(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
Friday, October 21st, 10am
in The History of Solo Performance
Drama Centre, University of Toronto
(course director: Nikki Cesare)
—a discussion of the French body-artist Orlan, the Cypriot-Australian performance artist Stelarc whose work focuses on extending the capabilities of the human body and Canadian Nina Arsenault’s cosmetic and spiritual exploration of beauty, image and queerness
OPEN TO PhD AND MASTERS LEVEL STUDENTS
.
Friday, November 4, 11:30am-1:00pm
Nina Arsenault: Daughter of the Air
Ryerson University Theatre
(organized by Cynthia Ashperger and Judith Rudakoff)
–panel discussion about me and my work by Cynthia Ashperger (the head of Ryerson’s Theatre Dept and an expert on the Michael Chekov Acting Technique) and Judith Rudakoff (scholar, dramaturg, playwright, editor who has worked with me on my stage scripts and who has editted the forthcoming book TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault: An Unreasonable Body of Work) and myself
OPEN TO RYERSON THEATRE DEPARTMENT STUDENTS
.
Wednesday, Nov 21, 7pm-9pm
Nina Arsenault: Queer Art Diva (an evening of selected writings, monologues and visual art)
(organized by GLOW – Gays and Lesbians of Waterloo)
in the Main Theatre, University of Waterloo Theatre Department
OPEN TO ALL UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO STUDENTS AND THEIR GUESTS
(ticket prices tba – in support of GLOW)
.
Wednesday, November 30, 10am
in Praxis: Intersections of Identity in Theory, in Performance (3rd year course)
Brock University
(course director J. Paul Halferty)
CLOSED TALK
.
.
.
Mon, December 5, 2:30pm
in Performing Gender (4th year course)
York University
(course director J. Paul Halferty)
CLOSED TALK
CUT AND PASTE THE FOLLOWING LINK TO GO TO THEIR WEBSITE:
http://www.wix.com/culturaalacarte/artecontemporaneo
The image used is a modified photo from the Transformation series I did with Bruce Labuce in 2005 (NSFW!). A couple of the images are available to see on my website (ninaarsenault.com) if you search under the Category “photographic projects.” Contemporary art History Presents, however, did a compelling gold treatment on my body though giving the shots a different effect and meaning.
And, you can see all the shots from the series as they appear in the magazine by CUTTING AND PASTING THE FOLLOWING LINK:
http://www.wix.com/culturaalacarte/artecontemporaneo#!obra/vstc2=bruce-la-bruce
TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault: An Unreasonable Body of Work is a book which is being published about me and my work by Intellect Books. The book is edited by Judith Rudakoff. There is information on the book below. It will be available for purchase in May.
CUT AND PASTE THE FOLLOWING LINK TO GO TO INTELLECT BOOKS’ TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault: An Unreasonable Body of Work:
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/books/view-Book,id=4875/
Not yet Available
Price £19.95, $30
ISBN 9781841505718
Paperback 160 pages
230x174mm
Transgendered playwright-performer, columnist, and sex worker Nina Arsenault has undergone more than sixty plastic surgeries in pursuit of a feminine beauty ideal. In TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault, Judith Rudakoff brings together a diverse group of contributors, including artists, scholars, and Arsenault herself to offer an exploration of beauty, image, and the notion of queerness through the lens of Arsenault’s highly personal brand of performance art.
Illustrated throughout with photographs of the artist’s transformation over the years and demonstrating her diversity of personae, this volume contributes to a deepening of our understanding of what it means to be a woman and what it means to be beautiful. Also included in this volume is the full script of Arsenault’s critically acclaimed stage play, The Silicone Diaries.
Nina Arsenault: The Daughter of the Air will take place at Ryerson Theatre (43 Gerrard Str East) on Friday, Nov 4th, 11:30am-1:00pm. It is a department wide event, but only open to Ryerson students.
Cynthia Asperger, the head of the Ryerson Theatre Dept, acting teacher and performer Cynthia Ashperger, will be presenting an excerpt from a paper she wrote about me. As part of the development of her paper I got to do a workshop with Cynthia in the Michael Checkov ‘Imaginary Body’ approach to acting.
Dramaturg, scholar and playwright Judith Rudakoff will also be speaking about my work. I’ve worked with Judith on the development of both my one woman shows The Silicone Diaries and I was Barbie.
Both of their works are being published in TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault, a full length multi-disciplinary analysis of my work from national and international scholars and artists. Prof. Rudakoff is also the editor of the book which is scheduled to be released May, 2012.
