Adrien Crossman
Hopping the Fence Transcript – #15, Adrien Crossman
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Hopping the Fence – S2E5: Adrien Crossman
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RC: Hello, I’m Rebecca Casalino, and this is Hopping the Fence, a podcast dedicated to talking to artists on the fringes of the Canadian art scene.
Adrien Crossman is a queer and non-binary white settler artist, educator and curator currently residing on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples in Hamilton, Ontario. Crossman holds an MFA in Visual Art from the University of Windsor (2018), and a BFA in Integrated Media from OCAD University (2012). Their practice explores the affective qualities of queerness, and they are interested in the liminality between the digital and the physical, considering how the terms trans* and non-binary apply to media as well as gender. Crossman is a co-founder and co-runs the online arts publication off centre and is an Assistant Professor in the School of the Arts at McMaster University.
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Our conversation was recorded in Hamilton within Treaty 3 territory on the ancestral land of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe nations under the Dish With One Spoon wampum agreement.
RC: Hello Adrien!
AC: Hey, how’s it goin’?
RC: Good, how ‘bout you?
AC: Not too bad, pretty good today.
RC: Awesome. Where are you right now?
AC: Uh, so I’m in the attic of my house, in the east end of so-called Hamilton, Ontario. And my dog is downstairs so unfortunately, I’m on my own up here.
RC: [Laughs] Aww. So I just wanted to ask a little bit if you could describe your practice for our listeners, just a general aesthetic, or maybe even describe one of your favourite pieces?
AC: Yeah. So I very much identify as an artist, curator and educator. I feel like I'm very much like... those are the three thirds of my artistic identity. In terms of my art practice, my practice is extremely interdisciplinary, and I've been reflecting on it a lot lately and how I'm often investigating a lot of new material explorations, but what unites it is very much the conceptual through lines. So a lot of my practice is based on exploring the affect of queerness and how to create a space that... either creating a space for the audience that literally feels queer or signifies the feeling of queerness.
RC: Mhm.
AC: So you know, through lighting, coloured lighting, and a lot of the aesthetic choices I'm making that feel more like turning a gallery space into less of an institutional white wall space and more of a...like, I'm also really interested installing in non-traditional art spaces, so more like project spaces or strange spaces that feel more community grassroots based.
RC: Mhm, mhm.
AC: And a lot of my practice is also kind of both having a physical IRL practice enmeshed with a digital practice, and trying to blend those spaces of the virtual and the quote unquote real. And then I also have a curatorial practice and I teach full time at McMaster as a studio art professor.
RC: How have you found teaching studio art has changed your approach to making, or has it?
AC: Uh, in a very...the most pragmatic way to answer that I would say that... so I got hired on a teaching load where I teach seven courses a year-
RC: Wow.
AC: - and it just takes up so much of my time that I haven't had that much time to make. So it's actually really changed my practice in the sense that I'm really consumed by the administrative side as well as the teaching side. From last year it was like September to the spring. This year it was actually September into the end of June, 'cause I was teaching three semesters in a row. So really taking advantage of these summer months to make. I feel like it's really affected my creative schedule.
RC: Mhm, mhm.
AC: And also I think it's giving me a lot of time to sit and reflect on who I want to be as an educator and who I want to be as an artist. And observing how young people are approaching art right now.
RC: Mhm.
AC: I've spent less time in the last two years making and a lot more time thinking and reflecting, and I think I'm finally ready to start producing more again. So it's just been a really good time to absorb a lot. 'Cause I also learn so much for my students. And you learn so much having... you can do something but once you have to teach it you actually learn it again from a totally different perspective.
RC: [Laughs]. And then in terms of your curation, you talk about grassroots spaces and things like that, do you find it’s easier to make them into queer spaces? 'Cause I'm also really interested in that. I was just wondering what your approach is.
AC: Yeah absolutely. I guess the last... actually, a lot of my curatorial projects. A couple of them have been in…I've created a couple shows at Xpace when I worked there. But then I created a show in Toronto in a garage. And then the last show that I curated that was in a physical space was in Windsor, in a tiny, converted storefront that had carpeted floors -
RC: Nice.
AC: - and [inaudible] blinds. And three people that I had been in the MFA program with, or it was a recent alumni and then two people that I'd been in the program with. I decided to curate this show the last summer I lived in Windsor and it was such a strange, weird space but it also really... it forced us to be really flexible. And so I feel like we very much queered this weird little space that was not an art space. And it also kind of forced us to queer our approaches to installing, because we had to... nothing about it was conducive really to the way that we wanted to show the work. So even like how to hang a projector, what kind of lighting to use, where we were going to blow a fuse. It was really hot and there was mildew in the basement, so we have to figure out a lot of things. But yeah, I think both as an artist installing and as someone curating, there's so much potential to work differently in non-institutional spaces. They force you to work differently and they also... the recontextualization of that space for an audience is really interesting, especially if they're used to encountering it at something really different.
