Recording: Bickersteth/McMann/Starkey

Artist: Neema Bickersteth/Jessica McMann/Dot Starkey

Song: [first section]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Main Hall (Women From Space Festival 2022 – Night 2), April 29, 2022.

Neema Bickersteth/Jessica McMann/Dot Starkey - [first section]

For the past three years, the Women From Space Festival has been an excellent encapsulation of its moment. Coming on the cusp of the First Big Lockdown, the 2020 Festival is remembered by many as the last event of the beforetimes, while last year's "hologram edition" was an elegant solution to the flatness of livestreams. And now, this year's Festival had to bear all the relief and angst of "returning to live" at this uncertain mid-point of the pandemic. Presented with joy and community spirit over four nights, the Festival was a chance to run into seldom-seen familiar faces and to hear a dizzying variety of sounds.

This co-prsentation with Understory presented one response to the query of how to bring the online series' "exquisite corpse" collaborations into the offline world. The solution here was to have Toronto-based Neema Bickersteth (voice, movement) performing live, responding to prerecorded contributions from Jessica McMann (flute, voice) and Dot Starkey (electronics), which created a rich visual field with the other performers' contributions being projected behind Bickersteth's presence.