I will also be at the event talking about how I have developed various artistic works, and all three of us will take part in the following Q and A.
Thrilled to be working with these two truly fierce theatre practitioners.
(photo of Judith Rudakoff by Christopher Gentile)
The Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) presented a conference session on my performance art today in Chicago. It’s an honour to me and my work to be recognized by these scholars and theatre practitioners at an international conference.
session info below:
The Artist as Art: Transgendered Canadian Performance Artist Nina Arsenault and Trans(per)forming the Self.
Three perspectives on transgendered Canadian performance artist Nina Arsenault, who embodies and enacts the authentic female within a surgically altered and technologically enhanced body.
Chaired by Judith Rudakoff (York University).
The papers presented were as follows:
Faux Art or Beaux Arts: Nina Arsenault and the Construction of an Imagined Future.
by Judith Rudakoff
Creation, Ontology, Self-creation: Nina Arsenault and the Performance of “Autopoeisis”
by David Fancy (Brock University)
“I’d rather be a cyborg than a goddess”: Nina Arsenault, Spirituality, and the Plastic Arts
by J. Paul Halferty (University of Toronto)
ATHE Mission Statement:
An advocate for the field of theatre and performance in higher education, ATHE serves as an intellectual and artistic center for producing new knowledge about theatre and performance-related disciplines, cultivating vital alliances with other scholarly and creative disciplines, linking with professional and community-based theatres, and promoting access and equity.
for more information on ATHE go to www.athe.org
This lecture will accompany the Magnetic North Theatre Festival’s production of my one woman play The Silicone Diaries (Ottawa, June 8-11). The lecture will be given by two art historians on June 10 at the National Gallery of Canada. Info below:
The Female Form, Beauty and Art: a lecture
From Ingres to Cindy Sherman, DaVinci to Dali and in works by artists from across the globe and throughout time, representations and images of women in visual art are loaded with meaning. Often they reflect artists’ and society’s aspirations, prejudices and obsessions. So where then, do we place Nina Arsenault and her pursuit of the ideal female form? Join us for this engaging lecture on beauty, aesthetics and the use of the female form in art from the beginnings of art practice to classic works to ”The Silicone Diaries.”
June 10 | 3:30PM-5Pm | Free | Lecture Hall, National Gallery of Canada
The fast feminist (FF) is a post-gender provocateur, not so much a gender terrorist as a gender risk-taker going the distance with her body. FF’s philosophy is lived. Actions count. One resists with one’s body.
The operative principles in Fast Feminism are that as FF I never write anything I haven’t done and that I locate the enactments inside a philosophical discourse. The sites of enactment are framed within queer postpornography. ‘Postpornography’ is a term used to refer to erotic sexual images, films and stories that recode how we look at bodies and sexual acts. If “pornography codes how to look at women,” postpornography queers the gaze, and in so doing destabilizes and recodes how we look at everyone.
(page 11)
* * * * * * * *
While Fast Feminism operates in proximity to other feminisms, its ‘natural’ home is in queer theory. Queer gets its meaning and its politics from its oppositional relationship to hegemonic norms. To queer something is to disrupt it, to put it under scrutiny and to attempt to change it.
(page 19)
* * * * * * * *
If fast feminism were to have a manifesto it would be:
1) Critique the world quickly.
2) Interrupt intellectual scholarship.
3) Position the body as the basis of intellectual work.
4) Write theory as art.
5) Do art as theory.
6) Do theory from non-obvious point of departure.
7) Do violence to the original context.
(page 174)
Fast Feminism by Shannon Bell
Published by Autonomedia
Brooklyn, New York
Copyright 2010
I’ll be doing another modified version of my artist talk Self-portraiture: Identity, Transformation and Performance at Ryerson University. The talk is quite malleable and I have given different versions of it at York University’s Visual Arts Department, Brock University’s Theatre Department, at The Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) and now at Ryerson’s Fashion Communications Department.
I’ll be speaking in a 4th year undergraduate course called Creating the Image. It is taught by Ryan Greenwood. I will be there on April 6.
CLICK ON THE THUMBNAILS BELOW TO SEE SOME OF MY COLLABORATIVE PORTRAITS
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- 'Sociogaze' --photographed by Peter Tamlin (2008)
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- 'Fey' --photographed by Michael Chambers (2010)
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- 'Unstoppable' -- photographe dby Tony Fong
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- 'Liminoid' photographed by inkedKenny (2008)
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- 'untitled' -- photographed by David Dean Portelli
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- 'Transformation' -- photographed byBruce Labruce
