About Queer Spa Network
Queer Spa Network (QSN) is a group of autonomous Queer artists and healers invested in rest, healing, and pleasure for our communities. We are brought together to exchange knowledge and collaborate on projects that build empathetic communal relationships with our body, the land and waters, and one another. Queer Spa Network meets on a monthly basis to: discuss topics centered around care, disability, bathing; organize regular bathing outings; and discuss potential public projects.
PROJECTS
PROJECTS
Digital Sanctuaries: Design Your Dream Genderqueer Spa (2024)
Engaging with the contexts and histories of the AIDS epidemic, the ongoing COVID pandemic, and bathhouses as sites of queer encounter and healing, “Digital Sanctuaries: Design Your Dream Genderqueer Spa,” is an online party, hosted by Queer Spa Network on its GatherTown virtual spa platform.
GatherTown is an online social space in which people can get together, prototype their own virtual environments, and have conversations with other participants in the same room or close by, similar to an in-person event.
This party will include three facilitated spaces: A conversation circle about the history of bathhouses, queer encounter, and queer community care; a room for prototyping visions for future queer spaces of community healing; and a virtual dance party room in Queer Spa Network’s fungeon!
The space will include original house music by MythicLuna and a sound piece by Umi Hsu.
This program was part of One Institute’s Circa Queer Histories Festival
Transforming Community Care Spa Kit Making Workshop (2024)
A workshop offered as part of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health'sTransforming Community Care series. Our workshop consisted of a skill share for self-massage techniques as well as facilitated spa kit making. Participants made body oils and body scrubs to take home and to be distributed for mutual aid.
This workshop was open to all members of the public but was designed and marketed particularly to members of the AANHPI LGBTQIA2-s community.
Community Care in Times of Drought (2023)
Three-part project supported by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) and The Andy Warhol Foundation.
Heal Hear Here
An event put on by LA Freewaves at LA Historic Park featuring music, processions, movement, sound, and workshops by 30 artist groups.
Queer Spa Network invited participants to make body oils, bath teas, and eucalyptus hangers—to take home and for mutual aid.
Sweating Vessels, Dry City
A pop-up exhibition at Coaxial Arts consisting of an installation, zines, and a body-oil making activity.
Pop-Up Spa
A series of 2 care days for tenant organizers in Chinatown, including hired masseuses, self-massage tools, and spa kits.
Spa Residencies for Frontline Workers (2021)
The years 2020 and 2021 have been incredibly grueling for people working on the frontlines—nurses, grocery workers, food service workers, delivery drivers, and more. As our society emerges into a new phase of pandemic response, we believe that it is vital to care for people who cared for us during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because we know that trauma lives in the body, we want to connect the unsung heroes of COVID-19—food service workers and delivery drivers—to bodily healing such as reiki sessions, acupuncture, massages, spa time, and more.
Spa Embassy and the Queer Spa Network held a raffle featuring items from Bulan Apothecary, Earthy Corazon, Moon Jar Design, Belly’s Bath, and Visitor Welcome Center. The seed money for the raffle came from Civic Wellbeing Partners. Raffle results supported 5 frontline workers from food service industries in receiving wellness services. We worked with the Black Trans and Queer Collective and Bob’s Market to identify frontline workers that received a spa service valued up to $150, as well as $100 to offset transportation, food, and childcare.
The Every Body Spa (2021)
SPA EMBASSY X LEO ALAS
Thanks to funding from the Department of Mental Health, Leo Alas and Spa Embassy (Carol Zou and Carrie Schneider) collaborated on "The Every Body Spa" during the month of May 2021.This project approaches healing from the perspective that traditional forms of healing, like psychiatry and gender-segregated spas, have been inaccessible and violent to queer and BIPOC bodies, and that art and somatic methods can provide a way of refashioning queer modes of healing. The project is open to queer-identified individuals and centers trans and BIPOC individuals in the co-creation of new rituals for grief, care, and healing. The project consists of three parts:
Locally sourced care packages distributed to queer and trans BIPOC individuals across LA County as selected through coordination with community partners
Online focus group with queer identified individuals to discuss healing rituals, healing methods, and to solicit input for care packages.
Online workshop with queer identified individuals to collectively build a vision of a genderqueer spa/healing space by using the digital platform gather.town.
Gather.town courtesy of Carrie Marie Schneider and participants of the Design Your Dream Gender Queer Spa event on May 29, 2021
Spa kit contents