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)

(This article was originally published in The Harold Times, the Fringe Theatre Festival of Toronto newspaper, on Monday, July 5th, 2010. The Harold Times is a small publication primarily distributed at fringe theatre venues and its main readership is theatre artists and people who have a special interest in alternative live performance. FYI- This piece is not a manifesto. It is a series of reflections.)

13 reflections from an unreal queer artist
by Nina Arsenault

1.
When I see theatre I see almost exclusively queer theatre now. I usually feel uncomfortable waiting for the lights to go down at non-queer shows. I understand that theatre spaces try to be inclusive. Still, I feel stared at and judged. No offense.

2.
I also do not have TV or internet in my home. I found most television programs repellent. The internet would consume my time. I got rid of them two years ago. Occasionally, I rent films.

3.
But, queer performance is mostly what I see. The pieces are usually radically different in form and content. This does not make it “challenging” to experience the works.

4.
I ask myself how to structure a new piece of performance? What is the paradigm for its form? Stylistic qualities? I am already forgetting what normative dramatic forms are. They aren’t what is normal to me anymore.

5.
Not knowing what else to do I work from obsession.

6.
I do not begin making performance to correct a social wrong. I am not trying to make the world a better place. I can not justify my creativity with a simple political statement. I haven’t tried to get an art grant.

7.
I know it is painful not to create. It is painful for my expressions not to be witnessed. It is painful not to have interflow with other creators.

8.
Having no TV or internet has intensified (and rarefied) my need to create and connect.

9.
I recently explored and saw a word based play with a linear structure. A dramatic arch with no digressions. Delineated characters with clear intentions. The characters had their feet firmly on the ground, maintained eye contact while talking with each other and had no generalized anxiety. Everyone so sure of themselves. The play, itself, had also had a singular accessible political message. I was fascinated by it. I was quite surprised the audience could accept this representation of reality as “real.” It was so unreal to me, so shockingly alien.

10.
In a talk-back after the show the audience and charismatic cast joyfully agreed with each other about the meaning(s) of the work. Some audience members offered suggestions about how the work could be changed to offer a political statement they would be even more comfortable with. An artist took notes. This was very affirming.

11.
I stayed at a hotel recently. After two years away from TV I found it mesmerizing. I enjoyed that it told me exactly where to look. What to notice. Where the story was going. What the characters were thinking. The message. The meaning. The score told me what to feel. The images, the pace, the rhythm told me what moments were important, more important, most important. For me, it was a sublime experience of being thought controlled. My moment to moment reality was so focused. Such order was hypnotic. It was a far more compelling experience than theatre that was telling me what to think, although after a few hours I began to resent the manipulation. Because I began to notice the machinations through which I was being controlled I felt my cognitive sophistication was being underestimated. I felt belittled.

12.
Although, I continued to be fascinated by many moments of family dramas, crime shows, hospitals –fragmented disconnected moments of straight actors/characters/people possessing stillness as they spoke. Not fidgeting. Holding eye contact. Their voices were easy-going yet also revealed their emotions. So casually. I want to believe that the way straight people behave in the privacy of their domestic relationships, homes and at work is very advanced. They are incredible performers (when I am not around?)

13.
I began to watch news casters and entertainment-tabloid television. I liked the way these announcers talked even more. I first experienced them as automaton-like. Then, I noticed that these robots seemed more like the real life people that I deal with. More real even than the reality show actors. Their voices illustrate what they are feeling. I also sensed that they are inferring what I should be feeling, what they want me to be feeling. They are so confident, so charming, so buoyant, so joyful that I could find little room for disagreement. I agreed to feel what I should have been feeling, what was charismatically implied I should be feeling. It was very comfortable and perhaps artificial (which is not a bad thing for me.) I am not surprised that I can accept this representation of reality as real.

Nina Arsenault is a writer, theatre maker, media artist, aesthete and transsexual cyborg. Check out her website www.ninaarsenault.com

(The following is my speech from Pride Prom, held at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, produced by the Triangle Program and SOY (Saving Our Youth). The Pride Prom is an annual prom in Toronto for LGBTQ and Questioning youth and their friends. It gives them a chance to come to a prom with same sex dates, be outrageously queer and there is a Prom Queen, King and Ace. The Ace is for anyone not comfortable identifying as a king or a queen.)

