I joined a free visiting artist talk at the University of Tennessee, of which the artist and themes discussed still influence my work today. I emailed the Head of Fine Art to see if I could join any further conversations with Cassils, and Jason was delighted to include me.
In total, I attended three talks with the University of Tennessee. The first was their Spring Visiting Artist Programme, of which Cassils was their first artist, that I have made notes on. The second, was a discussion with the University’s Master of Fine Art students around Professional Practice that I more-so listened to, rather than partook in, as it was very informative. The following transcript is from the third talk, with the University’s trans and non-binary students (so not necessarily artist’s). It was a 90-minute discussion, but the most relevant parts where I asked Cassils questions directly are dictated below, with the full transcript after.
Overall, it was a very informative discussion. I had the opportunity to ask Cassils questions that were informative for my practice, and as a transgender man:
“What/who helped you discover that you were trans-masculine? Were there particular artists or prominent LGBTQ+ people that led you to discovering your gender identity, or rather a label for it?”
“Did your artwork become a therapeutic outlet for this journey of discovery?”
“When did you come out as trans masculine? What was it like to do that being an artist, considering how LGBTQ+ art/artists had been received in the past, such as Ron Athey getting denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate by Jesse Helms, and Robert Mapplethorpe’s retrospective getting shut down when it reached Washington due to the X-Portfolio photos?”
I have gone over, and corrected his response to my personal questions below, and then after that is the full, mostly unedited transcript.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------Cassils: Hey everybody, sorry about that. How’s everybody doing today? Great. So really lovely to have the chance to engage with you all, as I was just saying in the talk that we were doing with the MFA students it’s like it's important for us to be able to have a dialogue amongst our own community, such that we can really just have an understanding around what it is that we're talking about and looking at, as opposed to having to lay all that ground work when folks don't directly come from that lived experience. So it's a great chance, and I’m really honoured to have this chance, it's not the kind of chance that I would have had when I was a student, so I'm really honoured and excited to hopefully be of service to you all and answer any questions and just be in dialogue with you all, however you'd like to do it. So nice to meet you I’m Cassils, my pronouns are they/them or he/his and I'm an artist, I have also run a personal training business for many years. I'm interested in- I used to never say that I was an activist per say, but I guess I do I care a lot about the world and what happens to it I think art is a strategy to engage in that and I do think that you know we can like leverage our positions to create awareness. I don’t know if that’s exactly activism but it’s something I believe in, and yeah I think we're just gonna spend this time chatting about art and chatting about queerness and transness and non-binary aspects of visual culture and so I don't know if we want to go round and introduce ourselves or if we want to just kind of jump in with questions but I'd be happy to get to hear all of your names and pronouns and then also like you can tell me you know maybe if you're an artist or what you’d like out of this engagement today and it can be short and if you’re like I don't wanna talk that’s too much to say you can just tell me something else that feels relevant
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Ashton: I can go next, I'm Ashton I’m from the last talk. I use he/him pronouns, I’m trans, I guess same as everyone’s said so far in these times. I’m from the UK and our art studios have been shut down due to Covid, so I’ve had to go from being an installation-based artist to being digital based, so it doesn't feel like my art is, I guess, ‘downplayed’ by having to look at it just through online because we won't get a degree show. So, I'm looking to have this opportunity to make connections overseas for hopeful future collaborations and things like that.
C: Excellent, Ashton I didn't realise that you weren't directly involved in University of Tennessee I thought like you were a foreign exchange student!
A: No I'm in the UK, I found out that the talk was public last night and then I emailed Jason asking if I could join in on this session today and he said I could join in the last session as well, which was great.
C: That’s so cool! I mean I don’t know if it’s silver but is it a puser(?) lining perhaps? That like we get to connect all over the world, it’s incredible the sort of resources we wouldn’t have had before so I’m so glad you’re here Ashton.
A: Thank you!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------A: So my first question was what or who helped you discover you were trans masculine? Were there particular artists or prominent LGBTQ+ people that led you to discovering your gender identity, or rather a label for it?
C: Yes, you know I am older than you so there were no trans people to look to that I knew that existed. I think the thing that kind of clued me into transness without even having the articulation for that was the relationships I had, the people I was attracted to, like for example just quite blatantly I wasn't interested in dating other lesbians right like I didn't want to have a woman loving woman relationship. I was into, at the time, straight women because they treated me like a guy you know and I think that was like the first indication was the ways in which these rules were being played out, and again this is very binary but it's also very much a sign of the time. It was really through this kind of- but it was also very painful because I was constantly in relation to being cast in this rule that felt right in terms of you're not seeing me or I'm not being engaged with as a woman per say, but there wasn't the sort of articulation of a space for that and I wasn't quote ‘a man’ and therefore it was sort of a painful sort of chrysalis, if you will. In terms of like first seeing something? I’d say there's like two artworks that I saw that was like- I think there's a moment when I was like in my early 20s and again, this is before the Internet was super widely used you’d log-on sometimes but no one was like constantly wired like we are now, and so book stores were like still a thing. You would go to the bookstore and would like look in art books and you would discover artists work that way by just kind of like digging through the contemporary art section, and I remember coming across a book that featured the work of a trans photographer named Del Lagrace Volcano, who’s actually based in London but is American initially from San Francisco, but moved to London I'd say in like the 80s either very early 90s, now lives in Sweden and has raised two non-binary children. But Del is intersex, but at the time was kind of flagging more trans masculine and his early photography is like- it is such an incredible documentation of that super hard to reach fledgling identity of trans masculinity. I remember seeing this photo- it was a photo called Jack's back and it was of this person with their shirt off shot from the back and their body was just like so- it looked like a guy’s body. And when I realised that it ‘wasn't’ per se, you know that image became like a Talisman to me and I would return to it time and again to seek out a model for my own making. To know that was a possibility through this image, was something that really resonated with me and then many years later I moved to London and actually - because the queer art world is a small, small world - as we know because we’re here online together, you know like we can make these connections and you can reach out to folks. So I ended up like befriending Del, and my wife told him this story about how meaningful that particular image was, and so unbeknownst to me, she like was able to buy me that photograph for my birthday. I actually have it hanging here in my living room, this is Jack's back and so it's this like beautiful thing this image that allowed me to imagine myself you know, then I got to meet that artist and I was able to not able to have this image. And so that image was really important and again, because you know I think the closest thing to trans masculinity for me was maybe Butch lesbian identity even though that didn't quite resonate you know, but to see an artist’s work who was like forged from that identity is the artist, Catherine Opie. I remember going to MOMA in New York City when I was, again I think in my early 20s, and seeing this photograph that she had done. And she did a series of very amazing early works on which were self-portraits and portraits of her community she was very involved in the BDSM community and she did a series of carvings like literal there's like a kind of edge play in BDSM where you usually like you cut into the body and usually it's done with designs or just marks or what not, but this was a portrait of her back. Again, her back, because of this idea of turning your back because no one's ready to face your front yet, you know this is like somehow metaphoric, and she was a sizeable kind of a Butch masculine person with like a large torso, and on her back she carved a child's drawing that depicted a family - you know how kids draw the sun and the women's dresses triangles, and it was a drawing of two women with triangle dresses holding hands and a house and a sun and a child that had been carved into her black with a razor blade and was dripping blood. You know this was before marriage equality, before marriage equality in Canada, this was like the idea that there was so much shame and fear even to be queer, to be homosexual, let alone to be you know trans. This kind of ideation of like happiness or the idea of, from her perspective, to have this unit was something that she needed to literally turn her back on our carbon blood, was a very resonant image and I remember seeing it and just weeping because I saw myself. I saw myself in that pain, I saw myself in that sort of struggle I guess and I'd say those are two works that really moved me and maybe formed an aspect of maybe allowed me to kind of imagine what it could be like to be an artist and to express yourself in these ways.
A: Yeah, no I completely agree, both yours and their work played a big part in finding my own way to artistically express my gender and stuff. It was great to actually see all three of your work at Masculinities: Liberation Through Photography where I saw all of your works displayed together which was great. This leads nicely into my next question, which is did your artwork become like a therapeutic outlet for this journey of discovery?
