Meta Wired Women S@lon 10: .dpi 23 launch – Art and Genders

Art and Genders: Trans, Queer and Feminist Perspectives
.DPI 23 launch

Thursday, March 8, 2012, 7PM
4001, Berri Street (corner Duluth) space 201
Admission: $5 or *FREE* for members

Studio XX’s Méta Wired Women Salon 10 is proud to present Art and Genders: Trans, Queer and Feminist Perspectives, an evening themed around the launch of  .dpi #23. Guest editor-in-chief Johnny Nawracaj will introduce this new edition and in celebration of International Woman’s Day, Coral Short, our ‘Méta’ artist of the evening, will present a selection of her videos as well as her recent work via Skype from her New York studio. The evening will also feature a spoken word performance from artist Lucas Crawford as well as the installation works of Jamie Q, Eloisa Aquino and Nancy-Anne McPhee. Join us for an eclectic evening!

CORAL SHORT
Artist Talk + Video Selection
Narcissus (2:27) – Coral Short
A young man becomes transfixed with his own image and begins to flirt with himself leading up to a tentative kiss. Here we witness this young trans man discovering himself in his new identity. Self reflection becomes self love.

HUMANimals (4:06) – Coral Short
The film maker visits a large furry convention to shoots some amazing creatures. Fascinated by the identity politics and history that surround the furries, Coral Short has created an experimental short documentary which gives the viewer a peek into this phenomenal secret community.

Lesbian Hand Gestures (2:53) – Coral Short + Mascha Nehls
Short, Castle and Nehls carefully craft floating hands in space with their laptop computer creating a surprising pleasurable effects with their mere hand movements. These classic gestures are familiar to all people who have enjoyed them but new technology brings a fantasy element to these old favourites.  Rorschach meets the electro-punk of Lesbians on Ecstasy.

LUCAS CRAWFORD
Memorandum
Spoken Word Performance
Lucas Crawford recently moved to Montreal to begin a postdoctoral fellowship in Gender Studies and Architecture at McGill. His first short film Threadbare (2011) recently screened in Philadelphia and New York. His poetry has appeared in The Nashwaak Review, Other Voices, and on CBC radio, while his writings about transgender appear in Women’s Studies Quarterly, English Studies in Canada, The Routledge Queer Studies Reader and elsewhere. Lucas founded the Alberta Beef Drag King Troupe in Edmonton and he has given over 50 poetry performances across Canada. Lucas completed his PhD in English and Film Studies in 2011.

NANCY ANNE MCPHEE
Encyclopedia of Depth and Gender
Installation
“I propose an illustrated textual work in the format of an encyclopedia entitled Encyclopedia of Depth and Gender. This piece is a variation of the installation artwork Library of Depth and Gender, which has exhibited at Galerie FOFA in Montreal and will be shown at the Canadian Gay and Lesbian Archives Gallery in Toronto autumn 2012. The text is of encyclopedic style definitions described in poetic text of entries such as Bodies, Books, Michel Foucault, Silk. Taken together they describe the amorphous, abject, queer body, and the systems of classifications and definition that attempt to define and constrain those bodies. On the facing page is a portrait of my drag persona Cosimo, a name that means beauty, order, harmony. Using the framework of the carte-de-visite, this image includes elements that describe the relationship between the natural and invention of the self, by including the sewing machine that made the suit that becomes the envelope of gender shifting. The image presents the drag body while simultaneously portraying its construction.”

JAMIE Q
What Makes an Object Queer?
Installation
Although Jamie Q is a queer artist, they generally make art that is somewhere between abstraction and representation: objects or paintings that do not explicitly contain queer subject matter. Jamie wondered whether these art objects were somehow queer even though they were not intentionally “about” queerness. Inspired by Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology, they created an 8-colour silkscreened book based on the question “What makes an object queer?” This limited-edition artist’s book proposes some criteria for queer objects, accompanied by illustrations reminiscent of their sculptural work. Its pages will be projected at Art and Genders: Trans, Queer and Feminist Perspectives.

ELOISA AQUINO
Installation
Since 2009, Eloisa Aquino has been working on mini illustrated narratives about homosexual women of note who strongly identify as masculine through dress and attitude. They are women who gained notoriety through their careers and activism, and are also representatives of their rich historical period, while at the same time being icons against heteronormativity. From the series The Life and Times of Butch Dykes, the biography of Gladys Bentley is illustrated, a black jazz singer during the Harlem Renaissance, in the 1920s in New York, a period of history in which black culture emerged as a major force in music, literature, and performance art. Bentley’s life is paradigmatic of her times, since her blossoming and decay reflected the liberal period of urban life in the 1920s and the subsequent conservatism of the McCarthy era.