While Ophelia/Machine is more surrealistic than my plays, The Silicone Diaries and I was Barbie, I see the works as a trilogy about autobiographical objectification.

I will shoot it this week on high def video working again with my collaborator Jordan Tannahill.

Ophelia/Machine will go into postproduction in phases in between me touring my theatre pieces and speaking at universities. Because of the unfolding way Jordan and I develop video we do not know what form the final product will take. I don’t expect though that it will be finished for another twenty-four months.

Jordan and I have been working on this piece for about ten months, on and off between our other various projects. It was formally called Dryad, but because of how it developed into a more metaphysical work it is now Plane of Immanence.

Below is some information about Jordan for those who don’t know him, followed by the artist statement for Plane of Immanence and a short trailer for the piece (which intentionally doesn’t reveal too much.)

Jordan Tannahill is a film and theatre director living in Toronto. His works of multimedia performance have been developed and presented on some of Canada’s most prominent stages including Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Canadian Stage, Great Canadian Theatre Company, and the Harbourfront Centre. He is the founder and artistic director of the award-winning theatre company Suburban Beast. Recent honours include the Inside Out Film Festival’s Emerging Canadian Artist Award, the Ken McDougall Award for Emerging Directors, and being named one of Canada’s Top Twenty Under Twenty. Jordan is a graduate of Ryerson University’s film production program.

Plane of Immanence
Nina Arsenault / Jordan Tannahill
14 mins / Canada, 2011

Plane of Immanence began as a guerilla intervention at the (re)construction site of Maple Leaf Gardens, which artists Jordan Tannahill and Nina Arsenault found in a gutted, liminal state of transition. In this video, this iconic space rich with national cultural significance – an arena of masculinity – is realized into a new potentiality as a metaphysical labyrinth and virtual womb. The queering presence of the body of Arsenault, both naked and constructed, climbing through a jungle of rebar, front-end loaders, and caution tape, reveals to us a multilayered allegory for the trans body, the Deluezian notion of the ‘body without organs’, and permutations of the divine within the Self and the material world.

TEASER TRAILER BELOW:

And here’s another quote by the artist that I thought was uber-interesting.

“Transition is always a relief. Destination means death to me. If I could figure out a way to remain forever in transition, in the disconnected and unfamiliar, I could remain in a state of perpetual freedom.”

— David Wojnarowicz (Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration)

by Ayshay (Fatima Al Qadiri)
Video by S.A.M. & the T.A.Z.

CORPCORE

Music: “Corpcore” by Fatima Al Qadiri.
Video: Ryan Trecartin and Rhett LaRue.
Editing: Nick Scholl for DIS Magazine.

Produced in collaboration with TELFAR for the presentation/installation of his Spring 2011 collection, FORmale, at White Box Gallery, NY, September 10-12, 2010.

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