Kean O'Brien - FTM FUCK FEST and DEVELOPMENTAL EMOTIONAL COMPLEXITY

The construction of “confessional” spaces needs to be a reconfigured landscape in hopes to develop new vocabulary around the visibility held by queer and trans. From this point on I will refer to this form as an autobiographical space. The representation of the spectrum of gender is minimal to non-existent in media- YouTube is a medium that allows this expanse to be held. These videos are a movement in the documentation of the transgender context through this gender revolution. It is important to demonstrate this as a form of activism that is needed to bring awareness to trans issues.

The subject position is a destabilized one as it is the perspective of viewing the other. Allen Feldman discussed in his lecture at CalArts how we are trained as people to disembody ourselves theoretically and analytically-, which creates a tension between our own perspectives of self and the other. How do we begin to understand this? I believe that we are not getting any closer to this reconnection by creating autobiographical/therapeutic videos on a public website. The understanding of hyper- individualism that is constantly recreated through the use of YouTube, by identifying oneself in reflection of the other, begins to erase the auto understanding of self-identification. Do these spaces create a visibility for critical discourse to then be made in progress to the political movement? Or rather make this THE political movement?

FTM Fuck Fest And Developmental Emotional Complexity is the beginning to a documentary that structures the autobiographical spaces that female-to-male transsexuals hold on a web based video site. I have begun to create a narrative of these autobiographical spaces by weeding through many and editing each one to the exact line(s) that tell the story/facts I am developing. When one types in “FTM passing” on YouTube and retrieves hundreds of videos of ftm’s discussing passing and what that experience has been like for them, a narrative is created about that topic. I am structuring these categories (ftm passing, ftm pumping, ftm girlfriends, ftm body transition, ftm emotional transition, etc.) into chapters that are illustrated through these video clips of dialogue- in hopes to create conversation outside the space within which these videos originally exist. On a much bigger level this piece is a new media study that is being channeled through the research of ftm trans spaces. Improving upon this medium allows otherwise marginalized communities to have dialogue.

Against Equality - Reviving the queer political imagination through visual culture

Against Equality is an online archive, publishing, and arts collective focused on critiquing mainstream gay and lesbian politics through text and visual culture. As queer thinkers, writers and artists, we are committed to dislodging the centrality of equality rhetoric and challenging the demand for inclusion in the institution of marriage, the United States military, and the prison industrial complex via hate crimes legislation. Founded by Ryan Conrad in Lewiston Maine in 2009, Against Equality has nurtured an international network of rural and urban queers who are committed to reinvigorating the queer political imagination with fantastic possibility. Through archival practices, calls for art, culture jamming, video production, book publishing and lecturing, the collective curatorial project has gained traction and praise from queer academics and cultural workers across North America.

This collective project relies heavily on phone and Internet technologies to function. With all of its core and contributing members living in different cities as big as San Francisco and Chicago and towns as small as Lewiston Maine and Omeemee Ontario, technology has been instrumental to our daily functioning and communication needs. In addition, many of the core collective and contributing members have never met in person. Using digital technology to tackle rural isolation and urban alienation in the deafeningly hegemonic political debates on gay marriage and “don’t ask, don’t tell” has become critical to our emotional and political survival.

This project also questions the current prioritization of specific gay and lesbian political issues (marriage, military and hate crimes legislation) set by an urban middleclass gay mainstream. By foregrounding the materialist critiques of working poor and rural queer & trans activists in tandem with radical queer & trans critiques coming from urban centers that are infused with an intersubjective criticality, we hope to create space for imaging the queerest geographic futures possible.

Visit www.againstequality.org to see more.

Tyrus Clutter

While urban centers continue to offer subcultural realms in which LGBT individuals may function in freedom and acceptance, the majority of people still live in smaller communities. And while attitudes concerning the LGBT community have greatly changed in the last forty years, living openly in less urban settings continues to be a challenge. In these regions traditional religious mores still frame the attitudes and actions of even those who do not necessarily ascribe to those faiths. The long held fears of rejection by family and friends also remain, causing many to live either untruthful or secret lives. These paintings on antique book pages were created in such non-urban settings and represent two different but related series.

The Permanent Fixtures series—the images of urinals—alludes to common cultural discomforts with male intimacy, whether homosexual or heterosexual. The absence of figures among these closely spaced urinals begs questions about sexual identity in men. The mixture of text and imagery also denotes the coded communications of closeted gay and bisexual men. Outside of gay subcultural centers, the communication among gay men often begins by “reading between the lines.” There is a “subtext” to these works and they can be read in multiple ways at the same time. Only a close inspection reveals the fullness of the communication.

The Saints, Sinners, Martyrs, & Misfits series is composed of a variety of portraits (including Andy Warhol, gay Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson, fallen evangelical leader Ted Haggard, Matthew Shepherd, and artist Tim Rollins, etc.). All the figures in this series are painted on pages from religious books or Bibles. The duality of text and image is matched by the figures. While the figures are not traditional canonized saints, they have each garnered praise from various people and groups. At the same time, other groups have been less appreciative of these individuals. The political left and right are at odds concerning several of these figures. Those with religious leanings—in both camps—have either praised or denounced these “saints,” using the same criteria to either lift them up or tear them down. Like the traditional saints, these are just ordinary people with good points and bad points. It should never be our prerogative to canonize or demonize public figures we do not personally know. These paintings seek a common ground between the increasingly polarized segments of our larger society.

