The book is being published by Intellect Books. It will be an international publication. Intellect has already published books about trailblazers like David Cronenberg, David Lynch and some other amazing artists. To see their other titles check out their website http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/

I already know some awesome writers and cultural contributors who are planning on participating in this project. Please, feel free to repost this call for submissions anywhere as we are trying to reach as many people as possible with as many different perspectives.

The book will be called TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault: Body of Work, Body of Art

Below is the official call for contributors.

–Thank you
Nina

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:

Transgendered Canadian performance artist Nina Arsenault has been characterized as cyborg, intellectual, and artist. After sixty plastic surgeries to feminize and beautify her originally male body, Arsenault has become an icon for a new queer generation. Her stage plays, electronic presence through videos disseminated online, website, blog, social networking presentation sites, her print media writing, and her celebrity/nightclub appearances as well as writings about her life and work alternately objectify and subjectify her: she is both artist and work of art.

Rejecting the binary of real versus fake and dedicated to exploring authenticity, Arsenault’s work continues to examine the relationship of the omnipresent female self within the newly constructed female body, while critics, theorists and documentarians continue to engage in an examination of the artist as art.

TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault: Body of Work, Body of Art, to be published by Intellect Books Ltd, UK in 2012 will be edited by Judith Rudakoff. Included will be academic essays, critical response papers, popular media articles, Arsenault’s writing and colour photographs.

Submissions from the perspective of theatre, video, feminist theory, queer theory, gender studies, sexual diversity studies, performance studies, cultural studies, media studies, celebrity studies or any related areas are invited in the form of academic essays, critical response papers or popular media articles on topics which may include (but are not limited to):

· Longing and Belonging: Authenticity versus Realness

· Queer aesthetics: the art object as beautiful, erotic, satirical, subversive, comic, tragic, blashp
hemous and grotesque.

· Superstar reproduction: Nina Arsenault and the manufacturing of celebrity

· Double vision: The masculine gaze in the art of Nina Arsenault’s femininity.

· Transgressing acceptable trans-narratives: return to normative society or failed tragic queen

· The artist as art

· The intersections of vocal training and dramaturgy in the solo theatrical artist

· Arsenault’s self-portraiture in the digital age of self-representation and self-dissemination

· The democratization of social networking and the sexually discriminated artist: Arsenault’s Facebook site as installation.

· Palatable empathies: Narratives of Nina Arsenault’s transformation on television and in the theatre

· Titillation, ornamentation and the ritualized body: The art of geisha vs. the transsexual gay nightlife hostess

· Mythology vs pathology: a crossroads for the queer artist?

· Chasing the Real from inside the labyrinth of postmodern deconstructivism(s)

· Blasphemous iconography: creating art that complicates the world instead of trying to save it.

· Heretic transmissions: Nina Arsenault and the politics of the right and the left

Please direct all proposals and queries to Judith Rudakoff, Editor at infoninabook@gmail.com on or before September 30 2010. Essays, papers and articles selected for publication (subject to final peer review) must be received on or before February 1 2011.

For academic essays selected for publication, reading copies of Silicone Diaries or I Was Barbie will be made available for consultation.

Proposals of up to 500 words (academic essays) and up to 250 words (critical response papers or popular media articles) should be accompanied by a brief biographical statement (in Microsoft Word .doc or .rtf format) and covering email note should include your name, any affiliation, preferred email contact information. Academic essays should be between 3000-5000 words and critical response papers and popular media articles should be between 500-1500 words.

Prospective contributors may consider source material such as but not exclusive to:

· The Silicone Diaries, stage play

· I Was Barbie, stage play

· “Glamour Crack”, series of videos produced by Nina Arsenault http://www.youtube.com/user/venusmachina

· Video representation of Nina Arsenault on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/ninaarsenault· Nina Arsenault’s website and blog: www.ninaarsenault.com

· T Girl columns for Fab Magazine (archived electronically at http://www.fabmagazine.com/archive.html)

· Publicity Archive (up to December 2009), housed in Clara Thomas Special Collections and Archives, Scott Library, York University, Toronto, Ontario. (File TPC 220)

· Club/party hosting, celebrity appearances as Nina Arsenault

· Appearances as fictional characters (Barbie at L’Oreal Fashion Week 2009 in Toronto, Jessica Rabbit)

· Television appearances in Canada (including The Jon Dore Show (Comedy Network), Kink (Showcase), Train 48 (Global), Fashion Television and Sex Matters (CITY)

Peter Tamlin is a young photographer that I think is extremely talented, and we will be seeing a lot more of his stuff in the future in high profile ventures I am sure…

He explained to me that for each shoot he tries to capture one exquisite image instead of aiming for narrative or series.

