• research & development

    with evan sproat, brigitte patenaude, and alex sudalnik

    with support from canada council for the arts

  • watershed decisions
    unreal expectations
    questions of Happily Ever After
    and true satisfaction

    considering the self as both a physical and immaterial castle

    each misstep a pleat
    each success a tufted stone

 

  • the art museum at the university of toronto

    with richard fung, tim mccaskell, jess dobkin, evan sproat, and jordan elliott prosser

    with support from the jackman humanities institute

  • gallop apace you fiery-footed steeds
    make me feel something/anything
    steal away this packed-full bindle
    lie me down on silk
    feed me peeled grapes like the rotund Greek
    bathing sodomy your little cherub
    take away the weight of things
    guillotine-proof those desires not not ours
    through some other body some garbled voice
    the internalized flagellation
    is so soft pillowy-down
    that it doesn’t exist – we float

    there is an acre of green vista
    that protrudes from the farmhouse
    immaculately kept—each blade in its place
    a fostered paradise like green gables
    the hoe and shovel
    the dewy overnight left lasting on its surface
    gleaming stage
    where the skies are not cloudy all day
    an emerald city wide open spaces abounding echo chamber
    plucked from obscurity thimble-fingered
    boombox karaoke with high kicks and pirouettes
    farmville phantasmagoria
    from the vinyl seats of tractors
    torches and pitchforks to drive him out of town

    a compulsion to organize nature
    as to appear more appealing

    unroll the turf unroll the turf!!!
    far beyond the picket fence
    creeping into lasciviously cloying
    that green that shade of green
    obliterated GCI XXX
    deep and luscious
    the prominence of heritage so immaculate and prepared
    no more turf the lawn is everything!!
    everything is the lawn!!
    dragging heaving baggage the failed performer
    the desire for live bodies
    to feel something/anything

 

  • the art museum at the university of toronto, online

    with catherine opie, john greyson, evan sproat, kaeten bonli, and shawné michaelain holloway

    with support from the jackman humanities institute

  • you catch a glimpse of your body as you strip off your sweat-soaked clothes, naked in the mirror. breathing, moving. if only you could explode out of the container.

    two women carved
    rendered in childish forms
    a house the sun some gulls
    the “household” upended
    incisions made in Opie’s back
    drip and ooze palpable
    the transference of the pain on my body
    reaching out and touching me
    carnal hermeneutics
    the lesbian home
    corporeal ten commandments
    and the abject stains of blood and gore
    immediate refusal for some even vomit
    the scene is one of hope and violence
    audience oscillation
    desiring her pain
    a new story told
    the lesbians are me
    they are you too

    the scar will surely stay
    sprawled on supple skin
    reminders of otherwise
    horizons exploding like dormant volcanoes
    this body suffering for us
    opie’s drawing her skin too
    becoming life-size taking form
    making real communities
    desires pulsing unencumbered
    this new home
    what does that place look like
    where do you come home to your queer desires?
    and when?

    imagining spaces
    arriving in your body
    carrying with you the crass and dull weights
    of expectation and survival
    shedding them now
    building new trusses
    a roof for us
    our desire our real real bodies
    exploding out of the container

    how did you get home?

    * Catherine Opie, Self-Portrait/Cutting, 1993.

 

  • 221A

    with tessa tomlinson, brian mcbay, vincent tsang, and michelle fu

  • Pollyanna 圖書館 Library is a research infrastructure collecting print material, audio, videos, objects, and artworks acquired by the research initiatives of 221A’s fellowship program. Pollyanna Library also produces educational programming — talks, performances, screenings, reading groups, and classes — that animate and develop the collection.

    221A made the unanimous decision to cease the operation of 221 East Georgia Street as of 2020 due to untenable conditions.

  • with support from the canada council for the arts

    vancouver, toronto, montreal, halifax in various outdoor locations

  • “Since the human is intimately immersed within nature, since the human essentially is nature, and since there is no separation between human and nature, when nature is rewritten so is the human reconfigured.”

    Matthew Causey, Theatre and Performance in Digital Culture (Routledge), 131.

    a changing landscape: awash with tombstones, the fields for growing our crops will be a mass of graves, the beach will be lined with bodies washing into the impoverished ocean, tasting of oil and rotten flesh.

    an investigation of the interface: proposing new methodologies and critical reflection on materiality and sustainability. how do we transport the human body back into the soil from which it presumably came?

 
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