Additional images from both of these series are available at www.tyrusclutter.com.

O. Gusavo Plascencia - Caught Between Ambiguities

Being an artist of “color” in the USA often overshadows my double identity as a queer artist – often to my own fault, I must confess. This is not a deliberate act, but more of combination of personality and cultural traits. To illustrate this, I need to quote my mother, she always told all of her children “I don’t want a parade here, just bring home the one you are going to marry” and so everybody did. This ideology reinforces the believe that what happens behind doors is private, but also opens the door to secrecy and the coded symbolism that is present in my work. On the other hand my work does not seem “Mexican enough” either.  I am an artist using mostly memory, the body and identity between an institutionalized society. My work is composed of different and sometimes conflicting facets, which makes it especially hard for curators and the art world because the work is hard to label. 

This is why sometimes I am accused of “passing” for something I’m not or pretend not to be. Apparently my work is not enough of anything and a little bit of everything, which makes people uneasy, because they do not know how to categorize it. Creating in the Queer Diaspora in the Mexican Diaspora may be removed once too many, but my work still deals with identity and personal struggles arriving to a personal Queer-Mexican-Catholic identity, both from a cultural and personal point of view – involving everything that makes me who I am as a person and as an artist. The series that best represent these qualities is entitled Capricious Tales.

For years I collected mementos, things that reminded me of people, places, or particular moments in my life. A year ago I started to collect things that I would normally throw away – orange peels, pepper ends, broken glasses, and eggshells among others things. These objects were meant to be discarded, but instead I kept them and soon they started to tell old and new stories; stories about childhood and adulthood, stories of family and solitude, stories about dream and hopes, stories about me. Many of the stories depicted in these images are based on family interactions and kitchen stories.  The kitchen is such an important place at many houses; it seems to be the nucleus of the family. The kitchen is where announcements happen, politics and religion are discussed, misunderstandings, reconciliations, and even weddings and first communions happen in the kitchen. Capricious Tales is a series that explores metaphors of family secrets, personal struggles, and shared experiences – both in public and private places. I created a physical inventory of shadows hoping to better preserve my memories this way. The abstract nature of the photogram emphasizes both the capricious nature of memory as well as the secret and sometimes coded aspects of private lives. All of the images in this series talk of the duality – and sometimes conflict – between domesticity and utilitarianism, personal and communal, self and society.

You Can find more wonderful works by Gusavo at http://ogplascencia.com

Geoffrey Aldridge

Investigating identity construction within my work, my artistic interventions speak to the institutional defining of “identity art” throughout the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s. Often promoting a stereotypical expectation about artists and their work, I position my work as a continuation of “identity art,” yet specifically from the perspective of a “queer artist,” as conceptually larger than myself. We all possess gender and sexuality. My interest is within the paradoxical moments between the objects and the viewer—it’s implicative—disrupting, or complicating the space. I want these interactions to work with an in-between-ness sensibility, like a pendulum swinging with two absolutions at either end. I position myself in the center of the swing, a place where I can question.

Originally from the rural Midwest, and raised in a small farming community, I refer to my upbringing as a source to create a larger dialogue about queer identity. In my work I refer to cultural pasts whether iconic cinematic themes, disco, farming, or Christianity, specifically Baptist, as a way to position the work. For example, Us is an installation of the fifty states, cut out of mirror and categorized to represent where, I, as a queer man would be most comfortable living. I think of my work as a way to position a greater cultural landscape that includes rural, suburban, and urban life.


For more information, www.geoffreyaldridge.com 

Dave Kube

As a queer artist, growing up and living in the Midwest, I oscillate between two worlds that, at once, allow me to feel connected to a community with its own history, struggle, communication, and inherent reality.  The other world, codified by living in a non-urban environment, has presented me with a longing for a more tangible sense of belonging to the queer community.

This tension, created by alternating dichotomies, fields my vision and provides a basis for the work I create.  My work primarily questions and reflects on queer experiences, relationships, and queer theory.  While most of my work subtly connects to the impact of being queer from a non-urban perspective, some bodies of work run more parallel to those ideas and influences of rural settings in regards to a queer context.

This is especially true in a recent body of work ‘Queering the Landscape’.  It is through this body of work that I attempt to present rural areas in the Midwest through a queer perspective.  By referencing the ideas of queer reading, which is a way in which sexual minorities deconstruct public and private spaces; I approached the visual elements within the landscape to impart ideas and experiences of queer life.  Assigning queer terminology to a traditional landscape, in an area that is often devoid of queer perspectives, challenges the invisible presence of queer elements within a non-urban community.  Furthermore, the visual elements conveying these queer ideas are often not readily apparent until the viewer reads the title.  This lack of clarity without a title or identification has a very symbiotic relationship to the excessive filtering often found in areas outside of urban settings.

Certainly technological advances in communication and the more visible presence in contemporary media have sparked a better environment for queer people in both urban and non-urban places.  However, I believe non-urban areas still lag behind due to a ripple effect that slowly and less profoundly affects people in rural areas.  A lack of community to rally and support leaves only an abstract presence for non-queer, and even queer, people to identify with.

You can find more about Dave and his work on his website, www.davekube.com