RC: Mmm, yeah. Also there's just no rules. If you're installing in your friend's bedroom, you can do whatever you want really. But like at an institution you have to ask to punch holes in walls or things like that.
AC: Absolutely. Yeah, and I think about your thesis exhibition and how it was in someone's home.
RC: Mhm.
AC: And it felt like it was domestic queer space, which I think was so interesting to house this...and it was small too, right? The tone of it was really interesting 'cause it was like a small little space in this domestic queer space. And I think it actually really suited it. And I felt more comfortable to engage with that work in a relaxed way than I maybe would in an institution.
RC: Yeah, I feel that. And even installing there, I had to do that nice even line around, but all the walls were cracking and warped, so it almost gave me an excuse to be looser with it, which I was really grateful for. So that was kind of a happy accident I would say.
AC: Yeah, 'cause a straight line isn't queer, right?
RC: Exactly. And it ended up looking really cool anyways. And like, it was more of...the perception of it was a lot smoother maybe than what it actually was if you looked closer, [laughs].
AC: Well it's like a queer approach to curating.
RC: Yeah.
AC: You know? In the actual installation of the work itself. 'Cause one thing I thought about...one thing that I got challenged on a lot when I was in my MFA was even like in installing work it's like, well how do you install work in a queer way? Is it high, is it low, is it on the ground? Like I started installing works in some of my exhibitions and like, I'd put a shelf up really high and kind of hide a piece in the corner, and maybe you'd see it maybe you wouldn't. But it's like, all these elements that defy a traditional way of encountering and installing work actually queers the installation approach of the work, which I also think is a really interesting way to think about it. Like, removed from the content but in the methodology of doing it, it's queer.
RC: Yeah, yeah. And I think that that's why I was personally drawn to curating. Did you start curating at the same time that you were doing your artist practice, or which one came first for you?
AC: The very first show I curated was... I think it took place a year after I graduated my undergrad.
RC: Mhm.
AC: So I went to OCAD for five years. I graduated in 2012. Then in 2013, I curated a show at Videofag called the Aesthetics of Failure, which was a glitch art show and it had just over 20 artists approaching the concept of glitch within their artwork. And so I did start working as an artist first, but very soon after kind of entering the world more professionally as an artist, I started curating as well. I was working in glitch art and I was like, “It seems like so many people are interested in this, how do I foster a community of people?” And then I just started realizing, as a queer artist, as a digital media artist, there is a lack of community for spaces like that, 'cause a lot of the digital artists I knew were all over the world and friends on Google Hangouts and Facebook and stuff, but there wasn't a ton of physical community. So I think... yeah, not that long after really starting to show and galleries as an artist, I got really interested in how I could also Foster community and create opportunities and spaces.
RC: Yeah for sure. And I think that off centre is a really good example of one of the projects that you started in Windsor that does actually create community and bring people together.
AC: I hope so. Yeah, so that project…so Luke Maddaford and I run off centre, and just for the context of folks that are listening, it is an online publication that publishes writing about artists and exhibitions and artworks and events that take place outside of the larger metropolitan centres within North America. And we started to conceptualize it when I was still in Windsor, I don't remember if we launched it while I was still in Windsor or shortly after I moved to Hamilton.
RC: Oh, gotcha.
AC: And it might have been shortly after I moved to Hamilton 'cause we were really interested in the fact that he was living in Windsor, I was living in Hamilton. So we were both...you know, Hamilton and Windsor still have larger populations, but they're not like these art centres like Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.
RC: Mhm.
AC: And so we were thinking like, what are these spaces? Cities as well as more rural spaces that...where art happens and interesting things happen but no one covers it, you know? And how could we actually start to foster recognizing and archiving, right? Because archives are so important, especially for more marginalized communities and marginalized practices that don't get written about. It's kind of like, if it happens and no one writes about it...
RC: Yeah.
AC: Not like, did it happen? But it's harder to find that history. So we just wanted to try to create a space where people were talking about these things and also creating this archive. And I'm glad that you feel like it is fostering a kind of community, 'cause we feel like that too, but it also feels, especially during the pandemic, everything feels so disembodied.
RC: Yeah.
AC: It's hard to know how much we're having an effect, but I think, you know, we really wanted to throw an event at some point or maybe do some in person stuff. So hopefully that eventually can happen, but the fact that we're fostering some kind of cross, you know, regional dialogue is really nice.
RC: Yeah I think there's just so much money it seems like, is really what drives it. There's so much money in Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto. These publications pop up and then all those things get covered, but there's like these deserts. We see this with even news media, where nothing gets covered and it'll just be lost into the void. But there's amazing stuff happening.
