Mikiki: .5

Image: Mikiki

Artcite Inc. is excited to include Mikiki to the lineup of HOTSPOT performers.

Through .5 Mikiki will facilitate conversations online with people seeking and negotiating physical intimacy during COVID-19.

Making use of hookup apps and dating websites, chatting with people looking for intimacy online; Mikiki will be engaging queer men about hooking up during the pandemic while negotiating comfort, safety, desire, and harm reduction strategies before putting into practice the acts they’ve discussed. The audience is invited to witness Mikiki’s reportage interventions about the exchange in various chatrooms or as presented on their respective app profiles, otherwise audience members are able to watch the artist on their webcam between guests.​

As we hear about vaccines on eighteen month horizon-lines, how long do we expect people to abstain from physical intimacy? To ignore the need for connection instead of explore new potentials for intimacy?

.5 is a reimagining of 23611708.5, during which Mikiki discussed self-identification, sexual health and history with participants on gay(dot)com while camming and making themself available as a sexual surrogate.

bio

Mikiki is a performance and video artist and queer community health activist of Acadian/Mi’kmaq and Irish descent from Newfoundland, Canada. They attended NSCAD and Concordia before returning to St. John's to work as Programming Coordinator at Eastern Edge Gallery. They later moved to Calgary to work as the Director of TRUCK Gallery. Their work has been presented throughout Canada and internationally in self-produced interventions, artist-run centers and public galleries.

Their identity as an artist is informed and intrinsically linked to their history as a sexual health educator, harm reduction worker and activist. Mikiki’s creative themes often address safety and responsibility, disclosure and self-determination, community building and reckoning with trauma and loss. Mikiki has worked as a Sexuality Educator in Calgary's public schools, a Bathhouse Attendant in Saskatoon, Drag Queen Karaoke Hostess in St. John's. Mikiki has worked in various capacities in the Gay Men's Health and HIV response in Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto, and recently in Harm Reduction Outreach and HIV testing.

Mikiki’s creative work is deeply rooted in the histories of performance art, Queer and AIDS activism, and their performances actively ritualize and remix references from within performance and contemporary art discourses as well as popular culture, queer communities and public health discourses.

recording: