ABORIGINAL DIGITAL ACCESS PROJECT VTAPE’S ABORIGINAL DIGITAL ACCESS PROJECT
A couple of years ago, Vtape’s Eschewing the shallows of thematics or administrative duo of Deirdre Logue and stylistic analyses, John Hampton has gone Chris Gehman saw a need – how to use into deep water. Unsettling Sex offers a new on-line delivery technologies to make bracing – and often challenging – view of the work of Indigenous media artists more Indigenous sexualities, in all multiplicities. widely available - and then they hatched a plan to address that gap. The plan was Like many of our efforts, most of the Vtape to digitize approximately 500 Canadian staff are implicated in one way or another Aboriginal artworks and documentaries in in this exciting project. Initially, Chris and the Vtape holdings in order to make them Deirdre developed the overall plan but conveniently available to programmers, the project itself was expertly executed librarians, buyers and curators. by Vtape’s Archivist and the ADAP’s Digitization Project Manager, Kristie With this, the Vtape Aboriginal Digital MacDonald. Utilizing her pre-existing Access Project (ADAP) came into being. knowledge of video formats, migration, The aim of this special project, funded and condition assessment, Kristie worked in part by the Canada Council for the independently to contact artists, patch Arts Initiatives Programme, is to actively the racks, upload content and distribute increase the public profile of Indigenous press releases. Kristie’s contribution has Canadian artists. To date, over 300 titles by generated a substantial web presence for Indigenous artists produced from 1978 right the Aboriginal artists represented by Vtape up to the current year have been entered and we thank her for her dedication. onto the Vtape preview website. Curators and programmers and other potential users Kristie’s work would not have been possible of this content can request a password to if it were not for the technical contributions allow access to this website in order to view of her project support team, Mark Pellegrino titles on-line, thus increasing the outreach and Kim Tomczak. The project also relied capacity of Vtape’s legendary user-friendly on key support from Erik Martinson, Wanda on-site research centre. For the first time, Vanderstoop and Kaherawaks Thompson, programmers in Australia or Taiwan or who continue to ensure that information Vancouver can have access to full-length about the Aboriginal Digital Access Project versions of Aboriginal titles in the Vtape is widely disseminated. collection on their own computers, giving them the same privilege that visitors to the I extend my personal appreciation to Vtape offices in Toronto have enjoyed for everyone at imagineNATIVE but especially three decades – service where it counts! to Jason Ryle, Executive Director for the commitment to the on-going partnership This programme – Unsettling Sex – is between iN and Vtape. And many, many the first public outcome of ADAP. This thanks to Daniel Northway-Frank for all summer, I invited emerging curator John his help with this program. Finally, I thank G. Hampton, recently of Regina’s Neutral John Hampton for his creative curatorial Ground and current Masters of Visual investigation that provokes a thorny Studies in Curatorial Studies student at subject in all the right ways. the University of Toronto, to construct a programme of his choice selected from the on-line previews available through Vtape’s Lisa Steele ADAP. The results of his research, I would Creative Director Vtape offer, are exemplary.
1 Smith has argued that “silence about our Native communities to accept colonial UNSETTLING SEX JOHN G. HAMPTON own complicated histories supports the domination, colonists needed to impose colonizer’s idea that the only real Indians upon them an acceptance of patriarchal are full-blooded, come from a reservation social structures, replete with normalized and speak the language and practice the gender-binary structures and hierarchy.6 religion of their ancestors.... too much These prerequisites for colonial sexuality Unsettling. To bother, upset, unfix, or expands, it has begun to include young Indian art remains within the predictable were not only used on Aboriginal people loosen; to force out of a fixed condition; artists moving to speak outside assertions images of ecology, protest, anger and however. Successful colonization does to deprive of fixity or quiet in institutions of personal identity. In kinship with the easy celebration. Rather than challenging not create new rules for each invaded or beliefs; to clear of settlers.1 The state subjectless critique of queer theory and its or reshaping the prescribed myths and territory, but seeks to expand the systems of sexuality in Indigenous communities unfixed identity structures, artists such as stereotypes, it settles for comforting of legislation used on their own people to has never been fully settled, never fully James Diamond, Marnie Parrell, and Ariel pastoral mythologies.”4 envelop new groups. The logics of power static or colonized, although attempts Smith are using new strategies to deconstruct used to attack Aboriginal identities were have been repeatedly made to give it that systems of institutionalized subjugation, While Aboriginal identity still remains extensions of the repressive colonial appearance. From pristine untouched domination and colonization. Their politics a fruitful and under-developed area of logics enacted on settlers themselves. utopia, to perverse abomination oppressed move away from counter-identification (the artistic exploration, it is significant that As Scott Lauria Morgensen so eloquently for its own good, Aboriginal sexuality is assertion of personal identity to protest settler this dialogue is expanding outside of states in the opening sentence to his a fluid, contested, and sensitive topic. dominance) towards an interior infiltration of exclusively studying its own history. The 2011 book Spaces Between Us: Queer Histories of sexual violence indoctrinated these structures. Their subject of inquiry is trap of self-othering can all too often Settler Colonialism and Indigenous into communities as a means for purging not strictly Indigenous sexuality. They use a reify colonial power by confirming the Decolonization, “We are caught up in one projections of primitive sexual sins, synthesis of the sympathetic projects of queer opposition between First Peoples and another, we who live in settler societies, have left wounds not easily healed, and theory and Native studies in an examination settlers rather than embracing a correlated and our interrelationships inform all that 3 not lightly probed. But this history, after of the impact of colonial sexuality. existence of mutual ancestors and shared these societies touch.”7 repeated attempts at erasure through experience. In “Decolonizing the Queer neo-puritanical shame, has come out of Operating in a space that Native Body (and Recovering the Native In response to their attempted hiding and has begun to lose the kind of is neither assimilationist nor counter- Bull-Dyke)” Chris Finley suggests that a erasure, Aboriginal peoples have been specificity that only silence can contain. identificatory, these artists intertwine settler “purposeful deconstruction of the logics of compelled to represent themselves in and Indigenous fates, implicitly showing power rather than an explosion of identity academia, art and politics in order to In 1999, Lee-Ann Martin and the impacts of colonial legacy on not only politics is a more fruitful strategy for gain recognition, but this has diverted Morgan Wood curated the landmark Indigenous communities, but also on all ending the colonial domination for Native attention away from defining the terms exhibition Exposed: Aesthetics of Aboriginal involved. By moving outside of the politics peoples.”5 of discourse itself.8 This ghettoization of Erotic Art in response to an “insufficiency of of opposition through personal affirmation, Indigenous knowledge does a disservice dialogue on sexuality, intimacy and sexual they reach beyond familiar communities, Colonial oppression does not to colonial studies and citizens within imagery in the Aboriginal community.”2 In towards an inclusionary dialogue that only enforce itself through direct attacks colonial states who could benefit from the thirteen years since this exhibition, artists critiques the institutional structures in which on Indigeneity. The cultural genocide a sustained investigation into the sado- such as Thirza Cuthand, Kent Monkman, they are embedded, rather than defining enacted by the North American settler masochistic rituals of colonial sexuality. In Adrian Stimson and Terrance Houle themselves in opposition to them. But the project often relied on assimilationist her exploration of the “heteronormativity have brought the discourse surrounding shortage of explicitly identifiable Aboriginal tactics that require an internalization of the of colonialism,” cultural theorist Andrea sexuality in Aboriginal communities out of content within this work is less a departure structures propping up colonial powers. Smith argues that: the smokehouse. With this revelation has from the decolonization movement than it One of these support-structures was the come increased awareness of indigenous is a shifting of strategy. male-dominated hierarchy required to When we no longer have to carry the burden two-spiritedness, the berdache, and the maintain the patrilineal inheritance model of political and cultural purity, we can be more unsettling force of indigenous gender In “Home of the Brave” that is so crucial to retaining ownership flexible and creative in engaging multiple politics. As this dialog continues and celebrated critic and curator Paul Chaat over conquered lands. In order for strategies and creating a plethora of alliances
1 From the Oxford English Dictionary, Second edition, 1989; online version June 2012. 4 Chaat Smith, Paul. “Home of the brave” C Magazine 42, 1994. pg 30-42.
2 3 that can enable us to use the logics of settler introspective investigation towards cultural It seems ironic that a colonial state, might feel particularly colonialism against itself... interconnectedness. Within the lingering these geographically, politically and sympathetic to May. His well-intentioned unease left by Diamond’s Art Scene, temporarily removed depictions parody is all too relatable to the self-doubt A subjectless critique helps demonstrate Marnie Parrell explores the rhetorics of of Indians have become a site of imposed by legacies of assimilation that that Native studies is an intellectual project desire, conflating and contrasting material investigation for ‘real Indianness.’ leave many hesitant to embrace their that has broad applicability not only for and sexual symbols of extravagance, What is it about these films that makes cultural history for fear of appropriating their Native peoples but for everyone. It also parodying their promotional pitches. And it possible to even consider them as own culture. But the light-hearted satire of requires us to challenge the normalizing finally, Ariel Smith follows this sensual script, arbiters of Aboriginal authenticity? these appropriating gestures removes their logics of academia rather than simply sending us on a dejected, camp-infused Based on novels written over one power, much as when the word “queer” was articulate a politics of Indigenous inclusion decent into horrific and hyperbolically hundred years ago from the other side redefined by activists to provide a retroactive within the colonial academy.9 gendered dramas of conflict and consent of the earth, they should be the furthest reversal of meaning.11 in colonial contexts of patriarchal power. things from our minds when considering In Unsettling Sex, we follow recent By negotiating heteropatriarchy outside of authentic Aboriginal identity. But there is In Dance to Miss Chief the racist, attempts to help decolonize our bodies, alignments with exclusionary groupings something attractive about their naïve heterosexist history of the cultural and sexual minds and bedrooms. Kent Monkman and by moving outside expectations appreciation for Aboriginal cultures domination of First Peoples is reclaimed sets the backdrop on which the other of cultural presentation, Smith, Parrell, they had no firsthand knowledge of. through the politics of desire—embracing artists define themselves, showing the Diamond and Monkman dismantle the Perhaps the physical, intellectual May’s infectious Indigenous fetishization and complicated interweaving of cultures and coercive powers that underlie the settler and spiritual distance between these glamorous cultural appropriation, directing international interests in the construction and heteropatriarchal colonization of both German admirers and our Aboriginal it right back to its source. This reclamation and preservation of a mythical authentic Indigenous and non-Indigenous bodies. ancestors is relatable to contemporary of the power of fetishization throws shade Aboriginal. James Diamond’s work then Aboriginal peoples who are separated at legacies of negative appropriation, and charts a multi-narrative movement from by vast temporal and cultural distances stereotypical identity generation, paving the from pre-contact ‘authentic’ traditional way for the decentering of identity with Miss life. First Peoples such as myself, Chief’s cross-cultural, gender-warping, time- who were raised in urban and mixed- traveling call to the decolonizing dance floor. KENT MONKMAN blood environments, embedded within
9 ibid 10 Loft, Steve. Culture Shock, imagineNATIVE Program. Accessed September 2nd, 2012: http://www.imagin- In Dance to Miss Chief (2010), Kent enative.org/program.php?id=45 Monkman’s infamous alter-ego Miss 11 Butler, Judith. Bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of “sex.” New York: Routledge, 1993. Chief Eagle Testickle performs in a music video for Dwayne Minard’s remix of Byron Wong’s diva house track of the same name. In this intercultural drag JAMES DIAMOND pop mashup, Monkman remixes footage from German westerns from the sixties with his own unique brand of Native couture. The video features an on screen “Opposites distract and the peripheral rule he has found a sense of peace with that romance between two fictitious chiefs, is born”12 bodily relationship. Diamond’s growing Monkman’s Miss Chief Eagle Testickle comfort with his body unexpectedly comes and Karl Friedrich May’s Winnetou. The James Diamond’s Mars Womb-Man from his experience of becoming pregnant. time-warped romantic connection between (2006) opens with Diamond sitting in the classic German Indian stereotypes and front row of a makeshift theatre, watching Diamond recalls asking his the contemporary Canadian Aboriginal one of his early videos, The Man from mom, as a small child, what the difference artists has been bubbling for half a decade Venus (1999). Diamond’s positioning between a man and woman was. “A woman now, most notably in an earlier screening as audience to his own work eloquently is a man with a womb,” she replies. “OK, presented by Vtape for imagineNATIVE, image of Native