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)

The interview is in two parts (below), and it’s about 20 minutes long. Cynthia Loyst and I chat about my transformations, straight men who are attracted to transsexuals and about my upcoming play I was Barbie at SummerWorks 2010. Brendan Healy, my director and the Artistic Director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre joins us later in the interview, too!

The show originally aired on Friday, June 4th. Big thanks to Star Network and CP24 for having us on, and for supporting queer performance!

We’re going to be shooting the commercials in May. I don’t know too much about my commercial yet other than it will include tattered clothing, decomposing flesh and silicone. I love that The Toronto Zombie Walk 2010 can include such diversity!

The actual Zombie walk doesn’t take place until October 23. Last year there were over 5000 zombies with numbers expected to rise this year.

For more information about the Toronto Zombie walk put and paste the link below:

http://www.torontozombiewalk.ca/

The following video is from Season 2 of Kink, a documentary production (Alliance Atlantis) about people with extraordinary sex lives. It was shot in 2001 and aired on Showcase TV. I was one of the main characters.

…below are some publicity shots Alliance Atlantis took of me (2002). They make me laugh a little bit now.

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.

innovator Moses Znaimer

(from www.ideacityonline.com)

What is ideaCity?

With extra-long schmooze breaks between sessions, and legendary parties each night, attendees have had an unprecedented opportunity to mingle with such notable speakers as Conrad Black, Barbara Gowdy, Michael Ignatieff, Douglas Coupland, Pamela Wallin, Pete Seeger, Robert Kennedy Jr., John Ralston Saul, Daniel Libeskind, Clayton Ruby, Romeo Dallaire and the late Peter Jennings. Past presenters include Margaret Atwood, Conrad Black, Ronnie Burkett, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This year the conference happens on June 16, 17 and 18th.

Steve Paikin

I’m going to be doing a one-on-one interview with Steve and then will take part in a five person panel discussion. I’ll post more details on the show closer to my shoot date (Jan 16).

(from wikipedia.com)

The Agenda with Steve Paikin [1] is TVOntario’s flagship current affairs program, hosted by Steve Paikin…

The program’s format is designed to provide in-depth coverage of specific contemporary social issues, and will also offer user-generated content. The show practises what Paikin calls “long-form” journalism; each program tackles no more than two topics, and sometimes no more than one. “We are going to be out there giving people what they’ve been telling us they want: more intelligent analysis, and more robust, thought-provoking debate and discussion among newsmakers and experts,” Paikin says.

for more on The Agenda with Steve Paikin cut and paste the link:
http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/

The “Manly Man” episode of The Jon Dore Show aired again last week.  I had a really nice time shooting this for the Comedy Network.  I think it originally aired about 1 year ago. 

On set, everyone was super sweet and very relaxed.  The director even let me see myself on the monitor to make sure I liked the way I was lit.  They were kind enough to shoot me from the three quarter angle which I like because I think it is the most flattering.  And, the producers, Jon and everyone on set assured me that no one would be making any transphobic jokes.  Yes, there´s more…. »

This segment originally appeared on Entertainment Tonight Canada in June, 2007, when I was the recipient of The Unstoppable Award from Pride Toronto and Toronto’s mayor David Miller.