AC: One thing that's come up for Luke and I that's been a strange thing for us to navigate is that a lot of the people that we know that are working outside of these larger city centres like Alex Rondeau for example... so he's someone that works very rural in Northern Ontario. He has curated both of our work and we worked collaboratively with him, but he's also like...he's running this Between Pheasants space, which is a pheasant coop in northern Ontario that he's turned into an exhibition space. And we've...we were like, "Oh, it's really important for us to cover that." And we've had like a lot of the same people want to write for us. But we've realized that... we were just kind of concerned about this conflict of interest thing.
RC: Mhm.
AC: 'Cause we were like, we're really interested in this thing, and we have access to a few people that are interested in doing the work. And we know that there's more people that just off our radar and we really want to expand that. But we were just like, "Do we cover this thing with this person whose also worked with us and curated us?" It's been a really... But then it’s like, when you're in a community and no one's covering it -
RC: Exactly.
AC: - And you have the opportunity to also cover it, I think that that's okay.
RC: Yeah, yeah. Well it's documenting your own community and I think that this podcast is a perfect example of that in that our new audio editor is also a former guest on the podcast, like you can listen to Emily's own art practice, but she also edits it. And all these different layers. At some point, somebody's gotta do the work, and it really is going to be people from within the community. So I think as long as you acknowledge it a little bit...
AC: Yeah. Being transparent about it. But like, we had this big talk 'cause we were not sure how to go with it. And I was just like, we were just thinking about...well, if the option is no one overs it or we cover it, and then just knowledge that sometimes we're also covering the things that we're doing, you know?
RC: Yeah, yeah.
AC: I guess the alternative would be like, or no one writes about it.
RC: Yeah exactly. And for me, when I started writing, I got a lot of pushback. Just like writing for like -
AC: Really?
RC: Yeah. I think just women writing just intimidate people. And I've never seen that more obvious than when I released my first couple articles in the student newspaper. But I said, no one was writing about the arts and I'd written about it every week, so I'd rather write about it badly every week than it not get written about at all, [laughs].
AC: That's true right? And it's like, you can't wait until you can do something perfectly to release it into the world. We all just have to learn by doing. And like, I have never run a publication before and I learned to... I learned about writing about exhibitions and editing other people's writing when I worked as a programming coordinator at Xpace, and I really thankful for that. But it's like, I had just kind of done that a bit through that job but I never had any formal training. So Luke and I doing this is very much just like, we pay for it fully out of pocket, we make sure that even though the writer’s fees are very low, we pay everybody that writes for us, we make sure that everyone's supported. But because we pay for it too, we have the freedom to do kind of whatever we want. Like we're not held to any kind of funding bodies’ expectations, which is nice.
RC: Mhm.
AC: But it is very much like... Luke has been running an exhibition space in Windsor on his own. Well he was doing it on his own for a while and now he's doing it collectively. But it's just like all this stuff where it's like we don't really know how to do this but we're figuring it out.
RC: Yeah I think that that's a queer DIY kind of thing.
AC: Yeah.
RC: It's like, okay nobody's inviting us in, so we're just gonna start our own party.
AC: Totally. I think the flip side of that that I get worried about sometimes is like, who is still being excluded?
RC: Mmm, yeah.
AC: 'Cause it's like, I'm white, I'm able-bodied. I'm queer and trans but I know that I have still a ton of privilege in the arts and in the community. And obviously there's been ways that I've been excluded but other ways that I've just seamlessly...you know, had little to no barriers with a lot of other things. And I do wonder sometimes... I don't want to be in a situation where it's like, "I'm just talking about me and all of my friends," you know? It's like, trying to expand that. And I think that really just takes time.
RC: Yeah.
AC: To build that community and trust, and really... do a thing for long enough that other people start to want to get involved, but like, kind of still being… somehow showing people that we're open. We don't want to be this like, cool guy group, you know?
RC: For sure! And I think art can be so cliquey. And for me, whenever I enter art spaces, I immediately try and squash that. But it is a really easy pattern to fall back into.
AC: Yeah, and so much of community is just the people you know. It's so hard to, especially now in the pandemic, meeting new people is so challenging. I actually really liked that workshop that you and I were a part of the other night. Rebecca and I were in a workshop run by Ed Video about artist statements versus artist bios. I feel like everybody in the group was queer.
RC: [Laughs].
AC: And I got to meet some new queer artists and poets. And it was just nice to have a little peer mentoring editing session.
RC: Yeah. I find, honestly, ever since I’ve entered the online disabled community, and especially the queer pocket, that nice intersection there of disabled queers, the online community is just so rich and bountiful and there’s just people that are down to talk and share ideas. And I think that that can be extended into the real world. Once we all get back out there, I’m excited for it.
AC: Me too. I really hope that translates to the quote unquote real world more. ‘Cause also it’s like, this is also the real world, right? And it’s like, we have discovered a lot of things during this time that have made communication and reaching out and working together a lot more accessible to folks.
RC: Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s a good transition to talking about the queer bath zine that you were working on. ‘Cause you put that all out and collected artists during the pandemic, right?
AC: Yeah, so last summer… I’m trying to remember if it was like… somewhere between May. I think I put it out in the spring, and then I extended the call all through the summer into September. So to give context, I just… I love to take baths.
RC: [Laughs].
AC: I love bath bombs… I really like bath bombs that turn the water a weird colour.
RC: Yes.
AC: And I have a piece from a few years ago, I’m not sure if you’ve seen it. But it's like... It's a fleece blanket of an image of my legs in the bath, and the tub water is orange and you can see my "no future" tattoo.
RC: Awesome.
AC: And I just like thinking about that... I've talked to a lot of people about that piece and the way that it's like.. to me, it's like having confidence in my body hair and my queer body and really celebrating. Often I think, you know, the world can be a very hostile place for queer bodies, especially queer bodies that present as non-normative.
RC: Yeah.
AC: And when we have those moments, especially when we're on our own or maybe intimately with a partner or close friend or a lover. You know, you have these moments of intimacy that feel safe and secure. So I'm thinking of like when I take a bath at my own it feels like this escape. And I'm really doing something for myself. And I was thinking of those moments, especially during the context of the pandemic. And I was like, "Wow, it'll be so great to make a zine where queer people just bathed and photographed themselves and submitted." And then we just had a compilation of images. I got a lot of really great submissions. And one thing that I wasn't totally... so I was thinking of the zine this product, but a lot of what I got when people were submitting their photos where they were like, "Oh, I actually had this really beautiful experience with my partner." Or... a really good friend of mine submitted, and he was just like... he took photos in the shower of his legs and his body hair. And he was like, " I had this intimate moment with myself where I just really accepted my body more. And I had this act of self-love."
RC: Yeah.
AC: And I didn't really think about how much it was creating these moments for people. It felt really beautiful.
RC: Yeah, to like share that care with other people. And I think even looking at images of other people... Like, for me, this is my first summer growing out my leg hair. And it feels so silly 'cause it's so soft and barely there. I'm like, "Why did I not do this before?" But it was through looking at pictures and seeing my friends with their leg hair that I really came to accept that, yeah it's a part of my body that I don't have to get rid of every week or so, [laughs].
AC: No and it's like you can if it feels good, you can grow it out if it feels good. You could have no feelings about it, you know, neutrality. Body hair is so loaded, you know?
RC: So loaded!
AC: Like, it's such a loaded thing and...even before I really came into my transness and I was still identifying as more cis, I've always had a lot of body hair. And I think there was a point, you know, like through my tweens to teens, kind of getting like passed down from my mom being like, "You have to get rid of your body hair." And I have really sensitive skin. And if I got it waxed or sugared or something I’d get these ingrown hairs and it would break out and it would be really painful and uncomfortable.
RC: Aww, yeah.
AC: And I'd be like, "Why am I doing this?"
RC: Mhm.
AC: And I did it for at least 10 years. And I think at one point I was like, “I just want to grow it out because I don't want to have to deal with this discomfort.” And it took a couple summers where I was like dealing another kind of discomfort where I was feeling so insecure. Like going to the beach or going out. And now I'm actually a lot better at wearing shorts in public.
RC: Awesome.
AC: Which is nice. I still have a lot of anxiety about going to the beach. 'Cause it's just so political for people.
RC: It's so political. And it has...my chants for when I enter cishet spaces is, "How does this affect you?"
AC: Oh my god, right? I think it just activates a really specific anxiety and people, where it's like they... I was talking to my partner about this but it's just like, people who feel like they've had to suffer or do something their whole lives and then they see you just like, "Oh, you've grown out your body hair," and then they're mad about it almost?
RC: [Laughs].
AC: 'Cause like, maybe for cis men it's like, "That's what we do, it's not what you do," and maybe for cis women it's like, "Well I have to shave MY legs." You could actually just be like, "No." You could all do whatever you want, you know?
RC: I feel like my mom always grow out her leg hair and fully still does. 'Cause she just like doesn't care, [laughs]. But my dad would always point it out and be like, "Why aren't you shaving your legs?" And it was definitely other people pointing into my legs and being like, "Oh, your stubble is growing in." But you just have to not care at some point. 'Cause it's too much to deal with.
AC: I just feel like then I would be like, "Why aren't you showing your legs?" You know?
RC: [Laughs], yeah.
AC: If you just turn it around, I feel like you could just like, fizzle that... you could kind of just like render that question...'Cause like, how would he possibly answer that?
RC: I don't know. My whole thing is like how does this affect you now? How does this impact you? Who is this hurting?
AC: It’s like, that's shaming right? Society is just constantly shamed us for bodies in all these different ways. It's such an act of self care love to let your body be the way that it is. And the fact that like... the fact that growing out something that's natural in your body is seen as an affront to people, it's actually a bunch of work and maintenance to get rid of all your body hair. If you're just doing something natural it's like... I don't know. It does not make a lick of sense...?
RC: I think it's a time thing too. Like when I started Living in the space that was like a DIY warehouse space with a bunch of tomboys and queers, and they never wore makeup or shave their legs or anything. We were going to the hardware store one time, and I was like disgusting, and I just went. And that was my first time not putting on makeup before I went outside. And it was so liberating. You save so much time, [laughs].
AC: Totally, yeah. And everyone's on their own gender journey, right?
RC: Mhm, mhm.
AC: That's why I'm so interested in femme as a gender presentation too, because it's so intentional. It's like, I've actually thought about all these things and I'm doing these things. Like, I'm not femme but the people, I like love fierce femmes. And it’s just like… to be so intentional about your gender presentation and really have thought about it rather than like I'm doing this thing because I have no choice in it and society’s told me I have to do it and therefore it's true, it's so different.
RC: I think Natalie King’s style is just so iconic like that.
AC: Yeah.
RC: And like, I just think about her when I'm getting dressed in the morning like, what would Natalie do?
AC: Absolutely yeah, Natalie's awesome.
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This week’s podcast recommendation is Episode 33 of One From the Vaults: “A Bunny in the Front Seat”. In this episode OFTV looks at the tumultuous life of early gender clinic patient, sex worker-turned businesswoman Patricia Morgan!
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RC: Oh, but that's a good way to start talking about the club scene. Because I feel like femmes and lesbians and queers kind of gather in these spaces but also we get really dressed up and it is kind of performative and does a lot of cultural references. If you want to speak about that like how it relates to your work or even just like your life, [laughs].
AC: Yeah, I mean, I don't even remember the last time I was at a queer bar, [both laugh]. I think as I was leaving Toronto, it was kind of some of the last days of some of the West End queer bars. Like I know that The Beaver just closed during the pandemic. But before that, The Henhouse what's my favourite queer space. To totally nerd out here, I don't know if you know the band The Organ?
RC: Yeah.
AC: But they started that bar. And, you know, when I was a teenager, it was just this like, band of queer women from Vancouver making really cool music. And then when I was like such a fan. And they opened up The Henhouse, and I rememeber the first time going to The Henhouse and one of the members of the band served me nachos, and I was like trying to keep it together. [Both laugh]. But you know, spaces like that were really formative to me. There was something so community and DIY about that space. I know when that space started, someone wallpapered all the bathrooms with yearbook images from an old yearbook, and they got all of their mix matched furniture from Craigslist, and it was just a really cool space. It got a lot more gentrified before it closed.
RC: Mhm.
AC: But, you know, I think about a space like that... a space that I literally experienced but now doesn't exist anymore. And to segue into my work a little bit, so I made this print, which is an homage to The Henhouse, but it is in the style of... it's in the style of the gay club that they go to in But I'm a Cheerleader called the Cocksucker.
RC: Yeah.
AC: There's this scene in the movie where one of them has a matchbook. And so I took the design from the matchbook, which it like this really intense rainbow gradient and there's a rooster on it. And then in rounded font it says "The Cocksucker." And I just kept the same background and drew a hen instead and wrote "The Henhouse." So it's this mishmash of this virtual space, which is this imagined queer bar in my favourite movie ever which is But I'm A Cheerleader, which is this queer movie from the 90s that I saw as a teen, which was very formative to me coming into my queerness, and mashing that up with a bar that I went to a lot in my 20s, which was very formative to my queerness in my 20s. But the fact that none of them exist anymore. Or they exist kind of in the same space now. They exist in this memory, in almost this fantastical imaginary space. And I thought that that was really interesting to connect... the way that media has really formed me and a lot of my queer identity. Like I was closeted as a teenager and then even into my... it took me a long time to just like publicly come out. I was by my early 20s, but you know, I was really, during that time, and it really translated into my 20s, really into all the queer media that I could access, 'cause that was my queer community and my queer culture. So many of these virtual imagined spaces in film and television started to occupy the same... I started to find connections between the death of the lesbian bar, right? As this like space that used to exist. And now it’s almost like the lesbian bar feels like this imagined space that doesn't exist any.
RC: The dodo bird or something.
AC: Yeah, and so I was really thinking about that. I'm not sure if I answered your question properly, [laughs].
RC: I think, even just thinking about imaginary versus the real and like these things being held in your memory... John Waters movies almost feel like a lucid dream because of all the colours.
AC: Yeah.
RC: Even talking about the poster was this rainbow gradient, but like the house that the people in the movie go to with the two gay men who decorated it, everything's rainbow, [laughs].