peoples. Although these reflects his working process, which is that’s cool,” returns James, while his body, Culture Shock. Curated by Steve Loft films curtailed the Hollywood tendency to often fiercely introspective and self- still inscribed with the projection of The Man in 2010, Culture Shock featured four villainize Native peoples, preferring positive critical, articulated through hauntingly from Venus, reads “Spare change for a sex contemporary artists (Darryl Nepinak, portrayals reminiscent of the ‘Noble honest steam of consciousness change.” In Mars Womb-man, the womb is Keesic Douglas, Bonnie Devine and Bear Savage’, they still perpetuated stereotypes monologues. In The Man from Venus articulated both as a site for differentiation Witness) commissioned to respond to films “that place Aboriginal people as victims Diamond articulates a fraught relationship and harmonious union of the sexes, from both East and West Germany that and leave the cultural revisionists as with his own body, but in Mars Womb- expressing integrative individuality of depict a sensationalized and fetishized arbiters and authors of the ‘real.’”10 Man’s subsequent revisiting of this work, queer identity. “I don’t believe in the notion
4 5 of opposites. In essence we are all male in creative production. This is reflected and female,” Diamond says. He fashions with his rendition of Lewis’ “Great Balls MARNIE PARRELL identity as a circular arrangement where of Fire” which is often considered Lewis’ we are all “staring directly at each other.” greatest song, but which provided a Diamond both disavows and capitalizes on source for personal turmoil because of its In About Town (2006), Marnie Parrell transfigures the ethnographic presumption blasphemous use of Christian hardcore mainstream pornography into a charming, of his automatic access to a passages. The fact that Lewis’ parochial real-estate listing. Using found footage from social transformative alterity,13 ethical turmoil revolved around multiple films (No Holes Unfilled, Gina’s Black Attack, using it to grant access to the his artistic production, rather and Black Reign 2 and 5), all shot in the same lavishly viewer and those not perceived than his pedophilia, highlights tacky dream home, Parrell creates a cable access style as socially or culturally othered the potential for tunnel vision fantasy real estate listing. Parrell (who has a background by brushing off dichotomies, when artistic production in semiotics) edits the footage to reveal repetitions in stating simply that “we need becomes the pinnacle of form, structure and content in the films, while a voice-over each-other to feel real.” existence. This sentiment is blithely highlights similar syntactical strategies used in the echoed by Whoopi Goldberg’s architecture of the home. The penetrating and penetrated, The “peripheral rule” infamous, yet popularly supplicative and domineering actors obscure the content introduced in Mars Womb-Man shared defense of Polanski’s addressed by the voice-over. Instead the architectural becomes an assaultive co- rape charge as not really features are pointed to with comically exaggerated arrows implication in I am the art scene “rape rape.” Polanski fans and football inspired freeze-frame circling. The traditional starring Woman Polanski who were unable to untangle site of interest for mainstream heterosexual pornography— (2010). Described by Diamond their equivocation of creative penetration—is also obscured, but by the cheesecake as a “high-art private service and moral identity unwittingly cable access special effects; glitter conceals hard cock, announcement,” I am the art became rape apologists, and like Adam’s postlapsarian leaf, while the penetrated vagina scene brings a self-critical lens Diamond further complicates becomes an orgiastic burst of multicolored fireworks. The to progressive conceit in the this representation by overlapping tacky fantasies also suggest multiple repeated liberal arts. The central action interweaving multiple citations histories of potential pornographic parallel universes, in the video consists of Diamond writing that make singling out any definite moral where the past (or potential) lives of the building seep up “RAPE ME” across his naked body, while reaction to his video extremely difficult. through the floorboards. a tragic acoustic cover of Jerry Lee Lewis’ Concluding the video with identification as “Great Balls of Fire” plays on the sound the “ex ex ex gay movement,” Diamond Avoiding morality tales or didactic track. This gesture of self-aggression and displays an identity that bounces between deconstructions, Parrell provides us with a humorous call to sadism is bookended by Diamond’s two oppositional statements until it drifts re-presentation of the pornography industry and its confrontational gaze being directed at laterally into a site without clear allegiance. relationship to advertisement, capital, and lavish the viewer. Diamond’s aggressive gaze The triple “ex” renders this complex and domestic banality. Parrell explores the rhetorics of desire, accompanied by the words “fuck you” multi-faceted expression of sexual identity conflating and contrasting