Thank you for having me here today. I want to welcome you all to Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. I believe that usually when we come to the theatre we come to watch characters onstage, people, have experiences and to watch them transform as they have experiences. And as we sit in the darkness in the audience, hopefully, we can let our hearts open. Maybe we let our hearts open just a little bit. And, if we let this happen it can be really quite amazing to watch people transform. It can also be very moving to realize that we are all on a journey that is unfolding in front of us. I think that is one of the things that makes the theatre a very magical place. When it lets us see that.

Tonight, I am very privileged that I get to speak to you at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre at the Pride Prom. As you graduate from high school. It’s my hope that you are enjoying the moments of this time in your life. Because this is a time of transition for you I expect it will also be a time of transformation for each of you. I encourage you to let your hearts open, just a little bit. You are witnessing everyone’s transformation and your own.

It can be very exciting to watch the Theatre of our Own Lives as it unfolds.

The Theatre of my Own Life has been very exciting for me.

I went to high school in a very small town in rural Ontario. When I was there I was a very effeminate person in a boy-body, and I hope things have changed in that small town for young queer people, and I know that they have.

One of the things that comes to my mind when I think back to my high school is that it was a kind of theatre, too. It was a very small high school so there were people watching other people’s lives unfold. In fact, we were all witnessing each other’s lives. Commenting about it. Talking about it. Getting caught up in the drama.

Sometimes people could say some very negative things about each other.

I did everything I could to perform well there. I performed very well in class. I was a “straight” A student. And, I performed very well after class in the drama club. I performed very well in our school’s production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I liked performing very much, and I suppose I was known for it in my high school.

I also made sure to perform very well in the hallways, and in the cafeteria and after school. In between classes I made sure that I guarded my impulses and didn’t do anything inappropriate for my small town high school in the 80’s. Don’t be too effeminate. Don’t be too flamboyant. Don’t be too creative. Definately don’t be too creative. Don’t be sexual in any way around straight people. I performed that very well.

I wanted to be liked. I wanted to have friends and be accepted. So, I performed very well whenever other kids were watching me which was pretty much all the time in the Theatre of my High School. It was very challenging for me to always be performing, but it paid off because I got to survive.

But in a way I made an unspoken deal with some of the other people at my school. I would perform in certain ways and not in others ways if they would accept me. And they agreed to this agreement, too.

But once I made that unspoken deal with people they could be very critical of what I was performing and how I was performing. In fact, almost everyone was a critic. Everyone had an opinion.

Some people complained I was too artistic. Others said, “Why can’t you just let yourself be as artistic as you want to be?” Some said I was too unusual. Others said, “Why can’t you just embrace the fact that you are unusual. Most people said I was too effeminate. Others said, “Why can’t you just get over the fact that you’re effeminate and stop caring what other people think?” I was too proud. Not proud enough. Too forceful. Not forceful enough.

There was always something wrong with my performance. It was never good enough, and the criticism came form both sides.

Sometimes the most painful criticism of what I was doing was, “Why can’t you just be real? Why can’t you be the real you?”

It’s very hard to be real inside that kind of theatre. With an audience always judging.

(pause)

I always used to think that if I was famous everyone would accept me. Once I was famous people would really want to get to know the real me. I was really looking forward to being the real me. In a way, I wanted to perform the real me.

I don’t think that to perform is only to be fake. After all, we perform daily actions. We perform brushing our teeth. We perform carrying out the garbage. We perform actions. We perform saying hello.

Hello.

I do my best to perform as well as I can.

(pause) Yes, there´s more…. »

Waawaate Fobister in Agokwe

My play, The Silicone Diaries, will be published in an anthology with Waawaate Fobister’s multiple Dora award winning Agokwe. This anthology of queer theatre will also contain Marie Brassard’s Jimmy (which we have known for quite some time.) It is a deep pleasure to be included with other such beautiful works.

I am not sure if a fourth play will be added to the anthology which is edited by J. Paul Halferty. It is being published by Borealis Press.

Agokwe is a multi-character monologue performed and danced by Waawaate Fobister. It explores unrequited love between teenage boys from neighbouring reserves. Yes, there´s more…. »

I’ve given a lecture for five consecutive years in Introduction to Critical Sexualities, a 2nd year Women’s Studies course at York University. It has two parts. The first part is called The History of M2F Transsexuals 1900 to the Present. It is a historical narrative that I have constructed that illustrates how the meanings around gender-different bodies have been constructed by separate groups of “authorities” over the last 100 years. These authorities have included sexologists, psychiatrists, sex change doctors, gender theorists, and activists, each with their own agendas. The second part of the lecture is called The Eroticization of M2F Transsexuals by Heterosexual Men. It examines the different ways in which sexual meanings (and pleasures) are ascribed to transsexual women’s bodies by (otherwise) heterosexual men.

The following video contains excerpts from the second part of the lecture.

(I orginally wrote this article for issue 301 of fab! magazine, tgirl column, 2006)

A woman slunk by in an exact replica of Princess Leia’s slave girl costume from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, complete with metal bra and flimsy loincloth. A 30-something beefcake of a guy dressed as He-Man, from the cartoon Masters of the Universe, did a Chippendales-inspired groin gyration while chanting, “I am power!” His girlfriend, in a She-ra, Princess of Power super-bikini, approached me, whispering lustfully, “Haven’t seen you since Club Sin.” “You’ve mistaken me for another shemale,” I replied politely. I tried to escape from perverts expressing their kink through sci-fi drag at Toronto Trek 20, a respectable Star Trek and science fiction convention. I wanted to look available in case any hot Klingons beamed in. In the ’80s, while the other Grade 8 boys were jerking off to sweet Debbie Gibson’s Electric Youth album cover or saccharine videos of Tiffany’s mall tour, I was wanking over Worf, Star Trek: The Next Generation’s animalistic, honour-bound stereotype of masculinity in a spandex uniform.

Never a hardcore Trekker, I watched the show because I was hot for Data –an android programmed with sexual capabilities – in my opinion, the most underused crew member. But mostly I lusted for Klingons, space Neanderthals with antiquated gender politics and forehead bumps, real rough-around-the-edges guys. Yes, there´s more…. »

Borealis Press is publishing the performance text of The Silicone Diaries in an anthology of three queer plays that deals with the themes of technology, performance and embodiment.  It is now confirmed the one of the other two plays will be Marie Brassard’s Jimmy.

I recently went to Montreal and saw the last English language performance of Jimmy.  I am truly honoured to be included in an anthology with her work.  Jimmy is an achingly beautiful  solo work by one of the most inspiring artists I have ever met.  It has stayed with me long after the performance ended. 

It was also a deep pleasure meeting Marie after the show.  She was radiant.  I can honestly say that I learned so much just being in her presence and seeing the authentic generosity with which she encountered people.

The antholgy is being editted by J. Paul Halftery.

Below is a (low-fi) video interview with Marie about her play Jimmy for Culturebot.org.

I’m developing a new performance piece with Buddies in Bad Times’  Ante Chamber Unit.  The new piece is called Ophelia/Machine.  It will be the third of three autobiographical performance pieces, each about a different aspect of my relationship to patriarchy.

The other members of the Ante Chamber Unit are:
Anna Chatterton
Lorainne Segato
Salvatore Antonio

We meet bi-weekly to each develope a new work over the season. The Ante Chamber Unit is led by Ed Roy.

Evan Vipond, a 4th year York University theatre student, is compiling my media, theatre and performance work for a final year project.  The archive will include my play scripts, press, reviews, selected Tgirl columns and all materials related to my performance work.  The project is part of Evan’s work for the 4000 level Canadian Theatre course.

The archive will eventually be available in Scott Library at York University.

dramaturg Judith Rudakoff

About a week ago I finished the rehearsal draft of The Silicone Diaries. I’ve been rehearsing with it all week, tweaking it, making smaller changes, and I think it is pretty much solidly in place.

I originally wrote and compiled the script in about three weeks for the original production in New Brunswick last August. I’ve spent a good part of the last nine months rewriting the script for the Buddies in Bad Times production this November.

A major shout out goes out to my dramaturg, Judith Rudakoff. She has been with me through the entire process of rewriting. She’s the person I’ve gone to when I need someone to look at the text with new eyes, and she reflects back to me what I can not see anymore. She supports me when I’m too afraid to express what I really want to say or when the truth seems to terrifying to reveal. I turned to her when I needed inspiration, when I was stuck and not sure how to write anymore. And, she helped me make sense of the whole structure of the piece. Yes, there´s more…. »