exciting and sustainable future. Edgy is transitioning from a 10-day fiesta to a compressed, powerful 3-day platform for feminist research through and around experimental performance.

HISTORY
Edgy Women began as a one-night dance event in 1994, eventually blossoming into an interdisciplinary two-night event with a concurrent visual art exhibit. In 2006, Edgy Women took on an expanded festival format in multiple partner venues, providing a refreshed context in which to showcase longer works, more out-of-province artists, and parallel activities. In 2013, we celebrated the 20th edition of the festival. Unprecedented artistic collaborations occurred between avant-garde theatre artists and professional wrestlers, visual artists and body-builders, hockey players, ice-dancers and novice skaters. Rich conversations took place between artists, audiences, academics and activists during a full-day colloquium and through our commemorative zine. After 2013, since a significant loss of funding and entering a new transition phase, the festival has been rebranded into a more concise affair: Edgy Redux.

MILESTONES
See archives for full lists of artists presented.
• 1994: Studio 303 hosts a one-night dance event called Women from the Edge featured the work of three New Yorkers and two local choreographers, Irène Stamou and Danielle Lecourtois.
• 1995: the event is repeated and the name Edgy Women / Femmes au-delà is adopted.
• 1998: now a full-on multidisciplinary two-night event, Edgy Women features a dozen artists including Céline Bonnier and Victoria Stanton.
• 2000-2003: a concurrent visual art exhibit takes place in Gallery 303, with works by Marie-Claude Pratte, Karen Spencer, Louise Dubreuil and Vanessa Yanow, among others.
• 2001: Edgy Women became one of four events of Studio 303′s newly established Interdisciplinary Series.
• 2005: Edgy Women relocates to the Sala Rossa for 4 nights and features a performance-art concert by Swiss radicals les Reines Prochaines. Audiences quadruple from 166 in 2004 to 652 in 2005 and artist fees nearly tripled from $2,750 to $7,100.
• 2006-2007: now a bonafide 3-week festival funded by the Canada Council for the Arts’ Inter-arts office, the Edgy Women Festival features screenings, exhibits, workshops, a zine fair and performances by 30 or so artists. The wildly popular Défi Edgy was created as well as a workshop co-facilitated by Nathalie Claude, Alexis O’Hara and Dayna McLeod. Partners included Café Esperanza, la Centrale, Reel Dames, Studio XX, Articule and Toronto’s Hysteria festival.
• 2008: the festival suffered a blow when it did not receive festival funding. Making the best of a dire situation, Edgy moved back to 303 and had a particularly process-based community-outreach edition. We had an Edgy career day, a fundraising concert for Project 10, and an adventure in gender-bending with the trans artist Lazlo Pearlman and the “woman with a beard” Jennifer Miller.
• 2009: the short-lived festival funding is no longer available to Studio 303, but the festival finds other ways to survive. Tangente becomes a presenting partner for the next 3 years, and the festival benefits from new collaborations with Eastern Bloc and Mainline Theatre which hosts the sold-out four-night run of the Scandelle’s Neon Nights.
• 2011: Edgy hosts two unusual events which bleed away from known artistic territory into sports/leisure, and sex eduction: Karen Sherman’s Slippery on a public ice rink and Annie Sprinkle’s Sidewalk Sex Clinic.

• 2012 - We host the inaugural edition of Edgy Hockey, a UPOP-inspired conference at the Casa del Popolo, several full-length works and a Zombie-zine launch, all with the much-welcomed help of a dozen volunteers from France!
• 2013 - We celebrated the 20th edition by moving into the Blue Cat boxing club with unprecedented artistic collaborations between avant-garde theatre artists and professional wrestlers, visual artists and body-builders, etc. Rich conversations took place between artists, audiences, academics and activists during a full-day colloquium and through our commemorative zine.

Repeat artists who contributed immensely to the Edgy identity include:
• Nathalie Claude: 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2011
• Alexis O’Hara: 2000, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2012
• Dayna McLeod: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2011
• Karen Sherman: 2005, 2007, 2010, 2011
• Karen Bernard: 1994, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005
• Tonija Livingstone: 1999, 2001, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012, 2013
• Jess Dobkin: 2004, 2006, 2009, 2010
• Coral Short: 2009, 2010, 2013
• Lamathilde: 2004, 2010, 2013