material and sexual symbols implicates the viewer in this act of textual into a pornographic display of hyperbolic of extravagance, parodying their promotional pitches. violence. As the ‘star’ of the film, Diamond desire and voyeuristic non-identities. Her critique does not rely upon a personal statement of plays the multiple roles of a queered However, the normalization of healthy counter-identification but on the generic appropriation and Roman Polanski, his sexual assault non-normative identities is complicated comical exaggeration of systems of oppression we often victims, and the placating art scene, when they are intermingled with criminal willingly collude in. The inevitable politics of the gendered while simultaneously casting the ones. Diamond’s complex multi- gaze and of racial representation is softened by the humor audience in each role as well. faceted expressions of sexual of miscast real-estate footage, nipples censored by digital identity and desire become eyes, and the naïvely self-parodying titles like “Black By occupying the questions of sexual agency Reign 5.” bodies of aggressor, victim in both personal and social and passive witness, interactions when he sings Diamond expresses the the words, “You broke my sometimes contradictory will, oh what a thrill.” 12 James Diamond from his artist statement for Mars Womb-Man. voices one speaks with 13 Hal Foster identifies the liberal ethnographic tendency to identify cultural alterity as “the Archimedean point from which the dominant culture will be transformed or at least subverted” in Foster, Hal. The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996. pg. 180
7 the mise-en-scène of madness typical ARIEL SMITH of German expressionism. Smith uses the harsh lighting signature to this genre, which often portrays the “binary struggle of light and dark,”16 to allegorize gender binaries which are then deconstructed Dear Diary (2009) that lurks behind even through anti-essentializing parody. ventures into the sexual the most tranquil, subconscious of a faceless unassuming scenery. When the assistant splits into female figure. Drifting from Unlike the rawness three mirror images, one awaiting to be a monotonous workday and lack of agency that sawed in half while the other two strike full of kitty cat calendars, Lynch portrays however, poses with their saws on either side of souvenir snow globes, the ‘switch’ power the stage, she plays the role of her own and compulsively chewed dynamics in Smith’s torturer who “freezes into postures that pencils, our protagonist hyper patriarchal BDSM identify her with a statue, a painting 17 takes a break to slip into playground of imagination or a photograph.” This aestheticized the salaciously surreal expresses an uneasy lack freezing and buildup of anticipation interiority of her diary. In of clarity. The protagonist parallels the anxiety of the masochist this masturbatory world of wavers between colluding who is trapped indefinitely awaiting satin, velvet and tulle, she in her own oppression pleasure while in intense expectation of explores the sensuality of via the internalization of pain (whether physical or psychological), self-stimulation. Moving colonial sexual scripts but the soundtrack laments a cycle of from smooth to striated, of male dominance, and abuse and abandonment more typical of 18 silky to scruffy, Smith’s the empowerment of the sadist. The repetition of the chorus textural explorations are the ‘bottom’ in BDSM here expresses a cycle of exploitation, overlaid onto sardonically communities, where they abandonment and return, suggesting hyperbolic gender ultimately dictate the the assistant’s codependence with the signifiers. A car engine boundaries and scenarios absentee magician who has “gotta revs over top of a close up acted out.14 ramble,” but the visual narrative enacts of a man’s burly chest in an indefinite suspension of action that a wife-beater t-shirt, while Smith’s blurring of undermines the emotional impact of the he suggestively pets his agency and empowerment audio. Target Girls displaces narrative, denim bulge. But when this continues in the tragicomic not explicitly illustrating it, but implying rugged greaser reaches independence portrayed it through Smith’s citation of filmic inside to whip out his in Target Girls (2012), convention and mise-en-scène, creating cock, he instead pulls out where she presents a the suspense though an unconscious a beautiful bouquet of roses. An unseen familiar ritualistic sacrifice of the female expectation of generic fulfillment. All audience applauds at this magic trick/ body in the form of the magician’s “lovely rising action and no climax, our tense gender resignification. But as the climax assistant.” The assistant is caught in a expectations lead to nothing but a has already come, the following cum shot, space of longing, presumably waiting for disenchanted bubble gum chew. shooting out of the bouquet, is rendered the magician, while sharpening the knives a redundant performance of masculinity, that will inevitably be thrown at her. The 14 performed out of convention, with little carnivalesque story of codependency and At least in “high protocol” and “old guard” communities: “Glossary of BDSM” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Accessed September 12th 2012 provocation, almost as an afterthought. heartbreak follows a masochistic formula, subverting climax in favor of suspense. 