C: I mean I would say absolutely, I think for all of us making an artwork is a form of expression and I feel like ,especially as trans people, there's like so many sort of rights - especially living in the United states in the last several years, the sort of rollback of civil rights of trans people but of all kinds of folks from different kinds of minoritized positions, and of course that sort of like roles of folks are impacted by gender and often also impacted by race and class all of these things and the rolling back of those rights has been something that’s been very difficult to confront, because as we can see the political system doesn't always work and so for me, making art is an act of agency. It's an action that I can take of my own free will and I can move my process through my expression, and I think often that if I didn't have art as an outlet I would not be here today. Art has always been a way of being able to kind of transmute the world and make sense of it in my own way through my own language and then share that language with others and have that kind of mutated version be something that I can kind of toss into the ocean like a fishing rod and find other likeminded people who then can say “that makes sense to me, I did this” you know and it's a way of being able to build like mindedness when we don't really have other resources. It's something they cannot take away, our creative expression, you know that is not up for grabs, even if rules are passed we always can create.
A: My last question was when did you come out as trans masculine? What was it like to do that being an artist, considering how LGBTQ+ art and artist had been received in the past, such as Ron Athey getting denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate by Jesse Helms, and Robert Mapplethorpe’s retrospective getting shutdown when it reached Washington due to the X-Portfolio photos?
C: Yeah, I mean- I think it was already- I've always been an artist right, like meaning I've always been making things like since I came out of my mother's vagina I've been making things. As a child I drew constantly and so I'd say in many ways my artistic subjectivity formed far beyond, or far before my like queer or trans subjectivity and so in a way art making became a process in that discovery. So rather than coming out in an official way, it started to get filtered through the work you know, but I was showing that work in a public forum in like 2009 onwards, when there wasn't really a vocabulary - a shared vernacular - around what it meant to be trans, let alone gender nonconforming, or non-binary for example, those words just didn't exist. And so, if anything the work was kind of positive as people didn't quite know how to position it, and even to this day like I have this very weird conversation with a gallerist in New York City, who completely didn't understand my work and, quite frankly didn't understand my gender, but didn't know how to explain that to me and so all she could say to me is “I don't know what I'm looking at, I don't know what I'm looking at” and I was like “wow, here we are”. So that kind of inability for people to understand something that defies categorisation is something that I continue to deal with and it's a problem we're working through societally, and it takes time and I'd say actually that a lot has happened in those last 10 years quite amazingly, like just the fact that many of you here today use non-binary pronouns blows my mind. Like I meet younger people that reject they/them because it's too confining and they are now using other words and I’m like “what!” – it’s amazing! You know this is our job, our job is to continue to unpack and dismantle and question, and so I don't know if that exactly answers your question, but I guess through my art practice I started to realise- honestly it was like engaging people who had met other trans people, like when I was in like my early 2000s I started to meet people who knew other trans people and just hearing that articulation, I was like “oh that sounds like me”. It was meeting people and having those experiences mirrored, it was really like having to find people and hear their experiences and hear a reality sort of mirror that had, at that point, not been something I had access to, and I’d say that that started to happen maybe only like 12 years ago, maybe 2008, yeah so longer than that I guess but yeah.
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Jason (J): There is something that I picked up in the lecture last night, Cassils had this amazing quote which if we get time would be nice I think to return to that? It’s from ….. I think those of you that heard the lecture heard this quote, but I’m gonna type it and post it into the chat and then maybe we can come back to it, because I think it's not just relevant to art. The other thing I was going to say is we can screen share if we need to look at websites if that’s useful oh cool Cassils is here okay.
Cassils (C): Hey everybody, sorry about that. How’s everybody doing today? Great so really lovely to have the chance to engage with you all, as I was just kind of saying in the talk that we were doing with the MFA students it’s like it's important for us to be able to have a dialogue amongst our own community such that we can really just have an understanding around what it is that we're talking about and looking at as opposed to having to lay all that ground work when folks don't directly come from that lived experience, so it's a great chance and I’m really honoured to have this chance, it's not the kind of chance that I would have had when I was a student so I'm really honoured and excited to hopefully be of service to you all and answer any questions and just be in dialogue with you all, however you'd like to do it. So nice to meet you I’m Cassils, my pronouns are they/them or he/his and I'm an artist, I also run like a personal training business for many years. I'm interested in- I used to never say that I was an activist per say, but I guess I do I care a lot about the world and what happens to it I think art is a strategy to engage in that and I do think that you know we can like leverage our positions to create awareness. I don’t know if that’s exactly activism but it’s something I believe in, and yeah I think we're just gonna spend this time chatting about art and chatting about queerness and transness and non-binary aspects of visual culture and so I don't know if we want to go round and introduce ourselves or if we want to just kind of jump in with questions but I'd be happy to get to hear all of your names and pronouns and then also like you can tell me you know maybe if you're an artist or what you’d like out of this engagement today and it can be short and if you’re like I don't wanna talk that’s too much to say you can just tell me something else that feels relevant.
Reed: I’ll go first, it’s me again I was in the last talk. My name is Reed I go by he/him or they/them pronouns and I’m just excited to engage with the community, have some conversations, just value this as time to connect with people. Especially, I've been thinking a lot about geography and relation to our queerness and community and really feeling grateful to have this opportunity, especially where we are.
Gregory: My name is Gregory, I use any pronouns and what I wanna get out of this today I think is to sort of continue what you started last night on a discussion of ideal-ities and subjectivities, I really like exploring that sort of binary between what is subjective what is ideal.
Iggy: My name is Iggy, I use they/them pronouns. I’m an artist, and an art student at NSCAD which I just found out is where Cassils went to which is pretty cool and I’m just really looking to be in community. I’m currently in a small town, my hometown in Maine and there’s like a burgeoning queer community I guess, but it’s covid so nobody talks to each other and yeah just looking for community.
Ashton (A): I can go next, I'm Ashton I’m from the last talk. I use he/him pronouns, I’m trans, I guess same as everyone’s said so far in these times. I’m from the UK and our art studios have been shut down due to Covid, so I’ve had to go from being an installation-based artist to being digital based, so it doesn't feel like my art is, I guess, ‘downplayed’ by having to look at it just through online because we won't get a degree show. So, I'm looking to have this opportunity to make connections overseas for hopeful future collaborations and things like that.
C: Excellent, Ashton I didn't realise that you weren't directly involved in University of Tennessee I thought like you were a foreign exchange student!
A: No I'm in the UK, I found out that the talk was public last night and then I emailed Jason asking if I could join in on this session today and he said I could join in the last session as well, which was great.
C: That is cool! I mean I don’t know if it’s silver but is it apuse lining perhaps? That like we get to connect all over the world, it’s incredible the sort of resources we wouldn’t have had before so I’m so glad you’re here Ashton.
A: Thank you!
Speaker 8: And I use he. Him, I'm a PhD student here at the University of Tennessee and I guess, like me being a stem like a science major, I've always been like, you know, I want to learn more about the hard side of the world, cause one of the things I realised I originally from Bangladesh that especially for. Western art and culture we have this very, I guess, a narrow view because we are always, always get the art and the culture of the winners, of the culture, of our so to. Week and a result like as I grow older, I suddenly start realising that what is called counterculture probably is the real culture outside and we are only exposed to probably, but one to 2% and that's why anytime there is opportunity to learn something like this with an open and honest conversation, I strive for. That's why I'm here.
C: Thank you. I'm glad you're here. Just jump in, yeah.
Dante: So my name is Dante. I use any pronouns, and I'm not an artist. I don't know much about artists. I'm a social science major, but I've always been interested specifically in my modification as an art form, and I feel like I really get exposed to it. So I was curious to see how that would relate towards like gender study.
Eli: I can go. My name is Eli. I'm non binary. And you say them pronouns. And I'm also, I guess, like an artist of source. I'm a writer. I really like prose. That's kind of my art form. And I'm also, like, looking for community. I came from a small Luton high school in a small southern town. Which had a clear community that was like entirely secret and hidden. And so I'm looking for. I'm, like, looking for a community to be open in, I guess.
C: Thank you, Eli.
Aaron: My name is Aaron. I currently use pronouns. I have no hard background but. I am how confused about gender and gender presentation, so I might as well take some time to try to learn about. It's from, you know, other people who are in the community so. That's where I am.
C: Great. That's the best. I love talking to like non artist. Personally I think kind of everybody can be an artist or as an artist of their own trade and medium, but it's great because it forces us to just talk and real talk and not use shop talk and I. Think we can have a much more like. Direct engagement that way. So I'm excited that there's lots of folks who are from outside art here. That's cool.
Delaney: I’m Delaney, I was in the last talk as well. I’m an artist in sculpture and I guess I tend to self-isolate already you know and so the pandemic has kinda made that worse. I'm trying to trying to just build a more active community around me this year, but my artwork is now- my sexuality has never really been a large component in my artwork, but I don't know I've never been that compelled to talk about it and I grew up in a military atmosphere so it might be part of that whole ‘don't ask, don't tell’ atmosphere I just kinda grew up into, but I'm working on a big project lately that deals a lot with sexuality and vulnerability and violence and so I feel like- you need to know it's kind of instinctually feminist project I feel like there's opportunities for it to be more than but I dunno I need a few more perspectives than just my own
Nasha: I’m Nasha, to I I'm in artist educator so I'm always looking for opportunities to learn about other communities and understand communities outside of my own
Aaron: Hi, I'm Aaron, I use they/them and she/her pronouns. I am at that UCLA and I study Theatre in art history and performance studies and I don't know I’m interesting in pushing into doing more clear performance stuff and figuring out what that looks like for me just really excited
Jase: I can go next, my name is Jase, I'm a studio art major here at UT and at print-grad and I'm here- my pronouns are he/him- because I am very interested in making art about my own experiences as a gender non-conforming individual and want to see how other people make their art about their experiences and I like looking at art made by the trans community
Jamie: Hello, my name is Jamie, I'm an artist in Memphis Tennessee. I’m at the University of Memphis, use he/they pronouns, and personally I've been very inspired by your work in my development of queerness and kind of self-discovery, so when I heard about this talk I just had to get in on it.
Bonnie (Mod): There are a few introductions in the chat as well as people prefer it. So again if you have questions, just to keep us from talking over one another, and make sure everyone gets a chance to ask questions they want to ask, again just a reminder I’ll be taking questions. Feel free to just shoot me a private message or public message, either with your question if you don't want to say it, or just hey I have a question. So, Reed I know I said in the chat that you were going to go first, but we actually had two folks email questions beforehand, so like you really beat it to the punch. So, Jamie your first if you – I know you had a few – so I don't know if you wanna like combine them into one super question or not, but anyways you go first.
Jamie: Okay, so I was kind of wondering about your process with making, working with kind of abstract terms of queerness. Do you find that you come up with like the formal elements of your work and then kind of clarify it with theory in the things that are going on? Or is it kind of a simultaneous process? Or do you look at theory and then produce a form? If that makes sense.
C: It does make sense. I would say I very rarely look at theory and then make from that. Actually I find that- I think usually the provocation for me to make is because I don't see- I can't- there's not a dialogue that I'm able to hear? That allows me to speak about- I feel like that's one of the brilliant things about being a visual artist, is that it allows us to express ourselves without getting hung up on the meaning of a word, you know? So it kind of offers up a sort of liberating terrain, because there's- images are so much more subjective than words and languages, right? So, I feel like there's a real possibility that we can- across cultures, across languages, of course those images have certain cultures and rootings, but I feel like to be able to create something that isn't rooted in language is kind of a gift. That being said, there are times where I'll read something and feel like emboldened and tales into what I'm trying to express, and that's very helpful coz it allows me to have a sort of then vernacular to speak about what I didn't know how to talk about, you know? I'd say, you know maybe in 2011 when I read Paul Preciado's book Testo Junkie that was certainly a piece of theoretical writing that I encountered while I was just like yes yes every page you know I felt like so much of what I had been thinking about and researching was laid out so beautifully in that text but more often I think it's about a sort of process of inquiry that supersedes language for me.
Jamie: Thank you very much I appreciate it.
C: Sure. Did that answer it?
Jamie: It did. It did definitely. And it it definitely is something I can resonate with. So thank you
C: What's your process like? Do you? Do you feel like you like to make things? Do you read about an idea and then think about illustrating it cuz. I don't think that's wrong. I think we all have different ways of engaging. What is your? What is your preferred method?
Jamie: So I work mostly in sculpture performance installation and I find that at least formally, the ideas come first and then I'm kind of like. Well, what does this mean? And then I kind of will go back into theory and it it does find, I find a lot of clarity in doing so and it makes me feel a little justified in my my formal choices.
C: Yeah. I mean, for me also, it's like I'll often have an idea of something I want to execute and it's almost a thesis in terms of the way the idea is formed. But then I think there's so much, especially in the way that we're trained as artists now. I mean, back in the day, you would train and just be a painter. You would just be a sculptor and you would learn this discipline and all of the intricacies of that medium and learn a much more like just in terms of materials, a much more sort of fluid state in, in the ways that artists are engaging with materials. And so I feel like some of there's. Sometimes there's an idea and we want to implement it through this idea of making a film more sculpture or something, but there's like organic process that happens in the experience of making where the formal qualities of the medium has its own poetry. And so for me, it's like I'll have an idea that's quite like, I guess, theorised or like a reason as to why it makes sense and why I want to set out on a path. But in the act of manifesting, there's like many tendrils that grow, you know.
B: Awesome. Thank you. So Next up, we have Ashton. I know you also had several questions, so phrase them how you want.
A: So my first question was what or who helped you discover you were trans masculine? Were there particular artists or prominent LGBTQ+ people that led you to discovering your gender identity, or rather a label for it?
C: Yes, you know I am older than you so there were no trans people to look to that I knew that existed. I think the thing that kind of clued me into transness without even having the articulation for that was the relationships I had, the people I was attracted to, like for example just quite blatantly I wasn't interested in dating other lesbians right like I didn't want to have a woman loving woman relationship. I was into, at the time, straight women because they treated me like a guy you know and I think that was like the first indication was the ways in which these rules were being played out, and again this is very binary but it's also very much a sign of the time. It was really through this kind of- but it was also very painful because I was constantly in relation to being cast in this rule that felt right in terms of you're not seeing me or I'm not being engaged with as a woman per say, but there wasn't the sort of articulation of a space for that and I wasn't quote ‘a man’ and therefore it was sort of a painful sort of chrysalis, if you will. In terms of like first seeing something? I’d say there's like two artworks that I saw that was like- I think there's a moment when I was like in my early 20s and again, this is before the Internet was super widely used you’d log-on sometimes but no one was like constantly wired like we are now, and so book stores were like still a thing. You would go to the bookstore and would like look in art books and you would discover artists work that way by just kind of like digging through the contemporary art section, and I remember coming across a book that featured the work of a trans photographer named Del Lagrace Volcano, who’s actually based in London but is American initially from San Francisco, but moved to London I'd say in like the 80s either very early 90s, now lives in Sweden and has raised two non-binary children. But Del is intersex, but at the time was kind of flagging more trans masculine and his early photography is like- it is such an incredible documentation of that super hard to reach fledgling identity of trans masculinity. I remember seeing this photo- it was a photo called Jack's back and it was of this person with their shirt off shot from the back and their body was just like so- it looked like a guy’s body. And when I realised that it ‘wasn't’ per se, you know that image became like a Talisman to me and I would return to it time and again to seek out a model for my own making. To know that was a possibility through this image, was something that really resonated with me and then many years later I moved to London and actually - because the queer art world is a small small world - as we know because we’re here online together, you know like we can make these connections and you can reach out to folks. So I ended up like befriending Del, and my wife told him this story about how meaningful that particular image was, and so unbeknownst to me, she like was able to buy me that photograph for my birthday. I actually have it hanging here in my living room, this is Jack's back and so it's this like beautiful thing this image that allowed me to imagine myself you know, then I got to meet that artist and I was able to not able to have this image. And so that image was really important and again, because you know I think the closest thing to trans masculinity for me was maybe Butch lesbian identity even though that didn't quite resonate you know, but to see an artist’s work who was like forged from that identity is the artist Catherine Opie. I remember going to MOMA in New York City when I was, again I think in my early 20s, and seeing this photograph that she had done. And she did a series of very amazing early works on which were self-portraits and portraits of her community she was very involved in the BDSM community and she did a series of carvings like literal there's like a kind of edge play in BDSM where you usually like you cut into the body and usually it's done with designs or just marks or what not, but this was a portrait of her back. Again, her back, because of this idea of turning your back because no one's ready to face your front yet, you know this is like somehow metaphoric, and she was a sizeable kind of a Butch masculine person with like a large torso, and on her back she carved a child's drawing that depicted a family - you know how kids draw the sun and the women's dresses triangles, and it was a drawing of two women with triangle dresses holding hands and a house and a sun and a child that had been carved into her black with a razor blade and was dripping blood. You know this was before marriage equality, before marriage equality in Canada, this was like the idea that there was so much shame and fear even to be queer, to be homosexual, let alone to be you know trans. This kind of ideation of like happiness or the idea of, from her perspective, to have this unit was something that she needed to literally turn her back on our carbon blood, was a very resonant image and I remember seeing it and just weeping because I saw myself. I saw myself in that pain, I saw myself in that sort of struggle I guess and I'd say those are two works that really moved me and maybe formed an aspect of maybe allowed me to kind of imagine what it could be like to be an artist and to express yourself in these ways.
