Welcome To Queering Dreams!
We believe our ability to dream has been truncated & made small by the oppressive systems under which we live, love & desire. By queering our dreams we seek to widen & expand what is possible outside the prerogatives of oppressive systems. We queer the idea of what is normal & or expected; we interrogate the way things are & how they can be. While we are queer-centered, we welcome anyone who is interested in abolishing all systems of oppression & domination.
Queering Dreams’ Tree of Change
Our Seed / From What We Spring
We come with open hearts, full of gifts, & a willingness to be in the process of co-creation.
We bring with us dreams of liberation from those who came before & make community with those who understand:
We must do better.
Our Soil / Archive
We cannot sprout & grow without nourishment from fertile soil, which comes only from deep, careful tending.
We tend to our soil by adding to it the knowledge, talents, & resources shared by our neighbors, comrades, & co-creators & noting what nutrients get added.
We believe paying attention to & documenting what we draw from helps us build upon the legacies, labor, land, & wisdoms of our relations & ancestors. By archiving our soil, we also provide the means for others to tend to & cultivate their own.
Our Roots / Dreams
We believe in the power of neighbors near & far dreaming in community to:
co-create shared dreams & visions of what it can look, feel, & be like to live, to love, & to build something new, outside the prerogatives of systems of oppression & domination,
cultivate intimacy, vulnerability, & belonging across ages, identities, territories, cultures, genders, sexualities, (dis)abilities, beliefs, …,
heal our selves & our relations as a way to begin naming generational wounds.
Our Trunk / Mission
We co-create gatherings in space & time liberated from the confines of all systems of oppression, if even only momentarily, so that we all can:
experience care, belonging, & a fullness of being,
collectively make meaning of the world & cosmos around us,
share talents, resources, & stories among ourselves & with our neighbors.
Our Canopy / Values
We value consent, conversation, communal dreaming, relations & relationships, accessibility, community media, relations / relationship, & freedom.
We continually practice our values through co-creating their meaning with our neighbors.
Our Flowers / Media
We attract our comrades & neighbors through making & sharing media & art that tell stories of Our Praxis / Tree (e.g. our seed, dreams / roots, mission / trunk, values / canopy, ...).
We seek to make clear both aesthetically & linguistically who we are & what we stand for, so others can better decide whether to join or support us.
We know broadcasting Our Praxis opens ourselves to criticism, & we desire to better understand criticisms, feedback, & critiques of Our Praxis so we continue orienting ourselves towards our collective liberation.
Our Fruits / Incubator
We work with our co-creators to incubate & grow connections, learnings & ways of being together & apart that foster feelings of belonging, intimacy & vulnerability.
We enter into the creative process to share & exchange what is known & unknown & to realize our collective dreams of doing better through a specific, time-bound project.
Our Co-Creator Incubator is our way of growing not just more Queering Dreams Trees, but birthing worlds without systems of oppression & domination.
Our Butterflies / Neighbors & Comrades
A neighbor is someone close in proximity to us either geographically or virtually or politically.
A neighbor is curious about our possible connections whether in complete alignment / agreement or not.
A neighbor is someone who cares about their neighbors & neighborhood & desires something better for us all.
A comrade realizes we are all in this together, meaning all of us or none of us as we co-create our liberation & freedom.
A comrade comes with an open heart, trusting together we can meet our wants, needs, and desires.
A comrade lets us know when we can do better.
Our Birds / Co-Creators
A Co-Creator is someone with whom we build, make, and create because they believe in Our Praxis / Our Tree.
Co-Creators help deepen our understanding & practice of it, thus making Our Praxis real.
Co-Creators join us on a project for a specified duration of time & co-own everything we co-create.
Queering Dreams is dependent on Our Co-Creators to seed & realize Our Collective Dreams.
2022 Core Projects
Immigrant Artist Network - Register for Tea to Learn More
Queer Art School - More coming soon.
About Crystal Mason & Jason Wyman
Crystal Mason is an activist, artist and cultural worker who works to create space for imagining, conjuring and sharing our dreams of a better, more just world. They have over 25 years experience in Arts Administration and programming. They were formerly Co-Director of Queer Rebels and a board member since 2012. Crystal also co-founded Luna Sea Women’s Performance Space and was Executive Director of the Jon Sims Center for the Arts. In Berlin, where they lived for 9 years, they co-owned Schoko Café, a women’s art and culture center. They are a co-founder, along with Jason Wyman of Queering Dreams, a new art, care and community-expanding network that’s collectively dreaming & creating our liberation (from capitalism & White Supremacy & patriarchy & ableism & colonialism & all oppression & tyranny. In 2021 they appeared in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s latest film Heaven 58. Find Crystal on IG: @ham_job1. and at crystalmason.net or treeofchange.net
Jason Wyman is Queerly Complex, an anti-binary social practice artist living & creating on Yelamu, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land or what colonizers named San Francisco. A mystical convener, Wyman creates spaces for comrades to explore & discover who they be individually & collectively. They work with dreams, value(s), structures, & equity to conjure forms of liberation & healing. Wyman’s art-making centers the messy, intangible, emotive, & esoteric bits that make us human. It’s resulted in a large-scale, participatory sticker mural with artists Celi Tamayo-Lee & Mary-Claire Amable for the Asian Art Museum, a national Youth Media Network co-produced with Myah Overstreet, and Queering Dreams, an intergenerational, cross-territorial network of artists, neighbors, & comrades dreaming & co-creating our liberation from oppressive systems, with Crystal Mason.
Find Jason on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook: @queerlycomplex