AC: It's funny 'cause I'm drinking out of... I don't know if you saw the mug that I made.
RC: Yeah, yeah!
AC: But I'm drinking out of my queer mug right now. There's this scene where Megan who's played by Natasha Lyonne, escapes the conversion therapy camp that she goes to, that her parents force her to go to in the film, and she escapes it and she flees to this house by these two queer men who had been former students of this conversion therapy place who had also escaped and then they take in the students, the runaways basically. And when Megan gets there, Dolph, who is the other... he was like kicked out of the camp, he's wearing a head to toe rainbow striped pyjama outfit and everything is rainbow. And one of them is drinking out of this white mug and in massive cap letters it just says "Queer" on the mug. And I was obsessed with it so I just made multiples that mug basically. They're still selling those mugs at ArtMet if anyone wants.
RC: When he sips from that mug I think he's like, "There's no one way to be gay," Or “There’s no one way to be queer.” And it's just so funny to see him drinking from that as he's saying it. Just like, high camp.
AC: 'Cause she's like, "Teach me how to be a lesbian!" and they're just like, "Oh, honey." It's really good. [Both laugh].
RC: The aesthetics of that movie are just so heavily reflected in your work. Like, the pinks and teals and the purple. I was wondering if you wanted to talk a bit about the visual references that use in your practice?
AC: Totally. I was told by a good friend once that my work feels very metropolitan in terms of the aesthetics. And so I grew up in Niagara Falls, just like a stone's throw away from Clifton Hill. I'm not sure if you've been to Clifton Hill, but it is like the tourist strip.
RC: Oh yes.
AC: It's kind of like a mini Las Vegas strip but Niagara Falls. There's the Rainforest Cafe, there's a bunch of neon signs. And I feel like I really took in the campy, neon, colourful aesthetic of this tourist mecca space throughout my whole life.
RC: Mhm.
AC: I think it was really subconscious, but I didn't realize how much the aesthetics of being in that city and being so close to all of the really loud tourist attractions informed my aesthetic taste.
RC: Yeah.
AC: And so I think there was something about the campiness there, and you know, to me, But I'm a Cheerleader is just... to me it's like the perfect film in a lot of ways. The aesthetics are beautiful, everything so thought out, like the way they deal with colour is so symbolic but it's so aesthetically pleasing. And there's all these things happening that I feel like you don't even... you'd have to watch it like five times to really absorb.
RC: Oh yeah!
AC: So many of the choices that they're making. And so, there was something about how intentional they were with all of the visuals. And the visuals are very loud, but I feel like they're very informant. And I think I just... I don't know it's like the influence there of all those things. I don't actually…I don’t even know how to fully articulate it but I think I just really like absorbed a lot of that. And in my work... one thing I really like to do... I hate overhead lighting.
RC: Mhm.
AC: I feel like I saw Twitter thread a while ago about how overhead lighting is homophobic.
RC: It is! It is... I was told by the bisexual men that raised me that it is homophobic.
AC: Yep, and my partner makes fun of me for it all the time. 'Cause we just need a lot of lamps, we never turn the overhead light on, [laughs]. But I’m really like that with my work. It's like, I do not like overhead lighting when I install work. Even though I make work that is on a monitor or goes on the wall or is more sculptural, the lighting is also a key part of creating an ambiance or an environment. So it's like, coloured lighting to me just has such an affect. And like, what happens in these films with colour, they have these effects on our emotions that we're not always aware of. And I'm really interested in this almost subconscious affective response.
RC: Mmm.
AC: Like if you walk into a room and there's a pink hue in it, it feels different than a starkly white light room.
RC: For sure, for sure.
AC: And so it's actually hard to answer your question because I feel like so much of what I'm doing with the aesthetics of my work feels so hard to articulate in language.
RC: Yeah. Maybe I need to write about how there's an overlap between John Waters movies on your art practice. [Laughs].
AC: Oh my God, yes please! I would love that. Totally. And I'm interested in this idea of queerness, like existing in plain sight or hiding in plain sight in a way. And I think there's a lot to do with colour and camp and some of the visuals and iconography that exists in these films like throughout my work that like nod and communicate something to a clear audience that can get lost or not seen by a straight audience.
RC: Yeah, I think your work with children's TV and cartoons really speaks to that. 'Cause for me personally, I'm so drawn to animation, or even Teletubbies live action with lots of bright colours, it's just so alluring.
AC: Totally. I mean, and the Teletubbies are extremely queer.
RC: [Laughs].