A: Yeah, no I completely agree, both yours and their work played a big part in finding my own way to artistically express my gender and stuff. It was great to actually see all three of your work at Masculinities: Liberation Through Photography where I saw all of your works displayed together which was great. This leads nicely into my next question, which is did your artwork become like a therapeutic outlet for this journey of discovery?
C: I mean I would say absolutely, I think for all of us making an artwork is a form of expression and I feel like ,especially as trans people, there's like so many sort of rights - especially living in the United states in the last several years, the sort of rollback of civil rights of trans people but of all kinds of folks from different kinds of minoritized positions, and of course that sort of like roles of folks are impacted by gender and often also impacted by race and class all of these things and the rolling back of those rights has been something that’s been very difficult to confront, because as we can see the political system doesn't always work and so for me, making art is an act of agency. It's an action that I can take of my own free will and I can move my process through my expression, and I think often that if I didn't have art as an outlet I would not be here today. Art has always been a way of being able to kind of transmute the world and make sense of it in my own way through my own language and then share that language with others and have that kind of mutated version be something that I can kind of toss into the ocean like a fishing rod and find other likeminded people who then can say “that makes sense to me, I did this” you know and it's a way of being able to build like mindedness when we don't really have other resources. It's something they cannot take away, our creative expression, you know that is not up for grabs, even if rules are passed we always can create.
A: My last question was when did you come out as trans masculine? What was it like to do that being an artist, considering how LGBTQ+ art and artist had been received in the past, such as Ron Athey getting denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate by Jesse Helms, and Robert Mapplethorpe’s retrospective getting shutdown when it reached Washington due to the X-Portfolio photos?
C: Yeah I mean- I think it was already- I've always been an artist right, like meaning I've always been making things like since I came out of my mother's vagina I've been making things. As a child I drew constantly and so I'd say in many ways my artistic subjectivity formed far beyond, or far before my like queer or trans subjectivity and so in a way art making became a process in that discovery. So rather than coming out in an official way, it started to get filtered through the work you know, but I was showing that work in a public forum in like 2009 onwards, when there wasn't really a vocabulary - a shared vernacular - around what it meant to be trans, let alone gender nonconforming, or non binary for example, those words just didn't exist. And so, if anything the work was kind of positive as people didn't quite know how to position it, and even to this day like I have this very weird conversation with a gallerist in New York City, who completely didn't understand my work and, quite frankly didn't understand my gender, but didn't know how to explain that to me and so all she could say to me is “I don't know what I'm looking at, I don't know what I'm looking at” and I was like “wow, here we are”. So that kind of inability for people to understand something that defies categorisation is something that I continue to deal with and it's a problem we're working through societally, and it takes time and I'd say actually that a lot has happened in those last 10 years quite amazingly, like just the fact that many of you here today use non-binary pronouns blows my mind. Like I meet younger people that reject they/them because it's too confining and they are now using other words and I’m like “what!” – it’s amazing! You know this is our job, our job is to continue to unpack and dismantle and question, and so I don't know if that exactly answers your question, but I guess through my art practice I started to realise- honestly it was like engaging people who had met other trans people, like when I was in like my early 2000s I started to meet people who knew other trans people and just hearing that articulation, I was like “oh that sounds like me”. It was meeting people and having those experiences mirrored, it was really like having to find people and hear their experiences and hear a reality sort of mirror that had, at that point, not been something I had access to and I’d say that that started to happen maybe only like 12 years ago, maybe 2008, yeah so longer than that I guess but yeah.
B I see some questions in the chat, should we shift to some of those for a SEC? We have a few queued up, but I think that starting with the chat is pretty great and then we can go back. So first one, make sure I'm going back all the way, Sophia asked: how has your work changed throughout your life?
C: That's a very broad question. You know, it's changed a lot. You know, I think. You know, it's it's I. I don't know if I can articulate. In a nutshell. You know how my work has changed throughout my life, but it's. You know, I feel like a creative practise is a sort of energetic force that comes out of us and. As you grow, you are constantly in relation to. All these different things, be it you know, the city and the society or your parental units or your upbringing or the laws that you live under, whatever our context is, we're constantly changing and mutating and adapting. And yet that energy, that creative energy is coming out. And so I'd say that my creative practise has been constant, but the sort of. Life that I have lived has changed dramatically, going from, you know, living in Canada to, you know, living in New York City as a young person to, you know, you know, not having immigration status to being very poor to, you know, just just, like, so many things that have happened in my life. Like surviving physical abuse like, there's been many different things that I've gone through in my life that has affected my creative practise and and and so it's a continuum. And I think that we're constantly responding and changing. And I know that that's abstract, but. To get any more detailed, we keep you here a long time, so I'll leave it there.
B: Thank you. And then Marie, I apologise if I am not pronouncing your name. I asked, what do you think about Transmasculine's? Linked to the voice.
C: The voice? Yeah, I mean, well, it depends. It depends where we're at. You know, I think that. Maybe 10 years ago you would have had to have a deep voice that was facilitated by testosterone, for example, in order for your voice to be deemed mass. I think that this process of undoing these binaries is allowing for a lot more registries of voice, hair, line, body composition, body hair. You know, I think we're in a moment where I see a proliferation of younger generations that are embracing. You know the identity of maybe, perhaps saying like I'm non binary or I'm presenting and yet having like a full beard and like a chest thick with body hair. And I think that's kind of amazing. And so I think that can be true to voice. I would also say that voice, you know, if we're thinking about voice as it relates to. You know, trans masculinity and particularly being on testosterone. You know, we think about transitioning in a medical way as this sort of. Journey that takes us from wherever we're at to a full masculine transition. Right. And that taking testosterone into our body does connote certain masculine signifiers, like a receding hairline as you age, like the distribution of fat being different, like your voice dropping right, like your clip growing. Like all the changes that happen to the body, however, you know I also feel like there is this. Interesting bit of discussion that is not often talked about, which is that testosterone is, you know, regulated through Big Pharma. And So what does it mean for many people to be purchasing a drug that is a testosterone and how this kind of like we have such individualistic endocrine systems when we take a drug that is actually like mass? What does it mean for us to take that into our systems and how does that affect our individual ecosystems of the body, be it the voice, be it, you know, all these other things. So I'm interested not just in transness, but how big pharma and capitalism is sort of in concert and unison with this idea of. Fully medically. Transitioning and what does that mean? Not just about the way our voice changes in tone, but also in terms of like what it is to speak with the authority of of something that has been like delegated? Via the ability to access those resources is something I think a lot about, so I know that's a little bit abstract, but. If you have another question that's more specific, I'm very happy to answer it. And if you want to ask it in French, you can ask it in French, because I can translate, but I'm sure you speak English because you're here, so feel free.
Marie: Thank you. Thank you so much for your answer. My English is not really good, but uh, yeah, the tone of the voice is really interesting and the and the maybe linked to the crypt queer to. Yeah, because I'm I'm wearing in the in here and so my. My voice is. It's it's the voice of lot. A lot of people say, oh, you have a you have a voice of a man. And uh, yeah, it's interesting.
C: I see. OK, so you'll catch that. So Marie is like wearing a hearing aid. And so the way that they experience their voice has a different tone and timber. That's a very amazing perspective to think about in terms of like. Bringing that to this dialogue, but if you haven't, have you read tested junkies by Paul Preciado. Yeah, yeah, you have. OK. I feel like that's you're like. Yeah, I read it a long time ago. Yeah. I think it like it gets into this idea of the dialogue around like. The sort of how, how medicalization. And I think what you're talking about, the device on the ear and other kind of like apparatus, how this affects our relationship to not only just the ability to hear and speak, but also, you know, the other ways in which we have sort of Cyborg aspects to our identities. Thank you.
B: Alrighty. So thanks to all the chat questions, we'll we'll keep taking them, but Reed you are next.
Reed: Yes, I was just going to ask kind of what your thoughts are in the last talk and I've seen that you've lived all sorts of places around the world and kind of wondering what your experience. Friends with your relationship with your own identity and your relationship with your community and kind of ways that your physical geography had an impact on on your identity or the way that you're interacting with others. I guess that kind of comes from a place of living in. Tennessee for my whole life that that really affects a lot of the way that I think about myself, my identity and my queerness and the way that I present myself, so I'd love to hear kind of your thoughts on that.
C: Yeah. I mean, I think. UM, you know it's it's it's an interesting thing to live out. I mean, I do think that. In a way, with the Internet, we're able to travel in a way it's not the same, but we can travel and experience sort of other cultural understandings in a way that we wouldn't have been able to many years ago. And of course it's limited. And of course it's mediated. But it does allow us to grow the size of our our understanding. And the sort of ways in which we read things which I think is. Really interesting. Yeah. I feel like growing up in different circumstances and under different cultures has has given me an understanding of the plurality and the diversity of approaches. I think, you know, undergoing, for example, you know, undergoing. Citizenship process of not being naturalised citizen in the United States and that process taking me 17 years and coming up against a lot of adversity despite being from a first world country despite having an education despite the colour of my skin. Made me really realise in technicolour the sort of urgency to what was happening at at the US border in the last four years with the incarceration and the for profit incarceration of immigrants that were coming to this country to seek the very things that country offered. So I feel like. The more sort of. Outside. What experiences we can have that often sometimes serve as difficult lessons to us? I feel like they can also provide us with sort of port tools that allow us to have empathy and and understanding of outside of experiences that extend beyond our own. I also think it's a great way for you to realise. Kind of where you end and others begin. There's been certain cultures that I've lived in where I'm like, I hate it here. I need to leave. This is not a. Space where I want to adapt. I actually need to go to a place where I feel safe and I think that you can have both those experiences of like opening and learning, but also understanding you know where there are certain cultural morays that just feel like. Not your interest, I guess, or not not something that feels like that feels oppressive versus generative, I guess.
Reed: Thank you.
B: Gregory, you're next.
Gregory: So I feel like a lot of your work, especially Tiresias really attacks binaries so and and Tiresias it would be the binary gender. I wonder in your performance if you feel a binary in yourself between performing Cassils versus non performing Cassils.
C: The short answer? Is no because so much of my work is. Is in my embodied practise and I really subscribe more to like the art as life sort of thing. You know of like I I often feel like so much of what I'm doing is in relationship to serving my art practise, be it. You know the way that I'm moving my body or the nutrient that I'm ingesting to facilitate the energy to ultimately manifest that peace, which is a long term project and it's a constant sort of like morphing and shifting that it requires constant attention and thought I'd say. The sometimes the place where I feel that displacement, I'd say I found it to be really difficult. In this past year because. So much of my work is about getting to share work and perform live and to share space and to be with people in, in the physical and to to engage in in our visceral presence with each other. And that I miss and I feel like that creates a split but. You know. I was. Reading about this a little bit and there is this like idea that there's like, there's sort of chemistry that happens to us when we are in proximity to another human and we're able to mirror each other. They're called mirror mirroring neurons. And that biofeedback gives us a sense of. In a sense of wholeness, and like corporeal engagement, and I think the, you know, it makes sense that a lot of us feel like. You know, isolated and lonely in this moment, beyond everything else in the world, which is already. A lot that. The fact that we're being offered this tool for engagement that is supposed to supposed to stand in for presence, but it in fact doesn't allow for us to have that same kind of like mirroring neurons with the Physiology. By that sort of proximity, I think that that creates a kind of dichotomy in me where I feel split like I don't feel like. I mean, I feel actually really present with all right now. But I mean it would be different if we were in a room together, right? Like it would be really different like we would smell each other. We would have all sorts of senses about each other's similarities and differences. In a way that like gets limited in this little cube you know.
Gregory: Thank you.
C: Sure.
B: All right. Next we have an anonymous question: How did you become comfortable with the image you produce?
C: Well, I'm not always comfortable, that's for sure. You know, I'd say. In fact, I'm often uncomfortable, I don't think. For me, making work isn't about comfort, you know. And in fact, when there's discomfort, that generally means that I am pushing into a territory. That is. Asking. Asking more of me and so I'm not saying that you should make yourself uncomfortable in order to be an artist, but I often think that when we're trying to do things that we haven't done before or manifest things that we're uncertain of or things that have been proven or things where we feel uncertain or insecure. There is a feeling of discomfort that is part. Of the process of making. So I'd say, you know, most often I am deeply uncomfortable, you know, and I am. I am. You know, my main thing is that I. I don't, as an artist, I don't want to be the kind of person that is making for myself per say like I think of art as a way in which artists can OfferUp things to each other and to society as a way for us to have a reflection in the dialogue around where we're at. And it's a huge it's a huge thing to take on for artists to do that right for us to take our jobs seriously and to commit to that ethos, I think. And so quite often I worry like, am I rising to that challenge? Is this of service, is this useful? And so. Yeah, I'm. I'm not quite there yet, I guess.
B: Thanks for that. Great question, I think Iggy, you're up next.
Iggy: I have two questions basically I so I guess the first one maybe a little bit shorter. I'm curious about the origin of your name. How you ended up sort of going going by that name.
C: Ohh yeah, it's just my last name. So you know I. I guess you know also being someone who is, you know, I have like three brothers and I grew up, you know, I like grew up working in gyms and so it's this kind of jock culture they call each other by our last names, you know. And so I was kind of for many years I didn't. I used my first name. But. I was actually like I was working with the curator and it was like she she kind of helped me. She's like, you know what I think we should just use your last name for this show. I really don't think you. Enjoy or feel attached to your first name and she could. She could see that in me, you know, and you know, I trusted her. And I said OK, I, you know, I think I agree with you and it just it felt really right. So I just kind of stuck with it there. You know, I had a talk with a. Young BFA last week from Texas, and I noticed that their first name was in parentheses and so I asked them about them like, why is your first name in parentheses? And they said, you know, well, I came up with this trans name. Maybe two years ago, but now it doesn't really feel like it fits me. But my family and my friends have grown accustomed to this, like new name that I've already forced upon them, and so I just put parent. Sees around it because it feels like a stand in for something that will eventually change. You know, I love that as well. So I think, you know, we get to, we get to use language and and naming in a way that suits us in an inventive, equally inventive way, I think.
