Malta’s Muses: Goddess, Madonna, Witch – A lecture and performance with Kay Turner

FRAGMENTA is incredibly honored and proud to be able to present a site-specific performance by renowned folklore professor and performer Kay Turner on a special prehistoric site of Malta.

Kay Turner will lecture on the overlapping her-stories of the Goddess, Madonna and Witch, three figures identifying Woman and women in Maltese life for generations, even millennia. Following the talk, Kay Turner will invite to a participatory performance. The performance will take form of a creative procession to which audience members are invited to join – or simply to watch. We are attempting to recreate a holy trinity. Additional performers from New York City: Mary Sanger, Karen Siegel, and Paula Schors.

The event, happening on Tuesday 5th June between 7-10pm at the Tarxien Temples (free entrance), will finish in a small gathering that gives the opportunity to talk about the event, our experiences, and gather socially with people of different ages and genders.

If possible, please bring a BROOM to the event. (We won’t beat you with it)

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Kay Turner received her B.A. in literature and philosophy from Rutgers University in 1971. In 1989, she earned her MA/PhD in folklore and anthropology from the University of Texas. Turner’s research focuses women’s studies, queer studies, and folk and contemporary art.
In 1984, Kay Turner, Pat Jasper, and Betsy Peterson founded Texas Folklife Resources. Turner went on to work as director of the Brooklyn Arts Council’s Folk Arts Program from 2000-2014. In 2011, she joined the board of the New York Folklore Society.

As a public folklorist, Turner has researched, organized, and produced public programs, museum exhibitions, and folk music festivals.
Turner, who served as president of the American Folklore Society from 2016–2017, has said “To be a folklorist is to be entrusted with a diverse body of critical cultural knowledge, art, and practice and to be just ornery enough to believe the world is better off if we share it out in teaching, researching, writing, consulting, public programming, advocating, archiving, and engaging with each other as members of our Society.”

Along with Gretchen Phillips and Betsy Peterson, Kay Turner formed the lesbian-feminist rock band Girls in the Nose in 1985 in Austin, Texas. The band performed between 1985 and 1996. Turner’s work as a musician has continued as she created Otherwise: Queer Scholarship into Song, which she began organizing and performing in 2013.