Check out his awesome photography at petertamlin.com

The shoot actually took place in a blizzard. I was two hours late showing up to the set because I was trapped in the snow. So, this shot was captured at 2am. I was freezing cold cause Iantha the make-up artist had to spray my body with Pam, the cooking oil, over top the body paint to get the slick effect on my skin…and all I was wearing was the dress that Peter had constructed out of industrial latex in a van…

For me this image is about the tension between a sociopathic gaze and an aesthetic vision.

…below is the image in its actual enormous size and a detail shot of the face. (You have to click on the little dot to see the face detail.)

me performing as Jessica Rabbit at the tranny strip club where I used to work (2007)…

…”real men” (a detective) lusting after a cartoon woman in Disney’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit…

…photos of me modelling as Jessica Rabbit for anatomy artists at the Cameron House (2007). FYI- the dress is very painful to wear because of how small the corset makes my waist, and the sequins dig into my flesh.

This interview was shot on the opening night of LG L’Oreal Fashion Week. It was the launch of David Dixon’s Barbie-inspired fashion line for real women as well as the 50th birthday party of Mattel’s best loved plastic doll. I was asked to represent Barbie that night.

I recently had the pleasure of attending Telling Takes Out of School, a project of the Playwriting and New Play Dramaturgy students at York U’s Theatre Department. The evening consisted of original monologues presented or performed by the students. Each monologue was inspired by one of Toronto’s leading theatre professionals. Each student had chosen a different artist to interview earlier this year and created a work based upon that person’s essence. I saw pieces inspired by Daniel Brooks, John Mighton, Sky Gilbert, Evalyn Parry, David Smuckler, Kelly Thornton, and others.

Because I know some of the artists and their work it was fasinating to see how the 3rd and 4th year students experienced them.

One of the students, Dan Vernon, interviewed me back in October and devised a beautiful piece called “The Nun and the Wolf.” I was impressed and honoured by how he interpreted me.  His monologue was very provocative (how fitting!), and there was a palpable shifting in the audience at the climax of his piece.

There were bios of some of the inspiring artists in the program.  Dan included only a single quote from me in the program: “I want to be able to be a human animal.”  Yes, there´s more…. »

WHEN BEAUTY IS NOT ENOUGH – Xtra Magazine’s story commemorating one year without Hamish:

http://www.xtra.ca/public/Toronto/When_beauty_isnt_enough-7607.aspx

Fashion Televison also covers his passing:
http://watch.fashiontelevision.com/news/november-2008/clip116833#clip116833

This is the entire photo essay, called Mannequin, that Hamish Kippen and I worked on for Fresh magazine’s Sept 2007 issue. I consider myself very fortunate for having had the opportunity to work with him. After the jump is the accompanying text I wrote for the images.

Yes, there´s more…. »

Hamish Kippen was a fabulous photographer who died last year. I never got to know him personally, but I loved collaborating with him.

Hamish Kippen

I knew him as talented, inspired and easy going. He was already making a name for himself, and I was sure he would one day be shooting for glamourous fashion magazines.

In his all-too-short career Hamish Kippen not only displayed to the world his unique vision of beauty but he also developed an exceptional way of communicating with and through his subjects.

image by Kippen and Arsenault, 2007

If you knew Hamish or his work please join us in celebrating Hamish’s incredible life and work at a gallery exhibit of his spectacular photographs. The exhibition will run from October 2 to 31, 2009 (including Nuit Blanche), and will be held at The Great Hall Gallery, 1087 Queen Street West (at Dovercourt), Toronto.

A book featuring his beautiful work will be published this fall by Hamish’s family and friends and will be launched with the exhibition.