Iggy: Yeah, I I went through so many different names before finding the one that I eventually went with that Facebook wouldn't let me change my name. I was like, Nope, you've done like 7. Here's a drop down menu of all the ones you've done so far. Pick one and stick with it. I had to wait like a year before it before it fixed it. My other question is a little bit more. I've been doing like research and thinking about like interpolation and drag and how within the queer community there's often like an within myself. There's sort of this. Anxiety that comes up in in people about like being like queer enough or trans enough and like being read. And like self identification and self interpolation and I'm just wondering, I guess what some of your thoughts? Are on that. And especially like as it relates to to art making.
C: Yeah, I think that's I think I think. We're really conditioned to feel that way. And it's it. Of course it does pertain to gender 100%, especially when you're trans. But I also think like for example. You know, working in the work that I do outside being an artist like the amount of sized women who never feel like their bodies conform to a female standard enough and the same with men like it is a constant moving target that serves, you know, product placement and control and authority in ways. Of like being able to. I think yeah. Have agency and control over people to constantly make them feel less than. And that comes both from outside and where his dominant culture like experience. But it can also come very much from within the community and that can be a painful place. But I think when it's coming from within the community. It's an importation, unfortunately, like an unconscious import of the sort of oppression from the outside that we reinscribe on the inside to feel like we have some kind of level of agency when we feel we don't, you know, so it's unfortunate when even within our communities. There are these sort of hierarchies and judgments. And and those are real, right like. Those are very real. And I don't know if I necessarily have, I mean in terms of of my own personal relationship to that, it's something that I probably struggle with, you know daily. And the other thing that you know, there's just. Yeah, I think that's a normal thing to struggle with. And I think it's a, it's like a especially. When you're told that you don't exist, or that your body doesn't count or it's not right, you know. To to find. Comfort in your own body and presence is it's a really it's a noble challenge to take on and I actually think like for me that's where movement and and energy like in taking nutrition. Like all of that is like a ball for me because it is a way for me to feel, you know, not ohh. I need to be bigger or I need to be more masculine or I need to be fit or whatever. It's more. Like this is. I can manipulate my brain chemistry. I can I can help myself move from a depressive mental state to a better state. You know, it's about understanding that actually like what we put in our bodies and and the messages we tell ourselves do have a tremendous effect on our state of. Being in our state of like, of loving ourselves and in our bodies, right. And that's I think it's an active challenge to maintain that act of love and self compassion. It's something that is taking me a very long time to get to a stage in my life where I'm even willing to even speak about this because. I'd be like. You know, I think it's actually, you know. Very it's, I think as trans people, it is like important to actively engage in, in acts of self love because there is so much of. The lived experience where you feel like you've you've not been able to get that from necessarily external source. So I don't know. If that answers your question.
Iggy: Yeah, I think it does. I just, I just watched this theatre movement installation piece by Jack Ferber called Chomp and I would highly recommend it to it is very intense. Fair warning, very, very intense. But there's a brilliant scene where. A person standing in front of the mirror doing this like increasingly complex choreography. Just going I love and improve myself. I love and improving myself. I love and approve of myself, I. Love and improve myself.
C: Cool. Yeah. Thank you again. And I think if any of you have like works that inspire you or things that have resonated for you, I see that you put like a really cool sounding book in there like that. I'm just queer cookbook by Alison Kafer. Like, yeah, there is resources or just cultural touchstones that. Then bring you somewhere. It would be great to share those.
B: Please feel free to drop them if y'all want I can scroll through the chat after this is over and send like a post e-mail out to everybody with a lot of the cool things drop here if if it's of interest. I know we all don't want extra. OK, cool team. Well, at least one thumbs up. So from so we have three questions left. We're at 506 right now, I think we. Depending on the questions and the answers, we may have time for maybe one more nation. The ones are in the queue, one or two we can feel it out, but please feel free to keep sending them to me. OK? I rock on. All right. Up next we have.
Speaker 8: I guess it's going through your like, you know, portfolio of amazing work. One of the thing that jumped to me of all the things that is quite different was you designed the album cover of the legendary heavy metal band Black Sabbath there 2013, the police, single goddess dead and it jumped to me. Quite a while because that's my favourite genre of music. I've always failed as a fan that it's not a highly inclusive genre. It is always. Being like you know, there is almost like a access white male genre even though it started off as a very outsider genre and somehow it became the mainstream. And I was curious like gave like what made you kind of like and I was it was interesting to find that you won a competition to design that. And I also found it. Making very interesting perfect mixture being the inspiration and he's always a very interesting article for anyone interested in LGBTQ history because of his views and also questions about how much. His homosexuality like infant. So that's the thing and the other. Thing. Was like basically how when collaborating in a situation which is not I guess out of your like a typical one, because a heavy metal album cover is not everything. So I was just curious about. Your views on that.
C: Ohh yeah OK. I'm going to work my way backwards. Yeah, I really I love collaborating with people who who share a different vantage point, who share a different place of entry because we get to learn from each other. And I think that, you know, when we have a sort of multiplicity of voices and. Expressions that come. From truly authentic spaces of story time that is indicated by vastly different perspectives, it allows us to understand that there is that multiplicity of experience and that we can see those like images living side by side. And so for me, that's like. Not only on a sort of intimate way of getting to, I mean, I often I feel like when I make art with people, it's kind of like having like a a love affair in a way. You know, there's a level of intimacy and risk that one engages with in terms of the sort of places we're able to go and discussing. That we might not go if it weren't centred around art. You know, if it was just a meeting, this person randomly and having to engage in small talk like art, it kind of cuts you straight to the centre where you know what's at stake. And it gives you the opportunity to have that sort of forthrightness in my experience. Uh. And then with the Black Sabbath album cover it just you. Know I remember. I was really sick. I like had this horrible flu and I remember just like randomly coming across that concert online like this, like this competition online and having the day free and just like kind of loving their music, but also not not knowing. So much about them, and it was just kind of a strange fluke. You know, there's not much more to it than that. It was like, shocking to me that I won the competition and I made that like, I worked with my friend Kathy Davies, who was a a graphic designer that I often worked with. So I did the illustration. And it's like, yeah, it's a portrait of. Niche, but it's also it doesn't look like it in the way that we rendered the image, but it's the the sort of stuff you see coming out of his mouth is actually the sort of brocade from a military uniform that decorates the applets on the shoulder. So it's this kind of like militarism. That is kind of falling out of his mouth, and the album was called God is dead and so it just made sense to me to incorporate niche. But I love your read on it. I think you brought a lot just in. In the way that you phrase the question. So thank you.
Speaker 8: Thank you very much.
B: Love a surprise Black Sabbath fan that was. I was over here, like that's dropped that Black Sabbath like dropped on. OK, Aaron, you're on this.
Aaron: Hi. OK. Sorry. I don't know what I guess it just makes me really excited to hear you talk about how excited you are about. Collaboration and like this multiplicity of of, of voices like you said and and this way that you describe the kind of. Ethos of performance to engage with people and to create opportunity to, to offer and and. And share and be in dialogue with people is all the things that I am missing and hungry for right now and. I I I guess I I wonder how how you are how you are dealing with the that missing aspect of. Of your practise, because I know it's been really challenging for me to kind of feel like there are so many things I want to be doing and being in conversation with people and making things with people and the the materiality of performance and especially I've always been very drawn in. Inspired by your use of interdisciplinary stuff and and stuff being in in performance, I I just I wonder how your how you are continuing your performance practise now how you're staying in in community with people and and finding if if if you are. Any of that ability to to find connection with people through through arts? Sorry, that's rambling question but.
