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)

SHOW TIMES AND DATES BELOW…

GO TO WWW.SUMMERWORKS.CA FOR TIX!!!

Thie following is from the Toronto Star. To view the article on their site CUT AND PASTE THE FOLLOWING LINK:

http://www.thestar.com/living/article/822008–sexy-transsexual-nina-arsenault-on-life-art-and-her-penis

by Jim Rankin, Staff Reporter (photos also by Jim Rankin)

This won’t be a narrative about a girl trapped inside the body of an awkward boy from Beamsville, who went through 60 plastic surgeries and cosmetic procedures to transform her body into Jessica Rabbit with a penis she remains rather attached to.

Nina Arsenault — whose critically-acclaimed autobiographical play, The Silicone Diaries, will brighten stages this fall and next year in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa — decided a while back that she was tired of others telling the story of her journey to “reclaim” her body.

Yes, beginning in 1999, she embarked on a long, painful, and at times scary metamorphosis that included risky surgeries and illegal silicone injections.

But, sitting behind a desk at the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, dressed in a clingy, low-cut black top, leather miniskirt and fishnet stockings, the 36-year-old former sex worker, writer, lecturer and performer with two postgraduate degrees in theatre and playwriting prefers not to dwell on that.

Arsenault is in demand these days. Pride celebrations are around the corner. She’ll be hosting parties, including a prom for young lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and questioning queers.

She will also take to the stage at the upcoming IdeaCity conference of big minds in Toronto, and tell her story.

Later this summer, at Theatre Passe Muraille, she’s scheduled to perform i was Barbie, another autobiographical play that riffs on a real-life gig she had to “represent a doll accused of f—–g up the body images of millions of little girls.”

As she put it in an email, it’s a “spiritual portrait of a glittery, digitally-commodified, plastic world from the point of view of a silicone transsexual who represents Barbie at her official birthday party and the opening night of Fashion Week . . . shades of Andy Warhol.”

Yes, she can write.

Her days consist of workouts, voice training with singer Fides Krucker and writing with mentor and collaborator Judith Rudakoff. She works out of her downtown apartment, where she oversees her publicity, right down to the cropping and airbrushing of photos that appear on her website. She likes, she says, to have the final say on everything, a prerogative she has borrowed from Madonna.

So, rather than a narrative, a Q&A followed by a photo shoot orchestrated by Arsenault seems appropriate for a woman who describes herself as a queer artist, and her body as a queer art object.

Q: You’re not the kind of model that sits back and lets the photographer call the shots?

A: No. I see myself more as an auteur. I like to be the subject of the work, but also the creator of the work. As transsexuals, there’s just been so many documentaries about us and they’re usually put together by non-transgendered people. The emphasis is always to make us palatable to whatever audience that’s being spoken to.

Q: How have people tried to make you more palatable?

A: No. 1, they try to make you less sexual. Less sexy.

Q: How is that possible?

A: I’ll take that as a compliment. Sometimes, I’ve done things for a newspaper where they’ll say, ‘We can’t print that photo. It’s too sexual.’ It’s just something about the way my lips are, or there’s maybe cleavage in it. And my response is always that people can get this online now — provocative, naked photos. I think that print media is really behind that way. Another way of making someone who is queer palatable to a normative mass audience is to pathologize them. It’s to say that the things that are different about them, the things that are unique about them, it must be because that person’s f—-d up. Certainly, I’ve been accused of that — it’s dysmorphia, intense perfectionism or narcissism. I always refuse to accept those perspectives on my life. I think it’s very important not to listen to your detractors.

Q: At what point did it become art for you, the transforming of your body? Yes, there´s more…. »

Special thanks to Michael Pihach for helping me create the image and to Dan Vernon for the poster design.

FYI-
PSi is a professional association founded in 1997 to promote communication and exchange between scholars and practitioners working in the field of performance. The organisation has staged numerous international conference and festival gatherings that have moved between the discourse and practice of performance. PSi conferences have been held across the U.S.A. and the U.K. and in Germany, New Zealand, Singapore, Denmark, and Croatia.

for more info check out their website http://psi16.com/

This performance is directed by Brendan Healy and dramaturged by Judith Rudakoff.

Very excited about the return of The Silicone Diaries back to Buddies in Bad Times Theatre!!! We’re going to be reworking it a bit, and this time I will be performing in The Chamber. Following this production the show will be moving onto a Montreal production at Theatre La Chapelle.

(photography by Tanja-Tiziana)

Very excited that my play The Silicone Diaries is being studied at another Canadian university.  It will be required reading in Sexuality and the Stage, a theatre course taught by reknowned playwright/director Sky Gilbert.  I will also be showing up (Nov 2, 2010) to speak in the class.

(The Silicone Diaries was dramaturged by Judith Rudakoff and directed by Brendan Healy.)

My play, i was Barbie, is going to be showing at SummerWorks (Aug 5-15th) this summer. I performed this play last year at the queer comedy festival, We’re Funny That Way, Buddies’ Pride Festival and at Queer Acts in Halifax. I am now considering these performances workshops.

I am working on a new draft of the script for this summer’s shows. Judith Rudakoff is working with me as dramaturg. This new production of i was Barbie will be directed by Buddies in Bad Times Artistic Director Brendan Healy.

I’m thrilled to be a part of SummerWorks this year as I have been an admirer of the festival of years.

(the following text from summerworks.ca)

ARTISTIC VISION
SummerWorks supports work that has a clear artistic vision and explores a specific theatrical aesthetic. It encourages risk, questions, and creative exploration while insisting on accessibility, integrity and professionalism. SummerWorks is the place where dedicated, professional artists are free to explore new territory and take artistic risks. Rather than getting larger, we strive to get better. We look to introduce professional artists from diverse communities to each other and be inspired by our similarities and differences.

a video trailer for my one woman play The Silicone Diaries…

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…. »

Silicone is anything but shallow

by evelyn shaller-auslander (reprinted with the permission of the author)

Nina Arsenault wrote and stars in The Silicone Diaries, playing at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre from November 14th-21st. Based on a series of articles for wrote for fab magazine detailing the trials and tribulations of aquiring the many dangerous silicone injections needed to produce her very feminine body, Silicone details more cosmetic procedures than you thought possible. Directed by Brendan Healy, this is one queer show you won’t want to miss.

I may or may not have snuck into her dressing room to take her make-up and wardrobe hostage until she answered my questions…

Many people are surprised to hear that you have a Master’s degree and taught at York University. Do you ever feel limited by people’s expectations?

I feel like I challenge people’s expectations. I sometimes think people underestimate my intelligence –maybe because I’m trans, maybe because I have big hair and wear lots of lip gloss. I don’t think it ever limits me in the end though. It means I get to see the ah-ha moment when people realize that I’m fiercer than they thought. It’s fun.

Do you consider yourself to be a feminist?

I am a feminist who believes that every woman has the right to be the type of woman she wants to be, and that all women have the right to seek happiness and pleasure wherever they choose.

Why do hordes of gay men idolize you?

I just assume that anyone who is a fan of my work is someone who has felt at some point in their life that they have had to fight to be who they are. At the end of the day we are all meant to be as beautiful, as sexy, as creative, as bold, as flamboyant, as challenging as we want to be. I feel bad when I see truly fabulous outrageous people being pressured by society to be smaller than they are. I think a lot of fags, particularly femme fags, relate with that. And then there’s also fags who relate with me because they are also obsessed with their bodies. Yes, there´s more…. »