Sacred Disease
Renèe Helèna BrowneSacred Disease is a two-colour animated film exploring language and its power over the body when consumed by the performance of romantic partnership. The script—developed from the TV series Sex and the City, The Heroides by Ovid, and Renèe Helèna Browne’s own experiences—brings classical and contemporary sources into dialogue to explore desire, narration, and the ways speech becomes embodied within intimate relationships.
Per Se
Deirdre LogueThis work is dedicated to the moment of hesitation that precedes saying something meaningful and to the difficulties of expressing oneself.
Pixel Metabolism, Interface Ulcer
Zhongyao WangPixel Metabolism, Interface Ulcer envisions a disembodied, screen-dominated AI future encircled by satellites: virtual imagery is compressed into a tiny pink pill that invades the flesh in reverse, dissolving the boundary between digital and biological. Users become self-experimenting cyborgs, forced to recalibrate touch and bodily perception between ingestion and rejection.
LetMEbeaWomanTM.mp4
E. JaneCelebrating women who expand beyond the possibility of belonging to anyone or anything, LetMEbeaWomanTM.mp4 beautifully captures the aporia of longing to be held and refusal to be grasped, one that inevitably led the artist back to the searing question guiding Sojourner Truth’s 1851 Black feminist manifesto: “Ain’t I a Woman?”
We’re here to please you, Baby
Welcome to Kiki’s Enmeshment. I’m Kiki and I’ll be your host.
Let the low-strained voice of Deirdre Logue familiarize you with this evening's events, as she explains: "[w]hat I really want to say is private, so what makes it so hard to say is that I really don’t understand it, per se..." I want to share a craving for enmeshment, a desire that motivates the performance persona, Kiki. A desire that is shaped and formed in reality TV, where the lines between selfhood and audience collapse. In this program, we explore the shared limits of persona: how much Kiki gives, how much she feeds the embodiment of desires, and where her boundaries and mine begin to dissolve.
Real Housewife of New York City Bethenny Frankel screams, “Go to sleep! Go to sleep!” I am delighted to bring you to Scary Island. Production’s failed attempts to reconfigure a Real Housewife’s breakdown leave audiences searching beyond the show for truth, taking to message boards and bloggers to find it. Exposing this rupture between show and audience, a longing for intimacy emerges, one that demands the fall of all boundaries between performance and reality. “I’m here to please you, Baby.”
Sinking deeper, we turn to comfort viewing: it’s our girls from Sex and the City! It’s Kiki’s favourite Miranda era, when she goes Black. Renèe Helèna Browne’s Sacred Disease (2020) isn’t a nostalgic revisiting of foundational texts on love; it's a warning about language and how it binds us. How deep will another’s desire go before your body rejects it? For Renèe’s characters, their bodies convulse, vomit, and shit until all other desires are removed.
“TAKE A XANNAAAAX!” echoes from the Real Housewife of New York City Ramona Singer as she prescribes a cure for her castmate’s codependence. If the process of enmeshment is anxiety-inducing, Zhongyao Wang’s Pixel Metabolism’s Interface Ulcer (2025) has a cure for our sacred disease. Pop the pink pill and let every membrane it passes bring us closer to our “compulsive desire to merge with every interface.” The singularity is in our guts, and we love it! I've forgotten where I started as the viral sound of Tiffany “New York” Pollard proclaiming “Whatever—I don’t give a fuck. Do I look like I give a fuck? Because I don’t!” resounds throughout the cinema.
Now we turn to the stage as E. Jane’s LetMEbeaWomanTM.mp4 (2020) introduces the Black Diva, unmatched by any light we’ve ever seen. Jane reminds the Black Diva, in all her presence, that her own desires aren’t safe from scrutiny. The stage she stands on reminds her of the lines she must stay within. The voice of the great Wendy Williams thanks Whitney Houston for giving her “her moment,” and Houston responds, “I love you, Wendy.” Dear audience, this craving for enmeshment, “it’s not exactly a secret, per se...It’s just that I don’t know how to say it the right way…per se.” This program became a path from body to stage, to screen, to Kiki, and we hope it pleases you, Baby.
Please join us after the program for a conversation with Kiki and Riss Sean Cruz
2 Sussex Ave, Toronto, ON M5S 1J5
Sidewalk-level entrance, elevator and ramp available, door width 32 inches, no automatic doors. No accessible parking on-site. Four wheelchair accessible seats in the cinema. 15 step-free seats in row 9. Accessible gender-neutral washroom located on the 2nd and 3rd floor.
For a map to Innis Town Hall, click here
(ARTISTS)
