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<\/a>A Methodology of Un_Becoming<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Too often, gender performativity is reductively understood as gender being a performance\u2014a play that we put on. Instead, as the philosopher Paul B. Preciado suggests, \u201cbiocodes of gender\u201d erratically and conventionally assign meaning in a male-female dichotomy. Then, gender is enacted through performative acts that signify rather than display gender. By making these biocodes disappear and appear at the same time, trans and GNC performance artists push signifiers of gender to the limits by using performances for the camera as a methodology of un_becoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Montr\u00e9al-born performance artist Cassils, whose practice I first encountered in the touring exhibition Masculinities: Liberation through Photography<\/em> (2020), best illustrates this. The group show featured Time Lapse<\/em> (2011), photographs of Cassils\u2019s half-year-long durational performance Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture<\/em> (2011), the work at the centre of Dubois\u2019s article \u201cOf the Techno-Plasticity of the Body in Cassils.\u201d Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture <\/em>is a direct take on Eleanor Antin\u2019s 1972 work, in which Antin crash-dieted for forty-five days to carve her body\u2019s mass. However, whereas Cassils followed an equally stringent dietary regime, including steroids, they actually aimed to increase rather than decrease their flesh as much as possible over the course of twenty-three weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Cassils<\/strong>
Time Lapse (Front, Back, Left, Right)<\/em>, details of the performance Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture<\/em>, 2011.
Photos: courtesy of the artist & Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Indeed, I was fortunate to be able to co-produce the online programming for this exhibition, which included a lecture and Q&A with Cassils on their 2011 works. Their statement \u201cI personally perform trans not as something about crossing from one sex to another, but rather as a continual process of becoming that embraces indeterminacy, spasm and slipperiness\u201d ^{4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 4 <\/a> - \u201cBehind the Screen: Cassils,\u201d Gropius Bau, last modified March 3, 2021, accessible online.<\/span> best reflects my sentiment about the intersection of queerness and performances for the camera. Hence, the purpose of Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture<\/em> isn\u2019t to render Cassils a man but to expose and destabilize the biomechanics that constitute gender in the first place. The only constant is the inherent tension of the competing biocodes in the photographs: muscled arms and breasts, a jockstrap and lipstick, as we see in Cassils\u2019s Advertisement: Homage to Benglis<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dubois illuminates crucial differences between Cassils\u2019s performances for the camera and those of Benglis and Antin, two cis-female performance artists. Although both of these artists extensively modified their bodies and used photography to document the process, Dubois emphasizes that their performances for the camera serve different functions. Whereas Antin aimed to denounce her gendered reality as a cis-woman, Dubois writes, \u201cCassils seeks to reverse the relationships of objectivization and instrumentalization of the female body by producing a body that is in fact hyper-masculine.\u201d And thus, Cassils reclaims the biocodes that assign bodies \u201ca natural status\u201d in the first place.^{5<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 5 <\/a> - Anne-Marie Dubois, \u201cOf the Techno-Plasticity of the Body in Cassils,\u201d trans. Ron Ross, Esse arts + opinions<\/em>, no. 90 (2017), p. 44-51, accessible online.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Cassils_Advertisement_HomagetoBenglis\"$
Cassils<\/strong>
Advertisement: Homage to Benglis<\/em>, 2011.