AC: I don't know. I follow them on Instagram 'cause I just am a big fan. And when I was making work in my MFA about Tinky Winky, I was researching the fact that like Christian parent groups were trying to band the Teletubbies and Spongebob for being queer media. And I was fascinated by it, 'cause I was like, "This is hilarious." Because like, on the one hand it's absurd. Like, Spongebob is a sponge. He's clearly not a heterosexual, but he's a sponge. So how can a sponge be gay or straight? And then Tinky Winky is this purple, non-human, non-animal Teletubby who is fabulous and has a little sway to his walk and carries a purse around. And the shape on his head is a triangle.
RC: Oh my god!
AC: It's like an inverted triangle. And so the moral panic around it was completely absurd but then also kind of totally valid, you know?
RC: [Laughs].
AC: Like, Spongebob and Tinky Winky might turn your children gay.
RC: Oh my gosh. I remember when everybody thought SpongeBob was gay and I remember being very confused. But it's his eyelashes and the fact that he goes and drag and him and Patrick raise a baby together. I love it so much.
AC: I'm pretty sure that Halberstam writes about the queerness of the whole universe of Spongebob, right? The universe of Spongebob is extremely queer. It is not heteronormative even when you think about the relationships and their friendships.
RC: Oh yeah!
AC: It's really funny now to see this moral panic in the 90s and the early 2000s play out in relationship to the Teletubbies for example. Because now on social media, the Teletubbies are super gay. They have pride products. They've aligned products that are for pride. And they're all styled in their pride outfits on Instagram and I'm just like, "Wow, this has come full circle." And they're just like, "We're super gay everyone."
RC: Oh my gosh. The cynic in me is going like, as soon as they figured out the gays had money, of course they start pandering to us. But also it feels like it's come to full realization like I'm a big nerd about Steven Universe and Adventure Time and stuff. And like Rebecca Sugar the animator said she had to fight so hard for the first gay kiss.
AC: Oh my god.
RC: Yeah, and like they weren't even out at the beginning of the series. I almost feel like, maybe if there was a gay creator on the Teletubbies all that long ago their dreams have come true.
AC: Yeah because I don't think a straight person had that vision.
RC: No. I also just want to touch a bit more on how your practice relates to the binary or the I guess the not so binary at this point, the digital-physical kind of realm. In terms of your sculpture, like making digital work and physical work but also your cultural references.
AC: Yeah, I mean so like this very much relates to what we were talking about with the Henhouse and the bar in But I'm a Cheerleader. So it's like these culturally, like these spaces... I'm really interested in what that in-between space is. So not the binary between these physical and digital spaces in media but what kind of non-binary, almost that psychological space that they take up, I think that's really interesting. And like, I'm non-binary. I feel like my whole practice, even before I realized and identified as non-binary in relation to my gender, my whole practice has constantly been about breaking down the binaries and challenging the binary. So that's why I was interested in glitch in undergrad. I was like, oh wow, you literally are queering the...which is to get kind of nerdy about it, you know, the ones and zeroes of binary code that make up digital media, that make up video for example. You're queering the media of this binary format, and breaking this binary format down by corrupting it as a glitch. And to me, that was such a trans queer kind of act to do.
RC: Mhm.
AC: And the aesthetic of it also looks really queer. And then I started getting really fascinated by like... I mean, I'm not gonna talk about them 'cause I... they make me very upset, but a lot of people have been talking about NFTs, and this value of like... trying to value digital art the same way that we value physical objects within the art market. And it's like, it's all symbolic, but it's like the beauty of the digital is that it's inherently reproducible.
RC: Exactly.
AC: You know, it's like, the aura... I talk about this a lot when I'm teaching but like, both Hito Steyerl and Oliver Laric have different iterations of basically expressing this fact that the aura of the digital is not in its uniqueness of being one object, but it's actually in its ability to be disseminated and to be experienced by a lot of people in a lot of different ways. And I think, to think about digital aura, I think it's fascinating. And I was like, you know, my work's very... I'm really interested in working outside of the concept of the art market. And so working digitally, up until very recently, it's really hard to commodify that kind of work. But I really wanted to try and break those binaries down between digital work in a physical space... and so I created...and also creating that space where sometimes you don't even know if something's physical or digital.
RC: Yeah. I found it super confusing looking at your work online. Like I couldn't tell the difference a lot of the time. I was like, "What? This is a physical rendering... no?"
AC: And also the translations right? So it's like, I made this sculpture of a Furby where I took a McDonald's plastic Furby and then I tried to scan it but the scan wasn't working very well. And then when I was on a residency in Windsor before I started grad school, they had a foundry there. So we did a mold of the Furby. We had this aluminum mold of the Furby, so that's like the first iteration. But I did a 3D scan of the aluminum one, and then I had a 3D model of it, which is another iteration. And then I printed it out and then I painted it. So it was just this five-step versioning of this thing that went from physical to copy to digital to physical again.
RC: Yeah.
AC: And so I'm really interested in these translations, 'cause when something’s 3D printed it's both kind of physical and digital.
RC: Mhm, mhm. But also that Furby was printed by McDonald's or somebody, and there's also like a thousand other of that exact same Furby.
AC: Exactly, right? So it's like these iterations, copies, versioning, the aura of that Furby is also massive, right? And then yeah, the neon signs... so a couple of years ago I got my first grant where I made actual neon signs, but before that, it kind of both came out of necessity of not having thousands of dollars for these things but then also really fitting in line with my practice of being like, you know, I'd done some 3D modelling before. I'm really interested in the aesthetics of neon. I made a small series of digitally rendered 3D signs that look super realistic. And I would project them in a gallery space, and it would kind of cause a bit of an illusion for folks. Some people would see right away that it was a projection, but then other times it would take people a little bit to figure it out and what I thought was really interesting about those signs is that...the two first ones that I made, "Lavender Culture" and "Gender Trouble," also very directly reference titles of queer theory texts, or queer anthologies. But what's interesting about the digital rendering of them is like an actual neon sign is actually very cumbersome in the sense that like, it's attached to something. So it's either attached to the wall or it's attached to plexi that's been mounted. There's hooks and then there's a bunch of cables and wires.
RC: Mhm.
AC: And the projection of the signs is just the text. You don't actually get the other stuff so it's almost like the way that our brains can just see that thing without the elements of the apparatus that it would need to exist and think that it's real.
RC: Yeah, yeah. And it's almost like a cleaner more utopic version...
AC: Exactly.
RC: Yeah, interesting.
AC: Totally utopic. And then the actual neon signs that I got made, one said "Utopia" and one said "Dystopia,” so…
RC: [Laughs]. Awesome.
AC: Mhm.
RC: I think the queer art of failure, utopias, there's just something very queer... many people have theorized about that your work is yeah, really fueled by it seems.
AC: Yeah. This might be an interesting way to wrap up because it's related to some of the work that I'm planning to do over the summer. But I have a tattoo over my right knee that says, "no future," which is a reference to Lee Edelman's queer theory text, but also just to like, the punk sentiment of no future. And it's very like, you know, living for the now, not living for the future, not living for the children. So it's not like this moralistic thing. And also really inhabiting the present-day dystopia in which we live.
RC: Yeah.
AC: Very much in the camp of queer nihilism. But then I'm also really interested in like, you know, Esteban Muñoz’s optimism. And this like, not yet here.
RC: Mhm.
AC: I'm thinking of doing a new tattoo that's kind of an ode to that mentality of like the horizon of queerness.
RC: Yeah.
AC: And I feel like a lot of my work and a lot of my identity in general really exists in between, again, in a non-binary way, between these two poles of queer nihilism and queer utopia.
RC: Yeah, yeah.
AC: And the tension there, and the fact that it's like it's not an either-or but a both-and.
RC: Yeah, that feels very much like where we are right now. And it's so funny 'cause I'm looking at your felt work that's "Neither/Both" that's in front of me.
AC: Oh yeah, you got that one!
RC: Yeah, I was like, "I need one of these flags."
AC: Incredible. Yeah. That's kind of where I am right now, is like, thinking about the multiplicity of those experiences, and thinking about existing somewhere in between these two poles of queer utopia and optimism and horizon and like queer nihilism. 'Cause I feel like I really relate to both, but I don't fully inhabit either. And I think that's really gonna inform where I'm going forward. And I think it’s...you know, I did a piece for Heaven is a Place on Earth two summers ago which I think really ties together being in between those two poles, and those two poles of utopia and dystopia which is like this tattoo on my left ankle which just says "exist." And it's in the style of one of my pennants, one of my little flags. And you know, I look at it a lot because it's like, you know, as a queer and trans person, and just as a person existing in the world, I've struggled a lot with those feelings of sometimes not wanting to exist. And I think it's a really nice reminder of like, you can get really caught up in the theory and all these different ways of how to be queer and how to be political, but I think at the end of the day it's just like, existence is a form of persistence and resistance –
RC: Oh yeah.
AC: - that grounds me and that I come back to. And that in itself is enough.
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Thanks for listening to Hopping the Fence, a podcast dedicated to the fringes of the Canadian art scene.
If you have an artist that you would like to hear interviewed, would like to correct / fact check a past episode, or would like to chat, feel free to send me a message on Instagram @hoppingthefence, or by email at rebeccaecasalino@gmail.com. Thanks to the OCAD Student Union for your financial support. Thank you to all of our Patreons for your ongoing support. It truly does help me avoid burnout and keeps this podcast rolling. If you would like to support Hopping the Fence, please visit our Patreon to subscribe. Check out the show notes for more details. If you can’t donate, no worries. Thanks for taking the time to listen.
Audio editing for Hopping the Fence by Emily Reimer. Original artwork by Alex Gregory, and original music by Jessica Price Eisner.
Thank you so much, bye!
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