C: You know like. The entire piece that we talked about last night, which was in plain sight, was something that was made entirely during the early stages of lockdown. So the idea had been kind of present really from like the 4th of July that year beforehand. 2019 but it was really in February. And all many of my exhibitions and opportunities were cancelled, but all of a sudden I was like, well, you know what, we have the decks cleared to make this in. That happened and it was interesting because that's the first time I've ever made a work with many people who I've never met in person. You know, the entire project was facilitated through zoom, zoom calls and dialogues, and I'd say like bringing an impact. Came into that process which was specifically like bringing in a coordinator who specialised in kind of. Bringing together a coalition of, in this case, immigrant rights advocates and forming brain trusts, where we would have calls where we could as artists, you know, listen to the various policies and issues that those organisations were having, the sort of countries they they were able to teach. Us so much. You know, we realised through that process that we needed to have many more undocumented artists involved in this project. We needed to have. Folks who had been detained, who had been held inside those prisons in this project, we needed to have authentic representations of those who were directly impacted as opposed to just not and but the the point of this work was complicated. It wasn't about saying, like, only only so and so can speak to so. And so. The point was that we were coming from. Divergent expressions and yet, because it was unethical, we were all focusing our attention on it, even if it didn't relate directly. To us, which is a very kind of boiling pot of water to get into today's like, you know, landscape, but a worthy 1 because where are we if we can only speak for ourselves, you know, then we're so siloed that we have absolutely no. Also where is our, where is the invitation for us? To reach out to each other. We can only speak to our own siloed experiences, so you know I was. I was, we were very intentional in putting together a. A diverse group of people from many different backgrounds, such that we could bring that in and then it was so much about building in the sort of time and space for us to listen to each other and for us to have problems. And then for us to trust that we could get through those problems and that's. You know, kind of back to last question earlier is like that's an. Amazing thing about. Collaborating is you. Trust that when you **** ** that it's that you're going to be not to say that you should, you know. But inevitably we have limitations to our understandings when we're coming from different place. And it's not about necessarily doing the emotional labour of constantly educating. That's not what I'm. Talking about, but I am talking about the permission for the fact that we do have limited experiences and that we need to be able to engage in dialogues that get us through the discomfort to see each other truly. And so I think like that project was so mind blowing. And affirming and I learned so very much. From it. But beyond that project after that project, that kind of collapsed because it was just like. Huge and we didn't really have resources for it or we're like a big enough team and we managed to pull it off anyways and so there was like definitely some burnout. And then I think like. Yeah, I've been just kind of recovering from the burnout and now I'm getting to a place where I'm starting to feel like my body and my mind is like more of. Replenished. And so I'm feeling like ready and I'm it's frustrating because I can't make, but I have ideas. And so I'm starting to. Just, you know, talk to people and say I got this, like, this thing I'd like to do and they're like, ohh, have you met this artist? Like they they do. They turned a shipping container into a into, like a pinhole camera. You should talk to them, you know. And so just like that way in which we can be generous and open with each other. That's like one thing we can do in these moments is we can we can point each other towards. Things to look at and people. Even albeit in this, like, not totally effectual way, but I feel like it's a moment for. And this is really difficult because I like to go, but it's like, OK, this is a moment to replenish and to plan. So that when time when if things do shift to a space where we can get back into being in proximity, that where we have, we have our energy and we have things that we're excited about it.
Aaron: Thank you so much. If you don't mind, I guess what comes from that for me is like I would, it would be very curious to hear about what it what planning and research looks like for you. I think I've also been kind of throwing myself into research for future projects since I can't get my hands on on it now. But I'm just curious about what that looks like for you.
C: Course, so I have. Like have some really trusted art friends, you know? And I actually have one friend that will answer her phone, but does she called? She calls it contemporary art crisis hotline. How may I help you? So she'll answer the phone whenever I call. Cause she knows I'm going to be like I'm having a quandary. About this formal decision, you know, I guess so. You know, it's good to have a contemporary or. Crisis hotline network. And if you don't, you know, I think like. Artists like just reaching, like building, I've been very intentional and I like initially I wasn't because I think earlier in my career I was travelling so much I really missed having a community of artists. And so in the last like. Maybe like six years, I've been trying very hard, purposely to foster friendships with artists who don't hide, who didn't really know. But I'm like, I'll just, like, invite them to do something or to make something with me, you know, and. And I think like. I think often like it's a it's a vulnerable thing. You know, it's like sometimes people are busier with not. But like, I really just think like reaching out to people who you think are interesting and and just like bouncing ideas back and forth is so it's like I get so much more I can feel so alone and like weighed down. But I can have a conversation with a friend. About an idea and they can talk to me about their work and we can go for a walk together, you know, and by the end of that walk, like, I feel so much more full of ideas because I'm in. Relation to. So I think like being in relation to is really important. And then the other thing that I would say is like I find also that in in this moment where you feel really lonely. I think like just trying to figure out how can we be of service, you know, like how can we help someone in our immediate vicinity. And it sounds kind of cheesy, but it's like. You know, I don't know, like my wife's a nurse, and she's at Dodger Stadium, vaccinating people 12 hours a day and she's exhausted. But I can cook her really nice food, you know, and I can. I can take care of her. Or, like, you know, my friend had COVID and two children and, like, doesn't is so sick. Can't get out of bed. And so. Like put together a group of friends who could drop food off at her door every day. Like, you know, how do we get through these difficult times just by, you know, being in a community with each other and justice doing something for each other that you don't have to do. But I find I get. A lot of. I mean, it helps me to do that. It makes me feel. Useful. It makes me feel better and it makes me feel. Like I have a. Purpose. So I find that being of service to other people is a really good tool in this time. Thank you. Sure.
B: Words of wisdom. Truly. I'm sitting there like that's the gospel I needed. I was like, thank you for sharing. Delaney. Right next.
Delaney: Hi, can you hear me OK? OK, so I had two questions, but I know we'll be mindful of time, so I could just ask them both and you can just kind of respond to whatever. Whatever feels good for you to respond to, I guess. Or whatever, I guess resonates be the most. But first was that I? I've gotten the impression that your work is very it's very confronting and unapologetic, and that it's the way you. Know. It's it's, it's not going to back down based on someones comfort level with it, you know. And so I was wondering. How you deal with instances of? Although I'm sure. You meet all kinds of people and I'm sure that someone can have very strong reactions you. Know. And so I was. Wondering how you deal with instances of like cognitive dissonance? You know when you're dealing with someone who in their mind, they know they're right. You know, it doesn't matter what we think in their mind. Like they know that they're right. And so, you know, and. So sometimes we. Meet people that are like a brick wall because your. Work is so strong. So. So. I I know, I know. You know, I think you know what I mean. Like, it's so it's it's not willing to back down when it's existing. Just just because it exists. You know. So I was wondering how you deal with those kinds of interactions that I'm sure you probably had to have. And then the second question. I'm actually I'm kind of nervous to. Ask because I. Don't. I don't want to offend anything. I I don't want to offend you or anyone, but it was more. It was a question more about your pronouns, so I know and I know that. I know the pronouns, you know, pronouns are really important and it's important to understand what other people and what everyone around you prefers. And so I know that's a personal choice for you, but also. You know, and researching your work as we've done here at UT before, your before your talk and listening to your talk, it seems like. It seems as though whenever you complete your work, the impression I get is that it's not. It's not just you. It's almost like you're presenting it as a collective, and I was wondering if because your chosen pronouns are like actually come out as a plural, I was wondering if that has any sort of almost poetic tie into this concept. Of your work, or maybe I'm just getting too.
C: No, that's, I love that interpretation. You know, honestly, I think pronouns are from I, I love that I. I mean I do. I mean, I know there's one artist I know who I've worked with recently, whose pronouns are we for exactly that. Reason for this idea of like this idea of a plurality of self, of not. I mean I think for me they. You know, when I chose that pronoun, I'm like, I don't know, five years ago, which at the time is very cutting edge. And now it is not. But it was very much about that sort of that denial of a sort of spectrum, right? But no, I haven't really thought of it in terms of collectivity, though I I do really like that read. But certainly there are people that come and sleep, have done that, and then the first question you asked. Can you just remind me?
Delaney: Cognitive is that what's popular with cognitive dissonance to people who, you know, can be really aggressively funding?