15 Deleuze, Gilles, and Leopold Sacher-Masoch. Masochism. New York: Zone Books, 1989. pg. 33 The dejected camp of Smith’s Philosopher Gilles Deleuze credits hyper feminized and masculinized Leopold von Sacher-Masoch as the first to 16 Powell, Anna. Deleuze and Horror Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005. fantasy then shifts to affected roles use suspense as an essential component 17 Deleuze, Gilles, and Leopold Sacher-Masoch. Masochism. New York: Zone Books, 1989. 18 of domination and humiliation. The of romantic fiction, and he parallels this ibid transition is signaled with the cueing narrative construction with the literal of “Laura Palmer’s Theme” by Angelo suspension of the masochistic protagonist: Badalamenti. The song, played regularly hung up, crucified, or in the case of Target throughout David Lynch’s television Girls, suspended as a target for knife series Twin Peaks, has come to signal the throwing.15 The target in question, as violence of the seedy sexual underbelly well as Smith’s general aesthetic evokes
8 9 PROGRAM NOTES BIOGRAPHIES
Dance to Miss Chief Kent Monkman James Diamond connects the Ariel Smith (Cree/Ojibway/Roma/ audience to his experience in an intimate Jewish) is an award-winning filmmaker In a sexy video for her Diva House track, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle presents a playful but unpredictable way. His award winning and video artist who has been creating critique of German fascination with North American “Indians” that is guaranteed to make works have been called ‘a lexicon of independent works since 2001. She you want to get up and dance! dispossession’ and ‘spliced from within’. has shown at festivals and galleries 2010, Colour, Sound 4:49 Born in Montreal and raised all over Turtle both in Canada and internationally, Island, he is currently based in Vancouver, including imagineNATIVE. Her work is Coast Salish Territory. disturbing, darkly humorous, visceral and Mars-Womb-Man James Diamond unapologetically feminist. Ariel currently Mars-Womb-Man is a companion to Diamond’s earlier film, The Man From Venus. In sits as an Ontario Regional Director of the this film the artist finds answers for some of his old questions as he explodes binary Born in Preeceville, Saskatchewan, Independent Media Arts Alliance (IMAA). Marnie Parrell concepts of man, woman, mother, and father. is a Métis filmmaker, writer and artist. Since the first 2006, Colour, Sound 14:00 screening of her work in 1991, her John G. Hampton is an artist and films and videos have been screened curator from Regina, Saskatchewan. He both nationally and internationally and is a member of the artist collective Turner I am the art scene starring Woman Polanski James Diamond she has received numerous grants Prize* and the Chickasaw nation and is James Diamond’s I am the art scene which he describes as a “high-art private service and festival awards. Her art practice the curator at large for Neutral Ground announcement,” dismantles faux liberal conceit by addressing difficult subjects in explores the creative integration of Contemporary Art Forum. He currently sexual discourse. craft and new technologies. Based in lives in Toronto where he is pursuing Toronto, she is currently working on his Masters in Visual Studies: Curatorial 2010, Colour, Sound 3:06 interactive database filmmaking and Studies from the University of Toronto. creating small objects and books that About Town Marnie Parrell combine her filmmaking and craft based practices. In About Town, Marnie Parell transfigures hardcore mainstream pornography into a charming, parochial real estate listing. Kent Monkman 2006, Colour, Sound 5:00 is an artist of Cree ancestry who works in a variety of media including painting, film/video, Dear Diary Ariel Smith performance and installation. Monkman has exhibited widely within Canada, and is One woman’s boredom, loneliness, and active imagination make for a sardonic, surrealist well represented in numerous private and tale of longing and sensual escapism. public collections including the National 2009, Black and White, Sound 3:45 Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. He is represented by Galerie Target Girls Ariel Smith Florent Tosin in Berlin, Trepanier Baer Gallery in Calgary, and Pierre-François Ariel Smith`s Target Girls presents a familiar ritualistic sacrifice of the female body in the Ouellette art contemporain in Montreal. form of the magician`s “lovely assistant.” Target Girls recycles the aesthetics of film noir, vaudeville and German expressionism, recasting them as a tragicomic rebellion against Hollywood glamour and submission. 2012, Black and White, Sound 6:31
10 11 Unsettled Sex programme commissioned by Vtape for the 2012 imagineNATIVE film and media arts festival Curator, John G. Hampton Unsettled Sex screened October 18, 2012 4-6pm at TIFF Bell Lightbox
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