I’m very gratified by a short video (about 15 mins) that Jordan Tannahill and I have finished together (everything done now– the score, the end credits, the artist statement). It’s a total collaboration between Jordan and I and a new direction artistically for me. I love this piece. NOW WE APPLY TO FILM AND VIDEO FESTIVALS WHICH MEANS THE VIDEO CAN NOT APPEAR ON YOUTUBE. (It contains nudity so we wouldn’t be able to post it anyways.)
Jordan and I have been working on this piece for about ten months, on and off between our other various projects. It was formally called Dryad, but because of how it developed into a more metaphysical work it is now Plane of Immanence.
Below is some information about Jordan for those who don’t know him, followed by the artist statement for Plane of Immanence and a short trailer for the piece (which intentionally doesn’t reveal too much.)
Jordan Tannahill is a film and theatre director living in Toronto. His works of multimedia performance have been developed and presented on some of Canada’s most prominent stages including Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Canadian Stage, Great Canadian Theatre Company, and the Harbourfront Centre. He is the founder and artistic director of the award-winning theatre company Suburban Beast. Recent honours include the Inside Out Film Festival’s Emerging Canadian Artist Award, the Ken McDougall Award for Emerging Directors, and being named one of Canada’s Top Twenty Under Twenty. Jordan is a graduate of Ryerson University’s film production program.
Plane of Immanence
Nina Arsenault / Jordan Tannahill
14 mins / Canada, 2011
Plane of Immanence began as a guerilla intervention at the (re)construction site of Maple Leaf Gardens, which artists Jordan Tannahill and Nina Arsenault found in a gutted, liminal state of transition. In this video, this iconic space rich with national cultural significance – an arena of masculinity – is realized into a new potentiality as a metaphysical labyrinth and virtual womb. The queering presence of the body of Arsenault, both naked and constructed, climbing through a jungle of rebar, front-end loaders, and caution tape, reveals to us a multilayered allegory for the trans body, the Deluezian notion of the ‘body without organs’, and permutations of the divine within the Self and the material world.
TEASER TRAILER BELOW: