Like all of us I am a storyteller and an image maker. Except I am writing and imaging my life in the theatre, but in reality, too.
Because I’ve had the privilege of performing the same autobiographical play a number of times I could see how the play would shift during my training as a performer. The text was the same, but I was different because I had more life experiences, more acting experience but also because I have more breath in my body because of the training I have done with my voice teacher Fides Krucker.
Having more breath means the stories are rendered with more scope and scale.
Acting teachers and voice coaches know that it takes an actor more breath to perform Shakespeare or any kind of heightened poetic text. You can be as authentic as you want, but if you only have a small amount of breath in your body you will only be able to bring a small amount emotionally to the words which are poetic, not casual. Our emotional life exists on the breath. It is the breath.
But, theatrical genre isn’t just an aesthetic. It isn’t just a convention of form. IT IS A WAY OF EXPRESSING TRUTH. IT IS THE FORM OF EXPERIENCE.
This brings a question to the forefront of my practise as an artist.
We can write and live our lives with the vitality and scale of a sitcom. But could our lives be as expansive as the Greek plays? Shakespeare? Beckett? All these theatre makers were inscribing their truths. They weren’t just being theatrical.
If you are performers or not, I urge you to continue voice work, body work, breath work or if that doesn’t resonate with you then athletics or yoga or meditation, whatever you can do to get more breath into your body
To be inspired is literally to be filled with breath.
The more breath in your body means the more life in your body –> more sensation, more emotion, more awareness, more heart, more empathy, more sensuality, every moment becomes heightened.
from Monty’s mouth:
“Implant Media announces: THE CRIME OF EMBELLISHMENT –We (and Istvan Kantor Monty Cantsin? Amen!) started a major project with Nina Arsenault, Neoist transsexual criminal, android creature, cyber model, body reconstructionist, performance artist, shape shifter…that will feature Nina as the embodiment of Neoism, goddess of contemporary mythology,a cyber diva of Neoist propaganda reaching out without limits of communication,…
pls look up her site for more introduction where you’ll also find information about my new paintings inspired by Nina’s plastic surgery campaign, available for sale in order to cover production costs of “Crime of Embellishment” (the video)
ISTVAN KANTOR A.K.A. MONTY CANTSIN? AMEN!
BIO
Istvan Kantor was born in Budapest where he studied medical science. In 1976 he defected to Paris and from there he immigrated to Montreal. He also lived in Portland, New York, Berlin and presently is a resident of Toronto where his three children, Jericho, Babylon and Nineveh were born in the 90’s.
His main subjects are the decay of technology and the struggle of the individual in technological society. His work has been described by the media as intellectually rebellious, anti-authoritarian, as well as technically innovative and highly experimental. He likes to break things and set things on fire. He uses conflict and crisis to present his cause, often placing himself in the center of danger and uncertainty. His radically changing creative ambitions are always related to his living environment and social situation.
Throughout the past three decades he has been arrested and jailed many times for his guerilla interventions in museums. He also received many prestigious awards among them the Telefilm Canada Award for Best Canadian Film and Video in 1998, the Transmediale Award in 2001, in Berlin, the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts in 2004, in Canada, and the EMAF 2009 Award at the European Media Art Festival in Osnabruck, Germany.
Here’s some photos of Monty Cantsin – performance documentation, Neoist propaganda, self-portraits.
Istvan’s a great artist, and a welcome collaborator. It is an honour to be signified by him in such a visceral and uncompromising way. He told me that he wanted to “paint the demons inside [me].” His works simultaneously exalts and degrade me.
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- The Crime of Embellishment 1
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- The Crime of Embellishment 2
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- The Crime of Embellishment 2 (detail)
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- The Crime of Embellishment 3
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- The Crime of Embellishment 4
They are beautiful acts. I have always had a deep relationship to my image and representations of me –a relationship that is erotic, spiritual, decadent, sadomasochistic and often feels insatiably bigger than me.
These painting are all mixed media (markers, pencils, ink, acrylic, construction wood), and they are quite large.
For purchase contact Istvan Kantor Monty Cantsin? Amen! use this email:
amen@interlog.com
Money from the sale of the painting will fund the video THE CRIME OF EMBELLISHMENT.
Fashion Forward: Fashion as art
by Isobel Slone
(this article from: Imprint, The University of Waterloo’s Official Student Newspaper, Nov25, 2011)
Queer performance artist Nina Arsenault articulated the beautiful confluence of fashion and art through her performance at the Modern Languages theatre on Monday, Nov. 21. She emerged from the audience clad in a vibrant multicoloured gown of ruffles and flounces reaching all the way to the floor. When she reached centre stage and turned around to face the audience, the dress was mini in the front and the bodice was covered in glittery pink rhinestones. Her perfect blonde presence was a spectacle to behold.
Arsenault began the show with a monologue called “I was Barbie” about her stint portraying Barbie at a Toronto Fashion Week event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Barbie doll. “Of course, only a man could be Barbie!” quipped [the person who hired] Arsenault, who is a trans woman. The audience was treated to a grotesque yet honest slideshow documenting her own bodily transformation, that of a biological male striving to attain the ideal feminine beauty exemplified by Pamela Anderson. Arsenault describes it as “the kind of beauty that is never found in nature,” but is still valued as the pinnacle of feminine beauty.
Arsenault has spent much of her career using fashion and art to transform herself into different characters, from doll to witch to fairy. In one portrait, she appears as a fairy in a construction zone, representing her constant construction of self as well as twisting the image of “fairy” as a common nickname for gay men [and transgendered women.]
Like every good performer, Arsenault went for a costume change during the “intermission,” when she showed a short meta-reality film called Plane of Immanence, featuring Arsenault sans wig, clad only in a sheet from the waist down. She returned wearing a form-fitting transparent rubber dress used for performances of her one-woman show The Silicone Diaries. The dress revealed everything aside from her bra and panties and was paired with demure white stockings and black heels.
Arsenault’s body is liberated by her sense of dressing rather than degraded. Ultimately, her outrageously campy yet sexual outfits work to enhance her brand of trans woman hyperfemininity. If her body took 60 surgeries to complete, she might as well show it off.
This is my favourite blog out there right now. (I have this closet interest in science and quantum physics.) Rob Bryanton, the author who runs the blog, is brilliant. Really mind expanding stuff that puts things into a (cosmic) perspective.
He’s also written a book called “Imagining the Tenth Dimension.”
AUTHOR AND RESEARCH SCIENTIST DAVID JAY BROWN SAYS: “ONE OF THE MOST BRILLIANTLY-CONCEIVED AND MIND-STRETCHING BOOKS THAT I’VE EVER ENCOUNTERED”. –SCIENCE FICTION AUTHOR GREG BEAR SAYS: “A FASCINATING EXCURSION INTO THE MULTIVERSE – CLEAR, ELEGANT, PERSONAL AND PROVOCATIVE”
www.tenthdimension.com
(this article from Imprint, the University of Waterloo’s Official Student Newspaper, Nov 18, 2011, written by Paul McGeown, Assistant Arts Editor)
Arsenault set to turn on minds at Waterloo
Prominent transgender performer speaks with hope of opening new channels of discourse
Nina Arsenault has been performing for most of her life. Her body of work includes two plays (written and performed by her), TV appearances on Kink and Train 48, and dozens of photo shoots. Still, the 37-year-old performer gets nervous on occasion. “Sometimes I get nervous when I show the nude photos… but I’m also just so proud of them as artistic pieces.”
Arsenault, one of the most prominent transgender performers, will speak at the Modern Languages theatre on Monday, Nov. 16. The talk will sample some of her past work (she plans to perform one monologue from each of her plays, I Was a Barbie and The Silicone Diaries) and will also include photos and videos that she took during her transformation.
She sounded most excited, though, about debuting a new video that she called, “My $20 million sci-fi film.” The footage was shot inside Maple Leaf Gardens, which is in the midst of a sizable makeover. Of course, the actual budget was less than $20 million — far less.
“Really, we just broke in at night and shot the stuff until security kicked us out,” said Arsenault.
She calls the performance “part artist talk, part performance lecture, part comedy.” It sounds ambitious, but Arsenault has enough experience to make it happen. She has two postgraduate degrees in theatre, and has contributed to both the National Post and Fab magazine. She also has no shortage of content: “My life has been so sensational I haven’t had to make anything up,” stated Arsenault.
A talk like the one on Monday affords Arsenault more than the oppurtunity to cross genres. It also allows her to open channels of discourse that are frowned upon on television.
“I feel like whenever I’m on TV, I sort of have to dumb things down for Grade 3 people, and I’m at the point where I don’t want to do it anymore,” said Arsenault.
When speaking to university crowds, “It can be a higher level of conversation. Not in an art snob kind of way but… it can go to another place,” she said.