C: Yeah, you know. I have not really. I have experienced that for sure online you know, there was like the the the sculpture I made with urine in 2017 and 16 Vice News tonight did like a documentary that aired on HBO. And it was like on YouTube and had like 17,000 dislikes. And, you know, people would write me on Messenger or Danny or whatever. And I remember one time getting in real time, this this message on Messenger from someone saying, like, hey, I saw your. I saw the profile on you on on, on Vice on HBO. Like, thank you so much for doing that work. It really. And roll back. And I was like ohh. I'm glad. Thank you for saying so. We're just something like that. And they wrote back like JK, I want to ******* kill you. You're you ******* like. I wish I had my hands around your throat. And I was like wow, you know, because this was happening in real time and that's very different than having someone write a comment on your page. And I was kind of like my heart started to beat really fast and UM. But I looked on his profile and I realised that this person was in the middle, like somewhere in the middle of America, like not close to me, so not an imminent threat in. A physical way, right? And then I kind of quickly rolled over their profile and I saw that they had pictures of what appeared to be a family member. You had Down syndrome, right? And they were, you know, had pictures of this family member, like in football uniforms. So it was, like, kind of celebrating them, you know? And. I just kind of called them out. I was like first I just said and I'll, I will preface this by saying I don't do this with everybody. It's just that I had had some instances in the past where I had responded in a volatile way and I had just like shut things down. And so in my mind, I was like, I have someone live in front of me who's clearly aggressive but is also probably not threat. In a real way. And I'm going to see if I can just from an anthropological curiosity perspective. Age. Now I I couldn't do this with everybody, but I was curious as to this particular instance and upon seeing that and my brother, my older brother is actually like nonverbal and autistic. And I know, you know, I know very much what it is like to have a sibling with special needs and but I basically just call them. I was like, you know what, why don't we have a coffee? And he was like, you wanna have a coffee with me? And I was like, yes, let's have a coffee together like, you know, do you do you live in Los Angeles? He's like, no. I actually live in the Midwest and I was like. All right. And we kind of just started to exchange and I was like hey, I notice you have maybe a sibling or a brother and you know, so do I and I kind of justice explain like why why are you hating on me like this like you don't even? Know me. Like what? Is why are you attacking me? You know? And we had. He asked, like a bunch of super ignorant questions about being trans. You know, like, how can you say you're a man when a man and a woman made you? Otherwise you wouldn't exist like that kind of questioning. And I was able to just kind. Like. Break it down and in the end he apologised. You know, and it was just like, not about me being right, but actually we were able to, like, greet each other. And again, that was an incredible amount of labour on my end. And also on his end actually, even though he was coming from this other perspective, that was like. Really threatening at 1st and I know that's I'm sorry because I know that's kind of really intense to tell you all in such technicolour, but it's an example of like. The sort of vitriol that we say so easily with our fingers, but when it comes to actually having to engage like is it possible? Us to find ways to find often I think points of connection that kind of humanise and link us. And it's not always so easy. And you know, I'm not always feeling that generous either. You know, there's some certain moments where I'm like, you know what you do, you Boo. And I'm going to do me. There's moments where you need to separate, but I I do think that like. That's not getting us super far and we could see that in, in this country in, in the United States. You know how how well polarity is going for us? Not very well. And so I do think that there is a sort of and yes, my work is like it does have a strong stance, but that's not necessarily how I'll meet you as a human being. You know, I feel like. Like art is like a thesis, right? If you're, like, making an academic argument, or you're making an argument, you have to have a strong argument, you know. But as a human being and as an engagement socially, I feel like there's more room where that nuanced dialogue, and there's often like an. Actually, and that seems to be something that. Is harder and harder for us to come by. The resources just emotionally, to have these days. So I don't know if I have the answers as to how to get there. But I do feel like there's a need for that. But I would actually say that the way that we do it is more. In the proactive. Sense. So rather than wait for this kind of like confrontation to occur that, you know, we engage in sort of generative world making aspects together where we. Coalitions that are intentionally different and that we work, I think like when we're working in opposition, that's very difficult. But when we're working to create together, that creates a very different dynamic for differences to be expressed. And I actually think that that's. The way forward actually. If I'm going to try that and imagine something. Right.
Delaney: Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
J: Cassils. I typed something in the chat. I don't know if you can see that, but I can read it. It's a quote that you used in the end of your lecture last night. I think I got this right I you know. You were. You were saying that I was. Seriously taking notes. So Jose Esteban Munoz query it starts out clearness is not yet here. Did I get that right? I mean there's a it's a longer quote. Should I read the whole thing? Do you want to? OK, so I just really struck me as a beautiful quote and it also was very. I just. I've been mulling it over. I mean, it gave it gave me personally. So much to think about. But I wonder if that might be. A place to sort of end our discussion today and I don't mean to by any means like. Have the last word or anything, but I do see that, Bonnie also said. We're out of time, so. Here goes. Queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality, but another. OK. We are not yet queer, but we can feel it as the warm and the illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality. We have never been queer, yet queerness exists for us as an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine in the future. The future is queerness's domain. Jose Esteban Munoz. Would you mind elaborating on that a bit or just sort of returning to that?
C: Sure. I mean it. You know, I think. A lot of folks think of. I think one of the things I grapple with a lot in my practise is this idea of. Visibility and inclusion right. And when I think of queerness, it pauses this idea of. Periphery Ness the ability of not being centralised, right? Not. Perhaps not by choice, but in a way I prefer. Or I prefer. I prefer the edge because it allows me to look in and see. You know, as opposed to it allows me to have a sort of critical distance. And I think that what, what Jose is talking about is when he talks about queerness, is this sort of expression that has not been absorbed into a sort of quotidian, neoliberalist agenda? It does not come with a rainbow. Visa card. It does not come with these sort of tropes that are sort of signified and anointed by a government. He's talking about a series of like Shadow practises that have come from necessity but have also given us space to have moments of joy in the midst of Devi. And specifically thinking about the time that he was young thinking about him living through the AIDS crisis and what it was like to, like, witness the beauty and the devastation of that plague. Right. And so thinking. About the fact. That queerness is something that we're always striving towards, meaning that it is this. Unnamable facet of imagination that allows us to. Project something that we have a sense of. It's freedom. It's an imagining of something that we don't quite have words for, but it allows us to kind of grasp for. So when he's talking about the illumination of the horizon, the sense that we don't know what it is, we can't see it. And yet we sense that that is there and it's something about. On the spirit of our ancestral past, that kind of in dust allows us to kind of know that there is future because there has been this past and and so I kind of see it as as that that makes sense. It's a bit like. Botched play.
J: Thank you so much.
C: Pleasure.
J: Well, I wish we didn't have to sign off, but we do, I. Know. I'm sure everybody has things to do. So, Bonnie, do you want to say anything else before we go?
B: Just thank you for being here. Castles and thanks to every single one of you for attending. This was so filling in so many ways I didn't even know I need to. Personally, I'm not even like an arts student, so I just appreciate the conversation today. Very the best way to spend a Friday afternoon. I would throw it out there.
C: Thank you, Bonnie, and thank you so much for putting this together. And you know, being being the engine and you too, Jason, and all of you for coming from all over the world to like to share this space. I really appreciate it. And I hope I hope you know, I feel like was me talking a lot. So I hope, you know, I don't know. I hope that's somewhat. But really great to meet you all. To learn from you as well, and I look forward to that e-mail and learning about. You know what? You guys are looking at and thinking of and. You know. Feel free to be in touch. If you want to.
B: Thank you. And I'll for sure send it out to everybody here. I've been pulling, especially your Instagrams. If you haven't left it, you want us to see your art Instagram, throw it in. You sent to Cassils like come. On shoot your shot.
C: Thank you.
J: Thanks everybody. Cassils I'll follow up with the e-mail just next week to make sure we've got everything. Finalised in order paperwork kind of things. Well, it's all electronic. But you know what I'm talking about. Yes, OK.
C: I do sounds good.
J: Thank you so much have a great weekend.
B: Take care
C: Bye.
J: Thanks, bye.
A: Sorry just jotting down these Instagrams.
B: I got it. I'm going to send them out if. And copy paste it for you and I got yours too, so don't worry.
A: Oh great. Thank you very much and thank you so much for facilitating this.
B: Thanks for being here all the way from our sister across and I don't know where. I'm going with this but.
A: All right. Lovely to meet you. Thank you very much. Bye.
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