Photo: Cassils & Robin Black, courtesy of the artist & Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Trans_gressive from Its Inception<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
This comparison of Cassils\u2019s and Antin\u2019s works doesn\u2019t mean that performances for the camera are a methodology that has been reclaimed from cis-female artists or that I am retroactively framing performances for the camera as queer. In fact, the use of lens-based media in performance or vice-versa was pioneered in the 1970s in so-called Canada by GNC artists who were contemporaries of, rather than successors to, Antin and Benglis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following Colin Campbell\u2019s death in 2001, Henricks wrote a deeply personal, poignant meditation on Campbell, \u201cTrue Lies: The Importance of Being Colin,\u201d ^{6<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 6 <\/a> - Nelson Henricks, \u201cLes vrais mensonges ou de l\u2019importance d\u2019\u00eatre Colin,\u201d trans. Isabelle Chagnon, Esse arts + opinions<\/em>, no. 46 (2002), accessible online. The English-language original of this text, \u201cTrue Lies or the Importance of Being Colin,\u201d can be found at nelsonhenricks.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/True_Lies.pdf.<\/span> honouring his ground-breaking contribution to video art. Campbell, who in fact \u201csaw himself as bisexual and bigendered,\u201d produced over fifty videos from 1972 onward.^{7<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 7 <\/a> - Kathleen Mullen, \u201cA truly queer network: Video artist Colin Campbell & Toronto\u2019s fruitful art scene,\u201d Xtra<\/em>, last modified December 31, 2008, accessible online.<\/span> At that time, this new medium lurked at the art world\u2019s periphery, and Campbell was one of the first Canadian artists to adopt it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like many of his contemporaries, Campbell was alone in front of the camera. Here lies the crux: Campbell\u2019s personas appear rounded \u201cin an almost mediumistic manner\u201d because of their inseparability from the artist himself.^{8<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 8 <\/a> - Nelson Henricks, \u201cTrue Lies or the Importance of Being Colin,\u201d nelsonhenricks.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/True_Lies.pdf.<\/span> Additionally, his personas transgressed gender\u2019s significance due to his \u00e6ffective <\/em>use of cross-dressing^{9<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 9 <\/a> - I coined this term, meaning both \u201caffective\u201d and \u201ceffective.\u201d<\/span>\u2014which, as Henricks notes, was out of necessity rather than a dramatic je-ne-sais-quoi<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Campbell refuses to respond to the viewer\u2019s mental shortcut regarding the stability of gender by giving only a taste of the feminine, but never excluding the masculine either.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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I wasn\u2019t familiar with Campbell\u2019s practice before diving into the archive, but finding out about him in Henricks\u2019s text felt like hitting the jackpot. Although Campbell is conventionally known as a video artist, I was struck by Henricks\u2019s discussion of the corporeal nature of his videos, any analysis of which would feel incomplete without acknowledging the embodied nature that extends beyond the narrative frame. What truly distinguishes Campbell\u2019s video works is how perceptibly his embodiment manifests within them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both queerness and performances for the camera break meanings into multitudes like a prism breaking light into a full spectrum. Although we might associate the camera with connotations of stability or fixedness, I argue that performances for the camera confront the viewer with multiple paradoxes not only in Campbell\u2019s practice but also in those of the following two artists, who erode not only the gender binary but essentialist concepts of identity and nature altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From Queer Decadence to Decolonial Ecologies<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nJust as the Hulduf\u00f3lk<\/em>\u2014mythical, invisible elves\u2014survive Iceland\u2019s harsh climate and landscape, so does Laurence Philom\u00e8ne in their eponymous 2019 self-portrait series. A tattooed, naked body drapes a solid rock. What looks ethereal and tender to us must have been a strenuous physical exercise for the Philom\u00e8ne, who is the subject of Skelly\u2019s 2022 article. Through the concept of queer decadence, \u201ca deliberate femme queering of an aesthetics and a late nineteenth-century discourse,\u201d^{10<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 10 <\/a> - Skelly, \u201cQueer Decadence.\u201d<\/span> Skelly invites us to view Philom\u00e8ne\u2019s photography practice as an anti-patriarchal reflection on the boundaries between humans and nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The grass on the edges looks dead\u2014indicating a cold season\u2014and the mud-covered feet must have stemmed from walking in the freezing brook. And yet, we have the feeling that Philom\u00e8ne experiences the pleasure of dissolving into the water and the land, as if there were no difference between the orange of the lichen and the orange of their hair. And at the same time, even as they seem to flow away, their body grabs our attention, becomes its focal point, defying the contrast with the landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As in Cassils\u2019s work, struggle and perseverance, tension and tenderness, human and nature, lead to an embodied reflection of the self so transgressive and decadent that no dichotomies can withstand it. The transitions from invisibility to visibility, from performance to photography, are effortlessly fluid in Philom\u00e8ne\u2019s works. They present us with a whole that can be reduced neither to themself nor to Icelandic nature\u2014a whole that is queerer than the sum of its parts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Laurence Philom\u00e8ne<\/strong>
Lava Field<\/em>, from the series Hulduf\u00f3lk<\/em>, 2019.
