Whorearchy: Pilgrimmage

Hamilton Frostbites Festival (curated) 2018 with Quietude Tacenda

Sex worker as god. Living in a "radical" body as a religion. Self-love as a bible.

This is an archival video of a site-specific theatre piece made by Kitoko Mai, Claud Spadafora, and Jesse Horvath. Whorearchy: Pilgrimage is part of a larger performance series exploring the experiences of queer sex-workers in Hamilton, Ontario and the surrounding area.

Everyone knows a sex worker. Sex workers are our friends, our family, our co-workers, and our partners. The stigmatization of sex work doesn’t stop it from happening, it just pushes sex workers further into isolation and secrecy.

Pilgrimage, specifically, explores the way sex work and sexuality can operate as a vessel for healing from trauma and oppression. How can we use the inevitability of ongoing micro-aggression and aggression to our advantage as a kind of reparation? It also explores sex as a form of spirituality, a subversion of the restrictive nature of many organized religions. In the time of #metoo and the Sesta-Fosta bill, sex workers need support from allies and need to be able to control their own narratives. We are interested in dispelling misconceptions of sex work and sex workers, and increase empathy in audience members who may be removed from that world.

Photo Credits: Claud Spadafora and David Pijuan-Nomura