The lack of control in television is equally frustrating: “It’s so maddening when some TV producer who’s never met a transsexual before me is telling me how I should be represented.” Television does have an upside, though. She laments that some grassroots documentaries highlight what they feel is the “real” story: generally, the gritty side of her transformation. But, “The real stuff is glamourous,” laughed Arsenault. “Glamour is really — it’s at the heart of me.”
That some people don’t understand her is something she laughs about. She talked about speaking to a Sociology 101 class at a local university, and how “they all thought I was the devil… they weren’t sure if it was a performance or if it was a lecture. But I was sort of like, ‘It’s both a performance and a lecture. Like, get with the program.’”
Of course, Arsenault is exploring topics that are foreign to lots of straight university students; particularly the concept of a male G-spot, and how to stimulate it.
“I notice that some of the straight guys don’t want to keep eye contact with me after I start talking about that stuff. I don’t know if it’s because they’re uncomfortable about it, or it’s because they think about it, or if it’s just… wow, that’s a lot of information.”
Regardless, Arsenault talked excitedly about being in a university environment. “What I’m interested in is… talking to people with open minds; I’m interested in talking to people who are hungry for new ideas; I’m interested in people who want to explore the complications of life… their mind, their body, their being, their breath: the whole thing is turned on.” On Monday, Arsenault will undoubtedly turn on more than a few minds.
Queer Art Diva: an evening of selected writings, monologues and visual art –part performance lecture, excerpts from my plays, new video art, photography, a living-art manifesto and a couple very fabulous dresses
a fundraiser for GLOW, The Queer and Questioning Community Centre at the University of Waterloo
warning: graphic photographic and video images
I’m taking the Contemplative Dance workshop with Denise Fujiwara. My understanding is that this workshop is the precursor to studying butoh, an ever evolving Japanese dance form.
I first saw butoh in 1992 and thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life. It has always been something that I wanted to study. So, I am excited to begin this journey partly for the pure pleasure of exploring movement, partly to see what it brings to my own performance art.
Below is a youtube video of Ms. Fujiwara and excerpts of her dance Komachi.
Unfortunately, we do not get to see sustained pieces of her dance, just fragments, but the movement is very beautiful. I suggest watching it full screen so you can watch her face as she dances.
Her website is www.fujiwaradance.com
“To dance is to journey into the secrets of intuition, memory, dreams; to encounter and express the mysteries of human nature as they are manifest in the body, before words.
I believe in the ability of art to move people, to change people, to put people in touch with the best part of their humanity, to remind people of the complexity of their humanity and to cultivate compassion.”
Denise Fujiwara
ABOVE PICTURE: portraying “the disembodied curator” in Kent Monkan’s The Art Game. Because of an optical illusion people couldn’t figure out where my body was, and until I moved many people thought I was a mannequin head
(from azuremagazine.com)
Of Cree and Irish descent, Toronto’s Kent Monkman is renowned for finding extravagantly subversive ways of breaking down social and cultural stereotypes. While his paintings sell for thousands of dollars, his performance art is perhaps more flamboyant. It’s animated by Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, his female alter ego inspired by Native Canadian folklore.
Monkman’s love for spectacle is on full display in The Art Game, which he created especially for Art Toronto. Comprised of a life-sized maze with a ringmaster ushering in viewers, the installation presents a vaudevillian take on the contemporary art world. Within the maze are four rooms, each painted in one of four colours – red, yellow, black or white – representing the sacred shades of Native tradition, according to Monkman. Everywhere else the surrounding white walls are stamped with over-the-top art-biz headlines like “Dumped by collector!” “Venice Biennale solo!” and “Museum acquisition!”
Inspired by old-fashioned circus personae, live performers act out their particular roles in the art world in each room. Dressed like a magician, the Dealer sits in the black room playing cards; in the white room, the Collector wears the head of a raven, a bird that craves shiny objects. In the yellow room, The World’s Most Prolific Artist puts his 12 hands to use churning out paintings. The red room’s Curator, meanwhile, takes the form of a disembodied head that’s “all brains.” It protrudes from a tabletop covered in textbooks.
A slapstick takedown of the business of making, selling and buying art, Monkman’s installation is a refreshing main attraction at an art fair where dealers are schmoozing clientele, collectors are being wined and dined, and curators and artists walk the aisles looking to see what’s sold and what hasn’t.
(PICTURE RIGHT: one of the other inhabitants of the installation. BELOW PICTURE: portraying “the most prolific artist of all time” –the picture doesn’t show you my other six hands (you just see the arms) –all working on different canvases that are all completely (different shades of) yellow and cried. I painted in extreme slow motion and with the other arms moving, it made little kids ask if I was a robot.