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Laurence Philom\u00e8ne<\/strong>
Orange Lichen<\/em>, from the series Hulduf\u00f3lk<\/em>, 2019.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Yet caution is called for when thinking about landscape. The vastness of landscapes can sometimes be mistaken for emptiness or wildness, an understanding that fed the infamous colonial concept of terra nullius<\/em>, \u201cno man\u2019s land.\u201d In her review of La Mackerel\u2019s exhibition Who sings the queer island body?<\/em> (2023), the art historian and critic Julie Richard not only dissects this concept but also illustrates how La Mackerel\u2019s multidisciplinary practice challenges its colonial legacy in their native island of Mauritius.^{11<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 11 <\/a> - Julie Richard, \u201cKama La Mackerel Who sings the queer island body?<\/em>,\u201d Esse arts + opinions<\/em>, 2023, accessible online.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the exhibition Basalt body 1<\/em> (2023), a series of nine large-format self-portraits, we see La Mackerel\u2019s Black body sensually lying down in the littoral zone, seemingly merging with the basaltic rocks and black sand of the Mauritian coast. And in Banyan body 1<\/em> (2023), their pants make it seem like their legs are one with the aerial roots of the trees around them. As we witness La Mackerel\u2019s spiritual dialogue with the forces of Mauritian nature (and society), Richard recognizes the central role that their trans body plays in the creation of their lens-based works. As they come face to face with the land and ocean, as we see the sun reflected on their body, La Mackerel is vulnerable yet graceful. For in these performed rituals, we witness not only their self-actualization as a Zom-Fam, \u201cmeaning \u201cman-woman\u201d or \u201ctransgender\u201d in Mauritian Creole,^{12<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 12 <\/a> - La Mackerel, lamackerel.net\/artistic-projets\/zom-fam\/<\/a>.<\/span> but also their enduring and sovereign presentation of a visual counter-narrative of Mauritius\u2014a narrative at odds with the hetero-patriarchal legacy brought by European colonialism, which continues to be projected onto the island by the exoticizing, orientalizing gaze of Westerners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Kama-La-Mackarel_Basaltbody1\"$
Kama La Mackerel<\/strong>
Basalt body 1,<\/em> 2023.
Photo: Ashvin Ramdin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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La Mackerel is never swallowed by the scenery, never just an ephemeral presence on a supposedly empty land, because the decolonial power that their performances for the camera possess cannot be physically or mentally contained. And so, the transgressive and empowering nature of their works continues to flow beyond the shore of Mauritius to us, wherever we may read these words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beyond the Authority of the Lens … and Society<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
We see, in these works, that the act of recording is more than a static act of observation, a freezing in time of an ephemeral motion. Far from that, the videos or photographs become imbued with the corporeality of the trans and GNC artists through <\/em>their performance, which supersedes the power of lens-based capture. The on-the-spot symbiosis of the artist\u2019s embodiment and the lens-based image allow the displayed personas to take on their almost spiritual or larger-than-life significance. As a hybrid medium, performances for the camera offer subversive and, most importantly, queerly decadent strategies for realizing identity \u201cbeyond the binary\u201d\u2014not only in terms of gender. But just as queerness evades binaries, so, too, are performances for the camera born out of a constant and inseparable tension between ephemerality and permanence, pain and pleasure, capture and evasion, becoming and dissolving, living and nonliving, hypervisible and invisible, authority and liberation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Links to the articles cited: Anne-Marie Dubois<\/a> Nelson Henricks<\/a> Julia Skelly<\/a> Julie Richard<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":269071,"template":"","categories":[7063,1398],"numeros":[],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[7540],"artistes":[2326,4880,1745,3899],"thematiques":[],"type_residence-numerique":[],"class_list":["post-269074","residence-numerique","type-residence-numerique","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-residency","category-acces-libre-en","auteurs-naveed-l-salek-nejad-en","artistes-cassils-en","artistes-colin-campbell-en","artistes-kama-la-mackerel-en","artistes-laurence-philomene-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/residence-numerique\/269074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/residence-numerique"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/residence-numerique"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269074"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=269074"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=269074"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=269074"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=269074"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=269074"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=269074"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=269074"},{"taxonomy":"type_residence-numerique","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_residence-numerique?post=269074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}