1 10 12 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62030/archive/files/8d1984857341e7d54c46943e27a550fd.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=ttXV656fxesZhLYT-TUgVFW5mDvbxeoO100icIFV2IGbfC-sJA0hF2DP4%7EOgToEz3OeOPp5cjtHLf5mSI7TXzeTPSQuBS-QL3TSPoyoBniCCbkJ6fc5jmdZCqFYvrxjgDswH-QkLxFahIL3h0AEYH9HskD8zuhuP7w9apJ15%7Ej-wakWZHcYD3yBC8ecVOeRoU2DJq%7EEXFgfwKiOjE-Idr3Bb4VM49BJOqFrLg4e9T8eszAIz5bj1jY-zAOhcyqSsYLzh0URZhLKBcQ2jzPNRTf3iYSAq9wJNG2xmenqC%7ETQja9m87Iuds9cNYIoKy%7El8DPiwYop3EahTATYFPHHAPg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 2873238988df0960449411dfccf995b3 PDF Text Text ETAMBOUI Le journal de l'associatioo des ctudiaot-e-s africain-e•s de l'UQAM Volume 4, Numcro 2, Octobre 1999 a Special elections l'ASEAUQAM Liste des membres et reactions P. 4 Partir ou res­ ter? Le dilemme de ces etudiants qui ne savent plus rentrer P.14 Le travail sur le campus: mythe OU realite? Voir notre dossier en P. 8 10 a lngerence humanitaire et droit Les gendarmes nouveau style P. 6 Date de tombee de la prochaioe parutioo: 05 Novembre 1999 a 17h00 Paites nous parveoir vos textes par attachemeot a l' adresse suivaote: letambour@hotmail.com Vous pouvez egalemeot nous les porter en personae au local DS-3221. N'oubliez pas de les eoregistrer sur disquette sous format word ou RTF.Longueur maximale 2 pages. Marquez vos nom et prenom aiosi que votre numero de telephone. �Faisons nos devoirn. Par Cyrille Eyoum .1 A croire que les Africains ne retiennent jamais les l�ns des choses. L'assentilee generals du 24 septembre demier m'a ramene en memoire les images de celles d'avril 1999 et de decem­ bre 1998. Una fois de plus, nous avons brille par noire amateurisme et noire folklore, mais quand apprendrons-nous done? Tenez, une assembles generale improvises (1Ji sentait a plein nez le manque de preparation et de serieux dont on! fail preuve ceux qui l'ont convoques, une assistance etrangere a l'ordre du jour et un debat semantique qui n'en finissait pas. J'exagere? Non. De grace nous avons besoin d'une association forte mais pour cela, ii faut I LETAMBOUR Le journal de !'association des etudiants africains de l'UQAM Vol4 . 11ume10 2. Oc1ob1e 1999, lle111Uel de l'AIEAUQAl1 Pmu 1ouir1 111gge111om 011 commen1,111e1, e1 po111 nou1 f.111e p.11Ven11 vo1 a111cle1 Adime_elec11Qmgue: leu111bou1@ho111wl.com Aairw foe po11ale 8888. luccu11ale A. Mo1111eal. Quebe c Hl( lPB Pivillon 1- A. De1eVe. llO l1e-Ca1he1me E11 loc, 1I DI- Jll I lelephooe 9BJ 3000 po11e 1988# fax :114 . 981 )611 li!Jge IOOC m111pl.i11ei. !r,fo1,,,,, '" chel .Cy11lle Eyo11111 [q11,pe du 10111n1I [b,11111, B011l,:1. (y11lle !rou.�. '11:,J1 4bou-Bik11c. M1 (111111 1. (hekm 111nm. 01oud, li11k. l.1k1 fo.1,,.,,, ,J,,1,11100 ll11h,n1 Aiin,;i, M)l lhhe l,n1 lilt. \1noko lo11leyn1111e. Om11 l!u:i,,,n, H1r t,,1111\ ll111rpc. �nn d011 l1111me \111 lnlot• 1pl1tc r�•,,: f_,_,1!\b,it l (t (y11lle [ 1011111 ,11111it:•) t�,1q,11 [11dun;o. (hudt lhlu Dep&1 i,; Ii : B1blio1heq11e th11on1le du Quebec l11 '" :n i ,;:1r1 "'"! 1;,,1 1 •111, I I : ,1µ,11111bil11e dr 1,11, I 1111,1111. 1,,,, ..1,ur,.,11 i"'""I' ''" 111,.'1111,,11 npl,1,1c de It iu11l(r que ceux qui tiennent les renes du powoir apprennent a faire leurs clevoirs et a preparer leurs dossiers. II ne revient pas aux milliers d'etudiants afti­ cains ou d'otigine de s'asseoir tous autour d'une table pour rediger ou modifier les statuts mais, certainement au bureau en place d'en dresser la pre­ miere mouture. Par ailleurs, nous avons besoin d'engagement, de dynamisme et de leadership pour assurer la survie de !'association et ces qualites, nous les avons certainement taus mais, ii faut que nous apprenions a les de­ velopper aussi bien a l'ASEAU­ QAM que dans tout autre groupe OU activite. En consequence, tant et aussi longtemps que certains seront la pour les besoins de CV et pour l'honneur du titre(?), c'est sur que la bonne marche de !'association ne sera pas une de leurs preoccupations majeu­ res. De ceux-la nous n'en avons pas besoin mais, de ceux qui veulent apprendre car, n'oublions pas qu'a l'uni­ versite ii n'y a pas que l'ap­ prentissage livresque mais aussi toute !'experience qu'on ne saurait quantifier et evaluer a !ravers !'implication dans des groupes ou des activites etu­ diantes. Vivement done du sang neut a I 'ASEAUQAM! Et ce sang neut, nous l'avons eu le 1er octobre de m·1erave:: . l''eIection d'un noweau blJ (�nfin!). Malgre les lacu nasre:. I� plus haul et qui, ant d'a1lleu rs ate decriees par les . membres presents a cette as­ sembles d'elections, force est de reconnaitre que le jeu a ete clair, democratique et libre.11 faut egalement louer le cou­ rage de ceux qui ant ose se presenter aux cifferents postes car ce qui nous caractoose le plus, ce sont les bruits de oou­ loir et la poussiere qu'ils souls­ vent et qui heureusernent, re­ tombent toujours sur leurs au­ teurs. A ceux q.ii n'ont pas eu la bravoure de se presenter, de grace faites du bruit mais fai­ aus 81 tes-le au vu et au su de t saisir de ais jam ez ne manqu sables les nouv eaux respon reac· de pa pour leu r faire �- vosc:ar quBS lions et de vos cnti nous tero'nt ue q x pri ce a c'est . ava ncer las choses -o.nnn�85 -I c;.r s utre a A vous •• us. b0flll9 el t en em vell no u aU� de cou­esl chance e• t be·-->hl iezoas c' ,naf , n rage S 1JW1 r111 jt.11818 au pied ell mur qJ8 mayan! LE TA�'BQUR Editorial (D Le mot de l'executif P.4 Special elections P.4 Le mot des lecteur Sur le campus Les 6 travaux de Pepere Le point de vue de l'universite Le programme Etudes-travail: une []] alternative discriminatoire Et les etudiants etrangers alors? SJ D D [7 P.5 Dossier []] Ecole,boulo,dodo ra P.2 Vie associative � _ P.8 P.9 P.10 P.10 Cher(e)s ami(e)s lee- lngerence hwnanitaire et droit P.6 teurs et lectrices, cette Pour un monde d 'egalite de chances P.11 Opinion Societe Kadafi au tribunal P.12 Partir ou rester? P.14 Le Billet du mois Les difficultes sont faites pour etres vaincues P.13 Temps mort Poeme & Mots croises P.15 � Vous aYez des choses a Yendre, Yous Youlez Yous faire connaitre , cet espace pourrait 6tre le Y6tre I Venez nous YOir au local DS-3221 ou ap­ pelez-nous au 987-3000 poste 7988 ou alors enYoyez-nous un fax au 987-3615 page est la vt>tre et nous serons tres heureux de publier vos reactions et vos commentaires. Vivement a vos plu- mes �c:r.nlwp., 1 QQQ �!d{iles -· · • •• • . -·· "� F tet,s ci1 journal LE TAMBOUR, Le a 1 oclcilre demier se sent de­ mlEIIS les elections de l'ASEAU­ QAM. A rtsllU8 de celles-a !'association s'est we allribuile une nowelle eqlipa Et c'est en ma (fJBlil8 de Secretaire Generale dans le noo­ \18all bureau <p'au oom de klus je YOUS nmereie pour votre paiticipa­ llon el VOUll prilsenle la nowelle �oo l'ASEAUQAM Sp9cial le ctio n 8 W@1 IB Is ant dit... , Je pense que les elections ont ete Plisident·: plus ou moins bien organisees. PATRICE N'GOUANDI Mais je souhaiterais que prochai­ Secretaire General : nemen� elles se fassenl avec plus STEPHANIE PADONOU de rigueur car de cette maniere, 1----------Delegue Communication bon nombre de personnes mal in- L'ambiance electorale etait ac­ MARIAM KANE ceptable, mais ii Y 8 lieu de tentionnees pourraient voter plus Delegue Integration souligner que j'ai deplore le fail d'une fois HAOUA NIANGADO que le desordre dont certains Delegue Culture et Sport nous reprochaient a ete une DEMBA DIAKHATE fois de plus a l'ordre du jour. ,__ ___. Mon souhail serait que dans Tresorier: JACQUES-ARNAULD. Bt­ les assemblees a venir et au­ LEY Tres mal organisees, on aurait Ires evenements chaque mem­ Et avec !es aqoints ainsi que la du verifier les caries de mem­ bre de l'association y mette du contrlbutlon de lous ceux. qui s'im• bres des electeurs a l'entree ... sien. Hennann Nabi pliquent tous ensembles, oous chaque candidat a amene ses CXJl'l'4)lons redolW l'image d$ amis, done les candidats ont l'ASEAUQAM pour en faire une ate elus non sur la base de 8S&Ocialioo efficace, puissante et leurs competences et d'une respe,ctee. Nous avons con­ campagne electorale mais sur science� ca ne sera pas une la base de qui a amene le plus Les elections se sont tache facile mais tool est une de copains. Madon deroulees de fayon �tlon de bonne vo1on1e, democratique parce Et la \'Olonte, on en a! que chaque candidal II n•est� uU1e (JJ8 t'on vous eu droit a la parole. a Une petite discorde vile dissipee au fasse des promesses car nous le depouille­ Pour debut. Les posies n'ont pas ete bien BVl:ln& bien conscience gJe C& n j'ai trouve ya ment, explicites(la responsabilite de l'elu...). 'est point ce 1J18 voos attendez de ratique en c e democ On ne s'entendait pas bien dans la nollepait Aklrs ces.,uisfa le& a ate fail qu'il sens salle, mais de maniere generate !'am­ claaxn. le monde, tout devant biance a ete bonne. Si.lMct, on a COffllll8fJcii bos­ pas de magouille! Farida Abou-bakare adll _________ � Les elections pour pouivoir au paste de president, de secre­ taire general, de delegue a la communication appelle un cer­ tain nombre de remarques. D'abord un manque apparent de preparation des organisa­ teurs qui a entraine un man_­ que de rigueur dans la gestion du temps. Une absence appa­ rente d'elaboration de leis electorales comme dans toute r pratique de eel ordre: �e qu eviler t � aurai s du reste nou ues Si­ hesitations et las quelq ons av ous . mulat ions que n state. malheureusement con en u'on J'espe· re toutefois q l n •euremen ulte • te tiendra comp Fredo seraphin SIA.¥_ uv c�� _ _ _ IT TAMBO_UJ<. _ ltd � ;,-. Les 6 travaux de Pepere Par Myriam Endungo Pepere et Myriam se sont donnes rendez-vous au Grimoire, le temps de deguster un snack Myriam: Salut pepere Pepere: Salut Myriam. Dis-moi, ici las cours sont cool, je n'ai pris que quatre cours ca qui me donne a peine 12 heures de presence obligatoire a l'UQAM. et de parter de l'UQAM. memoire de fin d'etudes, ii equivaut en fail a la somme de ces travaux. de groupe n'a rlen d'une lune de miel. Je le previens, si dans ta classe ii n'y a pas beaucoup d'etrangers ii te faudra d'€mor­ mes efforts 'pour squatter" une equipe. vers les autres car ton objectif est aussi d'avoir le meilleur groupe de travail pour avoir la meilleure note. Sois ponctuel et applique-tol a les cours. Sols actif au cours et labo­ ratoires. Avec ces attitudes les au­ Ires pourront voir au-dela de la dif­ ference quand ii faudra former un groupe. En resume, je le conseille d'6tre tres professionnel dans !'ela­ boration de travaux en groupe car le bouche-a--Oreille fonctionne bien entre les etudiants. Si t'es un para­ site, ya se saura vile et on t'evite­ ra a chaque nouvelle fonnation de groupe. Pepere: Quoi les gens sont racistes ici!!? Pepere: Tu m'as parle de six tra­ Myriam: Ce serait une bonne explication Pepere mais la plupart des travaux doivent en general se faire en groupe. Pepere: liens, je vais pouvoir rencontrer du Myriam: Detrompe-toi, Pepere, ii n'y a rien de cool a avoir autant de cours, le maximum autorise pour un etudiant normal est de cinq cours, six si on a des derogations . monde, c'est utile � pour donner des ren­ dez-vous a des 'gos'(filles en argo afro­ europeen). Pepere: Mais Myriam, tu blagues! Dans le systeme Myriam: Oui mais tu sais, faire un travail europeen on a pratiquement 25 heures de cours semaine! Myriam: ok, Pepere laisse moi le parler des 6 tra­ vaux de l'UQAM et tu comprendras mieux l'implica­ tion qua necessitent 12 heures de cours. Le premier travail de l'UQAM consiste a consacrer 2 a3 heures delude par heure de cours afin de lire las references prealables et s'assurer une reussite aux examens et 'quiz'. Done en plus des 12 heures de cours, tu devras consacrer 24 heures a l'etude de la matiere. <;:a le fail en tout 36 heures de tra­ vail academique. Pepere: Moi qui croyais prendre le temps de m'abonner aux differents bars du coin et passer de bonnes grasses matinees. J'avais 'booker" taus mes cours en debut d'apres midi pour pouvoir en-­ suite me balader relax. Myriam: Et bien mon char Pepere ce n'est pas fi­ ni, le second travail de l'UQAM est qu'il le faut pour la plupart des cours remettre une serie de travaux de session. Pepere: ah! Je comprends pourquoi ici la licence (baccalaureat} n'oblige pas un etu<iant a foumir un Myriam: Brise les banieres, va Myriam: Non, ce temie serait exagere. Le phenomene d'exclusion dun groupe de tra­ vail, en fail, plusieurs raisons I' expliquent: 1. Les gens preferenl se relrouver entre amis et toi tu n'en as pas clans ta classe car tu es un nowel arrivant 2. Les autres etudiants ont eu des mau­ vaises experiences avec des etrangers qui faisaient partie de leur groupe: manque de ponctualite, manque d'ap­ plication au travail, absenteisme aux reunions de groupe, mesententes per­ sonnelles sur les visions, difference d'approche et de caractere .... 3. lls preferent un copain nul plutot qu'un de ces etrangers! Pepere: Mais QJ'est ce QJ'il faut faire? Ca n'est pas juste detre juger parce qu'on est un stranger. vaux quels sont les autres? Myriam: Le troisieme et le qua­ trieme travail de l'UQAM sont re­ lies aux travaux de groupe. Le troi­ sieme travail consiste en la recher­ che des donnees necessaires a la realisation de tes travaux . A l'UQAM, chaque faculte a une bi­ bliotheque, ii y a aussi la bibliothe-­ que centrale au local A -M100 que je le conseille de visiler souvent pour tes recherches ou pour etu­ dier. II le faudra apprendre a utili­ ser le systeme Manitou qui t'aidera pour la collecte de documents et \'impression des references ainsi que la reservation de livres. Pepere: Decidement ! (Suite a la page 13) ()a;n,lw,,.,, 1 qqq �l n g e re n c e . . . ( s u ite ) Par Omar Mimouni a a ces derniers jours, le siege de l'ONU 1 �ew-Yo �k a co �nu u�� nouvel �e se�slon, l a 5411m�. L theme abord e mainles _ � reprises dans les discours des chefs d Etats presents eta,t I mtervent1onn1s me et le dro,t d'mgerence l e nolNel ordre mondial, au ce que nous appelons pudiquement la globalisation, qui consiste en fail en la domi­ nation politique et economique des pays du Nord, laisse pla­ ner sur las pays du Sud une menace de voir l eurs frontieres violees et leur souverainete, dans la plupart des cas chere­ ment acquise, remise en cause. Le president americain penche en faveur d'un inter­ ventionnisme mi l itaire, sans l 'aval de l'ONU au preal able, et encore mains du pays concer­ ne, comme au Kosovo, lais­ sait-il entendre dans son dis­ cours. D'apres lui, l'action de l'OTAN a evite au peupl e koso­ var l'epuration ethnique. Si pour la crise bosniaqua, !'inter­ vention de l'ONU n'avait que trop tarde, ceUe du Kosovo etait injustifiable. Si on dit qua la guerre est l'echec de la di­ plomatie, au qua la logique de guerre prevaut, la �tion qu'il fauaait se poser est celle de savoir qui est responsable de cette logique. Pour la crise du Kosovo, la lo- te nationale d'avoir des conceptions dog­ matiques d'une autre epoque, alors que nous sommes voues une interdepen­ dance incontoumable. C'est occulter cleli­ berement la realile qui est toute autre. La geslion des crises intemalionales a tou­ jours obeil au principe de deux poids deux mesures. Des cas de peuples oppri­ mes et de resolutions onusi ennes non respectees conlinuent de nous clemontrer les visees reelles des occidentaux. Quand ii s'agit d'un genocide, au meme une puissance occidental e serail i�i­ quee, dans un pays devenu sans Eta! en Afrique, on constate une inaction fla- gique de guerre etait imposee par las puissances occidenta­ les, celles-la meme qui preten­ dent defendre des valeurs uni­ verselles. L'accord de Ram­ bouillet, declencheur des frap­ pes dites chirurgicales qui ant provoque a elles seules plus de marts civiles que celles cau­ sees par l es milices nationalis­ tes serbes, n'etait pas signable par le cote serbe. Prenez un pays souverain, avec ses insti- a n'avait pas tente deliberemenl d'humilier les Serbes. Ce qu'il taut retenir, c'est qu'aujour­ d'hui, plusieurs mois apres la fin des frappes de l'OTAN, ce meme accord n'est pas app l i­ que et ne peut d'ailleurs pas l'etre. Un pays comme l a Yougosla­ vie, qui historiquement a tou­ jours ete independant des deux superpuissances de jadis, un peuple qui ne voulait etre le lure ephemera du liberalisme <!&­ bride, intervienne dans des pays pour des raisons uniquement h� manilaires. Pour l'lrak, l e vrai mobile etait, et continue de l'etre, le pelrole; pour la Yougo­ slavie, des imperatifs geostrate­ giques de l 'heure. Quant au Ti­ mar, on ne comprend pas l'inte­ r�t soudain de l'ONU pour cette region, si ce n'est sa propre res­ ponsabilite d'avoir organise un referendum haul risque pour 11 une popu l ation sans prot�ti� 11renez un pays souverain, avec ses institutions et son armee, et deque ce pays a eta co­ ir savo taut � son �andez-lui de signer un accord qui remettra en cause son au�orit� lonise par l 'lndonesie et q�e_ ;;ur ses lerritoires, le forcera a accepter qu'une armee etrangere ail d12.aines des depuis subil l e peup _ � ibre circulation dans lout ... et vous obtiendrez une log1que de guerre : . d' une d'annees une repressio� _ . ndon e i l'arm par e, .:C rare violenc ppeler,� sienna et, taut-ii le ra ­ pa s due tutions at son armea, et da­ � l as des armes ven satellite ni de l'URSS ni des en e nch est mandez-lui de signer un accord denta ux• Le Timar USA, paye aujourd'hui chere­ des uns qui remettra en cause son au­ l e bonheur ur po l e tro pe ment son intransigeance de au torite sur ses territoires, le for­ el le ma lheUr � � og.J8S refuser de servir d'appui geo­ s , deOI de fat cera accepter qu'une armee se uvai ma La strategique et geopolitique aux . rence donl ,a r etrangere ail libre circulation du droit d'�n�• occidentaux. Sinon comment 'rtaire ,nas, dans tout la pays et qu'une on jundrco-h uma' � ll<'t' tenti """"'abai­ occident expliquer qu'un on ns partie de son territoire se se­ que mal une Prope 00 la rs gnant dans un ultraliberalisme u en cense pare du reste du pays apres cee • a• s'eriger . atiOfl<tle, ne 19t, atteint d'une myo­ triomphan trois ans et vous obtiendrez USfl conscience r ntern pie chronique qui l'empec he m0','911 dw:,r, n n une logique de guerre. Les ucu a ur s sine �i e­ d'apprendre de l'histoire, frappes aeriennes de l'OTAN nseu rs de la , de la na- les ctefe toute necente somme auraient pu etre evitees si on a < a rm- grante de la communaute intemationale. On com­ prend done mal les regrets du premier ministre fran�is au siege de l'ONU, qu'i l exprimait clans son dscours sur l a rel ative timidite de l'organisa­ tion (ONU) chaque fois que l'Afrique est concer­ nee. Mais l a France etait l a bien avant l e geno­ cide. C'est elle qui faisait la pl uie et l e beau temps au Rwanda. Un massacre d'une tel l e ampleur ne pouvail en aucun cas se preparer sans qu'el l e le sache. signaler que duranl cette session de l'as­ semblee generale de l'ONU, le president en exer­ cice de l'OUA (Organisation de l'Unite Africaine) a declare que l'organisalion qu'il presidail croyait fermement que l'ingerence ne peut intervenir sans le consenlement de l'Etal concerne el, a reconnu A aux «opinions publiques <lJ Nord • le droit de denoncer l es atteintes aux droils de l'homme et l'ONU « l e droit d'entraide envers l'humanite souffrenle• . « Mais nous demeurons Ires sensi­ bl es toute atteinte nos solNerainetes. • Non seu l ement a-I-ii dil, parce qua la souverai­ nete « est la demiere protection contra l es r&­ gles cfun monde inegal •· mais aussi parce que les pays du Sud « ne sont pas parties prenan­ tes • aux decisions du conseil de securite de l'ONU et encore mains l eurs appl ications. a a a a Le Centre d'etudes arabes pour le developpement, I' Association des droits de la personne au Maghreb et la Ligue des droits et libertes, vous invitent a une conference-debat Theme: L'envers du miracle tunisien par Jean-Pierre Tuquoi Journaliste au quotidien Le Monde, auteur de «Notre ami Ben Ali » Date: Mercredi 3 Novembre 1999 a 18h30 Lieu: Salle SH-3640 a l'UQAM. 200,Sherbrooke est(metro Place des Arts) lnformations:(514)982-6606 extension 2235 Vous 6tes une association ou un groupe etudiant a l'universite, vous voulez faire connaltre vos activites, passez-nous voir,nous saurons comment vous y ai­ der. Vous ave!t,des choses a vendre, vous faites des tresses, vous voulez vous faire conn aitre,appelez-nous au (51 4)987-3000 poste 7988 oupasez-no us voir au 320, Ste-Catherine est, local DS-3221 (3e etage) f>c:b'wwp., 1 g g g �dodo Ecole bou lot ► a Nombreux sont ceux qui a chaque �t di! session, essayent de se trouver un emploi sur le campus afin d ' r " ar d r 1 de pourvoir a leurs menus besoins. De meme, dans les couloirs nous sommes interpelles par moult gens et t, :, �ur mors ou u des postes aussi divers que varies. Mais peut-()n vraiment concilier ecole, boulot et dodo tout en etant etudian� 1 i � nous offrent u rvez-nous et vous aurez la reponse. Qui peut travailler ? En principe tout etudiant a l'universite qui remplit ies conditions et ies exigences reliees au poste convoite peut travailler sur le campus, c'est-a-dre occuper un emploi dans l'enceinte de !'institution. Toutefois dans certains cas un Numero d'assurance sociale est exige. Comment faire ? Avant toute chose, ii taut nigulierement consultar las ouvertures de poste affichees sur le campus ou visiter le site web de l'universite a la page consacree au Service d'aide l'emploi. L'on peut egalement s'informer aupres des diffe-rentes administrations ou unites de l'universite. Una tois qua l'on a trowe une offre interessante, ii faut preparer un CV et le porter aupres de l'employeur. II est egalement possible de deposer son CV la fin de l'annee (avril ou mai) pour�rer travaill�r sur le campus en septembre. Generalement, 11 est recommande de faire parvenrr sa demande d'emploi en aout ou en septembre car, c'est a ce moment que la plupart des employeurs recrutent. . . a a Quels sont les emplors �•sponibles ? , concement tous les pastes en relation avec l'enseignement tels que charges de cours, auxiliaires cfenseignement, surveillants et correcteurs d'examen qui sont generalement offerts aux etudiants des cycles superieurs et dans certains cas aux finissants au baccalaureal. Rentrent egalement dans cette categorie taus ies empiois relies la recherche offerts dans ies differentes tacuiles, departements et chaires et generalement reserves aux etudiants en doctoral ou post-doctoral et, a certaines exceptions pres aux etudiants de maitrise. II taut toutefois signaler que Ies emplois syndi­ ques ne son! pas ouverts aux etudiants mains que ces demiers soient employes et membres du syndical. Combien � rappo,te ? La plupart des emplois offerts sur le campus son! temps partiel et payes l'heure. Quoique l'universite ail ses propres normes salariales nombre d'employeurs sur le campus offre�t des salaires allant de 6.90$/h 20$/h. Tres peu nombreux cependant, certains posies sont disponibles avec des salaires i'annee. a a a a a a � on peut reg'.°�per les emplo1s en trois catego. Oil trouver du travail ? • • . nes •• les empiats. nAr,;.,... If"'""aux, •185 emplm• s spec1ah• Nombreux son! las employeurs sur le campus ses et les empl01s academiques• dont quelques-uns que nous avons rencontres. • . raux regroupent lous Les amplois gene ceux qui ► Les residences universitaires : des ne demandent pas une foonation parti .. cu ,1ere . posies de prepose I'entretien meleis Ies commIs, ies agents de bureau . . • Les nag_er y son! offerts de maI a aout e� e"l)lois specialises par contre 0 .gent• • • une forXJ ce a temps partiei. Pour y postuier, 11 mation pertinente pour occuper Ie paste • • • · • offert • faut n 1rement hab1ter I � res1ii en est ainsi de plusieurs posies au Cent � re • dances et faire une demande a eel . sportif. Les emplois acaoom·iques q uant a aux effet. Les emplois son! generalement a cha. Les bibliotheques : les differentes biblio­ lheques de runiversite emploient a !'occa­ sion des etudiants et ce, dans le respect de la convention collective et de la priorite de la lisle de rappel des anciens em­ ployes. Les posies offerts concement sur­ tout le rangemenl des livres et de temps autre le remplacement au comptoir de prllts : une formation est d'ailleurs offerte sur place a cet effet Pour y postuler, ii n'est pas necessaire d'etre etudiant mais ii taut, avoir complete ses eludes secon­ daires et deposer un CV en precisant ses heures de disponibilite aupres du secreta­ riat de l'une des bibliotheques. Le depot de CV peut se faire a tout moment gene­ ralement en septembre mais, ii y a lieu de signaler qua les difficultes financieres per­ mettent mains d'ernbauche. Le salaire est le meme qua cel ui des employes syndi­ ques a poste egal. La Fondation de l'UQAM : deuxieme employeur en importance apres le Centre sportif, elle offre surtout des posies d'agent de liaison a tous les etudiants ou diplomas de l'universite. Pour en savoir plus, ii faut se presenter rune des se,m­ ces d'information organisees sur le cam­ pus au debut des sessions d'automne et d'hiver. La Coop-UQAM : elle offre cfrfferents pastes notamment la caisse, a l'entre­ p6t ou au service a la clientele et, ifs s'adressent tous Jes etudiants. Nean­ moins pour y postuler, ii taut avoir un nu­ mero d'assurance sociale. L'on peut y de­ poser son CV a tout moment mais de preference en debut de session. Les cafes : ii existe de nombreux cafes etudiants a l'universite appartenant cha­ cun un secteur precis d'etudes. Tous offrent des emplois aux etudiants quoique l!mit� en nombre. Pour y postuler, ii faut etud1er dans le secteur auquel appartient l e cafe. Generalernent ii suffit de faire parvenir son CV en debut de session ou tout moment salon le cafe mais, certains comme le Salon G exige une experience _ P8rtinente ainsi qu'une lettre de presenta- affiches aux residences et sur le campus a la fin de la session d'hiver. ► Le Centre sporllf : ii est l'un des gros employeurs avec pres de 150 posies par annee. La majort­ te des emplois sont des emplois specialises qui requierent une formation prealable cependant, ii y a d'autres emplois plus gene­ raux tels les preposes a l'accueil et au comptoir de pre! d'equipe­ ment ainsi qua ies preposes a !'inscription surtout en debut de session. Ces differents postes s son! ouverts tous les etuciant a e, egal ce peten ! mais, com 1 �m­ priorite va aux a ceux dont u: cte d'et pioi rentre dans ieur ca _ spelo1s emp l e s ur po out des surt er des rm nfo s'i • • . L'on peul • 1rses era nt au pa� en soil rts posies offe C8 efVI S au · Centre sportif ou our Y pos_tu d'aide a I'emploi. P i l u � orm un t z ler' ii taut remplir • n CV de pre1.,.. accompagne du . d'aOUI oU rence duran� le egalement en fin d annee. N n e au ce tre qu'on peut soum_ �. La remu-­ act des projets d lVl�f � f� t au551 � arifi­ s Y e tion nera qu t car elle tien c?mP!\nce et sur­ e . dU ITl9i· cations et de I xperl it aux pnx oi,e elle ut, to a ► a ► a r:';� q -,t"P.I 1 r) d°./'# qQ a a r J ► a a re­ lion en plus de passer une entrevue. La muneration varie de 6.90$/h a 8.90$/h plus pourboire. Cetta lisle des empfoyeurs n'est pas exhaustive, ii en existe d'autres tels le departement de thea­ tre pour ses salles de spectacle(renseignements au J-2325) ou les differentes unites et services administraUfs a l'instar des SVE, du Registrariat, des Comptes eludiants... Des posies sont ega­ lement disponibles dans las differents departe­ ments et facultes ainsi que les chaires aupres desquels ii faut directement s'informer. II en est de meme pour les associations sectorielles tel­ les l'AESG, l'AGEsshalcUQAM qui offrent des posies de scrutateurs pendant les elections ou, des associations modulaires comme l'tcole des Sciences de Gestion qui offrent des postes de moniteurs. l'institulion, la future politique tout en mettant !'accent sur la promotion de l'emploi etudiant devra tenir compte et respecter ies autres partenaires notam­ ment les organisations accre­ ditees. Elle devra egalement identifier les zones d'heures maximales qui permettenl de travailler sans nuire aux elu­ des. Egal ement la future politi­ que devra redefinir les meca­ nismes de remuneration et de reevaluation des salaires, coo­ trairement la pralique ac­ tuelle de remuneration en fonc­ tion du niveau d'etudes. La deuxieme action engagee dans ce sens est un projet de lettre d'entenle sur le travail etudiant entre l'universite et le Syndical canadien de la lone­ lion publique a travers le Syn­ dical des employe(e)s de l'UQAM. C'est la une demar­ che d'ouverture considerable quand on sait le poids que las syndicats occupant aujourd'hui dans notre espace social. Ledit L'on ne saurait parier de travail sur le campus sans projet reconnait aux etudiants se referer a ceux qui ont en charge la gestion de un certain nombre de !Aches !'institution qui nous accueille. A eel egard nous avons rencontre Monsieur Pierre Glac!J, directeur du afin de les aider poursuivre leurs eludes tout en leur appor­ Service a la vie etudiante. De prime abord et salon monsieur Gladu, malgre les tant un soutien financier. S'agissant du travail des litu­ quelques sept millions de dollars verses annuelle­ diants etrangers, M. Gladu ment en salaires de taus genres aux etudiants tra­ souligne qu'il s'inscrit dans le vaillant sur le campus, ii y a lieu de signaler que l'universite n'a pas de polifique en matiere d'emploi. cadre de la politique a venir de Toutefois, cette question reliant !'attention de l'insli­ travail sur le campus. Toute­ fois, ii a precise qu'il laut eta­ tution et d'ici l a fin de la presente annee, ii y a lieu blir une nuance entre las res­ d'esperer !'adoption d'un ensemble de regies enca­ sortissanls des pays avec les­ drant le travail eludiant. quels le Quebec a signe des Pour ce faire, des actions ont ete engagees deux principaux niveaux. La premiere conceme le conseil ententes particulieres et les der­ a la vie etudiante, organe paritaire de representants autres. El concemant ces niers, M. Gladu reconnait qua d'etudiants et de l'universite au sein duqUel, sera la loi ne leur est pas favorable cree un groupe de travail charge de definir la politi­ car, s'ils peuvenl travailler uni­ que de !'institution en matiere de travail etudiant quement sur le campus, leurs Paree qua travailler sur le campus favorise le main­ (Suite a la page 10) tien aux eludes et le sentiment d'appartenance a a a Le point de vue de runiversite a a <')c1nlwP./ 1 Q Q Q �·• Le pro�ramme Etudes-trava1I ace a la demande de plus en plus crois­ ,, sants d'ernplois sur las campus universitai­ res et au regard des difficultes financieres dans lesquelles s'empetrent les etudiants, le gou­ vemement a propose une solution pour le mains original : le programme ttudes-travail. Ce programme vise specialement les etudiants connaissant de serieuses difficultes financieres et, a pour but de les aider a se trouver un emploi sur le campus. Dans ce cadre, l'UQAM a rec;u 300.000$ pour aider ses etudiants. C'est la une initiative louable, mais la ou le bat blesse c'est quant aux conditions d'eligibilite. Non seulement ii faut etre etudiant a temps plein et souffrir de •maux de poche aigus ', egalement ii faut etre ci­ toyen canadien ou resident permanent recipien­ daire de prets et bourses ou alors, avoir depasse une alternative disai ni natoir e la limite d'endettement pennise pour son programme d'etudes entre autres condi­ tions. Ces conditions soulevent inevitablement quelques reflexions : n'y a-I-ii que les etu­ diants canadiens ou residents penna­ nents qui connaissent des difficultes fi­ nancieres? Par ailleurs, le fail de ne pas etre prestataire de prets et bourses est-ii synonyme d'une bonne sante financiere? Au-<lela, le Quebec et partant ses univer­ sites sont de plus en plus ouvertes aux etudiants strangers dont certains investis­ sent d'enonnes sommes d'argent pour leurs eludes. Rien qu'a l'UQAM ils repre­ sentent a chaque session 9% des nou­ veaux etudiants (a l'automne demier) dont beaucoup ne sont pas exernptes· sourf!'9nt-ils mains qua les autres etudian�? E�nt �nne la demande de plus en Plus si­ gn�ficative d'emplois sur 18 cam pus, l'UQAM qui a la responsabilite de gerer sa pert du budget alloue au programme du ministere de !'education devrait peut-etre revoir les regles du jeu ou du mains, faire des sugges­ tions a la tutelle. En ce sens, une conce rta­ tion des divers acteurs intervenant sur le campus serait souhaitable dans la mesure ou, si ii faut financer des emplois sur le campus, ce financement devrait s'adresser a taus les etudiants a mains qu'au Quebec ii y ail des etudiants a part entiere et las au­ tres. Et les etudiants etrangers alors? A (Suite de In page 9) chances d'y trouver un emploi sont Ires limitees. A eel egard, le responsable du SVE pense qu'il serait souhaitable de leur accor­ der une attention particuliere en matiere d'emploi soil en leur servant une partie des emplois, soil par tout autre mecanisme surtout ; pour les etudiants afri­ cains pour lesquels le travail sur le campus est la seule issue pour se faire de !'experience ou arrondir las fins de mois. Sur cette question du travail des etudiants etrangers, M. Gladu tend la main aux differentes as­ sociations notamment !'Associa­ tion des Etudiants Africains afin de trouver des solutions et de faire des propositions. La balle est lances a chacun de jouer ! re­ � en croire les chiffres en noire possession, l'universite s'intemationalise de plus en plus. Celle internationalisation se mani­ feste par un accroissement de 9% par session du nombre d'etudiants strangers a l'universite dont une bonne parie sont africains. Malheureusement, force est de constater qua Ires peu d'etudiants etrangers travaillent sur le cam­ pus. II taut souligner qu'il s'agit ici d'etranger au sens de la Loi sur !'Immigration. II y a certes des etrangers qui travaillent mais, ils ant souvent le statut de citoyens canadiens ou de residents per­ manents ce qui n'est pas le cas des autres etu­ diants. Au-<lela, las quelques etudiants etrangers particulierement africains rencontres et qui, ant essays de se trouver un emploi sur le campus ant taus essuye des echecs. Tres souvent, on leur de­ mande de deposer leur CV et leur promet de les rappeler plus lard ce qui arrive d'ailleurs pour leur annoncer un refus ou alors, leur demande ne con­ nail jamais de suite. D'autres ant mis en exergue les exigences d'experience qui sont souvent un frei n a leurs ambitions. Bien que ces exigences n e soient_pas r, des obstacles dresses pour les empAcher de trava1lle de ence experi Ires peu d'etudiants africains ont une travail pendant leur fonnation . etrangers D'autre part etant donne que les etudiants su� le . mer trava qu'a rises de par la loi ne sont auto les universtque 8 ·tab! aI h sou pas t-il serai ne us, camp ent l'UOAM, adopt� un� pol�,!:_ tes et particulierem eu ... ,. . . · rali·on des etud1ants d'emploi qui favonse I", mteg ·e· 1e· et soo la clans que . gers aussi bien dans I .mstitution es sa leurs connas nc qui, les aide a mettre en pratique et a acquerir de !'experience? = rea nse par Dossier prepare et , Cyrille Eyoum. 5 Nos remerciements ou r p al ceux qui no us y ont a le ur co lla boration Ali Ca mara an ees, d ! � ombreuses1 voix s! ! o�t fa ltes entendre en ce qui concer e le sort reserve au Au cours de ces der� ie�es1 � ? _ a ete au cmur d une med1atisat1on, on ne peut plus sans precedent. Mais sous q Afr1que I_ n. Ams1, cal uel continent afri _ r lu1? e angle le conti nent a-t-il fart parle d quelque chose. Ce qui fail defaut sur le connaient a /'Asie une certaine superioriffl De fa9(Jn generale, ce que la conscience intinent africain, ce n'est pas du tout le decolsur /'occident». temationale retient du berceau de l'humani!age economique. S'il s'agit d'une amorce te ce n'est ni un continent de performance L'objectif de eel article, n'est pas de s'ali­ economique, l'Afrique l'a deja et la vii taus gner sur une position don nee, mais de �nomique, ni celui respectueux des droits les jours. Ce que l'Afrique cherche a obtenir de la personne, mais tout simplement un lever le voile sur un certain nombre de univers mal mene par une mediocrite taus c'est l'attemssage economique. En d'autres facteurs qui font q.ie I'Afriq.ie a cl! ma! azimuts. Un continent sous-developpe, de termes, ii s'agit cfadopter un ensemble de se positionner au sein de l'orore moncial guerres, de sida ou la misers impose son politiques et de programmes economiques a actual. pouvoir sans partage. Nous A vrai dire, l'Afrique sommes l'oree de l'an 2000, «Si /es chgons de fAsle ontteussl 111eex1raolrinaireperceeecononicpe, au cot1S de es t enfermee dans un et toutes !es previ sions econo- ces llingtdemietes annees, c'estbe/ etbien p;,ce CIJ'ils ontrris en pr.tkpe ces valeus etau qui lui � donton a assez cftqu'elles donnaient a l'Asie me certaine �Sll rac- l'herbe sous les pieds miques presagent un avenir peu radieux pour l'Afrique. A sur tous les fronts, et Lee Kuan, fond.t.eur de la ville de Singapour l'oppose de cette idea pessiqui freinent son evolumiste, nombreux sont ceux qui '-------------------------- tion. Ell e slilil las asdemeurent optimistes. Ces dem iers argusauts de !'injustice de l'economie monlong terme a mesure de la sortir de l'ombre, �entent que las enormes ressources encore diale, amplifies par le diktat d'une mor_i· le tout dans un schema de developpement mexplortees dont regorge le continent, lui tion dont les enjeux font des afndialisa coherent. A ce niveau, ce qu'elle devrait eviI�I�nt u ne marge de mance veritables ' yeomen' de lajunde uvre Ires cains conter, c' es t bien l'attemssage force. J'entends . s1dF> • ••rable• v, "' ron aJout e a cela une gestion gle. par attemssage force, toute attitude de sa ne mafio: At a�uate: tout en veillant scrupuLe visage actual des relations inte part de s'aligner sur un quelconque modele, sement a la reparati n, et pla nd seco au e qu l'Afri ue on de la releve, i i P nales releg n'y aucu de l'imiter ou de le copier, comme ce M le n doute e du salut et de la que I'Afrique rattrapera le voi la pas ouvre lui ne le cas dans la plupart des decisions dans e� t du �� �8:u�, et �urrait meme prendre prosperite. Que retenir egalem le passe, et meme de nos jours. A ce sujet, ells, soc1ologue ono Cast m P uel q Man ue de mon onstat , dial. c _ ec II ecoutons Lee Kuan, le fondateur de la ville si l'on se fie a !'e . americain C#J8lld ii ecrit : xperience hi�v,:'-:'.,� de Singapour lors de la deuxieme confede 'A/ri(I' g "' ne " d'abo /'evidence, la quasi-trAB/ite rd, la Hollande A << ensu·11e"l"'utNe1 e sur Tokyo de le ranee intemationa ' puiE dans ta nou• 5 spa la France qui • • que noire n'a pas sa place Ia oi a regne jusqu'a loppement en Afrique (Jeune Afrique numeuw l'n tie du 1 Mme . . /a p� .,_ ale : mondl omie s1ec econ le, avant d'etre survelle PaSSee Par • G uti/es ro 293). ,n aJs esonn � d sont de � tagne, _ produits de base d' hui las E et aujou r� «Si /es dragons de /'Asie ont reussi une ex'.nsuffit��U� ras qui tienne s-payes, la main d'reuv� sou et biernent de nt indis cou au cuta� traordinaire percee economique, le haut Jes adm1mstrabons du pave), l'espoir samment qualifiee, et lllis. bien et bef est perc'est s, annee ces vingt demieres et cctrom/oC8leS flop ;116fflcaC8S Ceci eta parce qu'ils ont mis en pratique ces valeurs (S,ai. a ID fJOI' 12J nt d'11 ente ndons-nous ' dons bien sur qu'el/e asiatiques dont on a assez dit a a =- r. QQQ 1')6.tWWP., 1 �(Suite de lapage J I) pues>> . Ces barrieres font que l'Afrique n'a pas souverainement le contr61e sur ses pro­ pres ressources, rnais egalement ses va­ leurs cultu relles s'affaiblissent de jour en jour. Certains diront sans doute qua le pro­ blame de l'Afrique, ce sont las africains eux-memes. S'il est vrai qu'on peut sous­ crire partiellement a ce genre d'analyse, la nature des realites actuelles, nous commande de depasser ce classique, en vue de situer la problematique africaine clans une approche plus large. Si l'on est tente de condamner l'Afrique clans sa si­ tuation actuelle pour quelque motif que ce soil. une reflexion devrait nous inter­ peller et ne devrait jamais nous echap­ per. Ceux qui ont place l'Afrique clans une telle position, ceux qui lui infligent un tel traitement injuste son! les seuls res­ ponsables. Dans cat ordre d'idees, com­ ment expl iquer l'attitude de !'Occident, clans sa volonte sans cesse d'imposer sa pensee unique aux pays deja faiblas au depart, si ce n'est de les affaiblir da­ vantage. Peut--0n donner une justification au comportement des partenaires de l'Afrique, quand ils fixent les produits qui constituent ses sources de revenu? Ou se trouve l'independance politique et economique du continent quand on sail que le F.M.I. et la Banque Mondiale son! devenus les gendarmes du monde? L'Afrique porte le fardeau d'un endette­ ment qu'elle ne pourra jamais honorer. Salon plusieurs experts, cette dette qu'on qualifie d'heritage etemel, est lourde de consequences pour les generations futu­ res. Dans de telles conditions, y a-t-il place vraiment pour un avenir meilleur ? On demande a l'Afrique d'ouvrir son mar­ cha au liberalisme economique et meme au neoliberal isme s'il le faut, mais ou vonl les fruits de ces investissements. Ce qua les africains demandent ce n'est pas de suivre la lettre le modele de l'occi­ dent; certes, ils peuvent s'en inspirer mais, d'etre moins pauvres. Autrement clil, obtenir un minim um de conditions de vie qui leur permettent d'accecler un a a espace social qui inspire la <ignite. Si la monaalisation offre des possibilites considerables, elle laisse la rnajorite des populations africaines clans une precarite absolumenl intolerable comma le souligne cat infirmier africain: «Nos projets son! : de l'eau potable, de !'hy­ giene et des installations sanitaires. l'lntemet peut-il faire quelque chose pour nous». Pour qua I'Afrique emerge sur le plan international , ii est urgent de lever tou­ tes las barrieres qui minent son che­ m!" En clair, l'Afrique ne demande pas · mIeux que de lui ouvrir les portes de l'economie mondiale, en valorisant ce qu'elle fail, ce qu'elle produit. Pour cela, ii taut necessairement lui donner la part qui lui revient clans le systeme mondial. De fa�n plus explicite, ii s'agit de fixer las prix de ses produits a leur juste va­ leur. De plus, la necessite s'impose d'in­ tegrer las pays africains clans les struc­ tures economiques et polltiques actuel­ les leur permettant d'avoir voix au cha­ pitre. Ce qui passe par une responsabi­ lisation des Etats africains clans la prise en charge de leurs affaires. Cela sup­ pose egalement une reforme en profon­ deur du mode de fonctionnement des institutions qui gouvement les rapports No�ud ainsi que des mecanismes de negociation en matiere commerciale. A l'heure ou las economies sont plus que jan:iais devenues interdependantes, ou les Etats-Nations perdent leurs pou­ voirs, l'Afrique a besoin des opportuni­ tes qui lui permettent de participer plei­ nement aux prises de decisions qui lui concement d'une part, mais d'autre part, de prendre sa place sur l'echiquier mondial, en tenant compte naturelle­ ment de ses realites propres. II s'avere done evident que cela fail appel des Etats forts, non pas sur le pan de la re­ pression, rnais des Etats economique­ ment solides, qui soient en mesure d'encadrer un minimum du social. En definitive, c'est ce monde juste ayant pour toile de fond l'egalite des chances que I'Afrique a des difficultes a trouver. a Kadafi au trib un al Par Dao udi Tarek Jeudi 7 octobre 1999 Le juge Jean-Louis Brugyere, s'est ,.,__lare• co c..,.; m, . . pe1en1 pour mstru1re une plainte deposee pa r SOS ��en�ts �n� I president Kadafi pour � comphc1te � hom1c1des mvolontaires dans l'affaire du �C10 d UTA. Selon le magistrat fran�is le _ president hbyen peut etre juger en vertu des re­ gles de droit international et de la jurisprudence. Alors que cette nouvelle n'occupe que de brefs articles et entrefilets clans les medias occiden­ taux, les redactions africaines se passionnent pour cette nouvelle. Pour eux, cette action n'est pas le simple fait d'un juge mais la poursuite de la cavale contra la personne du colonel Kadafi. lls pensent que la Libya a paye sa delta en li­ vrant deux suspects a la justice hollandaise. Voici la retranscription du commentaire de Gora Gay de Radio DOUN IA a Dakar : « Pas de prescription decennale dans l'affaire de DC10 d'UTA qui a explose au-<lessus du Tenere au Niger et qui avait fait cent soixante dix morts. Le juge en charge de l'affaire Jean-Louis Brugye­ re ne desarme pas, ii va contra l'avis du parquet de Paris qui dit qua l'affaire est jugee apres la condamnation par contumace de six agents des services secrets Libyans don! le beau-frere du colonel Kadafi, qui lui n'a jamais ate inquiete au motif qu'il beneficie de l'immunite traditionnelle­ t ment accordee aux chefs d'Etats en exercice. E n e nt metta le surtout, ii n'y avait pas d'indices cause. quand L'attitude du juge parisien est paradoxale, er­ Lock de ntat l'atte de ire l'affa on sail que dans justice la a by les deux suspects ont eta livres Penal ecossaise (ii s'agit ici en fait du Tribunal benediction de la avec e) Hay La l de ona rnati Inte Kadafi. e a transfeDe plus, le seize juillet demier la Li� ns de mnl1o s cent en France plus de deux ilies �- vie­ fam les ser mni inde a s francs destine i�lion ra times prouvees par SOS Attentats, � Tnpoh. Ka­ de r leade du r ncie rejette le geste fina ines, que clout dafi qui affirmait, ii y a trois sema t• d la pag• Uj_ (Sui re Les d iffi cu ltes so nt faites p:ur etre vai rrues Par ous ma a ne lbrahim a Lorsque vous avez. decouvert la racine de votre de probleme, vous avez. fail un grand pas vers la ence sem la rme renfe eme probl t,aque solution. II y a peu de problemes que l'expesa propre solution. Cetta remarque prose ution l rience, la connaissance et la comprehension ne so la que ant import fait le londe souligne puissent resoudre. Toutefois, si on ne jette pas trows deja au creur de chaque probleme. A10rs quel est votre probleme 7 Vous pouvez Y un coup d'ceil averti sur le probleme, ii risque de paraitre beaucoup plus terrifiant qu'il ne l'est en remedier I On est presque toujours persuade d'avance qu'un realite. prooleme est en soi une tres mauvaise chose. Donnez tout de vous-meme n'en retenez rien Alora qu'au contraire un probleme peut s'averer be- Aucun {ltre humain ne devrait jamais, en aucune nefique en fail, ii l'est la plupart du temps. circonstance, abandonner la partie, regarder en Les soucis ne sont-ils pas signe de vie 7 defaitiste ses propres capacites. II se trouve en Logiquement les problemes sont signe de vie. On lui une aptitude au succes propre a sa personpourrait �eme avancer sans crainte qua plus on a nalite, qui attend le moment lui permettant de se oos P_roblemes, plus on est en vie. Celui qui a des real iser. �emes ':°�iques n'est-il pas plus vivant que Sachez ce que vous voulez et croyez que pa:M8 miserable qui en a moins ? vous pouvez l'obtenir � fa1t, noire reaction face aux problemes en dit L'un des grands secrets pour obtenir ce que .ong sur noire san e menlal e. Si nous nous plaivoulez. de la vie est de savoir ce que vous vous lriOns nous renfrognons en crian • • • I"InJus t a ti sI ' ce, et de croire qua vous pouvez l'avoir. Devoulez nous nous -1o i yons sur nous-memes nous avons mandez Dieu de vous aider et mettez-vous certa1·nemeap nt besoin d':a• de s·1 ..,.autre part nous ac- l'ceuvre de toutes vos forces. N'abandonnez ja, • u ceptons les •�r obleme . s comma etant des rouages mais la partie. Tout ce qua vous devez faire, du mecan·,sme dA la raient nous se •r • vie' en pensant qu'ils pourc'est d'essayer encore, et encore. , hauteur de l ; �t qua nous nous croyons ·1a Ceux qui perseverent accomplissen! toujours a opportuniest surement �h.Jation, alors notre sante mentale quelque chose. lls ne laissent pas les nne. es et -mem L'i rnP0 eux tes s'echapper. lls se font, pour rtant n'est-11 p . tes ? - as de faire face aux difficul- pour autrui , une grande vie, parce qu'ils sont es con�� des Principaux P . motives. La vie est pleine de posslbilit _ 01 vaille roblemes tra n O l'on 1-il - � ,':5 pas celuI dJ dition que l'on soil motive, que �e11e In COnflit P8l'Sonne1 ? L,.mcividu. a 1•·impress• ion compatent que l'on reflechisse. et info� u . kJcaiiab e ;e r, ,1 � croit tout fail Alors un seul mot foncez ! I'�s l de faire face .av,ux Problemes ordinaires de ten Tl'Ois ce. . un Pl'Ob l'eQ!es ElSsentieU pourra,e leme : l nt aider a trailer a conn�s i sance, la reflexion et la foi. r a a a a a /Suite de la page S) Myriam: Je sais � 'c'est tan­ na�r !ennuyant en �s) . m�s 11 (aut passer par�a pour elra umv�taire. Enfin ravenons au qualrieme travail (Jli consiste a P?uvoir _uti !iser les <ifferen1s log� ciels mis a ta dsposition dans les laboratoires informati"19S de cha­ �e faculte. Tu as intnt a proliter de l'horaire flexible � est propose en session et non a l'awoche des dates de remise de travaux au lis­ que de devoir faire la file et de per­ dre des points pour retard. Pepere: Bon ga suffit non. Myriam: bah! , Pepere, tu Ott,lies les deux demiers travaux: las exa­ mens et 'la guindai lle'( faire la f�te). Pour presenter tes examens, ii faut toujours awir ta carte etu­ diante sur toi. Assure-toi des documenls et l}peS d'oufils �e tu peux utiliser ciJrant l'examen et cis-toi que si !'as bien etudie et remis des travaux par­ faits, la reussite est dans la poche. Pepere: Bah, c'est facile a cire �­ Je connais deja le sixieme travail, je m'y suis awlique depuis mon amvee. en Myriam: ah bon! Et ii consists quoi? reaks ciJ _ Pepere: Pendant les b ou 8 re moi Gn au vas mid tu las jeuds et l'�rs surtout . soirs ven(ie(is Peper8, j'ai Myriam: oh oh mon on • 1811"5, � N,ez. H esl IS, res-<X)U voit a l'� . Pep�re: See ya �quant nos parents, nous nous dirigeons vars de nou­ veaux pays, de nouvelles cu ltures, des mreurs totalement cfflerentes. Au debut, c'est le choc des cultures qui nous attend, malgre notre preparation morale. Mais apres une periode d'adaptation et la distance de nos terres natal es aidant, nous nous immergeons et integrons completement noire pays d'accueil : uni­ formisation des modes, consommation de masse, ap­ plication de !'adage • : metro, boulot, dodo', le boulot representant pour nous les eludes. Vivan! l'etranger par differents moyens(bourses f c exemption attribuees par nos gouvemements res­ Nous percevons les pays dits developpes comma pectifs ; supports financiers emanant de nos families, notre bouee de sauvetage, notre demier espoir et etc),nous voulons taus achever avec succes nos elu­ sommes done tres disposes a partir. Convaindes et retoumer eventuellement en Afrique. CepenP-,en ,,, �lement a la fin de nos eludes secondaires, nous jeunes africains n'avons •un reve en tAte : partir pour l'Occldent Ce de� sir ardent de quitter nos pays respeclifs est motive par diverses raisons : la difficulte au la precarita des infrastructu res universitaires(beaucoup d'etudiants dans des salles restreintes, !'absence repetitive des professeurs impayes, etc);les problames familiaux ; les desillusions quolidiennes ou tout simplement l'envie d'aller etu<ier ailleurs. (Suite de Ia page 12) est regle entre la France et la Li­ bye » se trompait. Neanmoins le colonel sou lignait «qu'il ne fallait pas oublier ce qu'a fail la France contra la Libya au Tchad » . Kadafi rappelait que la France a abattu plusieurs avians libyens, des li­ byens ont eta tues par la DCA franyaise et qua la Libya n'a ja­ mais attaqua Paris. Mais les Li­ byans qui ont ate tues n'ont-lls pas de families ? Ne peuvent-lls pas avoir des reactions similaires celle des tran�is ? Ces interroga­ tions sont suffisantes pour dire que l'on ne peut pas oubli_er I� ce morts et qu'au-<iela de la ius� u. DIe de e cell a y des hommes ii ra ne slir e squ pre t c'es fi 5'.3 Kada et ii est pas inquiete outre mesure marts I pour prier de ton � de bon au �is tra et libyens au Tchad . ll. Niger . a a a 0 u ri dant, plus le temps passe et mal­ gre les hivers rigoureux, nous pensons generalement de moins en mains repartir dans nos pays, qui representent pour nous l'inconnu, et dont nous n'avons plus qua de brefs echos ici en Amerique du Nord. a A man humble avis, la veritable raison tient au fail que nous avons peu peu pris l'habitude de vivre un niveau relativement eleve comparativement a celui de la plupart de nos pays africains et que, nous ne sommes pas encore prels et dis­ poses tout laisser lamber pour repartir sur de nouvelles bases dans nos pays respectifs. D'aucuns avanceronl qu'il s'agit la d'un raisonnement simpliste et unilateral, mais ce n'est qu'une interpretation panni !ant d'autres ! Neanmoins, noire avenir profes­ sionnel, social et politique est-ii vraiment ici, dans les pays d'accueil ? Le fail de penser nous installer en Amerique du Nord ou dans tout autre pays occidental la fin de nos eludes universitaires, ne constitue-1-il pas plutOI une fuite en avant vers las pays du Nord, alors que nous, jeunes Africains sommes en realite les futurs balisseurs de nos pays ? a a a Albert Einstein repondait une femme qui lui demandait la dif­ ference entre le temps et l'etemite - Chere madame, je devrais consacrer tout mon temps vous l'expliquer, et ii vous faudrait une etemite pour le compren­ dre. a a - The OU cafe ? demande le gaf\X)n - je prendrai un the, dit un homme - moi aussi, dit l'autre, mais dans une tasse propre. precise-I-ii Quelques instants plus lard, le gaivon revient avec les boissons chaudes - voici vos !hes... Qui a demande la tasse propre ? - Docteur, j'ai des trous de memoire, qua dois-je faire ? - Me payer d'avance, madame ! a a in par P ierry P err etit na�ire qui le veux etre un p se ocean, immen vogue sur un les Et qui se laisse guider par flots de 1on phare lout brillant. Toutes les vagues de la mer en furie tenteront de briser nos liens d'amour, AJors que le hasard et le des1in ont deja uni nos deux creurs pour toujours. II nous taut de doux et gais sou- venirs en commun pour affronter l'avenir, M!!me si pour m'abri1er de la temp!!te tu n'as que ton petit creur m'offrir. a Enfin, je veux te dire par ces vers mon desir d'explorer ton char­ mant univers ... C'etait pour moi un joli reve de pouvoir contempler tes beaux yeux d'ebene. M ots c rois es Par Amadou Lamina Sall Ah I si nos levres se rencontrent un jour, je me delecterais du par­ furn de ton haleine. Tous les flats de la mer ant pous­ se ma pethe barque vers ton sa­ blonneux rivage. Alors si je suis Adam, tu es tve celle qui je veux offrir tout m� etre. a lls m'ont ainsi pennis de goOter le channe du sourire de ton ra­ dieux visage. Ne suis-je pas chanceux de de­ couvrir cette ile deserte, un vrai paradis terrestre ? Horizontalement - Fuyards - Chasses au loin. Interjection - Mesures. Croustille de singe - Direction. Piece - Abreviation technique. Chiffre premier - Detiennent un pouvoir mystique. Richesse materielle - Accord espagnol. Deftmt de la vilesse - Negation. Note de musique. Lady Diana - Parlie du corps. Regroupement de pays musulrnans las lords - Mis des ponls - Essai. Signe distinctif. L.angue ancienne - Du veibe litre. Carburant - evo1ue dans reconomie. Pro- nom - Lettre grecque. Fait des aiufs - Enlevee Solution du demier numero D E M O C R A T I E Verticalement - Concept de relations intemationa­ les - Est reellernent. Element - Annees folles. 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Title A name given to the resource Black Student Network Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The McGill Black Student Network Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Journal Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1999-10 Title A name given to the resource Le Tambour, Volume 4, Numéro 2 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource L'association des étudiant-e-s africain-e-es de l'UQAM Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available L'association des étudiant-e-s africain-e-es de l'UQAM Description An account of the resource Volume 4, issue 2 of "Le Tambour", a student journal created by l'association des étudiant-e-s africain-e-s de l'UQAM. Africana Studies Afro-American Studies Black Studies Student Press UQAM https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62030/archive/files/129925caea232e15db973d521226db14.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=h3cxzon-ZdxZj4Td3tOnn7J1r9o9%7Esg2emhQsO47mq4coZwRzY%7EX8AMXLn%7EjpnQb3yGYQxOEdh2iZ31vJs3GjUiMcqLGvdVKWHWCHpoC3loPGH4bmrEsbRTL3CdwNBtrdHjKkdVQzXWfbCizKX8hOTck5W660iJzl0IqMQe-K%7E5gjp7sElGtY7ljTNFo7S3nXkI-Qh5nZF9EF9b3%7ECwI8oHAl1ivmxEvMA6g6hfCnWbY3DcCxXQTUof6np58CjvWWx57VfvhjwGotqVYN2894mmD%7E4aIj9aaZFYNqOsbVg2QBPDYDNxl-aAB9G3bb8wYo8GGnyUFjos33dy%7Ec6ZvLg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM db1866c7742cbeb33f4392b655944c47 PDF Text Text E TAlvtBOUI Le journal de l'association des ctudiaot-c-s africaio-e-s de l'UQAM Volume 4, Numcro 1, Sep tembre 1999 Partir du bon pied! A lire dans ce numero Comment se loger et vivre pas cher a Mon­ treal? P. 8 a 10 IPepere a l'UQAM P. 6 Colophonie ou francopho­ nie? P. 11 Pourquoi la femme croise ��� ses jambes ... ? P. 12 ,,,.,. DB 10Mf14B POU UI #61M41to PltOCNA�II: a, O111011H .4 l1NOO 1a1tt1s Ml<S pawONr "'08 toxtos pw All�tl l'adrossa 8141.,.w.to: ldtl#fSo141@ADtlltCtil.to-. Vol<Bpowoz Ulctl-11141 Ml<B los port•,,,. fHIISO-"" local DS.3!!/. No..Stla pas 1111 l,s MIOflstr• 8141 dlsq...ttos IOl48 14>,IMI word o" R11. Marq..a 1,'0S M#t lit ptOMO#t al,uJ 'I"° ...otro fflflltito do ttilop4oM. �I� � ;:-. 2 Le TA½B<9_UR _ . ·- _ _ _ _. _ __ . _ c,n,1e Eyoum Q Vie associative Le mot de l'executif IJ TAMRQUR l} la le mot Oe 'exetutif P. 2 Editorial Edrtori.al _ _ _ P. 4 Sur le campus ue ce soit a Yaounde, Montreal, Paris, Abidjan ou ailleurs sur la planete, de plus en plus de personnes quittent leur terre de naissance pour aller chercher ailleurs les flammes de la connaissance. Cet ailleurs c'est pour nous Montreal, precisement l'UQAM et en tant qu'Africains, l'un de nos defis majeurs est de nous regrouper afin de rebatir notre association. Cessons de marcher en rangs dsperses comme cela a eta le cas par le passe. En ce debut de session, ii m'a ate donne de constater et ce avec beaucoup de joie et de fierte, que nous sommes nombreux clans cette institution et que pour une fois, que nous soyons du Nord ou du Sud du Sahara noire interet a ete le LfTAMB0UR Le journal de !'association des ctudiant.. africains de l'UQAM Vol 4. 1111111e10 I. lep1e111�1e 1999. lle11111el de l'AIEAUQAM Pou, 10111e1 111gge1110111 011 con1111e111,111e1. e1 pour 110111 llue p.11ve1111 vo1 .1111cle1 Ad, em elern 011,que : le1.1111bou1@ho1n1.11l.com Adrme :C.11e po11.1le 8888, lncc1111.1le A, llonneJI, Qnebec HJ( JPB Pw,11011 j. A. Dmve. J20 l1e-(a1he1111e E11 locll D1-311 I lelephone: 987 lOOO po11e 7988# f.11 :514 • 987 l611 l,1.1ge • 1000 e1e111pl.111e1. Red.1C1e111 eu chef : (y1 1lle Eyoum Eq111pe de Red.1c11011 : Ebo11111 Boullg.1. (y11lle Eyo11111. tLlhe len .1 f.111. JeJ11-Pie11e G.111m11 , Ont11 M,111011111, l.1foe Koml.1 N111epe. . An11do11 L.i111111e l.111 (011rn1011 : (hr1\ll.111 Elr1l1.1. (y11lle fyoum l11fog1.1pl11e: (y11lle. fyoum 11111111 .111011: D.1011d 1 D1011gue Relmo111 p11blrque1 : f11.1ne Habumnl, Hlbm / • D1.1110 0111 coll.1bo1e ,l ce 1111111e10 : Hy,1.1111 Endungo. Audre D,kombe Depo1 leg.ii . B1bl101heque N.1110111le du Quebec Lei t!IIEI 11gne1 1t'eng.1ge111 que l.1 re1po1111b1l11e de le1111 .1111eu11. Reproduc11011 pe111111e .wee 111e1111011 e1phc11e de l.1 10111ce. me�e �ur noire associali �n, �ur qu:el �e vive enfin! Cependant a ��,t �lorable que �olre Int �ret se 11�1� uniquement au kiOS<lJe epIsod1que de la rentree. II do1t se concreliser par une implication reelle clans les aclivites de !'association car sans activites nous ne sommes rien mais aussi, ii n'y a point d'activites sans implication sans participation des membres; comme on le dit si bien, une bri;._ dille ne saurait elle seule faire un fagot de bois! C'est ensemble au sein de !'association que nous devons relever le deli de noire in­ tegration clans !'institution qui nous accueille et aU-Oela, dans cette ville qui nous a ouvert ses bras. Le Tambour vous y aide cfailleurs a !ravers son dossier du mois. un de plus! . comma par sur votre partic•1pation .._•� En ce debut de session je compte OI"' ,.,,_ · es ! I son • et suggesfions . _.., • •-«le passe' vos remarques, cntiques n ...,.,.ne 1""" qu nfant I' Al. e , nues. Comme on le dt si bien en ,..n�u� ute, L13 una comm tient pas seulement a ses parents mais a toute lam iorer. travai ons a ramel Tambour c'est aussi volre enfanL ensemble A toutes et a tous, bon debut de session! 0 Par Barry Ibrahim■ Sary Kan• dia President par interim Dossier Comment vivre pas cher a Montreal? a Toutefois, s'integrer ne veut point dre se perdre ni se confondre clans la masse car, en cette fin de siecle de plus en plus marquee par la libre circulation des personn0S et du savoir, Mre etudiant etranger clans un contexte de mondialisation ou, une culture semble dominer toutes les autres, c'est dire aux autres sa connaissance d.J monde. C'est partager avec ceux qui nous entourenL c'est echang� nos experiences et nos differences, sortir de nos ghettos afin de bn­ ser les murs de !'ignorance. .. . Dans un monde ou l'avenir repose sur l'information et la capaate a s'adapter, �Ire etudiant etranger aujourd'hui ici ou ailleurs, c'est allE:'" vars les aulres pour mieux se connaitre et les connaitre afin de bMir des ponts vers demain. . . . . . . Que nous soyons africains, europeens, amen�ns o� as1atiques le autres les defi est le meme pour nous tous : apprendre a connaItre ur de son peu­ pour mieux vivre demain. C'est aussi Atre ambassade • nple de sa culture clans sa terre d'accueil que d'Atre etud'I8�t etra 'est ' s c ger.' c'est partager avec les autres ses raves et ses asp1·ration �8tre• vivre sa difference clans l'unite _afin que nous �ions , st la l e 8 etudiants d'ici ou la pour elre s1mplement des etudants. � n pas seussIo d'expre organe .,Ire : I' r6Ie que veut jouer Le Tambour ,,, . La est nolament des etudiants africains mais de taus les etudiai.-s• ..,J-ft ""' ="'"""'c nos s· • everon rel la • nous que tre mission et c'est ensemble ., ,un 18.,.�. ,. 'f-' ralt se e n ur vous son! ouvertes car sans vous, Le Tambo P.6 Pepere a l'UQAM a PP. 8&9 / P. 10 Comment se lager Montreal? Opinion Que veulent-ils done? P.5 Colophonie ou francophonie? P. 11 Chars etudiants boriour ! rn P. 12 autant de nouveaux visages <JJi aimereient etre merrues, wire P. 13 meme participer aux activites de l'ASEAUQAM. Pour preparer le terrain et faciliter !'integration pour ces nouveaux memxes, l'asso­ Pourquoi la femme croise ses jambes Le billet du mois Le meilleur est a venir . . C'est le debut de session et c'est un reel plaislr de savcir qu'il ya Culture ciation prevoit des activites, (JJi rentrent clans le cacte <iJ mandet <iJ Temps mort Saveurs cfAfrique P. 14 bureau actual, et qli je le �e. etait ctorganiser las elections en Poeme P. 15 bonne et due forme. Pour cela, nous avons prew: Mots croises P . 15 • D'organiser une activite ctaccueil des nouveaux menaes car ce sont aux les futurs arigeants de l'ASEAUOAM, en organi­ **************************** ***** * * � �� � � �-- * : ���£a� e...,.: ** � �......,.., �- ....._ -•· . . ' ** * **************************** ***** /,'.J l:.Lm.e-. : � a.. 0)'L,,.a � «dw. P'" a=. 0....- : : d � e.-1: d to..u,. ! qu .a.n.e. 0 d. lo..,. • OOn<\C. � : sant un cocklail-Accueil • D'organiser une assermlee ger,erale de dscussion et de pn> positions de changements des statuts de l'ASEAUQAM, car les statuts actuals fnlinent !'evolution normals dont rassocialian �-- .. :�Z::-:- ' ' . tot ���� eel�� la�� aid��; ·lricisernentte 30 � mois de septen'tlre; cela nous evttera �nsi ·de�•1 rbt' • Et finalement des elections qu devraienl permettre 11nstaUation • l , '' des c_andi,da�res qii s'avereraient Ires bonnes. O\l!I9, las' d'une BIJlipe definitiva, coot��� sbrtuts. auront la responsabilite de faire eux mooies leur � 8l4)l8S • ,• Par Cyrille Eyoum /'}�tf:*i¾1t;:i:'f.'. , • '\� \ , En �. , -� • / we w ban deroulE1Mnt des electicns,- le bureau actuel implore· ··\ , •, • '.\ .,• ' :�:·� r· , • . ' • • . . .. ' -· .',. ·., ; ·' . _., '• ·-:. . '::, .. �: ' ·, las � inte� faire �r leUJ'S cancldalures, le plus .. a • • �dais. des etudiants. 1 •• ,. ...• ' ' En souhaitant_bonne chance a la future equipe, agrecEle lecbn. O "ous a-v-ez:: des CO!ITIDU'i111�a'lltal­ res a faire, des criiltti!iqM<es, des propositions cl' OU C a a □ -v-oir cau loccal a a 3000 poste 7988 Si -v-ous etes DROil QUEBECOIS ETCANADIEN DE L'IMMIGRATION DEPUIS 1982 751 AVENUE OUTREMONT a □ Paradoxalement ces memes manitous occidentaux dont ceux q.ii etaient Moncion ne sont-ils pas eux qui financent et soutiennent les regimes autorilaires dans le Tiers-monde et en Afrique notan­ ment au nom, de leurs intemts? Ne sont-ils pas les mamas qui 1'>­ puient le FMI et la Banque mondiale dans leur Programme dAjuste­ ment Structural et qui, obligent les Etats couper clans les depenses de sante et deducation et mettre sur pied de milliers de travail­ leurs au nom dune saine gestion alin, de s'assurer du rentxiurse­ ment de leurs creances? Alors pourquoi cette hypocrisie? Ce mo111lisme et eel humanisme mensonge!'? Pourquoi vouloir irfl)OS81' au monde sa fa�n de voir les choses? a a w Assurement, tant et aussl longtemps que les peuples Sud n'a.i­ ront pas le minim1.m pour vivre dignement en sante et bien eci.J­ ques, tant que le travail sera une denree rare et que les dirigeants du Nord comma du Sud brilleront pas leur hypocrisie aux yew: monde, les Droits de !'Homme ne seront jamais qu'un vain concept u �e utopia pour I � P914>les li.J Sud et un fonds de commerce pour b1en des ONG. Mais aussi, la situation economique aidant, ils seroot de plus en plus norrbreux tenter le tout pour le tout et cogner aux portes de l'Occident pour revendiquer leur aoit la �e pliscµi delinitivement something must be wrong somewhere/ O w nolog ie en-v-oyez::-nous un letaml>our@hotmail.co...-. a a branche tech­ courriel a: a a a pcassez: nous <>u cappelez:: nous au 987- □ a a a a ctiv-ites DS-3221 a a a a cl'ev-enements? N'hesitez:: peas, a Au demier sommet de la Francophonie Moncion, ii etait question et ate nous a donne voir de toutes les couleurs. En l'espace des roils de la personne, ces droits inalienables et intangibles rede quelques mois, de milliers de clandestins chinois ont eta connus a tout sire humain. Eh oui! Ces arretes aux portes du Canada; en Belgique deux jeu____-, milliers de gens qui frappent aux portes de __d __ __ _rs __m_i_ _s nes adolescents guineens trouves morts dans le train ,....Ce e ge n s ll ie • • au monde une Ietr- l'Occident veulent simplement que l'on a x f d'atterrissage d'un avion ont Ia1sse u 1 r pp e t u p o respecle leurs droits : droit !'education, n _ a Ire adressee aux dirigeants de !'Europe. Ailleurs, en q droit la sante, droit un travail ... en un Afrique on pane de ces camerounaises qui cherchent te s d e l"Occ1d en t mot ils veulent qu'on respecte leur droit cors et eris des blancs afin daller vivre avec eux ail- veu len t s imp lem en t la vie. Pour cela, ils sont p�ts tout : les leurs, de preference en Occident Des histoires et d'au- qu e l'on re sp e cte uns comma les Chinois s'endetter et Ires qui defrayent les chroniques, sans paner de ces leurs dro its ••• payer des milliers de dollars, les autres, a milliers de refugies repousses chaque jour dans les risquer leur vie pour avoir droit l'exisposies frontieres des pays dis developpes. Mais que lance. En effet, que sont les roils de l'Homme tant dames Moncveulent done ces milliers de gens qui fuient leur terre natale? ion si ce n'est le droit !'education laquelle plus de 70% de la po­ pulation dans les pays du Tiers-monde n'a pas acces; le droit la sante ou encore celui un travail decent et honnete pour gagner sa vie? Ne doit-on voir les roils de !'Homme que sous leur aspect poli­ DIANE BELANGER tique de la libre expression, de la libre association et j'en passe comma, l'ont bien voulu nous faire croire les ONG, les medias et les AVOCATE chefs d'Etats et de gowemement reunis Moncion? SITE INTERNET www.bewiger-41uebec.com ADRESSE h£CTRONIQUE immigllltionllbelanger-41uebec.com a a a �16pnere a1 l'UQA Pepe re � Myriam: T'as tout pige. Tu as deja pense que comma tu habites loin de l'UOAM, ii te faut prendre le bus, le metro, et le balader toute lajoumee a l'UQAM avec !es bouquins, ton lunch, ton manteau, ton bonnet, tes bottes a l'epreuve des -40°C? Par L. Myriam Endungo Episode 1 : Bienvenue a l'UQAM Pepere. Pepere est un etudiant 6tranger qui vient d'arriver au Quebec. 11 s'est inscrit a l'UQAM pour cette session d'autoaina 1999 et a suivi las conseils du Tambour pour se trouver un logement et vivre pas cher a Montr eal. C'est la rentne ii rend a l'universite pour remplir une serie de fonnalites. Pepere n'a pas encore de difficultes avec le registrariat ii �-�e cha justs a obtenir las outils necessaires a sa reussite et Myriam l'y aide. Myriam: A/ors tu vois Pepere, la premiere chose a obtenir a l'UQAM, c'est ta carte detuciant Carte-UQAM. Pour l'obtenir, ii faut le rendre au local AM-850. Tu devras faire une photo, alors fais-toi beau car elle se collera a ta carte pendant tout ton sejour a l'UQAM. Cetta carte permet aux instances de l'universite de !'identifier g�ce a la photo et au code permanent qui y sont imprimes. Autant, memoriser ce demier, car ya !'arrive surement de perdre ou doublier ton portefeuille. Pepere: Oui surtout quand ii faut dealer avec plusieurs petites amiss (rires ... ) Myriam: En passan� au Quebec, on dit blondes. Entin, elle le permettra aussi de payer une serie de biens et services comma un repas dans certai­ nes cantines et disbibuteurs, des pho­ tocopies a moitie prix, une impression clans les laboratoires dinformatique et l'acces a b ien d'autres services et pro­ grammes estudiantins. Pepere: Je peux payer les entrees pour les danseuses sur la rue sainte Catherine? Myriam: Pepere, avec cette carte, tu peux t'inscrire a un cours de danse au centre sportif, mais, les danseuses demi tu me panes pratiquent plutcit un autre sport , et elles le prati­ quent hors de l'UOAM. Bon ben, ce n'est pas lout Pepere. Avec ta carte UQAM tu peux egalement obtenir l'agenda de l'UOAM. Dans cet agenda, tu pour- Pepere (sourit) : Des exercices physiques? Myriam: Soyons serieux Pepere, ce sont les cours notes E sur ta facture. Tu devrais tout le temps avoir ton agenda avec toi, pour y noter tes rendez-vous, tes notabene et les numeros des gens qui t'interessent. ��= Myri;m: Oui j'avais vu la mini i� �· mais j'espere que tu as bien.lu (e fasacule sur le harcelement sexuel glrsse �n� (011 agenda ok? Cet agenda est sense I arder dans ta vie estudianline. Comme un caJen­ rtantes drier, ii le rappelle les dates .illlP? a o ripb dinsc tes i l � pour les moda des 51 gramme ou a un cours. Et P�1�· . noo vis de n, ptio problemes d'inscri .� d !rn� e tes, •••tu Y trouveras. une sen anicroch85· es c des n o ti ges lions utiles a la des­ nt un: bonne L'agenda donne egaleme et es u i cription des infrastrucl��Y� uoi 58 q de I lles nne nisalio � orga the nn aby e ' retrouver dans c ! ? es ya• pepere Myriam: Tu me resum n. a enda me re re: J'ai compn�, ceI es et sur a� Pepe • lemes us • seigne sur les moyens de resoudre les prob ct pour avorr de pr ta • • n co en qur, qu01, quand et comment entrer amples renseignements. :a_ ° d Pepere: Dis on va me prendre pour un marchand ambulant ! Myriam: Tiens voici le local des vestiaires (local RM�5�). Tu peux obtenir un easier pour 20$, si tu n'as pas fais de deg�ls a la fin des deux sessions, on le rembourse 10$. Pepere: Myriam rnoije ne fais pas de degats je suis degat. Myriam: hahaha ! ...Viens on continue la vi site. Tu le sens plus lager apres le passage aux vestiaires? Au fail, a ton premier cours, ton professeur vous a- t- ii remis un syllabus ? ras inscrire l'horai re de tes cours et seances dexercices. Pepere (sourit en regardant une fille passer) l'U QAM. (su i_te) Pepere: Oui mais les notes de cours au Quebec son! infimes. Myriam: Non Pepere, ici, un syllabus ce n'esl pa� des notes � cours, mais plutot, un resume des points necessar.res au _bon derou­ lement du cours. II enonce les livres et lectures necessarres, les dates et ponderation des travaux et exarnens. Pepere: Oui etje n'ai pas compris, au Quebec on vote l'acceptation la dscussion de l'agenda et de la ponderation des examens et, en plus, un temoin signe avec le professeur au nom de la classe. ou Myriam: Eh oui ! C'est la democratie �. Bon ben ! On se revoit au cours prochain. Pepere: Adios caramia ! O le comite UQAM-Amerique centrale et la Brigade Quebec-Cuba vous invitent a une f6te dansante en hommage a Ernesto Guevera Le Che \ii '·' Date: Samedi 09 Octobre 1999 a partir de 20h30 Lieu: 429, rue Viger est, metro Champs-de-Mars 8$ 6$ a la porte a l'avance Pour toute information supplementaire Appelez au 987-3794 ou passez au local DS3225 �II s L UAlvfnO UJ_< ___ _ � C o m m e n t v i v re P ar L. Myriam Endung o � as cner a M o n t rn a � HOLA CH ICAS T CH ICOS DE AFRICAI Al o rs comme nt se sont de roulees vos vaca nc es? Yous avez bl en depense votre argent 7 J .,,ima- C e qui• ta·t • minimum payes' "tl'OUS n'avez 1 g i- n e que ou1. I que Ies fra•is d e scolante P us grand chose en poch e. Comm e vous n e pouvez pas trapper la pierre (ex ... ression za·iro· e ris paur le . .. te rm e Jaber) 11 vous taut ut1hs r des tuyaux pour pouvoir alimenter wo�re vie M o ntreal. Ala rs, � nous vous prop ose rans d'a pphquer le plan B de l a deb rouille. CibO@IIDS 'lil'abord le prob..me an est tauche mais ii nous taut avoi r un toit confortabl e , manger, inloll'mali', s'lhlabiller, et pou r�uai pas dragu er... La vie est b elle lorsque l'on sa it appliquer l'artlcQc 1 5. fiB@ll's entrons dans le Yif du suJet. a COMMENT MANGER PAS CHER A MONTREAL? M ontreal, ville d'abondance, regorge d'une multitude de marches mulliculturels. Les �ebecois ne voyagent peut-etre pas beaucoup outre-mer mais, ils savent apprecier les denrees de leurs visiteurs et des quelques mets qu'ils ont pu decou­ vrir dans les petits restos montrealais. De plus, de fortes communautes quebecoises d'origine autre qu'eu­ ropeenne ont amene avec elles le soleil de la table ... Rian d'eton­ nant done de trouver dans certains supermarches comma Poivre et Se/, Metro, /GA, ... des denrees exotiques telles les bananas plan­ tains, les mangues... Vous avez egalement une serie d'epiceries (depanneurs) typique­ ment exotiques dans les quartiers abondance ethnoculturelles : - le quartier haitien et latino vers Rosemont - Belanger - Jean-Talon et Anjou, - le quartier ethno-culturel par excellence, C6tes-des-Neiges, ou l'on retrouve les maghrebins, les juifs et beaucoup de gens des Carai­ bes. - la rue St-Laurent trone le quartier chinois. - le metro Pare ou quelques africains et indiens ont fonde leur commerce. a ou Alors moi, je vous conseille vivement le marche Jean-Talon pour les legumes et feculents. Faites !'experience, prenez un gros sac de sport, allez au magasin Sa­ mifruit Inc ( marche Jean-Talon ) et je parie que vous le remplirez avec 25$ en moyenne. II vous faudra accepter de manger un peu plus europeen car on y trouve pas les feuilles de manioc (cassavas), le bitekuteku ou tout autre denree typiquement regionale d'Afrique. II ne suffit pas non plus cfacheter la quantile, ii faudrait egalement que cfen­ ces denrees arrivent fraiches dans vos estomacs la recherche zymes instructives. Pourquoi pas appliquer le plan B! ireaux; les 1a. ·,re Consacrer une joumee couper ses legumes en mo p1asnq113. Le� en s t enan t con des bouillir ou non et les verser dans , de yeourt 8 ne contenants peuvent etre des anciens pots de margari de glace... . . le refn�teur, toum9" Si vous n'avez pas assez de place dans �otre !'ail de � u au bouton de contr6Ie de temperature du fngo . � �-le) . touiours viae, c1 nt ueme pratiq est u'il l'espace gagne puisq a a OS VEINES HOIJS DANS N LE SANG GUERRIER D'AFRIQUE QUI COULE E? CHE D'ACCEPTER UNE D/ETE VEGETARIENN . . Michel, me· tro B e• 1 anger/Saint Alors je vous propose /asenza ( com . Jean Talon, bus 95) oeuxieme expe­ . . men r a Cette boucherie italienne est un• mira cle50 '"· 81 sans maJYJ8 course de $ · ll·18 • t,oSP ta a moIs �� rience, tenir au moins deux e peu son ter quelqu de pore, bien sur, condition de limi africaine. se;A MAIS NOUS EN TANT QU'ETUDIANTS AFRICAJNS OU POI/VONS NOUS NOUS PROCURER DU " PAS n CHER CAR NOTRE CONDITION PRECAJRE NOUS EMPECHE MEME DE MANGER CACHERE. EJJPl­ a n'y perdrez nen. Alers tentez le coup vous on dans ce cas,_ vous achetez des sacs de li d'applica est L plan Le e magas1n • . olasliques vendus dan� ce mern paquets de VJandes. Par paquet : 2 Rentre la maison, faItes des de cinde, une quinzaine de gesiers, ou poulet de pilons 2 , tranches ou veau ... enfin, faites une douzaine de cubes de b<Euf, agneau lles. nouve des cirez m'en Vous gout votre t Les quarliers Jean-Talon et Cotes-des-Neiges grouillent egalemen de boucheries halal si votre religion prime dans votre vie. a a LES FRUITS DE LA PECHE VOUS FONT DEFAUT1 oeux magasins peuvent vous offrir un flots de nageoires et d'ecail­ les du pays. Le marche Ganakhan (pres du metro Pare J vous cxlre ses surgeles en grosse quantile ainsi que ses poissons seches et sales. La Poissonnerie vous offre des fruits de la mer allant des tilapias aux crevettes. COMMENT SE SOIGNER PAS CHER A MONTREAL? C'est simple. II suffit d'aller au CLSC des faubourgs rue Sanguine! (pres du Centre Sportif de l'UQAM). 11s remplissent le fonnulaire d'assurance-maladie pour vous et le font paivenir bon port. Vous n'avez egalement plus de soucis vous faire quant au paiement im­ mediat de cette visite medicale. a a COMMENT DRAGUER PAS CHER ? a Offrez un diner maisen votre Mur blonde ou chum. Si ce n'est pas votre fort opter pour le plan E, acheter en associa­ tion avec votre gang, ce livre.......... vous y trouverez une serie de tickets de reduction pour dverses activites de divertissement Mon­ treal, restos incius. �o�s avez. egalement des cinemas qui vous offrent une immersion cmematographique 2.50$. La panoplie de boites africaines qui vous font des speciaux tel Le keur gratuit le dimanche pour la gent feminine sera un bon terrain de defoulement Apparence oblige , si vous etes boutonneux et que vous ne pouvez �t�r pour le roacutane qui fail ravage depuis son accession au ter­ nto1re quebecois, je vous propose un savon pas cher chez Jean Coutu. II s'appelle Terra Nostra : vitamine E et Aloes (� marche, je su,s votre cobaye). a a COMMENT SAPER PAS CHER SUR MONTREAL? 1 nous fa� ccepter que le temps et la crise combines aux gouts � _ des quebeco,s nous imposent d'oublier les grandes marques italien­ nes et fran�ises. �ors ie vous propose de saper local apres tout, les quebecois tou­ es c?�leurs confondues sent mignons vetus leur mode (j'affinne). . • • Tro1s1eme expene nce, poussez les portes de ces quelques maga. sms· le depo ' ·1 Le Ch"t • . " eau s,·1ue au metro Namur (ligne orange) et le ciip:01 Bedo ( com Saint-Joseph et Saint-Laurent pres du metro Lau- a ner). Les magasins de chaussures suivants : le dep{>t Ndo sur Mont-Royal l'Ouest (metro Mont-Royal) , le centre de liquidation de chaussues (5643 Cote-des-Neiges) et le • 103 • sur Mont-Royal Est (coin Colo­ niale, metro Mont-Royal ). a Et si vous avez vraiment le goat de saper haute couture, saper africain nous allons convaincre nos compatriotes Katoucha, Azzedin Alaia, Al­ phadi et autres s'associer pour investir dans un magasin COITITiun Montreal . Pourquoi pas ? a a COMMENT MEUBLER SON TOIT PAS CHER? Mon chouchou s'appelle Entrade Verdun. J'avoue etre quelques fois infidels ce magasin mais ii m'a souvent depanner lors de mes deme­ nagements. Andre et son epouse vous offrent avec l'hurneur accueillante cil Que­ bec de nombreux meubles et objets uliles meubler votre vie . Si les brocantes et les secondes mains ne vous inspirent pas le mepris bien sur. Quatrieme experience, allez acheter un jeu de societe pour 5$ , un set de cuisine ou un matelas pour au moins 50$, des lurrinaires pour 5$, des ordinateurs... a a Vous avez egalement le Village des Valeurs, magasin typiquement quebecois a mon avis, sans compter l'Armee du Salut( voir les actes­ ses dans le bollin telephonique ). a Les magasins 1 dollar comma le Do/larama sent les caves d'Ali Ba­ ba visiter. Vous y trouverez une multitude d'objets de premiere utili­ te, decoratifs et divertissants. a Al JE FAIT LE TOUR DE LA QUESTION? Non, Montreal est tellement grand. Tout le monde n'est peut Aire pas inspire comme je le suis se balader moins 40 degres tout comma en pleine canicule afin de decouvrir les tresors qui font le channe de cette grande ville. Bien le bonjou,. du Quebec. (Le Quebec vous di! bonjour) O a a Glossaire. Article 15, debrouillez-vous ! (di.xii Mobutu), D comma debrouille (congolais,ex-zaire) Plan B, plan inspire de la famille bagula (Congo, ex-zaire). Plan L, man plan (cote Afrique: Congo, ex-zaire). Plan E, inspiration d'Eveda (Haili). Blonde :petite amie (quebecois) Chum : idem pour homme (quebecois) Gang : la bande d'amis Saper : s'habiller chic (congolais, ex-zaire) Ce! article est paru pour la premiere fois dans le Vr:,. 3 Numero 1 de Septembre 1998. �C om m ent se loger- a M ontreal.? a N utepe par z ato e Koml t'un d es obstacles majeurs que rencontre un etranger qui va sejoumer dans une ville pour une lo ngue periode est bien de s tro uver un toit en dehors des hotels. Les etudiants etrangers n'echappent bien sQr pas cette regle et cet effet, nous essayero� autant que faire se peut de vous loger a bon compte. a mains d'avoir de la famille ou des connaissances, se lo­ ger a Montreal peut parfois relever dune gageure pour l'etranger nowellement arrive en ville surtout s'il est etudant Avant toute chose, ii taut se reserver une marge budgetaire pour le layer et surtout savoir ce que l'on recherche comma logernent En outre, ii taut tenir compte de la proximite des services ( banque, supermar­ che ou centre dachats, CLSC..), de la proximite de l'etablissement frequente ainsi que de celle des moyens de transport notamment l'autobus et le metro. Dependant du budget alloue au layer et salon que l'on est un leve­ tard, ii taut savoir que la plupart des logements a proximite des uni­ versites ou au centre-ville sont d'un cout un peu plus sieve. Cela dl pour celui debarque nowellernent dans la ville et qui, n'a pas de parents ou de connaissances chez qui lager, les residences universitaires restent un choix privilegie a cause de leur proximite avec l'universite et des services qui y sont offerts. Pour ceux qui ne peuvent se payer une chambre aux residences, ii y a le YMCA ou bien las immeubles louant des chambres a la semaine ou au mois, ideales pour ceux qui veulent juste prendre le pouls de la vie mon­ trealaise avant damenager tout seul. Cependant, l'un des inconve­ nients de ces chambres est sowent le manque de cuisine ou de toi­ lettes privees. Toutefois avant d'ernmenager, ii taut chercher et .,;sitar et la recher­ che d'un �rternent se fail de plus d'une fay0n peu imports, qua l'on veLille vivre seul, sous-louer ou partager un logemenl L'une des fay0ns est de consulter les offres de logement affichees sur les ba- a billards de l'universite ou, de passer au Service a la vie etudante ( DS-21 1 0 ou DS-2250). L'on peut egalement consulter las joumaux Voir, lei, Hour ou Mirror disponibles gratuitement dans las stations de metro ou simplement consulter le journal La Presse a la section annonces. Par ailleurs, ii taut decider de la grandeur du logement recherche et s'assurer qu'il est meuble ou non et qua, l'electricite et le chauffage sont inclus dans le montant du layer. Un appartement peut etre moo­ _ _ LETAH Bo uu , , c o loph o n ie ou . . . Par Cyrille Eyoum A _ op,"'""' U fra ncophonie? ne fois encore, on vient dassister plans en temoigne. blias et entretenuas etaient la . C'ast vraiment au ballet traditionnel des grandes Je me demande si ces joumalistas ont fail dommage qu'ils n'ont pas pu aider plus las peu­ rencontres au sommet de l'Hypo- expres OU, c'esl de I' ignorance a propos de plas souffrants et surtout, la jeunesse .,,;ctime et la la realite de la dictature en Afrique. Mais une sacrifiee au profit du maintien de ces cictatures. crisie, je nomme le sommet de franco­ a­ joum les s, Mais lout n'ast pas perdu, je drais Hela phonie. ���S."'-"'-�N���'- meme un pas a ete franchi. A l'olistes canadiens sont pas­ (":�� du � 1 8 siecle, je ne �s plus a cote de la realite du � C 'est vra iment dommage qu'ils n'ont pas p u aider _ la Vlolence doit Aire l_ arme que probleme de la dctature sse J , s rt s eu � pl u les p ples ouffrants et s u out la eune , et, du non respect des ci contra ces ctatures .Pu1&µ1 I .1nc, VI·ct·1me et sa crifi ee • a u profit du maI ntien de c- di c- � ormati � f droits de l'homme par cer­ ,,. on peut circular dun Clditains pays membres sur­ \ tatures nent a un autre Ires rapidement Jes V,.,e--;�r, tout des pays d'Afrique. ��.;.;,,,�.;.��t,l>�;,t���� mefaits, les abus et las atrocites de Le simple fail qu'ils n'aient ces dictateurs seront mis a nu pas fail mention de ce que, c'est la France chose est claire, ils se sont attaques aux d'heure en heure ; et las sanctions , las mises a qui est a l'origine de ces dictatures, qu'elle apprentis sorciers lands que, ceux a qui l'ecart et dautres formas de mise en q.iarantaine les entretient et les soutient sur taus les (Suite page 13) profile cette dictature, ceux qui las ant eta- ses Jf ree 'i ble et tout cornpris surtout pour les 1 ½ et les 2 ½ auxquels cas, taus F o n d a t i o n M a th ie u D a c o s ta inclus dans le layer. Dans certains cas l'appartement peut �Ire semi­ Portrait d'un organisme axe sur votre futur les meubles son! foumis et l'electricite ainsi que le chauffage sont meuble ( poele et frigidaire) surtout pour Jes 2 ½ et las 3. Autre­ ment l'electricite et le chauffage son! aux frais du locataire, ce dont ii faut tenir compte pour les mois d'hiver. Dans certains immeubles des laveuses et secheuses son! disponibles moyennant quelques pieces, dans le cas contraire, ii faut recourir aux etablissements spe­ cialises ou faire soi-merne sa lessive. , • I • n·1 qui deterEn terminant, ii taut toujours s'assurer d avo,r un ba"' ec ations de chaque mine las conci tions de location ainsi que les oblig proche du centre­ partie et surtout, ne pas oublier que plus l'on esl ville, plus char sera le layer ... Heureuse chasse et bonne chance! 0 I� Dorte-parole respecte dans son milieu, la .J. corporation de developpement d'affai­ res Mathieu Da Costa est un organisme a but non lucratif, qui a pour mission de conbi­ �uer de fac;on durable au developpement econam,_que de la communaute noir e au Quebec. SES OBJECTI FS • Soutt� nir le dem arra ge et l'exp ansion des n f �� pnses de la Com mun aute Noire en leur acilltant l' acces aux out ils de fina ncemen t . • Prorm uvo,r • 1·espnt• d , entre preuna riat et la . 1orrn atio n en adm inis trati on des affaires a11ec ' a p a rticipation des enlre prise s prive es el n,- u b.il'que s, •et favonser la crea tion d'em�,s par tou tes mesure s approp riee s. • Developno . . ..�r un I eade rsh1p econo mique ereer un rese au d"a ffaires entre la comm�- naute noire et le monde des affaires et renforcer sa credibilite aupres des institutions financieres. - Favoriser le p arrainage et l'encadrement des entrepreneurs par des gens d'affaires. ASSISTA NCE FINA NCIERE Deux types d'assislance financiere sont offerts: - Des cautionnemenls de prels commerciaux ou de marges de credit de mame nature accor­ des par des institutions financieres. - Des prets de financement d'un montant maxi­ mal de soixante-quinze mille dollars (75,000$$) et comportant les suretes mobilieres eUou im­ mobilieres d'usage. L'assista nce financiere consentie par la Corpo­ ration s'adresse autant aux entreprises enregis­ trees qu'aux entreprises incorporees. Eire ciloyen canadien au resident pennanent issu de la Communaute Noire et avoir au moins 18 ans. Resi­ der au Quebec depuis plus de deux (2) ans; avoir un projel d'affaires. lnvestir une mise de fonds personnel d' au mains egale a 1 0% des besoins financiers totaux. Travailler a temps complel au sein de l'entreprise. S'en­ gager a suivre une formation minimale en gestion aupres d'une institution reconnue par le Gouvernemenl du Quebec. Avoir son siege so­ cial el sa principale place d'affaires au Quebec. CONDITIONS D'ADMISSI BILITE OON�36Z-UUAR I/OS Pll0167S 67 :,u 1/0US OOM3SIWN1 UUIR UPUJ_AnON7" . Pour d plus m pl es informati ons: Corporation de developpement d'affaires Mathieu Da Costa 5056,,Cote des Neiges, slite 401 � on M t/ eaJ, Quebec H3V 1G6 Tel: (514) 344-6672 Fax: (514) 344-9991 �• 12 - - LE TA}vfBOU R F> o u rq u o 1 ■ Par Andre Dikombe la - fe m m e . l uUtt , -e, C rO IS 8 S 9S ja m bes . I Le m e i l l e u r ••? • Savez-vous pourquoi la femme croise ses jambes ou encore rabat sa jupe ou son pagn e 1ors• qu 'e IIe s ' asseo1 ?. C erta ·ms d'iront que c' est pour cacher ses dessou s des · ets regards ind 1scr · • • , M · a& a1s vo1c1· 1a vra1e raison. Peut•1:Lre. ...I etait une fois, ii y a Ires longtemps du cote de l'Afrique da ns " un village nomme Niabazaoukrou. En ce temps-la, les horn­ mes et les animaux se cotoyaient et parlaient le meme langage. Dans ce village, vivait un couple Ires particulier : Niandenitiengrekain et son mari Faizongrain. Niandenitiengrekain se faisait passer pour la femme la plus maLNaise du village ainsi que son mari Faizon­ grain. Tous les jours, les femmes du village allaient se procurer de l'eau dans la riviere afi n de vaquer a leurs !aches menageres. La plupart du temps, elles allaient et revenaient ensemble. Cependant un jour, alors qu'elle s'attardait a recueillir de l'eau, Niandenitiengrekain se retroLNa seule au bord de la riviere. Ne voyant personne pour l'aider a mettre son seau sur la late, elle se mil a appeler a i'aide : I yo, yo, au secours, y a-I-ii quelqu'un pour m'aider... ? Yo, yo, au secours, venez a men aide !!! , En entendant ces eris, un poisson sortit de l'eau et lui demanda : • Qu'y a-I-ii femme pour que tu cries ainsi? , Niandenitiengrekain lui repondt : • C'est que toutes les femmes sent rentrees et ii n'y a per­ sonne pour m'aider a mettre men seau sur la tale. » Voyant la delresse de Niandenitiengrekain, le poisson lui dit : • Femme je peux !'aider a porter ton seau, mais avant tout, tu dois me promettre de ne rien dire a personne. , Ni_andenitiengrekain voyant la situation dans laquelle elle etait, pro­ m,t de ne rien dire a personne. Ainsi, elle put rentrer chez elle avec son eau. Aussitot arrivee, elle ne tarda pas a raconter l'histoire a son mart Ce demi� voyait en l'histoire de sa femme, une opportunite de manger du p01sson aussi, echafauda-t-il avec sa bien-aimee un plan pour capturer le poisson. �e !e�n, comma d'habitude, Nianderitiengrekain repartit a la . nVlere. Mais cette fois elle s'attarda expres pour poLNOir rester seule. Le moment venu, elle se mil a appeler a l'aide une noLNell e fois : « yo, yo, au secours, y a-I-ii quelqu'un pour m'aider... ? Yo, yo, au secours, venez a men aide �!!! » En entendant ses eris, le poisson sortit de l'eau et lui demanda : • QU'y a-1-11 femme pour que tu cries ainsi? -C'est que toutes les femmes sent parties et ii n'y a personne pour m'aider a mettre men seau sur la tete, lui repondil-elle. -Femme, je peux !'aider mais avant tout, tu dois me promettre de ne rien dire a personne, lui cit le poisson. » Niandenitiengrekain promit. Lorsque le poisson sortit de l'eau, Fai­ zongrain surgit des buissons d'ou ii etait tapi, le saisit et lui co� la tete. De retour a la maison, Niandenitiengrekain ecailla le poisson pour faire un festin a son epoux Faizongrain. Mais pendant que la sauce cuisai� le poisson ne cessait de chanter dans la marmite : • F�m�. alors qu'il n'y avail personne pour !'aider a porter ton seau, mo, p015son je t'ai aidee et tu m'as tue . . . femme tu vas etre maudite !!I Femme, moi poisson je t'ai aidee et tu m'as tue... et maintenan� vas me manger. . . femme tu vas etre maudite... femme tu vas maudite. . . » . m ngea vec Une fois le repas pret et servi, le couple se �ala, et _ � s : dpa amva,t n rekam nitieng Niande un gros appe'tit• Cependant• ven. son ns da _ r rl� gerer car, le poisson n'arreta,t pas de P:3 si r1i r. so ::...,. m'as. mange laisse-mol Ire •• « femme• maintenant que tu o,.,., . m le tout • a er 1 n tu ne veux pas moi-meme je vais sortir et raco ce que tu m'as fail. » . . vers_ la partie intime . Le poisson ne sachant comment sortir se dmgea cro ses �­ de Niandenitiengrekain. Lorsqu'elle le senti� elle � t son pi 0110 e!, pour eviler que les gens l'entendent parler, g ne. . . ou rat,al sa jupe IOIS· Voila pourquoi la femme cruise ses 1ambeS qu'elle s'asseoit. 0 Nutepe Pa r Zafoe Koml a fl "'•avais achete la video cassette du film Apollo 13 QUi, relate l'histoire veridique de trois astronautes en peril clans un astronef endommage, delivant a quatre cent kilome­ tres de la terre. Ce film m'a attire particulierement par son caractere positif malgre la trame negative des circonstan­ ces_ J'ai eta ebloui par le res­ ponsable de la mission a la base de Houston. Get hornme, malgre Jes embuches et les imprevus du parcours, a tou­ jours cru que les astronautes reviendraient sains et saufs sur la terre. Sa confiance inebran­ lable en la victoire, malgre de sombres perceptives suscita une solidarite generale. Celle image m'est apparue quand je pensais a quoi ecrire surt?ul en ce debut de session'. :"IJres deux jours dhesitation Je me decidai enfin a partage� ��ec �ous cette realite pleine Vie, de cour c?nfiance et surt age' de out de reussite• Je su•,s con nous tous, ancienvaincu que s et nou­ veaux, avons besoi n d'un tel courage et de confiance pour n P� dre I� train de �,, n� do1t avoir nos eludes de gare que la reuss,te. Pour les . noLNeaux, surtout ceux qu,- Vle nnent darriver au Can ad Chaleur des a, le vide de I habiludes, de 1: est a veni r famille et des amis doit �Ire comble par le souci de reussite. Quel­ ques soient les circonstances et quoi qu'il arrive, une pensee cbit nous habiter : le meilleur pourrait encore nous arriver. Nous devons nous accrocher afin dobtenir ce que nous souhailons par-dessus tout et n'en concevoir ni crainte ni culpabilite. Dans l'air frais de cha­ qua matin, noire CXBur doit se gonfler de joie ; ecouter nos propres sentiments suffirait peut-etre a ecarter le mal et le stress de nous. Je crois toujours que la solidarite doit Aire le moyen de communion et d'entraide. Je persiste en croyant que nous devons mettre de cote toute recherche egocentrique. En me rememorant une experience singuliere survenue dans men enfance, je compris que le passe, le present et l'avenir sent relies et i nterdependants. Dans le billet du mois de mars 1999 titre • Chaque chose en son temps', j'avais souligne que denormes defis nous attendant dans le noLNeau millenaire. Encore une fois, je crois que les etudants africains on! plus besoin de solidarite, de confiance et de determination. Les defis sent enormes car, nous sommes l'es­ poir et les ambassadeurs de noire continent et de sa culture. Tro­ quer la simplicite et le courage a l'indvidualisme et au desespoir ne seront que fatalite. J'espere que le monde connait la suite de l'histoire de ces premiers hommes qui ont marche sur la lune. Apres plusieurs jours de lutte et d'efforts surhumains, le miracle tan! souhaite s'est produit : les astro­ nautes fatigues a !'extreme reussissaient I1mpossible. Apres celte epreLNe, je suis arrive a la conclusion que si les astronautes de cette odyssee avaient su davance les souffrances qu'ils allaient en­ durer, peut-etre, jamais ils n'auraient embarque dans cette exped­ tion. Par centre sans ces experiences dllliciles et epoLNantables, en aucun cas, ils n'auraient peryu le prix de la gloire, plus encore, I 1m­ portance de la vie lorsque la capsule spatiale s'est enfin ouverte au milieu de l'ocean. En memoire, l'on vient de celebrer ii y a quelques jours les trente ans des premiers pas de l'homme sur la lune_ Du coup c'est !'exploit de ces trois astronautes qui est celebre. Celle illustration pourrait nous illuminer durant cette session et pour toujours. Nous devons etre armes de courage, de confiance et sur­ tout d'un esprit positif devant toute epreuve. A tous, particulierement aux noLNeaux, je souhaite une Ires bonne session et beaucoup de succes dans la fratemite, l'humilite et surtout, du courage devan I les epreLNes de la vie estudiantine ou extrascolaire. 0 Colopbonie ou fran­ copbonie ? (Suira da la pag• 11) pourraient conlribuer aux so­ lutions. C'est sQr, las pet.pas concernes vent en souffrir mais, je crois "1il y a un prix a payer pour loute chose. Le simple fail qu'a ce SOITl118I les organisations hlJTlallitaires ont stale les atteintes et les abus de certains gouveme­ ments constitue une petite victoire. Un grand � de chapeau est a donner a Mr nistie intemationae qui a su denoncer le rOle �joue la France dans le maintien de ces dictatures. A man humble avis, je crois qua la est le vrai problMIEI . Si l'on prend l'ex�e du Togo, la France y est pour beaucoup clans le malheur qua subil ce pe�e. Le Rwan­ da ,le Burunci , le Tchad, la Rapublique centrafricaine... , la lisle est longue de ces pays CJJi se voient ' regles' par la France. En conclusion, c'est une tres grands betise la francophonie. C'est une perte de temps et surtout, c'est une insulte a nous autres africains. A vous decideurs de l'Afrique de da­ main, vous etuciants et etu­ diantes africains a l'UQAM ou ailleurs, sachez � la coioni­ sation continue bel et bien, les methodes ant change mais les ideas et Jes conseqiences restent les memes_ 0 Colophonie: rasserrillement des anciennes colooes fran­ cophones �you m pa r eyrille E C O U S CO U S A.U NI O UT O N ( P o u r B � 1 0 person nes) I n g red ients Couscous 1 kg Viande de mouton ou agneau ou jarret de veau 1 kg Pois chiches 150 g Oignon 2 Huile cfarachide ou olive 250 ml Harissa Puree de tamales 5 cuillerees a soupe Carottes 250 g Navels 250 g Courges 250 g Aubergines 250 g Poivrons rouges haches 2 Chou 1 Beurre 200 g Safran Preparation Tremper les pois chiches la veille. Decouper la viands et la portion de graisse en morceaux. Assaisonner de sel, poivre et les mettre dans une marmite couscous. Emincer les oignons, verser l'huile, et faire revenir le tout pendant quel­ ques minutes. Verser un verre d'eau, ajouter la puree de tamales et les pois chiches et laisser cuire 15 a 20 minutes. Ajouter les legumes (navels, poivrons). Ajouter 1 ,5 litre d'eau au bouillon et porter a ebulli­ tion. a Couscous Attendrir les graines de couscous avec de l'eau pour qu'elles gonflent. Les rouler delicaternent de temps en temps pendant qu'elles s'im­ bibent d'eau puis les tamiser. Placer le couscoussier rempli de couscous sur la marmite en ebullition. Luter les 2 ustensiles avec une bands de tissu afin que la vapeur ne s'echappe que par le haut. Laisser cuire 30 minutes. Retirer le couscous en laissant mijoter le rests de la sauce pendant au mains 1 heure. Aromatiser avec des spices et le harissa. Verser le couscous dans une bol, l'ecraser legerement a !'aide d'une louche pour separer les grains. Laisser refroidir et arroser d'eau froide au besoin. Une ½ heure avant le repas, veri­ fier l'assaisonnement du bouillon et remettre le couscous pour une 2e cuisson. Lorsque la vapeur s'echappe dqqqu couscous, le retirer et le verser dans le bol. Ajouter le beurre et las raisins secs, bien melanger et verser au­ dessus autant de bouillon qua le couscous peut en absorber, tout en remuant Servez le couscous dans un grand bol en formant un puits au centre duquel vous disposerez la viands et las legumes. Servir aussitOI avec du bouillon a part pour ceux qui l'aime bien arrose. O .. Celle recelte a ete publiee pour la premiere fois en mars 1 998 . la melode et le chant Je SUIS le rythme 1•8 suis s et des tambours tam-tam des terre , e qu Afn' · Je suis , qua rythme Je suis l'etre chez qui tout n est Mon malheur et man bonheur s'expriment dans le rythme de mes chants . Ma joie et ma tristesse, ce sont mes tambours qui les dsent Vais comma je suis entier dans le rythme! Le cri de l'enfant nouveau-ne, la feral, la savane, le temps Tout est chez moi succession de notes et daccords parfois heureux, Souvent tristes, mais certainement rythmes! 11 Je suis l'Afrique, !'antique nation de la musi­ que et de la danse, Je suis le berceau du rythme, Je suis la musique et le rythme, Nl e>t� � Horizontalernent Par Amadou Lam ine SA LL A -Regime politique B - Rocambolesque. Ecole 1 2 A B C D 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 C - Charmant D - Reposer. A distance. E - Mettre sur la langue. F - Genie. Ego. Pronom. '---- ,_ G - Langue ancienne. Cereals. H - Modelees. E 1--.. I - Sigle education dans le F t-- web. Colors. G 1--- - II i-- -- t-J t-- .____.__ J - Jumeau. Volcan italien. Verticalement 1.Schema, tableau. 2. Total. Jeune. 3.Ensembles de lettres. Vigueur. 4.Sens, puriel. La. 5.Nuages. Voleuse. 6.Roue a Qo.'QB. Amour. 7A toi, en desordre. Uni. B.Sucer. Meilleur. 9.Dedans. II est des iles. 10.Solitaires. Solution du numero d'mil 1111111 �VOUS AVEZ DES CHOS ES A DI RE . . . L' ECRITU RE VOUS I NTE RES S E ET VOUS VOU LEZ VIVRE U N E EXPERI EN CE NOUVELLE . . . J O I G N EZ-VOUS A L' EQU I P E DU J O U RNAL I I PASS EZ-NOUS VOI R AU LOCAL DS-322 1 � OU ii APP E LEZ-NO US AU 987-300 0 POSTE 798 � P RO CHAI N E REU N I ON VE N DRED I 24 S E PJ TEM BRE 1 999 A 1 7H OO • i � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black Student Network Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The McGill Black Student Network Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Journal Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1999-09 Title A name given to the resource Le Tambour, Volume 4, Numéro 1 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource L'association des étudiant-e-s africain-e-es de l'UQAM Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available L'association des étudiant-e-s africain-e-es de l'UQAM Description An account of the resource Volume 4, issue 1 of "Le Tambour", a student journal created by l'association des étudiant-e-s africain-e-s de l'UQAM. Africana Studies Afro-American Studies Black Studies Student Press UQAM https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62030/archive/files/fed1c327da30b8029165cd75d0111583.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=VCPzh7QSmad0En2SCW2uG7u2LjpzOtyzWvkRBxqpdGJGdslL%7EQq9l42XkR0g4Hsb2mwpSmXUA8nywENpzKV51V0c6-3X3oifQM6srxwvNL6A5n%7EK42tGpric0zk7olFCR0GCNzp4nOJl3iSNa%7ELv0LNXcIwRCpw7Frsr7D5PfkMFb11TtTeRSF-pnfu5RdymlBZLbMT%7EqdkOXJ%7E9jroZGUzm%7EnXWJ7pJTqdiRHrkgJkNsjfLx%7E4EXL-UiCEbgLcbLG2jbwxBAgjw9fj8v4HXtUgtandlW-uNVgsfAJzBDdqOkH37zXe69ZS7mxlEInYgWfY1vs3z0%7EY6rOS4PHj%7EBA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 381f5c5ab7a8f052352cae9fcdd0bcd2 PDF Text Text 6/17/26, 9:05 AM Des étudiants demandent aux universités d’abandonner les combustibles fossiles | Radio-Canada Info | Environment | Pollution | Greater Montreal Students are calling on universities to abandon fossil fuels The University of Montreal is among the institutions targeted by this mobilization. PHOTO: RADIO-CANADA / IVANOH DEMERS The Canadian Press Published on March 12, 2022 at 3:23 PM EDT Please note that this article, published in 2022, may contain outdated information. Since the return of in-person activities to universities, Quebec students have been mobilizing to ask their institutions to get rid of their stock portfolios invested in the fossil fuel industry. This is the case at the University of Montreal and McGill University, where students have been occupying the entrance of a building since the beginning of the week. https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1868593/etudiants-universites-combustibles-fossiles 1/5 �6/17/26, 9:05 AM Des étudiants demandent aux universités d’abandonner les combustibles fossiles | Radio-Canada On Friday at noon, about twenty students occupied the space at the entrance to the McGill University Arts Building. Several tents were set up under a banner calling for “investment in the community, not in oil and coal” . Since last Monday, dozens of students have been taking turns demonstrating. Some are sleeping, eating, and studying there. Léo Ortega told The Canadian Press that students have been asking the university “for 10 years to remove its assets from the fossil fuel sector.” “ We demand divestment not only from the fuel industry but also from military defense companies like Lockheed Martin. ” — Léo Ortega, philosophy student and activist with Divest McGill Alors que des manifestants commencent à distribuer de la pizza aux “occupants”, quelques étudiants en biologie font un détour par le pavillon des arts pour s'informer à propos de “l'occupation”. “On a des cours qui nous enseignent les conséquences des changements climatiques, mais l'université investit dans les énergies fossiles. C'est incohérent : il y a une discontinuité avec ce qu'on nous enseigne”, déclare ainsi Majdi Hunter Batal. Cet étudiant dit s'être déplacé pour en apprendre davantage sur les revendications des étudiants qui occupent l'entrée du bâtiment. Au même moment, vendredi midi, des étudiants de l'Université de Montréal publiaient un communiqué dans lequel ils revendiquaient avoir installé une bannière portant le slogan “Action climatique maintenant” sur l'emblématique tour du pavillon Roger-Gaudry de l'UdeM. Ces étudiants demandent également le désinvestissement de la totalité des actifs de leur université dans le secteur des énergies fossiles. “Considérant le dernier rapport du GIEC qui nous sommait de réduire urgemment nos émissions de gaz à effets de serre, on trouve incohérent et incroyablement cynique que notre université continue à investir dans les énergies fossiles”, a déclaré Quentin Lehmann, militant au sein de l'Écothèque, un regroupement d'étudiants militants. https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1868593/etudiants-universites-combustibles-fossiles 2/5 �6/17/26, 9:05 AM Des étudiants demandent aux universités d’abandonner les combustibles fossiles | Radio-Canada L'UdeM veut “bouger dans les mois qui viennent” Selon un courriel transmis à La Presse canadienne par la relationniste Geneviève Omeara, le fonds de retraite de l'UdeM a investi près de 78 millions de dollars dans le secteur pétrolier et gazier. La relationniste a souligné que ce fonds de retraite possède “sa propre gouvernance et est donc administré par son comité de retraite et non pas par l'UdeM”. Toutefois, l'université administre également un fonds de dotation dans lequel 14 millions de dollars sont placés dans l'industrie du pétrole, du gaz naturel et des combustibles. “Actuellement, nous n'avons pas de politique de désinvestissement du secteur des énergies fossiles pour le fonds de dotation, mais c'est un enjeu qui reste à l'étude de manière continue”, a indiqué la porte-parole Geneviève Omeara. Dans un texte publié récemment sur le site de l'université, le recteur Daniel Jutras a indiqué que l'établissement d'enseignement “réfléchit et fait du chemin sur l'enjeu du désinvestissement. On veut bouger dans les mois qui viennent, mais de façon raisonnée et informée”. Rappelons qu'en 2019, l'Université de Montréal s'était jointe à une dizaine d'autres établissements d'enseignement supérieur pour souligner qu'elle reconnaissait la nécessité de lutter contre la menace des changements climatiques. L'UdeM avait signé une déclaration dans laquelle elle s'engageait à atteindre “la carboneutralité pour 2030 ou 2050 au plus tard, à mobiliser davantage de ressources pour la recherche axée sur les mesures pour remédier aux changements climatiques et pour faciliter le développement de compétences et à accroître l'accès à l'éducation relative à l'environnement et au développement durable dans les programmes d'enseignement, sur les campus et dans les programmes de sensibilisation des communautés”. McGill soutient avoir réduit ses placements Dans un courriel envoyé à La Presse canadienne, l'Université McGill a affirmé avoir “déjà réduit de moitié ses placements dans les actions des 200 plus grandes sociétés figurant dans la liste Carbon Underground 200”. https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1868593/etudiants-universites-combustibles-fossiles 3/5 �6/17/26, 9:05 AM Des étudiants demandent aux universités d’abandonner les combustibles fossiles | Radio-Canada Carbon Underground 200 fait référence à une liste compilée par la firme américaine FFI Solutions, qui publie des données sur les 100 entreprises publiques qui détiennent les plus grosses réserves de pétrole et de gaz naturel ainsi que sur les 100 entreprises publiques qui possèdent les plus grosses réserves de charbon. La porte-parole de l'Université McGill, Cynthia Lee, a indiqué que les placements de l'université dans ces secteurs étaient passés “d'environ 2 %, soit environ 32 millions de dollars en septembre 2019, à moins de 1 %, soit environ 17 millions de dollars”. Mme Lee a ajouté que l'établissement a “adopté une approche innovante” qui vise à investir dans “les énergies renouvelables, les technologies propres, l'efficacité énergétique, la construction écologique, la prévention de la pollution, l'eau durable et d'autres fonds à faible émission de carbone”. Des universités font le choix du désinvestissement Depuis quelques années, un nombre croissant d'universités, souvent pressées par les étudiants, font le choix de ne plus investir dans les combustibles fossiles. La Fondation de l'UQAM affirme ne plus avoir de placements dans le secteur des énergies fossiles depuis 2018. L'Université Laval a promis de se débarrasser progressivement de ce type d'actions. “Depuis le 31 août 2021, la Fiducie a cessé complètement tout investissement dans des entreprises figurant sur le Carbon Underground 200”, selon un communiqué publié sur le site de l'établissement. En 2019, la fondation de l'Université Concordia s'est engagée à effectuer 100 % de placements durables d'ici 2025 et à renoncer complètement à investir dans le charbon, le pétrole et le gaz. À lire aussi : Un professeur de McGill démissionne pour des raisons éthiques L’Université de Victoria désinvestit 80 M$ de l’industrie des énergies fossiles McGill défend son refus de retirer les hydrocarbures de ses portefeuilles https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1868593/etudiants-universites-combustibles-fossiles 4/5 �6/17/26, 9:05 AM Des étudiants demandent aux universités d’abandonner les combustibles fossiles | Radio-Canada Harvard et Yale sous pression pour cesser d'investir dans les énergies fossiles https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1868593/etudiants-universites-combustibles-fossiles 5/5 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource DIVEST McGill Subject The topic of the resource Environmental Justice, Divestment, Climate Action Description An account of the resource Since 2012, Divest McGill has been pushing for change through research, education, and mobilization. After 11 years, Divest McGill successfully lobbied McGill to to divest from all direct holdings in fossil-fuel companies listed in the Carbon Underground 200 by 2025. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource DIVEST McGill Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 13/03/2022 Title A name given to the resource Des étudiants demandent aux universités d’abandonner les combustibles fossiles Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource La Presse Canadienne Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Newspaper article Type The nature or genre of the resource Online article Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available La Presse Canadienne Description An account of the resource Article in La Presse Canadienne about the occupations for fossil fuel divestment happening at McGill and at Université de Montréal. It also briefly discusses how other universities in Quebec (UQAM, Concordia, and Université Laval) have divested from fossil fuels. Climate Activism Concordia Divest McGill divestment editorial non-McGill UQAM https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62030/archive/files/7bdceb838301210b8d716fd6587af0b9.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=CMeHtOiG-X8S-H2cAreLF4DFj3aH3IihimCxDIox0H80yH6HndYoIbEePwb0sOf0rM1dMhcVDPJQYK1MDVnCMsE2EWWiUEfKZqYlD6rPnSJkYnAjDOYp0xSN%7ElDTpviUfqWtkFkn9VKSJnYXb8-7Izg82NW0iYxUVz7vFJ6%7E0Zhwoa63Dcu8TOSky7WRrbgXgRNCHhZ1gkaQGu3Yw6rXlj8MK4hm-1Fanzn%7EnyHDS8CYYND8MmwffPQEeXKJGRyCTFqwHahN39UKyylOH5Xj40sM2%7EaEsFORs1P%7E%7EAAqZyjqEwHbr-Enwr6lWoVyrA7-TsHQTPlIlhGW43RZv6Lg6Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 4e3917b35750927e0c2edebe297a99fb PDF Text Text �Faculty mentor: Kristina Huneault Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada Issue 1, March 2013 yiaramagazine.com info@yiaramagazine.com The Story Behind Yiara : Name: Yiara was an indigenous mythological Brazilian queen, legendarily beautiful but also a mighty warrior. She thus embodies many different issues of interest to feminist art history: sexuality, power, exoticism, cultural identity etc. Logo: The choice of logo joins a recognizable art historical object, the cameo, with an image of a non-idealized woman. The profile image based on Grandma Iara contests the ideal beauty present in women’s representation throughout the history of art and offers an image of a wise, elderly woman. �TABLE OF CONTENTS Letter from the editor .- Raissa Paes ........................................................................................................................................ 1 Books and Bravery - Julia Skelly ............................................................................................................................................... 2 Zoom sur le tricot graffiti - Stephanie Hornstein et Marilène Gaudet ............................................................................. 3 Fat Rabbit and All Her Glory - Jessica Sallay-Carrington ................................................................................................... 5 Nostalgia, She - Lucy Fandel ................................................................................................................................................... 6 À l’envers - Paloma Lopez Sierra ............................................................................................................................................. 7 Knitted composition (tribute to Mondrian’ s wife) - Véronique Tremblay ....................................................................... 9 An Excerpt of “Let Me Be Worthy of Hate” - Grace An ........................................................................................................ 10 Inked Gals - Valérie Frappier .................................................................................................................................................... 11 Woman Holding a Fruit - Jacqueline Hanna ......................................................................................................................... 12 The Body and Embodied Subjectivities in the ‘Minor’ Cinema of Chantal Akerman - Katerina Korola ................... 13 Untitled #2 from the series “Hard Soft Rough Easy” - Chalsey Taylor ........................................................................... 17 Romaine Brooks, the Modern Woman and the Dandy - Veronica Della Foresta ........................................................... 18 Slip of Memory - Theresa Passarello ..................................................................................................................................... 24 Will, Reason and Character: Elizabeth’s Feminism in Pride and Prejudice - Rudrapriya Rathore ........................... 25 Sans titre - Audrey Limoges ..................................................................................................................................................... 29 Jeanne - Léa Radoslava Marinova .......................................................................................................................................... 30 Reinventing Ritual: Keriah,Tails,Teffilin,Siddur - Rachel Woroner .................................................................................. 31 The Myth of the Graffiti Whore: Women’s Bodies in a Masculinist Subculture - Éliane Gélinas ..............................32 Performance bleu - Érika Circé-Perrault ............................................................................................................................... 37 Gustav Klimt and Adolf Loos: The Woman in their Interior Spaces - Katrina Caruso ................................................ 38 �Letter from the editor LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Welcome to Yiara’s inaugural issue! As young art historians we noticed the lack of attention and studies driven to the history of women in art early in our learning process and therefore the importance of feminist art history. We, as young feminist art historians, have the duty of reshaping and rewriting the history of women in art as well as addressing its meaning in contemporary visual culture. In response to the inquiries concerning the relevance of feminism nowadays we decided to create this magazine. It is through Yiara that we will bring to life, discuss, and continue to produce feminist art and art history. Yiara aims to cross borders and portray the wide spectrum of feminism. She strives to use feminism as an eye-opener, as a key to a closed door rather than a retrograde thought. Yiara is label-less. Yiara is a critical thinker. Yiara is a young artist, an experienced painter, an art teacher, an amateur, a retired artist, a contemporary artist, a historical artist, a writer, a student, a warrior, a myth, a symbol, and a broken stereotype. She is the personification of the hands and minds that shaped and continue to shape the history of art. Yiara is a narrative that hasn’t begun today nor will finish tomorrow; she is a process and a cause that speaks through a feminist art historical frame. Yiara is timeless. Yiara is feminist art. Yiara is equality. Yiara is just beginning. Yiara is a woman, a girl, a man, a boy, a lesbian, a heterosexual, a homosexual, a transsexual, a bisexual - a person. Yiara is at the same time gendered and genderless. With a creative and strong personality Yiara claims her space in the world and fights against inequality, patriarchy, heteronormativity, racism, injustice, violence, misrepresentation and untold histories. She remodels and critically thinks about the importance of women in art. Yiara openly discusses feminism by proposing new ways of seeing and understanding the world visually. She is a full-hearted activist that believes in a better world. Yiara also believes in the power of knowledge. She is academic feminism, which strives to change disciplines and the way knowledge is produced rather than dictating patterns. Yiara produces knowledge in order to rethink the way women shape and inhabit the world. She promotes women as knowledge producers rather than objects of knowledge. 1 Yiara’s stories are represented in her inaugural issue through painting, film, performance, photography, sculpture, installation, poetry and essay form produced by Montreal undergraduate students as well as guest professionals. Yiara is bilingual. - Raíssa Paes Editor-in-Chief �Guest writer BOOKS AND BRAVERY by Julia Skelly SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Art History, Concordia University I would like to open this brief article with a dedication. Not my own, but one written by a feminist art historian whose book has been highly significant for me since I first read it as an undergraduate student in the early 2000s. It is now a ‘talisman book’, a term that refers to those books that have resonated with me and that continue to have a kind of aura about them. A talisman book is a very personal thing. These are the books that I must keep returning to, must have near me; I want to be able to turn around and see their covers when I’m writing. I don’t own a Kindle or any such device, and this is partly because, not only do I love the feel of a book in my hand, I love the sight of books, their spines vertical or horizontal, piled or shelved. My talisman books are few (it’s always quality over quantity for talisman books, as with friends and clothes), but they are precious both as material objects and as sources of information and inspiration, and I inevitably have an evolving relationship with them. The ‘Dedication’ in Jo Anna Isaak’s Feminism and Contemporary Art: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Laughter (1996) reads in its entirety: ‘My study window overlooks the St Stephen’s School Playground. The school is a private Catholic school for children from kindergarten through grade school. It has separate entrances for girls and boys and the children daily line up outside the doors marked “Boys” or “Girls”. One day I overheard a little boy tell a little girl she couldn’t play on the swing because it was on “the boys’ side”. Clearly, there was something in the gender divide the school was underlining that the little boy understood as privileging his sex. The little girl turned to him and said, “This is the playground. There’s no boys’ side on the playground”. It is to that five-year-old future feminist, who has such an unshakeable grasp of the fact that the playground is hers to enjoy, that I dedicate this book’. Reading this passage again a decade after I first read it, I get goose bumps all over again. I even get a bit teary. Why is that? What is the resonance here? And would the impact have been different if I had been reading this on a screen rather than from a book that I held in my hands? I believe, in hindsight, that reading that dedication was the moment that I became a selfidentified feminist, although I had long been aware that I saw the world ‘differently’ from most of the girls I knew; some of those girls suggested that I stop being so ‘angry’ because I was scaring the boys away. Isaak’s dedication resonates because I used to be that future feminist in the playground. As feminist art historians we study art objects. There is something about the materiality of things that we as art historians are drawn to – as well as the surface of things, touch or the possibilities inherent in touch – rather than privileging vision alone. The same could be said for my love of books. I am happiest when I am reading, and I am doubly happy when I am reading and look up and see piles of books – some of them my own, some of them from the library; some of them novels, some of them academic texts. Their presence gives me comfort, and I go back to certain books again and again; Rosemary Betterton’s An Intimate Distance: Women, Artists, and the Body (1996), for example, which I first read in an undergraduate course taught by my eventual PhD supervisor. In fact, I have one of my PhD supervisor’s books (British and Irish Home Arts and Industries 1880-1914: Marketing Craft, Making Fashion by Janice Helland) in a pile immediately to the right of my desk. I see it every time I sit down to write. It might not help me to write when I’m struggling, but it can’t hurt to have it there. I’m currently completing the finishing touches on my first book, which is a revised version of my doctoral dissertation. In this book, I examine addiction and British visual culture produced between 1751 and 1919 from a feminist perspective. Producing a book feels like a never-ending process, and the writing is only the tip of the iceberg. Don’t get me started on how much it costs to publish a book when you’re an art historian. Digital images! Permission to reproduce those images! But: je ne regrette rien. Books by feminist art historians and about feminist artists are part of our lineage as feminist artists and feminist art historians. I like to have books by people I both respect and know around me. These books, as objects, as sources of inspiration, are integral for my past, present and future as a feminist art historian. I am horrified when people say that books will someday stop being produced. I need books not only for pleasure (novels, novels and more novels) but to keep me slogging along when I’m writing my own work on representations of women in historical art or on contemporary feminist artists, which will be the focus of my next book. I need to look at books, to flip through them, to feel them, to touch them. I need to be close to books when I’m writing. There is an erotics to my relationship to and with books; I can’t deny it. And why would I want to? Being a feminist art historian, for me, means many things, but it means two things above all else: books and bravery. 2 �Interview UNE MAILLE À L’ENDROIT, UNE MAILLE À L’ENVERS: ZOOM SUR LE TRICOT GRAFFITI MG: Ouais, ben en Français on l’a traduit librement à tricot graffiti. C’est d’emmitoufler le mobilier urbain, des arbres, des statues, et des objets que d’habitude dans notre vie de tous les jours, on passe à côté si on les voit. C’est de leur donner une deuxième vie, une nouvelle voix, un nouveau sens en les emballant de laine. SH: Est-ce qu’il y a un but en particulier? Ou est-ce que c’est juste visuel? MG: Le but c’est de se réapproprié l’espace urbain. On l’a commencé en ville, mais c’est pareil à la campagne. De ce réapproprié l’espace public et de pouvoir aussi interagir nondirectement avec les gens en faisant sourire, en mettant un peut de rêverie dans leur journée. C’est ludique, c’est pour faire réagir, d’interpeler les passants. SH: Quand tu tags c’est quoi ta démarche? MG: Quand je tag par moi-même, j’aime beaucoup beaucoup m’inspirer des statues et allé jouer soit avec le visuel de la statue ou la personne que la statue représente. Ça fait longtemps que j’ai pas eu l’occasion d’en faire. SH: Comment trouves-tu que le tricot graffiti se différencie des autres types de graffiti? C’est quoi les grosses différences pour toi? MG: Au plan technique, c’est sûr que le graffiti tricoté, ça emballe des trucs sans les briser, sans les délabrer. Versus le graffiti qui à la peinture qui est plus permanent. Mais ils viennent vraiment du même esprit de la rue anticapitaliste, qui veut réapproprier l’espace, qui veut laisser sa trace. Et des gens qui sont un peu écarté des galeries d’arts et du marché de l’art malgré que là on commence à se faire inviter dans des galeries. L’intention c’est de jouer sur le plan galerie/ art de rue. Si quelqu’un veut acheter une œuvre comment ça va se passer? Souvent c’est sur la rue, donc ça se dégrade à cause des intempéries, la neige, ou même les travailleurs de la ville qui l’enlèvent. Photo courtesy of Marilène Gaudet Le tricot graffiti prend de plus en plus d’ampleur à Montréal et ailleurs. Cet art subversif, qui a pour but de réapproprier le mobilier urbain à fin de l’embellir, constitue d’emballer des objets de laine. De cette manière, le tricot graffiti rend l’espace public plus doux et libère le tricot—compris comme un art féminin—du milieu domestique. Pour en savoir plus, Stéphanie Hornstein de Yiara Magazine a rencontré Marilène Gaudet qui oeuvre à Montréal en tant que tricot pirate. Stéphanie Hornstein: SH Marilène Gaudet: MG SH: Donc, juste pour commencer, est-ce que tu peux nous donner une description ou une définition du yarn bombing? SH: Comme tu le disais avant, le tricot graffiti c’est un peu plus éphémère que d’autres formes de graffiti dépendant de l’endroit et de l’environnement. Est-ce qu’il y a une durée de vie pour des tags tricottés? MG: Des fois c’est 20 minutes, mais ça peut aller jusqu’à un an, un an et demi. SH: Qu’est-ce que ça te fais quand tu passes quelque part où t’avais mis un tag et il est parti? MG: Ah mais quand il est parti, je suis toujours un peu triste et je me demande vraiment qu’est-ce qui est arrivé, mais ça on le sait jamais. Je crois que c’est surtout les employés de la ville qui les enlèvent. Mais j’adore ça repasser à des endroits et qu’ils soient encore là ou des fois s’ils ont tombés et que quelqu’un les a repatchés. SH: Pis toi, c’est quoi ta motivation pour faire du tricot graf- 3 �Interview fiti? Tu t’embarques dans un art qui est très éphémère évidemment ça serait différent si tu faisais de la peinture. Le tricot graffiti n’est pas nécessairement supposé survivre... MG: Ouais, mais je pense qu’il y a un côté qui m’attire dans l’éphémère, de pas ramasser plein de bagages d’art, mais d’avoir quelque chose qui a sa vie propre. Quand j’ai commencé, j’étais très occupée et j’avais pleins de cours. Je me demandais comment est-ce que je pourrais combiner le tricot avec les beaux arts afin d’élever le tricot au niveau des beaux arts. Donc j’ai commencé à faire des recherches sur les artistes de tricot graffiti et j’ai trouvé que c’était surtout des femmes qui faisaient du tricot. La personne qui m’a vraiment accroché le plus c’était une femme polonaise qui avait fait un tea cozy mais pour un tank en Pologne pour marquer le 50e anniversaire de la fin de la guerre. Ça tellement été puissant comme image parce que c’est un travail de femmes, c’était des fleurs au crochet, c’est le peace and love, le flower power mais c’est aussi super d’actualité et de voir quelqu’un qui avait amené le tricot à un autre niveau, une artiste activiste et qui prend quelque chose d’aussi banal et familier qu’un tricot et qui l’amène à être un grand symbole de paix rassembleur, ça m’a vraiment accroché. SH: Est-ce que c’est à cause de cette œuvre que tu as commencé à faire du tricot graffiti? MG: Ouais. C’a m’a accroché et de là j’ai trouvé d’autres gens qui en faisaient comme Knitta Please qui étaient les premiers à faire du yarn bombing. Ça m’a tellement accroché parce que j’étais habituée, surtout à Concordia, de travailler dans l’art conceptuel, mais moi je suis tellement une manuelle alors passer des heures et des heures à la bibliothèque à cogiter sur un concept ça me parle vraiment pas. Je suis tellement intuitive, viscérale et manuelle que ça me faisait tellement de bien de tricoter, d’aller dehors de pas avoir à demander la permission de personne et de juste le faire c’était vraiment libérateur comme art. C’était ma petite révolte du monde des arts. Je pense que c’est ça l’art de rue: une petite révolte de l’établissement. SH: Je voulais que tu parles peut-être un peu plus de l’aspect féminin/féministe du yarn bombing. Qu’est-ce que tu trouves que le tricot graffiti apporte à ce dialogue? MG: Dans ma famille, c’était ma grand-mère et ma grandtante qui tricotaient tout le temps et elles faisaient toujours des pantoufles. Pendant 95 ans, elles ont tricoté des pantoufles! C’était le fun de prendre cette tradition-là et de la rendre ludique, de ne pas faire des objets usuels. De reprendre quelque chose de très familier qui appartient au domestique mais de le sortir dans l’espace publique, de le rendre politique, d’y redonner une deuxième vie. Le fait d’être une femme qui étudie à l’université, c’est déjà un geste féministe selon moi. J’ai rencontré une étudiante en journalisme qui se considérait pas du tout féministe. Je lui ai dit: «T’es à l’université dans un métier d’hommes, automatiquement ça fait de toi une rebelle.» SH: Comme on le voit dans nos cours, dans l’histoire de l’art, t’as toujours le craft versus les beaux arts. Souvent l’art qui est considéré comme étant féminin —comme la couture et le tricot— est considéré de moindre importance. MG: C’est vraiment intéressant d’observer qu’avant, il n’y avait pas d’artistes avec un grand “A” tout le monde était des artisans. Je ne sais pas pourquoi certains médiums ont été élevés à un autre sommet comme la peinture, la musique, la sculpture et pourtant même quand il y avait des femmes comme Camille Claudel elles n’étaient pas du tout reconnues, elles travaillaient dans des ateliers non-chauffés en plein hiver à Paris, en grosse misère. SH: Même la description du yarn bombing que tu m’as donnée —que le but c’est vraiment d’envelopper et d’emmitoufler et de protéger— c’est des valeurs maternelles. Le tricot, c’est sûr qu’on associe ça aux valeurs maternelles parce que ça nous rappelle des images de maman qui met un gros pull sur son enfant. MG: C’est sûr qu’on peut pas défaire une association aussi forte dans notre société Nord Américaine. Au Pérou, c’est les hommes qui tricotent, qui filent. Donc, c’est vraiment culturel. Pour notre tricot graffiti c’est sûr que c’est la culture Européenne/Nord Américaine qui nous influence. SH: Vous, est-ce que vous cherchez à amplifier cette association-là ou à la changer? MG: Je pense que présentement dans mon processus de création et de réflexion sur les Ville-Laines, le tricot graffiti, les performances, j’ai vraiment une vision supra-féminine. De jouer avec le visionnement et aussi dans l’action avec l’image des années 50 de la mère au foyer parfaite. Mais c’est plus la mère du foyer complètement hystérique, disjonctée. SH: Toi, le futur du yarn bombing, tu penses que ça s’en va où? Qu’est-ce qui serait le but ultime pour cet art selon toi? MG: Ça serait vraiment d’être reconnues comme des artistes à part entière. Des fois on se fait encore dire: «Ah, ouais c’est bon pour un fille...» SH: Le monde trouve ça encore trop difficile de détacher l’aspect féminin du yarn bombing. MG: Ouais c’est ça. Mais c’est un peu difficile. D’un côté je me dis qu’il y a de plus en plus de gens qui en font et qui se démarque et ça c’est le fun parce que ça nous donne un défi. Je sais qu’avec les Ville-Laines, on s’en va beaucoup dans la performance, dans des ateliers communautaires et on est un peu tannées de faire des poteaux de téléphone. On veut faire plus de performance, on a des projets en galerie. On veut passer des rues à la galerie et de voir si c’est bien accepté, bien respecté. 4 �Sculpture FAT RABBIT AND ALL HER GLORY Porcelain and velvet cushion / 20” x 9” x 20” This is Cookie, a fat, saggy rabbit who is not afraid of revealing her form. Her body language is an indication of her indifference towards the audience. She is not about to rearrange herself to look “presentable” even though she does not fall into standard categories of beauty. Through this character, the artist inspires women to live freely and not to be caught in stereotypical representations that are deemed correct by the media nowadays. This cute but secure bunny allows for critical thinking on women’s representation and women’s acceptance of their own body. In the artist’s words: “To love ones body as much as Cookie loves hers.” 5 Jessica Sallay-Carrington Vancouver, Canada Ceramics Concordia University �Poetry NOSTALGIA, SHE by Lucy Fandel Concord, United States Contemporary Dance and Sociology Concordia University No now be honest. Here I am. What resides? Conscious thankfulness, But also pestering hesitation. In that history Loaded and seemingly stable. Teetering undercurrents threaten. Yet, I cherish those times. My grandmother’s mind was miserable, The psyche was secondary, Choices weren’t freedom In these prescribed Choreographed scenes. Yet, I cherish her tension. Sugar ‘n’ spice Pretty as a picture What a great gal Such a stunning wife, This attentive mother. Mother of four. Wife of one. Individuality—perhaps some. Waist of a WASP. A cage that billowed so elegantly. But wind never touched Traditionalism in her pearly skin. To me this would be A frightened trembling reality Yet, I cherish her lines. I love her hurts, Not her suffering. In awe, I love her. And all despite Visceral dissociations. Baseless projections, Impossible inseams. Yet, it seems it’s true Yes, I cherish her aesthetic. Voluminous fabrics Over fleeting soles. Rubber gloves, glistening dishes Such enthusiastic hoovering Frilly patterned aprons. I know! She was the two dimensional But my construct, my myth Yes, her memory runs deep. All determined we remained Ignorant of the ugly. My fantastical obsession With elegance resurfaces. This femininity is criminal. Yes, she is beloved. We need the context Its suffocating embrace. The road blocks dissolve Only if you stop before them. The modern tug-of-war: Yes, I think I might I want I need That crystal haze. That guilty nostalgia, she and it. Choice arriving, They both dissipate. 6 �Poetry À L’ENVERS de Paloma Lopez Sierra Montréal, Canada Sociologie L’Université de Montréal Peur d’avoir tord tout le temps sans sort et avec ou sans ressort se joigne à ma pensée mon temps qui coule vers le reste que je ne connais pas que je tente de deviner, peur de l’homme et de sa main du lendemain et des bandes en bosses dans la rue que je ne vois pas et qui font mal au dos quand je trébuche, sur mon genou, sur un poteau, sur un mégot, sur un tréteau. Je ne suis pas à l’endroite je n’ai jamais été à l’endroite toujours à l’envers pour toujours le revers parce que je suis un vers, un vers de femme et de con, le recto de ce qui doit se faire. Essaye de courber mon échine au temps de ressembler aux passants de fléchir encore et encore de sourire de ne pas mentir d’être gentille et courageuse et surtout ne jamais faiblir de toujours être patiente pour que mon envers de genre revienne et encore me refasse casser la gueule encore une fois je veux casser la gueule à cette route en pansement qui vient, de stopper, de laper, de saigner en lambeaux: tu es petite route tu lames bottes mon cul tu me rases tu m’arases tu m’arrises sur cette marre de route de bois que je ne voyais plus qu’en lois et foi de bonheur et de droit droits droites, tiens-toi droite, tiens-toi droite, tiens-toi droite, t’y entre en froid tu te doigtes et tu boites. 7 N’ai jamais voulu me tenir droite n’ai jamais voulu tenir le stylo avec l’index et le syllex entre les doigts n’ai jamais voulu tenir la fourchette et le couteau et pourtant j’ai fait, ai fait, l’ai appris, me tiens droite, souris, me courbe et mon échine assoiffée de liberté est toujours et sans cesse sevré de ce désert sans serve qui vole de ne pas pouvoir courir davantage de galoper les idées et les pieds en haut en diagonal rectangulaire et losange pour voir ce qu’il y a encore plus derrière au fond entre les plis de la terre ou là-bas, oui là-bas entre les sexes à l’envers: vers le chemin le plus grand celui qu’on dit grand sur une carte et qui quand tu danses dessus ne fait ni le bruit de la carte que tu as entre tes mains ni froissé ni plissé mais le puits de la terre pure de sexes humides et de langues vivantes où des plis racontent plus qu’un plissement, content le mouvement irrémédiablement jamais fatigué ni arrimé toujours été mouvement qui embranche l’autre mouvement de nos bouches à tes poils qui frappent sur la brume le do et la du sol, du sol et de la terre qui frôle ma terre et de ma peau qui frôle encore ta terre mouillée pour de la matière pour aucun mystère ni aucun monde austère. Mon oeil veut voir, mes jambes veulent agripper, grimper sur un poteau parce qu’il bande, branler un arbre parce qu’il sent bon, mon con parce qu’il est là et que je le veux dans mes bras. �Poetry Faut être modèle de gens et de normes faut être modèle d’habits modèle de paroles et de genres de coutumes en coutumes on modèle aux modes on se gèle aux règles qui changent meuvent dans le temps où rien ne fait peur aux gens où tout leurs font peur, ils aiment et sèment à se ressembler à être comme l’autre pour mieux être ce qu’il est l’imiter pour ensuite le dépasser et ainsi suit des suintes de boucles et des boules d’eau de châteaux de cartes sans ceux d’Espagne et encore plus ceux d’Amérique qui s’écroulent pour se redresser recommencer à se ressembler et à se raconter. Danser dans une ruelle nue, laper une pomme ronde, courir à pied-joint. Laissez-moi me vider pour apprendre. Laissez-moi m’évider pour me comprendre. Laissez-moi me libérer pour me rendre. Ne suis pas vous, ne me suis pas je suis moi, même si je m’absorbe de vos chairs de vos corps de vos pas pour tisser ma pensée, plus je vous vois plus je suis en dedans du dehors plus je veux être libre me salir et me construire, me salir me construire me salir me construire me salir me construire, me détruire, me reconstruire. Et baiser dans les recoins et coins où on n’en pas encore eu l’occasion de penser. Embrasser dessus, sucer dessous, enlacer devant, emballer derrière, enlacer arrière, lécher en avant. 8 �Installation KNITTED COMPOSITION WITH PINK, GREY, BLUE AND GREEN (TRIBUTE TO MONDRIAN’ S WIFE) Bois, tricot et grillage métallique / 48” x 72” L’œuvre commente la relation historique entre un art abstrait élitiste, typiquement masculin, réservé au cercle muséal, et son opposé représenté par le patchwork de tradition féminine, fabriqué dans un but utilitaire selon un savoir-faire artisanal. Ironiquement, cet hommage à la femme de Mondrian se réfère à une femme fictive, étant donné que l’artiste n’a jamais été marié. L’œuvre peut aussi être considérée comme une réappropriation du canon de l’histoire de l’art par la femme. Le travail de l’artiste tire profit de différents médiums et s’intéresse aux processus de transformation, à l’expérience de l’ambiguïté, et à la tension générée entre des forces opposées. 9 Véronique Tremblay Montréal, Canada Art visuel et médiatique UQÀM Beaux-arts et fibres Université Concordia �Graphic novel AN EXCERPT OF “LET ME BE WORTHY OF HATE” Ink and paint / 8.5” x 11” per page The multiple layers of meaning within this work expose the nuances of carrying the title, “feminist.” Love and hate are the simplified emotions that An focuses on throughout the two-page comic strip excerpt. Based on her own experiences of being subjected to misogynistic behavior from loved ones and men in general, she makes a point to show the emotional consequences of acting as a fearless feminist in the face of adversity. In a society where women are already expected to be emotionally weak, a feminist believes she must only show strength for fear of enforcing these harmful stereotypes. This belief leads to the disregard of the negative psychological impact that patriarchy and misogyny have on women who are brave enough to speak up. Grace An Toronto/Lindsay, Canada Film Animation Concordia University 10 �Painting INKED GALS Acrylic and modeling paste on canvas / 36” x 48” per panel Frappier portrays Joy Tomkins and Paula Westoby as women who do not fit into the traditional sphere of feminine beauty due primarily to their age. It is important to point out that these elderly women are not attempting to fit into these conventions by any means. Instead, they proudly reveal their new tattoos that read, “P.T.O” (Please Turn Over) accompanied by an arrow and “Do Not Resuscitate.” The use of vibrant colors and bold brush strokes announces the liveliness of these equally spirited women. Skin is paid special attention in these works, seeing as it is an important factor denoting issues of aging, physical transformation (self-imposed or natural), beauty, and ownership of one’s body. These women chose to take control of the unknown by humoring their own deaths and having the last say—or laugh—in both cases. 11 Valérie Frappier Aurora, Ontario Art History and Studio Arts Concordia University �Poetry WOMAN HOLDING A FRUIT by Jacqueline Hanna Montreal, Canada English and Creative Writing Concordia University Where are you going her eyes seem to suggest the scent of suspicion turning or not turning to canvas. And I see Gauguin in some simple white fishing shorts crouched behind an easel of green bamboo. The suggestion of a pipe clutching his lips. But more to the point the pipe the nipple the fruit the this woman holding suddenly suggests we see we can see, look and see. Away or toward an easel. One Tahitian expression giving or not giving her name, the scent of suggestion one oblong papaya of heat spilling over the orange flesh of day. Splitting Refocus. Just a mural, glaring reproduction splayed to the side of a lotion shop in the middle of a mall a decade ago in the middle of blue noise. or not splitting. Milking or not milking one breast, crowned white and gold. Rolling in the eye of sea again, bald formative dance. Fruit so heavy, the gaze leaden. Gauguin rounding the crown of her head one brush, two the planting of the hibiscus, the sewing of admission. She is. 12 �Essay THE BODY AND EMBODIED SUBJECTIVITIES IN THE ‘MINOR’ CINEMA OF CHANTAL AKERMAN by Katerina Korola Montreal, Canada Art History and Film Studies Concordia University Since the publication of Laura Mulvey’s influential essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” the question of how to recuperate the female body from objectification has been of central concern to both female filmmakers and feminist theorists. Over the course of her career, Chantal Akerman has confronted this problem in a variety of ways. Her hyperrealist style, in many ways the product of a rigorous application of structural filmmaking to narrative cinema, deploys duration and desensationalized aesthetics of the ordinary to dissolve the frame that has traditionally isolated the female body in cinema. In her films of the 1970s, where her hyperrealism is at its most intense, Akerman’s detailed description of the body in space becomes a means for her to free the female body from objectification and the cinematic gaze. This is especially true of Jeanne Dielman (1975) and News from Home (1977), two very different films that explore the everyday realities of the contemporary woman. In these films, Akerman’s hyperrealist aesthetic directs the audience’s attention through the physical body towards the phenomenological body. This phenomenological body becomes a site for the articulation of discrete female subjectivities, which reveal themselves as both embedded within and embodied in a specifically physical reality. Akerman frequently describes her work as “minor” cinema, drawing on the theory of minor literature articulated by Gilles Deleuze and Feliz Guattari. In Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature, Deleuze 13 and Guattari define minor literature as consisting of the use of a major language by a member of a minor or marginalized population.1 This appropriation, which Deleuze and Guattari see as necessarily political, is apparent in the films of Chantal Akerman, whose work in the major language of narrative cinema consciously subverts its codes in order to voice the experiences of a marginalized group. As Ivonne Margulies notes in Nothing Happens, Akerman’s relationship to narrative filmmaking bears certain similarities to that of Kafka and the German language. For Margulies, the two share a “dryness of language, lack of metaphoric association, composition in a series of discontinuous blocks […] and [the use] of a reduced vocabulary at the service of a new intensity”.2 This last quality can refer not only to the awkward scripted dialogue that is typical of Akerman’s films, but also to her reduction of cinematic conventions to the bare minimum. Akerman’s fixed camera, long takes, and refusal to engage in the conventions of continuity editing allow her “to forge the means for [the expression of] another consciousness and another sensibility” within the space traditionally dominated by cinema’s male gaze.3 During the 1970s, this other consciousness was for Akerman primarily a female consciousness, absent from mainstream cinematic representations of women. Filmed with an all-female crew, Jeanne Dielman is a monument in the history of feminist cinema. The film tells the story of a suburban widow and the banal rituals of her day-to-day existence as �Essay a mother, housekeeper, and afternoon prostitute. In this film Akerman counteracts the traditional cinematic encapsulation of woman by adopting an approach to subjectivity informed by the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, who discussed perception and indeed consciousness itself as intrinsically corporeal phenomenon. In Jeanne Dielman, the titular character’s subjectivity is rendered visible through the “intermediary of the body.”4 It is through the body that the audience comes to understand Jeanne, who is defined by the sum of the quotidian rituals that she performs. Fixed camera shots of the real-time execution of these rituals occupy the majority of the film, emphasizing their complete physicality. Moreover, the absence of point-of-view and reverse-shot conventions effectively limits the audience’s access to Jeanne except through the physical realm. Akerman’s phenomenological description extends beyond Jeanne’s physical body to the domestic space that is the extension of her body. The relationship between Jeanne and her home is first established in the full title of the film, Jeanne Dielman: 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, which marks Jeanne’s address as an inseparable component of her identity. For all intents and purposes, 23 Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles is the functional outer limit of Jeanne’s ‘body image,’ which the contemporary philosopher Elizabeth Grosz defines as the “neurological mapping of the body, not in the terms provided by biology but in terms of psychical significance.”5 This relationship is further cemented by the film’s mise-en-scene: there is a colour match between the pastels of Jeanne’s wardrobe and the décor of her home, from which Jeanne is only rarely seen apart. Following Mulvey’s lead in deconstructing the mechanics of the male gaze, the feminist film scholar Claire Johnston notes that the cinematic facsimile of woman is “ahistoric and eternal.”6 Jeanne’s embodiment in the space of her home stands in direct contrast to this ahistorical depiction of woman in mainstream narrative cinema. In this tidy middleclass home, Akerman reveals Jeanne as very much a product of her time and place in the socio-political history of twentieth century Europe. Duration plays a key role in the articulation of Jeanne’s position in this history. Through the inclusion of often-elided everyday tasks, the audience can observe the rituals, values, recipes, and moral codes of Europe during the early 1970s. Discourses of class, gender, and economics haunt the space of Jeanne’s home as much as they shape her actions, right up until her violent breakdown. Significantly, it is in the physical space of the home that Jeanne’s instability first manifests itself. After over an hour of watching Jeanne compulsively turn on and off her light switches each time she enters or leaves a room, the viewer can immediately sense that something is wrong as she forgets to turn on the light after a session with her second client. But even this breakdown can be linked to a specific historical moment: the moment in which the housewife was on the verge of becoming an economic anachronism. Jeanne, however, has by this time so thoroughly absorbed the codes of mid-twentieth century middle-class morality that she cannot exist beyond her domestic space. Mental breakdown is the only conceivable reaction left to her. A very different kind of subjectivity is articulated in Akerman’s next film, News From Home, which presents itself as an almost complete conceptual inversion of Jeanne Dielman. Whereas the earlier film unfolds primarily in the home, News From Home occurs entirely in the exterior space of New York and its transportation system. Fixed-camera long shots of the city streets capture the anonymous denizens of the one of the world’s largest cities as they move in and out of view, for the most part completely uninterested in the fact that they have been caught in the act of their daily routine. As noted by Jennifer Barker, the project of the film bears many similarities to that of French philosopher Michel de Certeau’s “Walking the City,” an essay that sets out to challenge the idealized panoramic image of the city when gazed at from above or at a distance – views that ignore the innumerably plural realities that exist, intertwining, 14 at street-level.7 Akerman’s film does not show the �Essay New York of postcards, t-shirts, and skyscrapers, but rather the New York that exists beneath the spectacle of its image. Her emphasis on unremarkable street corners, the back loading bays of commercial buildings, dingy late-night diners, and of course, the subway system itself, demonstrates a specifically plebeian re-imagining of the city. Like women in the cinematographic tradition, New York City is a victim of essentialism. In popular imagination, representations, and economic and political discourses it has been effectively replaced by its image. It is a city of opportunity, prosperity, and freedom—the cultural capital and beacon of the Western world. It is its silhouette printed on coffee cups, t-shirts, baseball caps, and magnets. Akerman troubles this image of New York by documenting the daily movements of its citizens. Over the course of the film, Akerman’s fixed camera reveals New York as the site of innumerable singular and shifting narratives. It is a place of work (the rush hour subway), play (boys playing around a bursting fire hydrant), romance (a couple kissing in the subway station), and a whole number of other activities that defy categorization, epitomized by the old woman sitting beneath the ‘Don’t Walk’ sign at the corner of a busy intersection. Akerman’s non-judgemental hyperrealism confers visibility on the “chorus of idle footsteps” that gives shape to the city by walking through it.8 Under Akerman’s gaze, New York is transformed from a static concept to a mobile entity composed of the myriad individual journeys that occupy its space. More importantly for our purposes here, Akerman positions herself as one of the many individuals occupying and actualizing this space; in the process, she actualizes her own identity. This extremely structural city film also contains autobiographical elements that allow a narrative to unfold. Layered over and sometimes under the soundscape of New York City, Akerman reads a heavily-accented English translation of the letters her mother sent to her when she first left home to live in New York. The words of Akerman’s mother tell us of her constant changes of address, as well as her reluctance 15 to return or even write home. Contrary to Jeanne Dielman, the female subjectivity expressed in News From Home is in search of itself outside the confines of the home and the traditional order that ‘home’ represents. In an ultimate move to thwart the objectification of the female body, Akerman keeps herself invisible in this quasi-autobiographical film. It is only through the sound of her voice that the audience is made aware of the presence of a female subjectivity. In her discussion of the film, Jennifer Barker suggests that News From Home’s epistolary form renders the authorial voice “feminine, personal, and informal.”9 I would like to go further and suggest that it is not only the authorial voice but also the camera’s gaze that becomes specifically female as a result of this epistolary address. To recall the language of Merleau-Ponty, the scenes of New York presented by the film are seen through the “intermediary” of the filmmaker’s female body, whose perceptive faculties have been shifted onto the camera. This invisible subjectivity exists within the spaces of New York City as much as within the family home in Brussels. These two environments are juxtaposed in the soundtrack of the film, where the words of the mother’s letters and the white noise of the city wrestle for acoustic priority. The auditory merger of these two environments, combined with the invisibility of the speaker, force the audience to look beyond static conceptions of body and place to locate the subjectivity behind the film. Rather than existing in any physical single space, this nomadic female consciousness exists in the act of passing by. Whereas Jeanne Dielman is embodied in her home, the subjectivity expressed in News From Home is free-floating: on the one hand emancipated and on the other drifting. She is embodied not in any one place, but rather in the ephemeral path of her journey. The two subjectivities expressed in Jeanne Dielman and News From Home stand in opposition to one another. It is a measure of Akerman’s sophistication as a storyteller that neither subjectivity is condemned �Essay or celebrated. On the contrary, Akerman’s extremely formal observation of how these subjectivities inhabit their physical surroundings merely attests to their being-in-the-world. In fact, this attestation alone is revolutionary in its contradiction of the essentialist image of ‘woman’ that dominates cinema. In Jeanne Dielman and News From Home, we see two distinct forms of female consciousness that cannot be reduced to a single whole. These subjectivities are given form not through the body alone, but also through the ways in which they are embedded within the physical world around them. Akerman’s hyperrealism is a judicious reduction of the ‘major language’ of cinema that gives corporeal weight to the women of her films, whether their bodies appear onscreen or not. For this reason alone, the cinema of Chantal Akerman constitutes a major step forward for not only feminist filmmaking, but for all ‘minor’ cinemas. Endnotes /// Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, translated by Dana Polan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986),16. 2 Ivonne Margulies, Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman’s Hyperrealist Everyday (Durham; London: Duke University Press, 1996), 15. 3 Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, Kafka, 17. 4 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge, 1962), 138. 5 Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), 32. 6 Claire Johnston, “Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema,” in Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader, ed. by Barry Keith Grant (Malden, Massachusetts.: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 120. 7 Jennifer Barker, “The Feminine Side of New York: Travelogue, Autobiography, and Architecture in News From Home, in Identity and Memory: The Films of Chantal Akerman, ed. Gwendolyn Foster (Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), 47. 8 Michel De Certeau, The Practise of Everyday Life, translated by Steven Rendall (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), 97. 9 Barker, 45. 1 16 �Photography UNTITLED #2 FROM THE SERIES “HARD SOFT ROUGH EASY” Inkjet Print / 10” X 10” per print Taylor’s photographic study considers the aesthetics of natural black hair as it pertains to the daily lives of black women. The artist also confronts our society’s estrangement not only from these aesthetics but also from natural black hair itself, where western ideals of beauty have influenced many women to alter their appearances to fit into the narrow judgment of racialized beauty norms. Through her sleek typological portraits, Taylor not only captures the details in the women’s hair, but also their varying feelings pertaining to how they wear their hair: while some women seem shy, others stand bold in their composure. 17 Chalsley Taylor Toronto, Canada English and Creative Writing Concordia University �Essay ROMAINE BROOKS, THE MODERN WOMAN AND THE DANDY by Veronica Della Foresta Montreal, Canada Art History Concordia University Clothing is an extension of its wearer, and as such, has long performed as a marker of gender and sexual identity. What happens then when the role of clothing as an indicator of sex gets re-appropriated and its function redefined? What happens when clothing no longer reveals, but begins to obscure gender and sexuality? Such was the case for women’s wear in Paris during the 1920s, as it was reworked and redefined by an emerging aristocratic lesbian subculture. Composed mainly of artists, authors and literary critics, these women espoused recent fashion trends that offered newly feminized versions of male fashions for women’s wear. In their hands, however, modern fashion was imbued with a transgressive sensuality that set them apart.1 The painter Romaine Brooks was particularly adept at representing the subtleties of her time, displaying – through her portraits of dandified women – the particularities that distinguished this emergent lesbian subculture of the 1920s. In her work, the fashionable image of the cross-dressing modern woman held deep implications that extended well beyond those of sartorial rebellion.2 In this article, I will endeavor to explain why Romaine Brooks and her fellow modernist women adopted the look of the male, more specifically the dandy of the previous century, and how, by re-appropriating this style, Brooks reconfigured the image of the modern woman into a queer aesthetic. As such, Brooks did not merely record the fashion(s) of her time, whether sartorial or sexual, but introduced a lesbian modernity that emphasized the ambiguities inherent to normative gender binaries. Across Europe and North America, cross-dressing had long been adopted by individual women seeking to broaden their sphere of action. However, it first manifested itself as a social trend in the context of women’s involvement in the suffrage movement and, subsequently, the war effort. Eventually, however, what began as an adoption of an unconventional trend or a response to a practical need, soon became the distinguishing feature of the modern woman. Demonstrating a penchant for more masculine silhouettes, she became the archetypal boyette: the youthful and petite androgynous woman who, despite having embraced masculine clothing, never quite relinquished her feminine appeal.3 The masculine appearance of this new style appealed to the women of Paris, where twentiethcentury urbanization had brought with it significant changes in gender relations. Indeed, there was widespread involvement in women’s movements, an increase in employment among women of all social classes, as well as an increased mobility of women into male-dominated public spaces, as both workers and consumers. As witnesses to the increasing mobilization of women, French men began to feel threatened by such female displacement into their public domains. Such changes even 18 �Essay extended to the realm of women’s fashion where unisex clothing became increasingly popular. Their new position within the predominantly male workforce and their status as commodity-consumers exposed women to male terrain and masculine work wear. It wasn’t long before the fashion-forward women of Paris began parading in more comfortable, yet form-fitting, masculine outfits. This pervasive phenomenon of female masculinity was not merely an appropriation of male clothing, but a means of both usurping male supremacy and indulging in male privileges.4 Accordingly, the new look was paired with an attitude of defiance, decadence and increased promiscuity, as women publicly divested themselves of their maternal and domestic qualities. . . As such, the new woman was effectively reduced to the likeness of a frail, effete boy—the boyette—nothing more than a boyish female whose objective was not to be mistaken for boy, but rather to adopt a masculine air by appropriating the male dress.5 Ultimately, her male costumes reinforced the prevalent notion that to be human was to be a man. Moreover, the boyette still retained a certain heterosexual pull, arousing male physical attraction because her outfits were formfitting, seductive versions of menswear. Essentially, despite her seemingly mannish attire and mannerisms, the image of the modern woman was still appealing to men and subjugated to the male gaze.6 It is important to note that although this androgynous trend was pervasive throughout Europe, it was notably present among the Parisian upper class. In fact, cross-dressing at the time was considered by many solely as a display of haute-bourgeoisie eccentricity. It was from the confines of this somewhat elitist and comfortable social position that lesbian artists such as Brooks were able to publicly associate themselves with this newly undisguised, overt and deviant sexuality.7 It was under the veil of the sexually playful and rebellious Modern Girl that lesbians, mostly middle- to upper-class, discovered a space which allowed them to experiment and enabled them to establish a distinct lesbian style.8 19 The masculine look adopted by Romaine Brooks and her lesbian peers was that of the dandy of the 1800s. As an inherently subversive figure, the male dandy, apart from his affinity for the decadent, was recognized for his unconventionality. Epitomized by Charles Baudelaire’s representation of Constantin Guys in, “The Painter of Modern Life” the dandy was defined by his mobility and evasiveness. The proverbial flâneur was a passive observer committed to roaming the city streets.9 Entirely self-created, the dandy, though a constant spectator of his surroundings, was also aware of his role as recipient of the gaze. In other words, the flâneur’s identity was intrinsically performative and ever changing. He was constantly conscious of both how he was to be perceived and who was to see him. Most importantly, however, is the reality that the dandy was invariably a man. The woman, confined to the domestic sphere, lacked the independence crucial to the society dandy; the flâneuse was therefore made impossible by the normative gender restrictions of the nineteenth century.10 Following Oscar Wilde’s 1895 sodomy conviction, the image of the debonair dandy became associated with decadent male homosexuality and was thus perceived as morally questionable.11 Baudelaire’s flâneur, who had initially permeated late nineteenth-century European aristocracy, was repudiated/rejected/abandoned by aristocratic society, only to be resurrected years later by Romaine Brooks and her lesbian contemporaries.12 The appropriation of the dandified male by the lesbian subculture of the 1920s was, from a male perspective, unoriginal. By adopting his dress, the lesbians were not simply altering their clothing, they were also appropriating the dandy’s freedom and insouciance, as well as associating themselves with a passé visual language of obscene decadence typified in the homosexual lapidé of the nineteenthcentury—the indelible outsider.13 The performative aspect of the male dandy was just as relevant to the female dandy. Much like her male counterpart, the female dandy was completely conscious of how her image was orchestrated and perceived. Thus, �Essay by re-creating herself through performance, the cross-dressed woman was empowered through her knowledge of how she presented herself to others. She was no longer subjected to the male gaze, but was instead in complete control of how she was perceived by the spectator. Significantly, the allure of the female dandy—her sexual ambiguity—alluded to the idea that the better man was also a woman.14 By parading as dandified modern women, these masculine females disrupted normative gender divisions, and usurped male control. The aforementioned notions, as diverse as they were, were ever present in Brooks’ portraiture, not simply in her representations of female lesbian dandies, but through her subtle indication of the tensions inherent in heteronormative gender binaries. Following the death of both members of her immediate family—her brother in 1901 and her mother ten months later—Brooks was left with a substantial fortune that allowed her to live lavishly for the remainder of her life. Having inherited a considerable sum, Brooks, once a destitute artist, now partook in the indulgences that the Parisian aristocracy enjoyed. Her involvement in high society afforded her the opportunity to connect with such prominent women as sculptor Una Troubridge, painter Hannah Gluckenstein—commonly referred to as Gluck—and author Natalie Barney, each of whom eventually figured in her work.15 Brooks portrayed them as women that were firmly involved in Paris’ modern cross-dressing lesbian subculture. Although Romaine Brooks and her peers’ appropriation of the male dandy is commonly understood as a celebration of female mobility and increasing liberty, what one gathers from her portraits and their sitters is that this freedom was only made accessible to the upper classes of twentieth-century society. Due to their composition, Brooks’ portraits were seen to belong to a longstanding tradition of conservative and aristocratic portraiture, particularly in light of the increased interest and experimentation in Cubist and Fauves portraiture that was consuming Europe in the 1920s. She thus used the conventions of such portraiture in conjunction with the debonair dandy as a springboard for a new lesbian sensuality. Brooks’ self-portrait as well as her paintings of Gluck and Una Troubridge are replete with visual signifiers that indicate the subject’s elevated social status. Her painting Una, Lady Troubridge of 1924 (Fig. 1), embodies the image of the aristocratic dandy.16 Posing with a dog in a tailored black jacket and a stiff-collared white shirt, Una’s costume and aristocratic pretensions reflect her class position. Troubridge, whom Brooks depicted wearing a monocle—the most prominent sign of the male dandy— was clearly very much aware of the kind of high-society air that she projected. Brooks’ Self-Portrait from 1923 (Fig. 2) bears similarities to the stark, somber and glamorous elements found in the Una painting. The figures in both paintings stand rigidly and occupy the entire composition while confidently staring ahead of them. In this, their stance closely resembles that of a conventional male society portrait.17 The austerity of both paintings, the monochromatic colour palette as well as the severe gaze, rigid pose, and fine contemporary dress of the sitters give the overall impression of refinement and elegant aristocracy. In this way it became understood in Paris at the time that parading oneself as a male dandy was evidence of high social standing. As the epitome of decadence and subversion, the dandy was recognized by the Parisian lesbian aristocratic subculture as a figure worthy of imitation. However, while some members of society understood the lesbian significance of the dandified attire, others, particularly those of a different social class, might have misinterpreted the costume as a mere aristocratic antic of nonconformity.18 As a result, lesbianism and cross-dressing eventually came to be associated with the upper class. The increased social freedom that was enjoyed by (and restricted to) high-society women allowed Romaine Brooks and her lesbian contemporaries to openly partake in deviant sexuality. Class was a significant component in the visibility of lesbian sexuality in Paris of the 1920s. Indeed, upper20 �Essay class women enjoyed freedom from rigid bourgeois sexual norms and protection from social rebuke.19 Although Romaine Brooks celebrated women’s freedom and mobility, she did so from her secure position within the luxury and glamor of high society. It was Brooks’ social standing that gave her the opportunity and the freedom to experiment artistically, sartorially, and sexually. to unravel like a performance: the sitter exhibits simultaneously the most extreme sartorial characteristics of the aristocratic male dandy (the monocle and tailored coat) and ostensible visual markers of femininity (earrings, lipstick, and cropped, fashionable hair). In her superfluity, Una takes on a burlesque quality, one of “double drag:” seemingly, a woman dressed as a man dressing as a woman.20 In Brooks’ portrait of Gluck, Peter (A Young English Girl) (Fig. 3), the sitter is depicted as reclusive and austere: she is turned away from the viewer as if ignoring his or her gaze. Despite her seeming detachment and severity, there is nevertheless something quite alluring in the discretion of the boyish Gluck.21 These three compositions display a shared sense of self-restraint. Juxtaposed with the exhibitionism Fig. 1: Romaine Brooks, Una, Lady Troubridge, 1924, oil on canvas, 127.3 x 76.4 cm. Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC. Despite the diversity within Brooks’ body of work, a certain tension permeates her portraiture. In her Self-Portrait, for instance, Brooks’ dandified figure assumes an air of glamour and dignity, communicated by the confidence and composure of the frontal pose, and her shaded yet piercing stare. Brooks’ portrait of Una Troubridge, on the other hand, seems 21 Fig 2: Romaine Brooks, Self-Portrait, 1923, oil on canvas, 117.5 x 68.3 cm. Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC. �Essay of the disparity between what is shown and what the title describes—what the painter pushes the viewer to see—Brooks puts forward her belief that socially constructed notions of gender normativity should be revisited and questioned.23 In essence, by destabilizing spectators through the use of visual dissonance, Brooks not only sensitizes them to the ambiguities of normative gender binaries, but she also displaces, and thus, controls, the viewer’s gaze. She is both proposing an ambiguous transgendered sexuality, and asserting herself as a female artist. Fig. 3: Romaine Brooks, Peter (A Young English Girl), 1923-24, oil on canvas, 91.9 x 62.3 cm. Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC. inherent to the dandy, these portraits are connotative of a visual dissonance that frequently reappears in Brooks’ work. Another area of tension can be found in the relationship between Romaine Brooks’ paintings and their titles. Brooks’ Peter (A Young English Girl) is the ideal example since the title of the work itself is indicative of the sitter’s sexual ambiguity. Had the portrait been untitled, the viewer would have been compelled to assume that the figure was male. Divested of any feminine traits and depicted in sombre tones, Peter, with her short hair and severe features, resembles a man; the title, however, indicates otherwise. As a result, the viewer is left in a state of ambivalence regarding the sexual identity of the sitter. By injecting her paintings with such elements of visual dissonance, Brooks emphasizes the ambiguities of gender identity; the same ambiguities which compel the viewer to look again and to look differently.22 Moreover, in making the viewer aware As an artist of the 1920s, working at a time when parading in male dress was considered fashionable, how did Brooks translate the image of the modern woman into one of a lesbian aesthetic? While Brooks and her sitters entertain the visual rhetoric of the modern woman, her portraits do not correspond to the European reality of la femme moderne. As previously mentioned, the tailored clothing adopted by women in the early twentieth century was significantly more seductive on account of its form-fitting design. Thus, rather than suggesting female sexuality through ruffles and extravagant proportions, fashion in the ’20s employed a formfitting masculine shape to emphasize the contours of the female figure.24 Though this new trend was appreciated by certain men for its stylish sensuality, many criticized the concealed breasts and hips. Nevertheless, the figure of the modern woman still retained a quality of womanliness. Real concern was shown, however, when all female signifiers were expunged as in Brooks’ portraits.25 The three aforementioned paintings refuse to read the aesthetic of the modern woman as necessarily appealing to the heterosexual male. Neither of the three portraits, in their androgynous quality, draw attention to any particular female silhouette despite the sitters’ adoption of the form-fitting gent’s suit. For example, the crisp contouring of Una Troubridge’s figure exaggerates the tight tailoring of her suit and draws attention to her thinness, exposing her lack of breasts, hips and other feminine physical traits. Brooks’ Peter, on the other hand, entirely undermines the presence of the male spectator in her refusal to return the gaze. Due to the sitters’ subversive 22 �Essay self-confidence and their lack of femininity, both portraits, though far from the conventional imaginings of the typical enticing female, possess a sexual allure that distinguishes their sitters from the contemporary modern woman. In other words, by divesting her figures of any feminine, heteroerotic quality, Brooks succeeded in acknowledging a transgressive sexual identity via the modern woman.26 Most notable in Baudelaire’s decadent flâneur, the male dandy of the nineteenth century became the symbol of Paris’ modern lesbian woman. As a prominent figure and portrait painter, Romaine Brooks did not simply depict the dandified lesbian subculture of her time, but also succeeded in redefining the image of the modern woman through a gender-ambiguous aesthetic that transformed the male connotations of the dandy into signifiers of lesbian sensuality. Endnotes /// Melanie Taylor, “Peter (A Young English Girl): Visualizing Transgender Masculinities,” Camera Obscura 56 (2004): 3, accessed March, 24, 2012, doi: 10.1215/02705346192561. 2 Bridget Elliot and Jo-Ann Walters, “Fleurs du Mal or Second-Hand Roses?: Natalie Barney, Romaine Brooks, and the ‘Originality of the Avant-Garde,’”Feminist Review 40 (1992): 13, accessed March 24, 2012, jstor.org/stable/1395274. 3 Bridget Elliot, “Performing the picture or painting the Other: Romaine Brooks, Gluck and the question of decadence in 1923,” in Women Artists and Modernism, ed. Katy Deepwell (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 73. 4 Laura Doan, “Passing Fashions: Reading Female Masculinities in the 1920s,” Feminist Studies 24 (1998): 670, accessed March 24, 2012, jstor.org/stable/3178585. 5 Ibid.,674-75. 6 . Joe Lucchesi, ‘”The Dandy in Me”: Romaine Brooks’s 1923 Portraits,” Dandies: Fashion and Finesse in Art and Culture, ed. Susan Fillin-Yen (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 171. 7 . Elliot and Walters, “Fleurs du Mal or Second-Hand Roses?” Natalie Barney, Romaine Brooks, and the ‘Originality of the AvantGarde,’” Feminist Review 40 (1992): 24, accessed March 24, 2012, jstor.org/stable/1395274. 8 Laura Doan, “Passing Fashions: Reading Female Masculinities in the 1920s,” Feminist Studies 24 (1998): 693, accessed March 24, 2012, jstor.org/stable/3178585. 9 Susan Fillin-Yen, Introduction to Dandies: Fashion and Finesse in Art and Culture, (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 9-10. 1 23 Ibid., 20-21. Lucchesi, “The Dandy in Me,” 163. 12 Ibid., 163. 13 Ibid. 14 Fillin-Yen, Introduction to Dandies, 15. 15 Catherine McNickle Chastain, “Romaine Brooks: A New Look at Her Drawings,” Woman’s Art Journal 17 (1996-1997): 9, accessed March 24, 2012, jstor.org/stable/1358461. 16 Lucchesi, “The Dandy in Me,” 166. 17 Cassandra Langer, “Reframing Romaine Brooks’ Heroic Queer Modernism,” Journal of Lesbian Studies 14 (2010): 150, accessed March 24, 2012, doi: 10.1080/10894160903196525. 18 Lucchesi, “The Dandy in Me,” 166. 19 Ibid, 166. 20 Taylor, “Peter (A Young English Girl),” 13. 21 Ibid., 13. 22 Ibid.,18. 23 Ibid.,19. 24 Doan, “Passing Fashions,” 693. 25 Lucchesi, “The Dandy in Me,” 166, 171. 10 11 26 Ibid.,176. �Installation SLIP OF MEMORY Woman’s slip, fabric marker and plexi-glass light box / 19” x 38” Personal memories of the artist are inscribed on slips and then gradually washed away in an ongoing process that speaks to women’s work, memory and history. By writing on and then washing the garments, the artist allows layers of symbolism to be constructed. The slips become a metaphor for the “feminine” object and the missing histories of women in inhabited slips. The washing of the slips comments on the washing of clothing in general as historically women’s work. Memory is referenced in its fragility and anonymity as layers of faded histories compose the meaning of the piece. The intimate pieces of lingerie open ground to a discussion about personal and public as it provokes viewers to think critically about the missing history of women. Theresa Passarello Freeport, Bahamas Studio Arts Concordia University 24 �Essay WILL, REASON AND CHARACTER: ELIZABETH’S FEMINISM IN PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Rudrapriya Rathore Born in New Delhi, India (lived in Toronto, Ontario) English and Creative Writing Concordia University Elizabeth Bennet occupies a distinctive space in Jane Austen’s celebrated Pride and Prejudice. This is the case not only because it is through her perceptions that the reader absorbs the narrative, but also because she is a critical observer of her context and—more importantly—herself. The shifting opinions and perspectives that drive the relationships in this story, whether they are between women and society or between women and men, invite the reader to evaluate the novel’s feminism. Elizabeth’s marriage in particular is at odds with the influence of progressive feminist ideology as well as the differing values of emotional, intellectual, and moral judgments. While marriage allows women to move upwards in the social hierarchy, it is first and foremost Elizabeth’s investment in her own improvement that brings her to marry Mr. Darcy, regardless of the fact that he also provides her with that social mobility. Her pursuit of her interest in her own character and female identity is what makes her relevant to a feminist exploration of the novel. Eighteenth century British philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft’s feminism hinges on the idea that “to become respectable, the exercise of [women’s] understanding is necessary, there is no other foundation for independence of character…they must only bow down to the authority of reason, instead of being the modest slaves of opinion.”1 It is this concern with one’s “understanding” and 25 rational engagement with the world that she identifies as central to “respectability” and “independence.” The process through which Elizabeth decides to marry Darcy is one in which she makes mistakes due to emotional motives that cloud her rational judgment; ultimately, however, these help her come to a better understanding of her own character. Her will to better herself is not a means to an end (the end being marriage); this is evident by her rejections of Collins and, initially, Darcy. She is not willing to compromise her happiness for either man, despite their offerings of elevated familial social status and good fortunes. Elizabeth’s desire for self-improvement distinguishes her as someone who is not ultimately a “slave” to society’s or her own opinions but rather as someone who wishes to rationally further her independence and respectability in ways that her society does not actively encourage her to do. While at Netherfield, visiting Jane after she has fallen sick, Elizabeth identifies herself as an observer of other people.2 Her wit and self-assurance influence the reader to align with her judgments of other characters; while Jane cannot be made to think badly of others, Elizabeth’s skepticism towards people such as Darcy appears objective and well founded. Much of Elizabeth’s charm comes from the fact that she is not concerned with what others may think of her blatant transgressions from what Miss Bingley calls “decorum.” In fact, the outraged �Essay reactions to her arrival at Netherfield, punctuated by remarks on her muddy petticoats, do nothing to distress her. She is comfortable in the position from which she judges others: “[Miss Bingley’s and Mrs. Hurst’s] indifference to Jane when not immediately before them restored Elizabeth to the enjoyment of all her original dislike.”3 She “enjoys” the fact that the behavior of the sisters reinforces her first impression of them. Her mistake is that she allows herself to believe that her judgments about others are always right. There exists a dissonance between what she says and believes but does not apply to her judgments: that “people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them for ever”. 4 She does not apply this natural understanding that people are always changing in her negative evaluations of others, though it proves to be a reality not only in Darcy’s emotional development but also her own. Her observation and interest in others parallel the interest she develops for her own character. Darcy is the only person who displays the same tendency towards introspective analysis that she possesses, and is able to admit to his own “resentful temper” while suggesting a “defect” of Elizabeth’s: “Yours is wilfully [sic.] to misunderstand [others.].”5 Though addressed playfully, it becomes apparent that this is exactly her folly—that her emotional gratification demands a selective blindness with which to view others. Elizabeth’s favorable first impression of Wickham is broken down by a genuine realization of her prejudice as she reads Darcy’s letter. While she inspects all the indicators of her inaccuracy, from Wickham’s first lack of “scruples in sinking Mr. Darcy’s character” to Mr. Bingley’s and Colonel Fitzwilliam’s unquestionable support of their friend and cousin, she is struck by the blindness of her vanity.6 “Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment, I never knew myself. “7 The idea that her “prided discernment”8 could so easily be affected by the short-lived and superficial attentions of Wickham on one hand and the Darcy’s “neglect” on the other humiliates her. Her shame is rooted in the fact that she has “driven reason away,” bringing to mind Wollstonecraft’s crucial prerequisite for female independence. This reconfiguration of her self-perception would not have been possible had she not already been deeply invested in her own self-improvement. The impact of the letter in bringing her to examine herself would not be as forceful did Elizabeth not identify rationality and independence as the predominant concern of her personal integrity. Moreover, Elizabeth would not have been able to recognize the extent of her mistake had she not acknowledged that Darcy’s lack of knowledge of Jane’s affection for Bingley was genuine –“How could she deny that credit to his assertions in one instance, which she had been obliged to give in the other?”9 She reconciles herself to the painful understanding that in fact she has nothing to justifiably blame him for, and the humility gained from this is what allows her to grow. Whereas her skeptical judgments of others previously seemed to be detached and neutral, they begin to appear to the reader as overly cynical, conceited and unreasonable. Her opinion of Charlotte Lucas’s marriage to Mr. Collins as “unaccountable! in every view it is unaccountable!”10 is harsh and definitive before Elizabeth goes to stay with them and sees that in their view the union is not at all unaccountable. Similarly, her attribution of Bingley’s sudden absence to “thoughtlessness, want of attention to other people’s feelings, and want of resolution” also ends up being incorrect and biased.11 Jane counters both these opinions: “You do not make allowance enough for difference of situation and temper…We must not be so ready to fancy ourselves intentionally injured.”12 It is selfinvolvement that does not allow Elizabeth to include her own possible ignorance of events in her judgment. It is easier to place oneself at the center of things, to believe oneself “intentionally injured” and to “confirm [one’s] belief of the inconsistency of all human characters,” as Elizabeth does, than 26 �Essay to reasonably allow for the possibility of misunderstandings and detach oneself from their import.13 This tendency to see the worst in others is mitigated by her relationship with Darcy because his unforeseen amiability and kindness represent a rational detachment from her harsh rejection; he does not harbor resentment towards her, and because of this she is able to accept rather than condemn him for what she believes is the final blow to their possible connection: his learning of Lydia’s elopement. “She could neither wonder nor condemn, but the belief of his self-conquest brought nothing consolatory to her bosom…Never had she so honestly felt that she could have loved him, as now, when all love must be in vain.”14 Though given an opportunity to think him more proud than ever, she cannot resent or think badly of him for his supposed “self-conquest,” his final, degraded judgment of her family and herself; instead of hatred she feels understanding, love, and forgiveness based on what she believes to be his thoughts. Darcy aligns himself with Elizabeth’s interest in self-improvement as he gives her an opportunity to reevaluate the role emotions play in her judgment. More importantly, however, his own behavior transforms so fully that she is able to “look up to him as a superior,” as her father knows she must do in order to be happy in marriage.15 The shift is first evident after her visit to Pemberley: “There was a motive within her of…gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough, to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner….He who, she had been persuaded, would avoid her as his greatest enemy…. Such a change in a man of so much pride excited astonishment.“16 Suggested in her feeling of gratitude is the idea that perhaps she herself might not have been able to forgive her own “petulance and acrimony” had their places been reversed. Darcy does not have any logical reason to treat her friends and family with so much regard, to eagerly “preserve the 27 acquaintance;”17 in fact he has every reason, Elizabeth feels, to treat her like his “greatest enemy.” It is all the more surprising then, that he has not only changed but that he has changed so drastically that Elizabeth cannot help but feel grateful to receive a graciousness that she does not feel she would have been capable of. Secondly, his monetary exertion to secure Wickham’s marriage to Lydia serves to display a moral and emotional growth of character that is wholly unexpected: “For she herself was humbled; but she was proud of him. Proud that in a cause of compassion and honour, he had been able to get the better of himself.”18 Elizabeth recognizes that their internal struggles have not been so different, and that he has more concretely than ever shown a character that matches and perhaps surpasses hers. In a mark of Austen’s characteristic generosity, the qualities that exemplify Darcy’s “superiority” are none other than the ability to discern what is right, to learn from others and to be humbled by them. “You shewed [sic.] me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.”19 Elizabeth’s manner of falling in love with him is rooted in these ideas of good will, strength of character, honesty and rationality, making her marriage a catalyst in her improvement as an independent and respectable woman. The feminism Austen makes available to her readers is not one of blatant rebellion, as Lydia, in her elopement, only manages to prove her selfishness while ensuring a lifelong partnership unlikely to provide genuine happiness; nor is it a feminism based only on virtuously cultivating the female intellect. Elizabeth’s self respect, her faithfulness to her own happiness and her ability to acknowledge her faults and grow because of them lead her to love someone who teaches her about her own character while developing his own. Her feminism is one that encourages the freedom to fall in love with and marry a man with the social status and wealth of her mother’s dreams as long as it is in her own interest as a rational and independent being. In a striking moment at Pemberley, as she looks up at Darcy’s portrait and “[fixes] his eyes upon herself,” she sees herself from the perspective of someone �Essay who understands her with a deep clarity.20 It is a glimpse in which she may see that the marriage is right because he will want for her only what she wants for herself: a fulfillment of her character, of her individual being. Endnotes /// Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and A Vindication of the Rights of Men, ed. Janet Todd (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 119. 2 Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, ed. James Kinsley (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 31. 3 Ibid., 27. 4 Ibid., 31. 5 Ibid., 43. 6 Ibid., 158. 7 Ibid., 159. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., 104. 11 Ibid., 105. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., 104. 14 Ibid., 210. 15 Ibid., 288. 16 Ibid., 201. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 248. 19 Ibid., 282. 20 Ibid., 189. 1 28 �Sculpture SANS TITRE Forton / 24” x 20” 18” Pour l’artiste, ce projet se veut une mise en évidence des contradictions présentes dans un objet (le talon haut), l’emblème de la féminité contemporaine. À travers cette œuvre, Limoges souligne et critique la construction d’une telle idéologie. L’apparence hyperréaliste de la sculpture (moule de ses propres jambes), pousse le spectateur à s’interroger sur ces propres conceptions de la féminité. Est-ce la femme qui fait l’escarpin; ou l’escarpin qui fait la femme? 29 Audrey Limoges Montreal, Canada Studio Arts Université Concordia �Film JEANNE 16mm black and white film Through the feminist lens with which Marinova creates all of her work, Jeanne is a fiction following the daily struggle and personal torments of a Montréal metro musician who uses her music as a means of escape. Driven by the feeling that there were not enough women voices in her life, the artist used this work as an opportunity to create her own. Based on real events in the life of a male metro musician, the story was adapted to a female point of view, allowing Marinova’s perspective to shine through the character as well. Finding inspiration in the neo-realistic style of Italian post-World War II directors, a documentary approach is used to help Marinova create what she believes to be an honest, human perspective and a reflection on what feminism was and is today. Léa Radoslava Marinova Montreal, Canada Film Production and Anthropology Concordia University 30 �Photography REINVENTING RITUAL: KERIAH,TAILS,TEFFILIN,SIDDUR Digital Inkjet Prints / 17’’ x 22’’ This work explores Jewish tradition and identity through a series of self-portraits, focusing on traditional prayer shawls, phylacteries, prayer books, and other objects associated with the practice of Orthodox ritual. Nearly all the ancient rituals and related objects depicted in these images are within the male domain–the role of women in synagogue and traditional practice being considerably limited. By positioning herself, a Jewish female, interacting with these religious objects that belonged to her grandfather, the artist seeks to challenge the traditional gender roles found not only in Judaism, but also within the foundations of nearly every ancient religion. Reinventing Rituals explores the symbolic weight of the religious object, as a means of identification with one’s own spiritual beliefs and religious community, while simultaneously questioning the gender exclusivity that is imposed on these sacred objects. 31 Rachel Woroner Toronto, Canada Photography Concordia University �Essay THE MYTH OF THE GRAFFITI WHORE: WOMEN’S BODIES IN A MASCULINIST SUBCULTURE by Éliane Gélinas Montreal, Canada Women’s Studies Concordia University As the practice of graffiti has become more mainstream and documented, graffiti art and its derived products are becoming pop culture artifacts that are consumed on a daily basis. The rise in popularity of this subculture has also encouraged academics to look into the dynamics of graffiti practice outside the discourse of criminology. Among these studies, a limited number touch upon the issue of gender or offer a feminist perspective on the subject.1 Informed by my own involvement as a woman graffiti writer2 and by literature documenting the experience of female graffiti artists, I will explore how the myth of the graffiti whore, a popular label attributed to women and girls in the field, is used to control female participation in this milieu. I will begin by providing a brief introduction to the graffiti subculture and expose the fact that sexism and homophobia are implicitly part of the unwritten rules of the practice of graffiti. Building on Roland Barthes’ semiotic theory of myth, I will explain how such an image is constructed in order to benefit the men of this subculture.3 I will then explore how the policing of women’s bodies and sexuality is a tool that male graffiti writers use to control the female access to recognition. This tendency is perpetuated by unrealistic representations of women in com- mercial products associated with graffiti, like books and magazines.4 Finally, I will attempt to highlight women’s resistance to the patriarchal norms imposed on them by relating some of the tactics used and by demonstrating how some of them engage with feminism through this form of art. The practice of graffiti (and to some extend street art) is built on a complex set of rules and ideals, which are often unknown to anyone unfamiliar with this practice. Although many graffiti writers don’t follow these unwritten rules, it is important to take a brief look at them.5 The main goals of graffiti writing can be summed up as “getting up.” and attempting to gain fame by being as visible as possible across the city.6 “Getting up” is a slang expression referring to the practice of writing one’s name on walls and trains illegally. This practice is referred as “tagging,” but is often associated with more elaborated pieces as well, such as “throw-ups.”7 It is worth noting that the practice of “getting up,” which started mainly in New York and Philadelphia in the 60s and the 70s, comes directly from marginalized groups (such as black and Puerto Rican youth) and could be directly linked with notions of civil rights, identity politics and community.9 Although the critique of gentrification and political resistance were grounded in the birth of graffiti, 32 �Essay the subculture rapidly became a trend which rapidly spread to different areas around the world. It therefore lost its political significance while conserving its counter-cultural image. Because of the issues linked to the illegality of graffiti, media and academics usually position themselves on one side of the vandalism versus art divide.10 To properly discuss the topic of this paper, it is important to acknowledge that such a division is unproductive as graffiti is always nuanced between these two dichotomies.11 Studies have shown that more men than women practice graffiti, although women have been part of the subculture since its very beginning.12 This gender imbalance may be caused by the risks implicated in practicing illegal graffiti, but it may also be linked to the hostility directed at women by male graffiti writers.13 It is obvious that the creation of illegal graffiti may be dangerous and women face more dangers than men as the city is more hostile toward women than men. The gendered city, as Gentry puts it, was created by men to serve their own interests, and was designed in ways that made it unsafe for women to participate in public life.14 Girls are socialized to fear the city, especially at night when they might be attacked or raped.15 Many women graffiti writers consider these risks to be purely constructed, manufactured in order to scare them and limit their involvement outside of the private sphere.16 Others admit to having encountered street harassment, but still manage to practice graffiti by joining friends and forming crews.17 Nancy MacDonald, in her groundbreaking work on the graffiti subculture, affirms that graffiti writing is a method used by males to develop their masculine identity, and that female graffiti writers are typically rejected or dismissed because they are perceived as a threat to the construction of this identity.18 MacDonald further analyses the difficulties faced by women who do practice graffiti. Often, they are perceived as sexual objects and are targeted by numerous sexual rumors.19 MacDonald’s study confirms that these gender inequalities and assumptions about women are common to the two geographical areas in 33 which she conducted her field work, London and New York.20 Recent research has shown that these dynamics are also present in Montreal as well.21 It is also interesting to note that in both the subculture and much academic literature on the subject, gender as a concept impacting the practice of graffiti is dismissed.22 Moreover, the specific vocabulary used in the graffiti subculture is centered on the male experience, which reinforces misogyny and homophobia. A graffiti writer who is perceived as lacking skills will quickly be feminized, or labeled as “gay.”23 Such qualifiers are also attributed to artists who produce murals with spray paint legally, which is viewed as a weakness and does not count as “real” graffiti.24 The male appeal to graffiti resides in the art form’s illegality, and in order to receive the ultimate title of “King” one needs to paint graffiti illegally all over the city.25 The vocabulary used in the subculture is highly gendered, which consequently discourage women’s involvement. The fact that the female participation in graffiti is relegated to women’s sexuality leads me to question the popular label of graffiti whore. In her research on female graffiti artists in Montreal, Couvrette acknowledges that some of the women she interviewed were continually labeled as graff whore by male graffiti writers, to such point that their sense of worthiness as artists was affected. 26 Gentry also observe the double standards at plays, noting that female writers are more likely to be labeled as “hoes” than “toys”, the term commonly use to describe a novice or untalented graffiti writer. 27 My contention is that the graffiti whore doesn’t really exist. She is rather a constructed image that limits women’s involvement in a sphere where male dominance remains relatively unchallenged. To begin with, it is useful to use Barthes’ definition of myth in order to understand how the illustration of the graffiti whore influences women’s representation and consequently the reception of their participation in the subculture. According to Barthes, a myth can be any cultural object which upon �Essay closer analysis shows the ideological purpose of its meaning.28 Revealing the nature of the myth is necessary to divulge the identity of the power structures benefitting from such a disguise. 29 The myth is a type of speech that uses specific imagery to serve the interests of a dominant group: in this case, the interests of male graffiti writers.30 If in Mythologies Barthes refers to the myth as constructed by the bourgeoisie, it is also possible to apply his process of mythologisation to today’s political context and the promotion of subcultural ideas. For Barthes, this process occurs when a dominant group (or class) creates a narrative privileging their status; such narratives are elevated to the status of myth when they pass unchallenged, thus appearing to become mere common sense.31 When we apply this to the graffiti subculture, it becomes evident that the idea of the slutty woman graffiti writer is so prevalent within the subculture that it has become accepted as a form of truth, to the point where we can consider it a myth.” The expression graffiti whore is part of the graffiti writers’ vocabulary. According to Urban Dictionary, a graff whore is “a person who likes to engage in sexual behavior specifically with graffiti writers”.32 Although one of the female graffiti writers interviewed by Couvrette explains that this expression relates to “a girl who will be fanatic about a writer” and will try to have sex with him, this label is often attributed to female graffiti writers as well, especially if they are new to the subculture.33 When graffiti writers are not experienced and lack skills, they are also often qualified as “toys” by other writers. Women are subjugated due to their gender and see their pieces dissed with gendered terms such as “cunt” or “hoe.”34 When a woman enters the subculture, she becomes hyper visible simply because she is female.35 Consequently, women become the center of the attention whether they like it or not. They are constantly subjected to the male gaze, sometimes to the point of harassment by men seeking sexual encounter with them. They are victims of sexual rumors even if they are not interested in the male writer.36 The simple fact of being a woman becomes reason enough for a female graffiti writer to be immediately qualified as a graffiti whore. Interestingly enough, the definition of graff whore on Urban Dictionary is followed by: “A graffiti writer usually tags up this type of whore with a marker.”37 This remark is relevant because it allows us to understand the crucial role that body painting plays in the diffusion of the graffiti whore mythology. Graffiti magazines and popular website encourage graffiti writers to use attractive women’s bodies as canvases on which to display their tags. This reinforces the image of the submissive promiscuous woman who is only interested in graffiti for sexual reasons. The pictures displayed on such websites are basically pornographic photography; the only difference being that a form of graffiti art is painted on the model’s body. Although it is important not to dismiss the creative aspect and artistic potential of body painting, it is also necessary to question the staged representation of women on such platforms. Not only does it reinforce the standard ideals of western beauty, it also creates a hegemonic portrait of the woman inclined towards graffiti: a heterosexual, promiscuous and vapid sexual object. Moreover, the lack of physical diversity present on graffiti websites and magazines reflects the commercialist values present in graffiti art nowadays. The commodification of graffiti and women’s bodies happen simultaneously, reflecting what many graffiti writer qualifies as the “selling-out” of the subculture.38 As graffiti is becoming a product, it is no surprise that the graffiti whore discourse parallels it. The implication is that within a capitalist society it is in women’s interests to represent themselves in sexualized ways. As the graffiti subculture grows bigger, the number of women (as well as queer identified people) practicing graffiti is increasing. However, their strategies of resistance are not often documented by academics. Coping methods, such as the formation of all-female crews and the development of alternative methods or techniques providing more safety are briefly discussed by scholars such as Gentry and 34 �Essay Couvrette, but the implication of feminist values remains relatively untouched.39 Considering gendered discourse within the field as well as the real physical danger that illegal graffiti poses, a woman practicing graffiti, as Jessica N. Pabon argues, is indeed performing a feminist act.40 But writing on walls as a strategy to resist patriarchy is not a new concept; it has in fact been used since the second-wave of feminism. Besides their illegality and the notion of reclaiming public space, these types of graffiti have little to do with the graffiti subculture I am referring to in this essay. However, it is still useful to consider their impact as Angela Johnson (1990) does when she mentions two radical feminist graffiti— “Dead men don’t rape” and “Women fight back!”— which appeared in her neighborhood.41 Even if she later questions the inherent violence of such messages, women’s words on public property is inspiring to her and makes her feel safer in the public space. As women were conditioned to stay in the realm of the domestic sphere, it can be argued that reclaiming the public space by practicing graffiti is a powerful way to show political opposition and challenge gender oppression.42 Basing herself on the work of the French street artist Mis.Tic, Rebecca Pursley claims that feminist graffiti blurs the line between the feminine/private sphere and the masculine/public sphere.43 Moreover, the feminist transformation of the public space achieves what Hélène Cixous described as “shaking the law”, which signifies disrupting the patriarchal law which is prevalent in society.44 The feminist response to “traditional” graffiti is yet to be documented, but as explored in the current research surrounding the gendered dynamics of the practice of graffiti, the themes of coping and resisting are predominant interests for women graffiti writers.45 Even if they face more obstacles than men, the women interviewed by these researchers have no intention to stop producing street art, which underlines the fact that patriarchal control won’t stop women’s participation in the field of their choice. Gentry sums up how graffiti gives women the skills to stand up to patriar35 chy and how its practice also positively influences women in the subculture: “Graffiti is a microcosm of society, and it reflects the ideas that are present in the larger culture. Though it mirrors many of the same masculinist values, graffiti offers women the opportunity to step outside of the “sociality of norms” and create new identities that they are able to challenge those standards. Graffiti’s identity forming opportunities are not lost during daylight hours, when graffiti artists are not painting graffiti. The women who participate in graffiti are able to use the lessons that they learn from graffiti about standing up to a culture that fetishizes and objectifies them in the dominant society, lessons that are valuable for their entire lifetimes.46” This paper’s aim was to fill the gap in the literature concerning women in relationship to the practice of graffiti as well as their representations within the subculture. I am personally involved in this area and have unfortunately witnessed homophobia and sexism limit the practice of talented graffiti artists. The denial of the implications of gendered dynamics is very common in both the subculture and the literature I encountered in the research process. Moreover, the erasure of women who are not exposing their body is striking. Many questions are still unresolved, and hopefully more research on graffiti will be realized from a feminist standpoint. Notions of intersectionality,47 privileges and access need to be addressed in further research. The myth of the graffiti whore is likely to stay prevalent, at least until graffiti as a trend loses its popularity. But a great number of women, despite their lack of visibility, contribute to render the fascinating practice of illegal graffiti more accessible to other women. �Essay Endnotes /// Macdonald, The Graffiti Subculture, 77-79. Couvrette, “Graffiti à Montréal, “80-83. 27 Gentry, “Girls’ night out,” 36-37. 28 Barthes, Mythologies, 109-159. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 “Graff Whore,” Urban Dictionary.com, accessed February 5, 2013, urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=graff%20whore&defid=4959564 33 Couvrette, “Le Graffiti à Montréal,” 81. 34 Gentry, “Girls’ night out,” 36-37. 35 Gentry, “Girls’ night out,” 40-41.; Couvrette, “Le Graffiti à Montréal,” 81. 36 Macdonald, The Graffiti Subculture, 127-150.; Gentry, “Girls’ night out,” 28-47.; Couvrette, “Le Graffiti à Montréal,” 69-83. 37 “Graff Whore,” Urban Dictionary.com, accessed February 5, 2013, urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=graff%20whore&defid=4959564 38 Austin, “More to see than a white cube.;” McAuliffe and Iverson, “Art and crimes,” 10. 25 26 N. Macdonald, The Graffiti Subculture: Youth, Masculinity and Identity in London and New York (New York: Palgraves Macmillan, 2002), 94-150; E. Gentry, “Girls’ night out: Female Graffiti Artist in a Gendered City” (Master diss., Bowling Green State University, 2008), 28-47, available at etd.ohiolink.edu/send- pdf.cgi/ Gentry%20Erin.pdf?bgsu1206212108.; K. Couvrette, “Le Graffiti à Montréal: Pratique Machiste et Stratégies Féminines (Master diss., Université de Montréal, 2012), 60-83. 2 Macdonald, The Graffiti Subculture, xiii. I will use the term graffiti writer as an umbrella term to describe people practicing graffiti. It is the term that is the most popular within people practicing graffiti and is commonly used in academic research about graffiti. 3 R. Barthes, Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), 109159. 4 Gentry, “Girls’ night out.” Such example is brought up by Gentry, commenting the represen1 tation of the graffiti artist TRIBE, who display her body in front of her graffiti piece by posing in bikini and high heels. 5 Macdonald, The Graffiti Subculture. For a more elaborate discussion of these rules, see Glossary (xixiii) and the chapter Going underground: A journey into the graffiti subculture(63-93). 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., xi-xiii. 8 T. Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (London: University Press of New England, 1994), page.; J. Austin, “More to see than a white cube: For an art in the streets,” City 14(2010), 22-27, 44-45. 9 Austin, “More to see than a white cube,” 36. 10 C. McAuliffe. and K. Iveson , “Art and crimes (and other things beside...): Conceptualising graffiti in the city,” Geography Compass 5(2011), 128-129. 11 Ibid., 129-130. 12 Macdonald, The Graffiti Subculture, 95-96.; Gentry, “Girls’ night out.;” Couvrette, “Le Graffiti à Montréal,” 69-70. 13 Macdonald, The Graffiti Subculture, 94-150.; Gentry, “Girls’ night out,” 21-22, 25, 30.; Couvrette, “Le Graffiti à Montréal,” 68-70. 14 Gentry, “Girls’ night out,” 11-27. 15 Macdonald, The Graffiti Subculture, 100.; Gentry, “Girls’ night out,” 20-21.; Couvrette, “Le Graffiti à Montréal,” 69-70. 16 Gentry, “Girls’ night out,” 21. 17 N. Ganz, Graffiti Women: Street Art from Five Continents, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2006), 9, 12-13.; Gentry, “Girls’ night out,” 23. 18 Macdonald, The Graffiti Subculture, 127-128. 19 Ibid., 128,135. 20 Ibid., 127-128. 21 Macdonald, The Graffiti Subculture, 128, 135.; Couvrette, “Le Graffiti à Montréal,” 80-83. 22 Macdonald, The Graffiti Subculture, 234-240; Austin, “More to see than a white cube,” 13. 23 Gentry, “Girls’ night out,” 36. 24 Macdonald, The Graffiti Subculture, 126; Gentry, “Girls’ night out,” 36, 67-68. Gentry, “Girls’ night out,” 24-85.; Couvrette, “Le Graffiti à Montréal,” 63-83. J. N Pabón, “Fillin’ with Feminism,” C.O.P. Magazine.com, accessed February 5, 2013, c-o-p-magazine.com/2011/12/c-o-p-minifeature-fillin-with-feminism/. 41 A. Johnson, “Response to Graffiti: The Writing on the Wall.” Off Our Backs. 20(1990), 14. 42 R. Pursley, “Shake off the Law: Graffiti and Feminism,” The McNair Scholarly Review, 18(2012), 61. 43 Ibid. 44 H. Cixous, The Portable Cixous (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 24.; R. Pursley, “Shake off the Law: Graffiti and Feminism,” The McNair Scholarly Review, 18(2012), 61. 45 Pabón, “Fillin’ with Feminism.;” Gentry, “Girls’ night out,” 32-47.; Couvrette, “Le Graffiti à Montréal,” 74. 46 Gentry, “Girls’ night out,” 67-68. 47 This term was coined by critical race feminist Kimberly Crenshaw to describe the interlocking relationship of socio-cultural factors such as race, gender and class in the impact of oppression. She originally uses the term to describe black women experiences of discrimination in work application. K. Crenshaw Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. (University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989),139. 39 40 36 �Performance PERFORMANCE BLEU Peinture, toile, Humains À travers cette performance, l’artiste rétablie l’équilibre entre le corps de la femme, trop souvent utilisé comme objets dans l’histoire de l’art, en se réappropriant une célèbre performance par l’artiste français Yves Klein. Ici, deux choses se manifestent, l’expression de la volonté féminine ainsi que l’émancipation du corps nu masculin, souvent sous-dévoilé dans les siècles derniers. Vue sous l’angle de la réappropriation artistique, l’œuvre devient également une critique du canon esthétique de l’histoire de l’art. Dans un climat de respect et de compréhension, c’est au 21e siècle que les deux sexes s’échangent les rôles préétablis, les transforment et les mélangent. 37 Érika Circé-Perrault Montréal, Canada Beaux-arts Université Concordia �Essay GUSTAV KLIMT AND ADOLF LOOS: THE WOMAN IN THEIR INTERIOR SPACES by Katrina Caruso Montreal, Canada Art History and Studio Arts Concordia University Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) and Adolf Loos (18701933) were born into a time of rich artistic creativity in Vienna.1 They worked during the fin-dusiècle period, a period of grandeur, and into the turn of the century pre-war period, which was seen as a time of reconciliation between nature and artifice.2 Klimt is best known for his decorative paintings of women with golden accents. In contrast, Loos has been made popular because of his functionalist architecture, which advocated for the home as part of the “modern lifestyle.” Klimt’s works are ornamental, while Loos opposed decoration. Klimt championed equality between fine and decorative art, a position that Loos opposed.3 Both artist and architect were highly controversial in society: the former for his pornographic subjects, and the latter for his minimalism. Though they had inherently different aesthetics, the theme of “the female” played significant roles in their interior works. Gustav Klimt and Adolf Loos both utilized ideas about the female —one through his blatant, sexual friezes; the other less directly, through his use of space in the home. This essay will focus on the artists’ differences and discuss the potential for similarities by examining their shared interest in women in relation to their work. Gustav Klimt is one of the most memorable Art Nouveau decorative painters of the 20th century. He is known for his erotic art, which was imbued with an eclecticism that bordered on the fantastical. Klimt’s style draws on Egyptian, Minoan, Clas- sical Greek, Japanese, and Byzantine art forms and was inspired by other Art Nouveau artists such as Aubrey Beardsley.4 Klimt celebrated all kinds of beauty, and his subjects varied from wealthy Jewish women to prostitutes. Overall, Klimt depicted women in a romanticist style, and his sitters often embodied the role of the femme fatale—an intense, strong woman in command of her sexuality.5 Klimt’s work conveys psychological symbolism—using artistic freedom to break from traditional portrayals of sexuality.6 In fact, he utilized allegory to thinly camouflage a highly erotic tendency of his. An example of these ideas may be studied through his 1894 interior commission for the University of Vienna. Klimt was commissioned to execute paintings which would adorn the ceiling of their Great Hall. His paintings, Philosophy, Jurisprudence, and Medicine were deemed overtly pornographic. The public was shocked by his transformation of allegory into sexual symbolism. They were never displayed.7 After the scandal, Klimt abandoned historical painting and realism, veering towards ornamental, mythological painting instead.8 He co-founded the Vienna Secession group with a number of great Viennese artists. The group aimed to provide an alternative exhibition space for upcoming young artists.9 They strove to raise the status of crafts to the same level as art, advocating for the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk—the total work of art.10 Klimt soon began working in his own style, which 38 �Essay portrayed strong women, in terms of space and sexuality. A first example can be seen in his 1902 Beethoven Frieze (Fig. 1). The frieze was intended for the 14th Vienna Secessionist exhibition, which celebrated Beethoven.11 The Vienna Secessionists considered this exhibition an opportunity to unite their talents and to create a Gesamtkunstwerk. The exhibition featured a monumental sculpture by Max Klinger, along with Mahler’s musical performances. 12 bining painting and architecture.16 For the frieze, Klimt used shape, form and colour to create curvilinear, organically-formed trees typical of Art Nouveau, which allude to the female body. The work also contains one of his femme fatales: the powerful, beautiful woman, seen in Expectation.17 The mosaic displays Klimt’s tendency to use the female figure in his work, which creates a total work of art in its combination of psychology, the senses, and space. Fig 1: Gustav Klimt, Detail from The Beethoven Frieze, The Kiss to the Whole World, 1902. Photo: Klimt Museum Vienna. Klimt’s frieze fills an entire room, overwhelming the viewer with visual subject matter. The artwork depicts people’s yearnings for happiness and freedom. It contains mostly nude subjects, which were offensive to the conservative Viennese. Beethoven Frieze can be read as a statement of Klimt’s subjects’ desires for sexual freedom, which can be considered in the stylized mythological females of Lust, Unchastity and Gluttony. In the frieze, these characters all have long, gorgeous hair, a typical Art Nouveau symbol of sexuality and attractiveness.13 Klimt’s work fearlessly showcases woman within the interior space, in full erotic sexual wanting and thus, in full control. Klimt’s interior commissions continued in 1905, when he began work on Adolphe Stoclet’s Palais Stoclet in Brussels.14 Klimt worked on the Palais’ dining room, which he said was “probably the ultimate stage of my development of ornament,” the culmination of his role as artist and craftsman.15 The Stoclet Frieze (Fig. 2) is a total work of art, com39 Fig 2: Gustav Klimt, Part of The Stoclet Frieze, The Tree of Life, 1909. Photo: ©MAK/Georg Mayer. For his part, Adolf Loos was a pioneer of modern architecture, influential in his controversial essays and interior design.18 From 1893-1896, Loos lived in the United States where he developed his modernist taste, influenced by American buildings, �Essay clothing, and furniture. 19 Upon his return to Vienna, he became a catalyst for functionalism by publishing his writings on architecture and design. In his most radical piece of writing, the 1908 manifesto Ornament and Crime, Loos critiques and derides the Secessionists for their use of ornament, specifically the architect Josef Hoffmann.20 He agreed, however, with the Secessionists’ desire for art to go beyond traditional boundaries. What is more, Loos did not fully reject decoration.21 This can be seen in his Café Museum which merged ornament and function. For example, he applied ornamental functionality to the design of the chairs of this museum: two wooden curving pieces meet each leg, acting as extra support.22 Loos believed that architecture should provide a means for a modern lifestyle, and he placed the individual’s needs at the centre of his architectural plans.23 This is how he created the Raumplan,24 a spatial plan which he used for many of his designs. It has been said that “Loos acted not just as an architect, but also as a psychologist.”25 His work has been considered a precursor to Constructivism, due to its industrial aesthetic.26 In the midst of this cold, modern approach to architecture, one may assume that the female was forgotten in the home and replaced by the male. However, Loos was adamant about the fact that the woman’s place was in the private sphere, and he designed spaces in accordance with this belief. 27 The Looshaus, one of the architect’s early works, distinguishes the public space from the private one. There is a clear separation on the building’s exterior façade between the ground level store and the second level apartments. This delineates the public store from the private apartments.28 Another example of such division can be found in the later Haus Müller (Fig. 3). Situated in Prague, the Haus Müller’s ceiling heights were adjusted by Loos to divide the public and the private spheres. Besides the separation between the public and the private, Loos had created a division between the man’s space and the woman’s in Haus Müller. In fact, a public staircase from the living room leads to the study—a typically male space—and a private staircase in the kitchen—typically seen as the “woman’s domain”—leads to the bedroom.29 Fig 3: Adolf Loos, Façade and plan of Haus Müller, 1929-1930. Photo: kotonogo.blogspot.ca/2011/05/adolf-loos.html In 1927, Loos began planning designs for the Parisian house of Josephine Baker, the famous African American dancer. Though the house itself was never built, its plan (Fig. 4), follows Loos’ previous division between the private and the public. The private living space was situated at the back of the home, while the public space was at the front. The house was meant to have two staircases: one for Baker’s guests, the second for her personal use. This created a boundary between the different sections of the house.30 Similarly to Haus Müller, Loos designed specific rooms with gender in mind.31 An indoor swimming pool was planned, which would enable Baker to “dance” in the water, and be seen by viewers, who were often male, watching her from the level above.32 It is interesting to consider the private and public in relation to Loos’ belief that the home should function for its owners. Baker, for example, was an exotic woman, the “other.” She was likely seen as sexually desirable privately, but was also prosperous and successful in public.33 The Baker House can then be appreciated as a unification of Josephine as a whole—designed for her public needs, as well as her private needs. 40 �Essay force. Through a functional aesthetic, Loos’ spaces separated women from the public space, placing her in a place of weakness. On the other hand, Klimt’s ornamental friezes speak of sexual liberation. Both artist and architect were avant-garde in what they attempted to create, though each had very different aesthetics and, ultimately, different visions of the woman’s role in the interior space. Endnotes /// Rachel Barnes, Gustav Klimt (London: Quercus Publishing Plc, 2008), 8. 2 Justin Wolf, “Gustav Klimt,” The Saylor Foundation and The Art Story, last modified 2012, accessed November 27, 2012, saylor.org/ site/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/ARTH208-2.3.2-Gustav-Klimt. pdf. 3 Ibid. 4 “Gustav Klimt Biography: Life and Work,” Klimt Gallery, accessed November 27, 2012, klimtgallery.org/biography.html; Wolf, “Gustav Klimt.” 5 Barnes, Gustav Klimt, 7, 8, 56. 6 Gustav Klimt Biography: Life and Work.;” Barnes, Gustav Klimt, 7. 7 “Gustav Klimt Biography: Life and Work,” Klimt Gallery.; Wolf, “Gustav Klimt.” 8 Wolf, “Gustav Klimt.” 9 “Gustav Klimt,” The Art Story, last modified 2012, accessed November 27, 2012, the artstory.org/artist-klimt-gustav.html; “Gustav Klimt Biography: Life and Work,” Klimt Gallery. 10 Barnes, Gustav Klimt, 16.; Wolf, “Gustav Klimt.” 11 “Beethoven Fries – Die feindlichen Gewalten 1902,” Klimt.com, last modified 2012, accessed November 27, 2012, klimt.com/en/ gallery/Beethoven-frieze-klimt-beethovenfries-die-feidnlichen-gowalten-detail3.ihtml. 12 Beethoven Fries,” Klimt.com.; Barnes, Gustav Klimt, 20. 13 Barnes, Gustav Klimt, 10, 23, 26, 31. 14 Ibid., 45.; “Gustav Klimt Biography: Life and Work,” Klimt Gallery. 15 “Gustav Klimt Biography: Life and Work,” Klimt Gallery.; Barnes, Gustav Klimt, 48. 16 Ibid., 44. 17 Ibid., 45, 48. 18 “The Villa: History of the Villa,” Mullerova Vila – Muzeum Hlavniho Mésta Prahy (archives), accessed November 27, 2012, mullerovavila.cz/english/historie-e.html;“Architecture: Adolf Loos, 18701933,” National Gallery of Victoria, last modified 2011, Accessed November 27, 2012, ngv.vic.gov.au/vienna/architecture/adolf-loos. 19 “Adolf Loos,” Famous Architects: Architect.Architecture.sk, accessed November 27, 2012, architect.architecture.sk/adolf-loosarchitect/adolf-loos-architect.php. 1 Fig 4: Adolf Loos, Potential façade of Baker House, 1928. Photo: cargocollective.com/adolfloos/Josephine-Baker-House-Unbuilt While Klimt may have been considered less “modern” due to his position within the Art Nouveau movement (a style which faded in popularity after the turn of the century), his depictions of women were of the avant-garde. He was fond of commanding, seductive femmes fatales, and as such, often included them in his work. On the other hand, although Loos’ plans were more aesthetically modern, he had antiquated ideals of the woman’s place in the home. This is evidenced through his architectural design, which confined women to the domestic, private part of the home—a notion which several feminist scholars, including Beatriz Colomina, Karen Burns and Christine Threuter argue.34 Though erotic, Klimt’s women are not demeaned by the artist, nor are they submissive to the viewer or in the subject matter. Klimt created interior spaces where the sexuality of his female figures overpowers the viewer. While the woman has not been removed physically from Loos’ architecture, she is relegated to the back of the home, confined to a position quite unlike the freedom exhibited in Klimt’s friezes. Conversely, in the concept of the indoor swim ming pool in Baker House, she is fully on display sexually, with the viewer watching her from above. Evidently, Gustav Klimt and Adolf Loos’ designs were at odds with each other. Klimt’s artworks put his women displaying their sexuality powerfully, while Loos’ homes pushed the female to the background, allowing the male to be the dominating 41 “Architecture: Adolf Loos, 1870-1933,” National Gallery of Victoria, last modified 2011, Accessed November 27, 2012, ngv.vic. gov.au/vienna/architecture/adolf-loos; Wolfgang Karolinsky, “Adolf Loos: 1870-1933,” Woka Lamps Vienna, accessed November 27, 2012, woka.com/en/info/designer/adolf-loos.asp. 21 Avnee Jetley, Susan Nugraha and Georgia Read, “Adolf Loos and 20 �Essay the Secession,” Cargo Collective, accessed November 27, 2012. http://cargocollective.com/adolfloos/About-Adolf-Loos-and-theSecession. 22 Avnee Jetley, Susan Nugraha and Georgia Read, “Adolf Loos: Individual Works, Cargo Collective, Accessed November 27, 2012, cargocollective.com/adolfloos/Individual-Works.; Karolinsky, “Adolf Loos.” 23 Ibid.; “Architecture: Adolf Loos, 1870-1933.” 24 “Raumplan,” Mullerova Vila – Muzeum Hlavniho Mésta Prahy, accessed November 27, 2012, mullerovavila.cz/?q=english/ node/430; “Raumplan,” Mullerova Vila – Muzeum Hlavniho Mésta Prahy (archives), accessed November 27, 2012, mullerovavila.cz/ english/raum-e.html. 25 “The Villa: History of the Villa,” Mullerova Vila – Muzeum Hlavniho Mésta Prahy (archives), accessed November 27, 2012, mullerovavila.cz/english/historie-e.html. 26 The Villa: A Guide to the Interior,” Mullerova Vila – Muzeum Hlavniho Mésta Prahy (archives), accessed November 27, 2012, for “male” visitors to watch Josephine’s body, and that the façade’s white and black stripes expressed Loos’ condemnation of ornamental women’s clothing, and could even further be seen as racial discrimination. mullerovavila.cz/English/pruvod-e.html; Karolinsky, “Adolf Loos.” 27 Janet Stewart, Fashioning Vienna: Adolf Loo’s Cultural Criticism, (London: Routledge, 2000), 129. Google e-book. books.google.ca/ books?id=k7Qfkmf2g-QC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_ summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false. Adolf Loos believed that notion is especially true for the German and Asutrian woman, not so much with her American counterpart. 28 Karolinsky, “Adolf Loos.” 29 “The Villa: History of the Villa,” Mullerova Villa. 30 Shapira, Elana, “Adolf Loos’s House for Josephine Baker,” Studies in the Decorative Arts, The Bard Graduate Center and the University of Chicago, 11, no. 2 (Spring-Summer 2004): 2-24, jstor.org/ stable/40663079. 31 Jetley, Nugraha and Read, “Adolf Loos: Individual Works.” 32 Avnee Jetley, Susan Nugraha and Georgia Read, “Josephine Baker House, Unbuilt,” Cargo Collective, accessed November 27, 2012, cargocollective.com/adolfloos/Josephine-Baker-HouseUnbuilt “[Aldolf Loos] designed the swimming pool so that Baker’s guests could watch her swim in the pool, a quality in Baker that he saw deserved an architectural glorification. Loos saw in Baker a chance to express his view of her modernity through the language of architecture. The house was never built and there has never been any solid information to prove that Baker asked Loos to design a house for her, or if they have ever met.” placesinfrance.com/ la_piscine_josephine_baker_paris.html. What is really interesting about this is that there is actually a swimming pool in Paris named after Josephine Baker: “The Piscine Josephine Baker is more of a swimming pool barge that is situated on the bank of the River Seine and was named after the actress and French resistance heroine, who became the first American-born woman to receive the highest French military honour called the Croix de Guerre.” 33 Shapira, Elana, “Adolf Loos’s House for Josephine Baker,” Studies in the Decorative Arts, The Bard Graduate Center and the University of Chicago, 11, no. 2 (Spring-Summer 2004): 2-24, jstor.org/ stable/40663079. 34 Jetley, Nugraha and Read, “Adolf Loos: Individual Works.” These Feminist theorists have written of the clear gender discrimination in Loos’ design, arguing that the swimming pool was an invitation 42 �STAFF Editor-in-Chief/Founder – Raissa Paes Raíssa Paes, from Brazil, is in her final year of completing a BFA in Art History. She is interested in feminist art and art history. Understanding the role of feminist art, recuperating forgotten female artists and criticizing traditional notions of art through contemporary and historical practices are among her strongest interests. She is a feature writer for CUJAH, and has published her writing in the Combine 2012 exhibition catalogue. Raíssa will begin her masters in visual arts administration in the Fall of 2013. She is the Editor-in-Chief and founder of Yiara Magazine. Assistant Editor – Tess Juan-Gaillot Tess Juan-Gaillot is a second year undergraduate Art History major at Concordia University. She is bilingual in French and English, having been born in Paris and raised in New Jersey. The strong differences in cultures have shaped the way she views artworks as constantly changing and multifaceted, no matter how simple they may appear. Tess involves herself in the Montreal art community by taking part in Art in Action, the 2012 Combine Catalogue, and the Fine Arts Faculty Council. Her main areas of interest include artworks concerning feminism, issues of identity and linguistics, and contemporary installation work due to their problematic categorical natures. She is the Assistant Editor for Yiara Magazine. Associate Editor – Stephanie Hornstein Stephanie Hornstein is a native Montrealer currently in her second year of a BFA in Art History at Concordia University. She is also completing a Creative Writing minor. Her interest in art and literature lie in art conservation, as well as feminist and First Nations issues. She is currently Associate Editor for Yiara Magazine. French Editor – Sallie Baron Sallie Baron is in the process of completing her final year of a BFA in Art History and Classical Archaeology at Concordia University. Having been born and raised in Montreal, her french-québécois familial upbringing paired with an english education, allowed her a deeper insight into Montreal’s multifaceted community. She is interested in post-colonial theories and 19th century Canadian Art. In the future, she plans to continue her research on Canadian Art and its status within the Imperial British Supremacy of the 19th Century. Sallie is the French Editor of Yiara Magazine. Graphic Designer – Audrey Malo Audrey Malo is from the south shore of Montreal and currently completing her third year as a Studio Arts major at Concordia University. She has a degree in graphic design from Cégep du Vieux-Montréal and is a self-taught digital illustrator. Her work, while being quite contemporary, has a vintage and nostalgic touch. She loves experimenting with colours and materials, while playing around with the endless possibilities and applications applications the medium has to offer her. Some of her recent clients include Bleublancrouge, Séries +, FASA and Festival FAST. She is the Head Graphic Designer at Yiara Magazine. Photographer/Assistant Graphic Designer/Copy Editor – Ellen Belshaw Ellen Belshaw, originally from New Brunswick but raised in Ottawa, Ontario, is currently in her second year studying Photography and Art History at Concordia University. In her visual work she is mostly interested in the personal and social implications of portraiture. Meanwhile, in her academic work, she finds herself mostly interested in bringing unknown artists (as well as unknown facets of already well-known artists) to the surface, in the hopes of their works being included more prominently in the art historical canon. She is the Photographer, Assistant Graphic Designer and Copy Editor for Yiara Magazine. 43 ��� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Other publications Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Issue 1 Page Number(s) 1-43 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data PDF Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013-03-01 Title A name given to the resource Yiara Magazine Issue 1 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Yiara Magazine Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Yiara Magazine Description An account of the resource The first issue of Yiara Magazine, an undergraduate feminist art &amp; art history publication. Concordia McGill non-McGill UQAM https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62030/archive/files/8aa6a6e89968d2aa8c942da20dd07203.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=QeFj9XzU2k23qzr2jypHmYmqMtT-d5gT0lD0Af2iJf2V9M2wHYs-6j8NeURecr7jiF4atNZs%7E8yVMX3jg0b%7EQ1Ema7yMuNqejDOYD4iunOb2vKeeVbrJjdpEKnj1iXW2Z%7ENTGLNfCOM6HJOlzUY8yF9P-4hB44OaZYqNOKpMz7cVmFWpTLY403C7o%7ExYAsyUJg7gHeotn1UtCKwA92S9L5ZkYcAwAdquj7tisMQn9zeerS6OYGjKxRPUzVWMQNt96H7BNrD2wv7ct1POdneakaZDRMDTtOl613pKMUNv-KHfBJFwsIlsmKA5oFc3IMwLy%7E0T8mUWEogekr5QfYlc-A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 43c651959f34a89ffc03a5b2ee892ab9 PDF Text Text ��IA R A MAG A Z I N E TABLE OF CONT ENTS 02 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Tess Juan-Gaillot 03 ANONYMOUS PORTRAITS OF WOMEN, WORK, AND SPECTACLE: FROM DEGAS TO LAUTREC Katerina Korola 08 DEAR VAGINA - Fannie Gadouas 09 MY BODY IS A STATE Camille Cléant 10 THE CONFUSION AND IDEALISM MONOLOGUES Leilani Fraser-Buchanan 11 SWEET EIGHT-LEGS Hannah Materne 12 STILL LIFE - Emily Karcz 13 LAS VEGAS SERIES Jonah Migicovsky 14 INTERVIEW WITH JESSE HARROD Valérie Frappier 18 BUST- Julie Villeneuve 19 COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE 2007-2012 - Megan Moore 20 AUTO-IDENTIFICATION Laïla Mestari 21 BUS STOP - Sophie Morro 22 A GIRL WALKS INTO A BAR: THE FEMINIST POTENTIAL FOR RAPE JOKES - Anna Frey 27 BOUNDARIES - Alysia Piatkowski 28 GENDER MENDER: AN XXY REVIEW Miia Piironen 32 BEADING NEW WORLDS: NADIA MYRE, CHRISTI BELCOURT, AND INDIGENOUS WOMEN’S ART OF RE SURGENCE - Claire Stewart-Kanigan 39 LET ME COUNT THE WAYS... Naakita Feldman-Kiss 40 GAZING BACK: SPECTACLE AND SPECTATOR IN JOYCE’S “NAUSICAA” - Rudrapriya Rathore 43 SORCIÈRES - Gabrielle Brais Harvey 44 YIARA’S STAFF �LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Dear Reader, This year has been about expansion on all fronts: magazine production, membership, community outreach, and content scope. Thanks to the financial support from the Fine Arts Student Alliance and the Concordia Council on Student Life, I am proud to say we have doubled our magazine production while maintaining a steady level of quality since last year. Membership also doubled in size, resulting in a much more efficient and dynamic team. These changes contributed to yet more expansion in the form of community outreach. In February 2014, we held our first ever art exhibition showcasing a variety of works by undergraduate artists (most of whom are featured in this magazine) at Café l’Artere. The successful month-long exhibition was celebrated with a well-attended vernissage open to the Montreal public. You may notice that we have expanded our understanding of what being an art and art history magazine entails. In addition to including purely art historical essays that deal with generally accepted forms of visual art, you will find pieces dealing with comedy and literature as art forms. In many ways, however, you will find Yiara to be a continuation of last year in terms of its inclusions. Once again, poetry, performance, film, and scriptwriting pieces are placed alongside 2 02 more sculptural and painterly works. The rich range of perspectives never fails to impress me, even after working on the editing process for the last two issues. If there is one thing I have come to learn so far, it is that we, as individuals, are fluid. Our capacity for change and growth is infinite. I believe that the content of this magazine reflects this organic mentality. Yiara does not and cannot encompass one singular form of feminism, since feminism is arguably as multifaceted and organic as those who practice it. I would like to extend my thanks to all contributors, Yiara team members, and supporters without whom this magazine would have never seen the light of day. Your dedication and passion for your work and Yiara Magazine has shown every step of the way. Congratulations, Tess Juan-Gaillot Editor-in-Chief Yiara Magazine, April 2014 �ANONYMOUS PORTRAITS OF WOMEN, WORK, AND SPECTACLE: FROM DEGAS TO LAUTREC Katerina Korola Montreal, Quebec Concordia University Major in Art History and Film Studies 2013 For Edgar Degas, the 1874 Exposition de la société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, etc. was primarily a Realist exhibition.2 Degas would never adopt the Impressionist label, preferring to consider himself a “Realist” or “ Naturalist.”3 If history has nonetheless cast him as such, it is most certainly for his relentless determination to portray the denizens of fin-de-siècle Paris. This urban contemporaneity, however, is by no means the exclusive domain of Impressionism. In fact, it is precisely this aspect of Degas’s oeuvre that would be later developed upon by the younger Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The lives of these two singular individuals offer many parallels to biographers: Degas and Lautrec were both born into financial security, students of academic training, extremely fond of Japanese prints, and accomplished draftsmen. More importantly, the two artists shared a common repertoire of themes, including laundresses, jockeys, performers, prostitutes, and bathers, all drawn up from the human world of nineteenth-century Paris. teenth-century. Women, although they often remain anonymous, come to dominate the portraiture of both Degas and Lautrec. This is especially true of the working woman who is always inextricably tied to spectacle, be she a laundress, milliner, prostitute, or performer. Although both committed Realists, with Degas and Lautrec we see a Realism of abbreviation, a Realism that would transform portraiture into the quintessential modern genre. Neither of the works discussed in this investigation are typical of their creator: Degas’s Au théâtre: femme assise sur un balcon (1877-80) [fig. 1] is one of the few instances of the artist turning his attention to the spectator and Lautrec’s Waiting (1888) [fig. 2] is far more subdued than the energetic prints for which he is famous. Nonetheless, it is precisely for these atypicalities that these works offer a unique vantage point into the oeuvres of these painters. Similar in tone and composition, Au théâtre and Waiting provide a counterpoint to the boisterous images of performers that immediately leap to mind at the mention of either Degas or Lautrec. Contemplated together, these anonymous portraits reveal a sustained concern with the working woman and her place in an urban society increasingly defined by spectacular diversions. Focused on depicting this world sincerely, both artists turned to portraiture, a genre nearly as stigmatized as landscape in the mid nine- Before discussing these two paintings further, it is important to briefly outline the status of portraiture in the nineteenth-century. In his essay Avec un dos, nous voulons que se révèle un tempérament, un âge, un état social; par une paire de mains, nous devons exprimer un magistrat ou un commerçant; par un geste, tout une suite de sentiments.  Edmond Duranty1 03 3 �fig. 1 - Edgar Degas (Paris 1834 - Paris 1917), At the Theatre: Woman Seated in the Balcony, c. 1877-1880, Oil on canvas. Coll. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Michal Hornstein. Photo MMFA, Brian Merretti, inv. 1999.18. on the subject, Pierre Vaisse notes that, within the academy system, portraiture was considered a subordinate art, based in imitation, and was taught only as an aid to history painting.4 Maligned as a strictly commercial endeavour that catered to the taste and wallets of the middle classes, portrait pieces that appeared in the salons were frequently attacked for their ugliness and inconsequentiality.5 It is no coincidence that these were precisely the same criticisms most often levelled at Degas, whose work increasingly came to represent the middle and working classes. It was Baudelaire who first observed portraiture’s potential to go beyond mere imitation. In his review of the Salon of 1846, Baudelaire distinguishes two notions of portraiture: the portrait as a historical record and as a novel.6 With the latter, it is the artist’s task to reveal the invisible personality and history of the sitter, a feat demanding ingenuity beyond the capacity for straight imitation. Baudelaire’s thoughts on modern painting are elaborated in his later essay, “The Painter of Modern Life.” Written nearly twenty years later, this influential essay calls for painters to render the “gait, glance, and gesture” particular to their age.7 Portraiture thus becomes the obvious vehicle for rendering the “beauty of circumstance” unique to each contemporaneity.8 The specificity of the late nineteenth-century lies in the phenomenon of accelerating urbanism: Paris, like other 4 04 European urban centres, increasingly became the locus of social, economic, and political activity. New forms of leisure emerged, as did a new social class: the urban proletariat, which significantly included a large number of women, whose work was ever-present behind the leisure activities of the urban bourgeoisie. Degas was one of the first artists to turn his attention to this emergent subsection of Parisian society. His depictions of laundresses, milliners, and café-concert servers and performers blur the line between portrait and genre. The plain features of his subjects (so often criticized for their ugliness) authenticate the realism to which Degas aspired,9 while their anonymity (the names of sitters and models were rarely recorded by the painter)10 relegate these women to representatives of their type, the working woman. As the art historian Emil Maurer notes, Degas did not take portrait commissions.11 He chose his own subjects, and in the case of his portraits of working class women, demonstrated an interest in “turning the expressive head into a study of modern sensibility.”12 In Au théâtre, we see this process exemplified. The small canvas reveals an intimate portrait of a working class woman. Unlike Degas’s milliners and laundresses, this woman is not at work, but in the penny gallery of a theatre, spending her leisure time rapt in the performance below. Although only shown from the elbows up, in keeping with the tenants outlined in Duranty’s La nouvelle peinture, the woman’s “temperament, age, [and] social condition”13 are nonetheless clearly legible. Her working class status can be identified in her simple clothes, the drabness of which lend the whole work a sombre tone. Her slumped pose reveals physical exhaustion of a full day’s work, her bright turquoise hat suggests a flirtatious streak, and her downcast look testifies to a touching desire to forget herself in the spectacle below. The impact of the work is due in large measure to Degas’s mastery of abbreviation. The background of the painting is highly abstracted, only barely implying the red and green velour of the theatre interior. The eye is drawn immediately to the slumped figure of the woman, to the somewhat sad tension between her drab dress and bright hat, to her white hands clutching the railing as she looks below. Even the specific features of the woman herself are abbreviated. Although the woman’s downcast eyes and snub nose are clearly delineated, her exact expression is cast in shadows, and must be read in the posture of her body. The painting, in this sense, represents not �only the working class woman but also the obstructed and perhaps even distracted gaze of the flâneur, another specifically modern (male) sensibility. Baudelaire discusses the flâneur at length in “The Painter of Modern Life.” Baudelaire’s flâneur, as the masculine form of the noun indicates, prescribed a specifically gendered gaze as well as a social practice generally barred to women. In the paintings of Degas, this gaze is developed into an aesthetic, one which would be formalized in the writings of Duranty. In La nouvelle peinture, Duranty insists that the modern painter must leave his studio and seek his subjects “amongst men, in the world.”14 Direct observation of human beings in their social milieu has direct implications upon composition, since in reality the subject never appears against a “neutral background” or “at the centre of a canvas.”15 This last point was almost certainly developed in collaboration with Degas, a close friend of Duranty and a silent presence throughout the manifesto. Asymmetrical, arbitrarily cropped compositions form a key component of Degas’s brand of realism, emphasizing the fugitive, fragmented, and accidental nature of fast-paced modern urban life. This compositional strategy is clearly at work in Au théâtre, a perfect example of what Maurer calls Degas’s “directorial approach.”16 The woman is depicted from above, slightly off-centre, against the strong diagonal of the balcony railing. This conspicuous cropping reinforces the accidental element of observation. The viewer has the impression of having caught the woman unaware, in one of those rare fugitive moments when sincere emotion surfaces. Degas’s striking division of red and green by the body of the woman attests to this drama of the moment, available only to the dedicated observer of modern life. It is pictorial decisions like these that allowed Degas to elevate the portrait to the prestige of an authentic work of art, expressive of the modern sensibility that preoccupied his mature career. For today’s viewer, however, Degas’s abbreviations and compositional choices cast a problematic light on his depiction of women. In a statement that may as well have been written with Au théâtre in mind, feminist cultural studies scholar Elisabeth Bronfen notes that in many of Degas’s paintings, the woman “seems caught in the process of absenting herself.”17 Bronfen elsewhere writes: While many of his portrayed women seem to pose as typical figures for what is specific about the late nineteenth-century individ- ual, they are in fact removed from their concrete historical context and relocated as actresses in a multifarious spectacle of urban modernity.18 Although Bronfen ultimately concludes that Degas’s tendency to blur or otherwise obscure significant details celebrates the artist’s “disempowerment” before the inaccessible subjectivity of the female model,19 her critique nevertheless raises an issue that cannot be ignored when speaking of Degas’s depictions of working class women: the abstracting movement of the male gaze. In Au théâtre, where the stolen glance reveals the woman as the unwitting object of scopic consumption, this issue is especially portentous. Although on the one hand protecting her sovereign individuality by obscuring her facial expression, Degas nonetheless abstracts his model by denying her name and by positioning her as an object of spectacle. The attention placed on her hat, the brightest point of the composition, is especially important, since, as noted by art historian Werner Hofmann, the hat was the primary attribute of the fashionable nineteenth-century woman.20 This coquettish hat, then, at least implies a desire on the woman’s part to be looked at. The element of the intruding gaze is also a key component of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Waiting (1888). Painted roughly ten years after Au théâtre, this early work by the twenty-four year old painter builds upon the stylistic innovations pioneered by Degas, whom Lautrec acknowledged as an especially influential forerunner.21 As in Degas’s Au théâtre, in Waiting, Lautrec employs a downward axis of entry, an angle he would favour throughout his career.22 The space of the picture is quite flat, demonstrating again the influence of Degas and Lautrec’s own affinity for Japanese prints.23 This flatness is intensified by the painting’s uniform and earthy palette, which heightens the viewer’s proximity to the woman depicted. Here again the viewer approaches an anonymous working class woman, this time seen from behind. Although her features are hidden, her slumped back betrays her weariness, realizing down to the letter the words of Duranty in La nouvelle peinture. The woman’s downcast gaze is absent as she waits before a yellow café table, not touching the glass in front of her. Melancholy pervades the image, and the viewer has the distinct impression of having infringed upon a moment of private introspection. 05 5 �Upon closer inspection, however, the whitened edge of a canvas reveals itself in the upper left-hand corner and the supposed café dissolves into the artist’s studio. Known as a painter who “limits himself to the bare essentials,”24 this inclusion is no accident on Lautrec’s part. Because of it, the anonymous woman depicted cannot simply be understood as a seamstress or a milliner on her day off, but must be acknowledged as a model whose work consists in transforming herself into an image of another. Lautrec freezes his model in the midst of this transformation, yet another form of “absenting” oneself.25 Although the woman remains anonymous, by drawing attention to this moment of transformation, Lautrec’s painting ennobles the work upon which his own profession is contingent. More than any painter before him, Lautrec delved into the world of spectacle that entertained both elites and masses of the late nineteenth-century and his artwork soon became an important part of that spectacle.26 It is therefore important not to underestimate the important relationship between the model, her work, and spectacle. In this respect, the comparison of Waiting to another Lautrec painting undertaken during the same year is illuminating. The Hangover (1887-1889) [fig. 3], which would be featured as a lithograph in the periodical , depicts Suzanne Valadon, one of Lautrec’s favourite models at the time, sitting before a similar round yellow table and a similar glass.27 Even the bench behind her can be identified in Waiting, where it sits to the left of the model. But where The Hangover depicts the degradation of lower class female morality, Waiting is a tongue-in-cheek document to the artifice implicit in any artistic representation. More importantly, the work acknowledges the important role of the working woman (the model) in the anonymous portraiture of the late nineteenth-century. Lautrec depicts her as not only the subject of a work of art, but as a key partner in its production. As two artists obsessed with the human world and its social realities, Degas and Lautrec took up the portrait genre and, through their work, made significant contributions to the promotion of portraiture to the status of high art. Through portraiture, both Degas and Lautrec not only exercised the distinctly individual styles for which they are remembered today, but also cast visibility on a subsection of the population whose invisible presence defined the urban world of the late nineteenth-century. Although many of Degas’s depictions of women retain the latent trace of objectification symptomatic of his age, his commitment 6 06 to the representation of this group (especially as workers) speaks to an almost proto-feminist sensibility. Degas’s desire to depict contemporary society alone does not account for the overwhelming predominance of women in his work. Three quarters of his portraits represent women,28 and although the majority of these will remain forever anonymous, Degas’s decision to paint them has given these women a presence in history. Indeed, in Degas’s work, as in the later work of Lautrec, the working woman is revealed behind the spectacle of nineteenth-century leisure and diversion. Lautrec’s entire artistic career would come to revolve around this spectacle and the role of women within it. Building upon the groundwork set by Degas, Lautrec’s portraits of women shed light on their often-marginalized roles in the world of art and entertainment. His later works have preserved the names of numerous female performers whose short careers lit up Montmartre during the end of the nineteenth-century. fig. 2 - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901), Waiting, c. 1887. Oil on canvas, 22 1/8 x 18 9/16 in. (56.2 x 47.2 cm). Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA, 1955.564. Image © Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA (photo by Michael Agee). �14 Ibid., 20. My translation. Duranty’s use of the word ‘men’ to designate society at large is indicative of the invisibility of women in the nineteenth-century world. Interesting to note, however, is that the majority of Degas’s portraits feature women rather than men. 15 Ibid., 21-22. My translation. 16 Maurer, “Portraits as Pictures,” 112. 17 Bronfen, “Facing Defacement,” 242. 18 Ibid., 236. 19 Ibid., 248. 20 Werner Hofmann, “Bodies Adorned and Used,” in Degas: A Dialogue of Difference (London: Thames & Hudson, 2007), 148. 21 Julia Bloch Frey, “Toulouse-Lautrec (Monfa), Henri de,” in The Dictionary of Art (Volume 31), ed. Jane Turner (London: Macmillan Publishers, 1996), 213. fig. 3 - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The Hangover (Gueule de bois), ca. 1887-1889, Oil and ink on canvas, 47.1 x 55.5cm, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass. 22 Horst Keller, Toulouse-Lautrec: Painter of Paris, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Incorporated, 1968), 17. 23 Ibid., 37. 24 Ibid., 31. 1 Edmond Duranty, La nouvelle peinture (Paris: Editions du Boucher, 2002), 19. 2 John Rewald, “The First Group Exhibition (1874) and the Origin of the Word Impressionism,” in The History of Impressionism (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1973), 313. 25 Bronfen, “Facing Defacement,” 242. 26 Bloch Frey, “Toulouse-Lautrec (Monfa), Henri de,” 214. 27 Keller, Toulouse-Lautrec, 31. 28 Maurer, “Portraits as Pictures,” 99. 3 Genevieve Monnier, “Degas, (Hilaire Germain) Edgar,” in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner (London: Macmillan Publishers, 1996), 621. 4 Pierre Vaisse, “Between Convention and Innovation—the Portrait in France in the Nineteenth Century,” in Degas: Portraits, eds. Felix Baumann and Marianne Karabelnik (London: Merrell Holberton Publishers, 1994), 119. 5 Ibid., 120. 6 Ibid., 118. 7 Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, ed. and trans. Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon Press, 1995), 14. 8 Ibid., 13. 9 Emil Maurer, “Portraits as Pictures: Degas Between Taking a Likeness and Making a Work of Art (Tableau),” in Degas: Portraits, eds. Felix Baumann and Marianne Karabelnik (London: Merrell Holberton Publishers, 1994), 105. 10 Elisabeth Bronfen, “Facing Defacement: Degas’ Portraits of Women,” in Degas: Portraits, eds. Felix Baumann and Marianne Karabelnik (London: Merrell Holberton Publishers, 1994), 234. 11 Maurer, “Portraits as Pictures,” 100. 12 Degas, quoted in Maurer, “Portraits as Pictures,” 102. 13 Duranty, La nouvelle peinture, 19. My translation. 07 7 �DEAR VAGINA Fannie Gadouas Cheney, Ontario Concordia University Major in Photography Digital print 80” x 120” 2013 Dear Vagina is a large-scale digital print composed of patchwork images of the artist and her fellow females’ vulvas. The assemblage of these images into a large wallpaper connotes decorative art and the interior of the home (realms typically associated with the female) while simultaneously confronting the viewer with explicit imagery. Beyond this pink surface lies the artist’s aim to address the limited ways the female body is often represented by depicting the unique and diverse appearance of each vulva. Gadouas truly believes that art should engage with one’s community and actively question societal norms. Dear Vagina reflects these beliefs as the work advocates ownership over one’s body, as well as defiance towards perpetuated stereotypes in contemporary culture of what ideal female genitalia should look like. Gadouas thus challenges these bodily expectations delineated by society, all the while using the power of her dear vagina. 08 �MY BODY IS A STATE Camille Cléant (née Brisson) Montréal, Québec Université Concordia Majeure en Print Media Médiums mixtes sur papier 10” x 5” 2013 Camille Cléant est une artiste qui explore ce qui la compose en tant que femme et en tant qu’artiste. Dans son œuvre My Body Is a State, elle aborde les dualités entre le monde des apparences et le monde de l’intérieur. En déconstruisant son corps pour saisir ses enjeux et mettre en lumière sa politique, elle l’infiltre dans le paysage d’une carte de Montréal, sa ville d’origine, créant un lien entre son corps et les lieux physiques qu’elle côtoie. Le corps féminin devient un terrain explicitement politique, comme le mentionne le titre de l’oeuvre et sa forme. Un rapprochement peut alors se faire entre My Body Is a State et l’ensemble des réglemen- tations contraignant le corps même de la femme (on peut penser entre autres aux droits reproductifs). Les écrits parsemés à travers l’œuvre reflètent le dialogue intérieur de l’artiste, similaires aux confessions retrouvées dans un journal intime, pour nous rappeler que le personnel est politique. 09 �THE CONFUSION AND IDEALISM MONOLOGUES Leilani Fraser-Buchanan Pender Island, BC Concordia University Major in Theatre and Development 2013 All: To Whom It May Concern, Reader Number One: First of all, this was supposed to be about mens rights activists on reddit and the Good Girl Gina meme. Then, after hours of demoralizing, rage-inducing research, I asked myself why I was spending my time trying to write about guys at their computers who think that all women are going to vindictively steal their sperm and then spend their lives languishing in the oh-so-luxurious world of being a single mom living off child support. Right. Either that or essentially proclaim that the ideal woman delivers blow jobs and sandwiches and not much else. What’s the point? I know these views exist, I know they’re damaging, but mocking them for my own enjoyment does not seem productive at all, besides being a way for me to pat myself on the back for recognizing misogyny. What follows may not be productive either, but it feels more hopeful, and that is important to me. Reader Number Two: So, Number Two. Recently one of my teachers spoke about a playwright who, at the end of their career, stopped writing because even one single word was too powerful. I should probably remember who the playwright was, I don’t, and google isn’t offering any answers. I have a problem. I’m terrified of saying anything. There are moments of light, moments of insight, 10 moments of understanding in the wake of reflection, moments of expression that feels true. Mostly there is a lot of fear. Fear that what I say, or try to create, will be at best boring, unintelligible, or saccharine, and at worst, support the very systems that I try to deconstruct. Do I get it? Do I care enough? Am I smart enough to deserve self-expression, or at least brave enough to fuck up honestly? Does it even matter? Does this sound self-pitying? I recognize this place of privilege- I am actually being asked what I think, in a space where my words are given such gravity that they actually are examined. So. Upon further inspection of the inner contents of my psyche, my conclusion is inconclusive. I obviously must have something to say, because the thought of silence makes me want to scream, and though I fear the ramifications of what words can do, I suppose that the possibility of illumination makes them worth the risk. Reader Number Three: When I burst into tears trying to describe to you why feminism is: A. valid and B. important to me, it was not because, as a woman, I am so emotional that my brain has no room for intelligent thought. Fuck that. It’s because this affects me in a way that lies deeper than what can be put into quantifiable boxes. Reader Number Four: I sense that something, maybe many things, are broken in the world. I �SWEET EIGHT-LEGS Hannah Materne Toronto, Ontario Concordia University Major in Design, Minor in Sustainability 2012 don’t know how to fix it. I also feel such an immense, overwhelming joy at the fact that I am alive, that I do not know how to express it. I feel that the two are perhaps connected. In my terribly young, idealistic mind, I think love is my deus ex machina. Reader Number Five: I would love to be fearless. I am not. I would love to live in a world where I don’t feel inherently threatened by a stranger, simply because the sun has gone down, and we are both walking down the same street. I would love to feel at ease at a job where I am the only female in a kitchen of men. I would love to only ever believe in the best in people. I would mostly love to never have to feel that my body is a weapon against my soul that inspires hate, violence, vulgarity and un-wanted attention. candied wrapped for the world this lacquered façade fickle frenzied flashy encases one pinch insecurity one pound insincerity. her candy floss spiderweb cowers in the corners of her shell and sweet eight-legs scratches from the inside. But for every hurled proposition at 3AM on St. Laurent, and for every moment that the presence of someone’s eyes makes me want to curl up in a ball and disappear, there are touches that inspire, words that empower, and smiles that make me believe that I am worth nothing less than the entire universe. For these, and the people whom which they belong, I would like to make my life a valentine, dedicated to thanking them for making me believe that a broken world is still a world worth trying to change. 11 �STILL LIFE Emily Karcz Mississauga, Ontario Concordia University Specialization in Fibre and Material Practices & Painting Oil on ovular canvas 16” x 20” 2013 Emily Karcz’s artwork is an oil painting that uses the language of art history’s longstanding still life tradition, a style canonically dominated by male artists, to speak to the subject of contemporary sexual technology. The artist’s portrayal of a “taboo” subject, being modern-day toys used to pleasure oneself, in a classical realist 12 manner reminiscent of Dutch still life paintings results in a glorification of women’s sexuality. By literally placing this issue on a pedestal, Karcz chooses to address female self-intimacy and masturbation, issues often absent in public platforms, instead of referring to the intimacy experienced with another partner. She here un- dertakes the study of a sexual object without resorting to the objectification or representation of the female body. By focusing the viewer’s attention to these tools for sexual pleasure, Karcz creates a colourful commentary that celebrates women’s sexuality and independence. �LAS VEGAS SERIES Jonah Migicovsky Montreal, Quebec Concordia University Major in Photography Inkjet prints 16” x 20” per photograph 2012 In this series, Jonah Migicovsky undertakes a photographic study of the infamous vacation spot Las Vegas. More present than the casinos and nightclubs is the ever-looming promise of sex and nude female bodies, as documented in Migicovsky’s photographs. By using the camera as a tool to examine the sexual culture of the city, the artist asks important questions about how women are objectified in advertisements for sexual interaction and in such occupations as stripper and escort. The notion that sex sells is paramount in Las Vegas, and ultimately in contemporary media and culture, which is largely depicted here. Viewed through a feminist lens, the artist conveys the objectification and loss of identity women as well as men undergo in the media, and the process of reducing a person to a simple “type.” 13 �Ways of Being Done and Doing sculpey, embellishments, masonite, cloth, paint, metal pipes INTERVIEW WITH JESSE HARROD February 5, 2014 Originally from Toronto, Jesse Harrod obtained her MFA in the Fiber and Material Studies Department at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago and she also holds a BFA from the Nova Scotia School of Art and Design University. Now living in Virginia, Harrod is an Assistant Professor of Fibers at the School of Art and Design and Art History at James Madison University. Valérie Frappier, Yiara’s Head Writer, had the chance to talk with Harrod over the phone about her fibre-based art practice and discuss the political and social facets of her work. Valérie Frappier: First off, could you describe the themes that you explore in your art practice? Jesse Harrod: I think there’s a variety of things that I’m exploring. But ultimately, I’m often thinking about this idea of becoming, and as that relates to gender expression, identity, puberty, class, labour, and colonization—as referenced 14 through a lot of the textiles that I work with. And then, I’m also interested in the materials themselves and what kind of role they play in transcending or questioning: What is art? What is good taste, what is bad taste? What is appropriate or inappropriate? VF: It seems that notions of value are being addressed through the use of DIY culture and �kitsch aesthetics in your work. How are these questions of hierarchies important to you? JH: They’re so important to me. I think that there are these ideas around what is art and what isn’t art, and a lot of that is really entrenched in patriarchy. It’s very much related to gender and to these notions of where value is placed, and how we prescribe value to objects and to modes of making. This is really linked to issues around feminism, and gender and so on and so forth. So I think that when you think about hobbyist materials or when people talk about hobbyists in a contemporary context, and they speak about them disparagingly—which people often do, particularly in the art world—oftentimes, were talking about women in rural settings and women that are making for pleasure. But oftentimes, it’s also a form of escape, and so it becomes a critique on class and on gender. And I think that that gets overlooked when people make those kinds of assumptions or make those kinds of sweeping statements. Ultimately, I think that your material choices, the way in which you approach making and the techniques that you use all relate back to issues of class and issues of gender. And because the art world is so steeped in this notion of the canon, which is inherently white men, it becomes this critique of the Other. VF: Your work fluctuates between simultaneously vast and intricate installations and smaller detailed pieces. How do you find scale affects your work? JH: Scale is huge and I like huge scale (laughs). Ultimately, I’m happiest when I’m working at a really large scale because I really want the work to consume the viewer. I feel that sculpture only exists in relationship to the body, and that your body becomes a part of the work. When the work forces the body to respond in different ways— whether that’s stand back, look up, look down, move around—you are ultimately interacting with the work in a physical way, which is really important to me. And I like when one’s body feels enveloped, or immersed, or overwhelmed by the work, particularly when I’m making work that’s of questionable taste. I feel like it can be unsettling for the viewer in a way that a discreet little painting can’t be. I like to work as big as I can work—that lends itself to all sorts of other challenges. VF: Was the 1970s the golden age for feminism and feminist art? If not, when do you think it was? JH: Oh, I don’t think it was. I mean, I think that it was a turning point in terms of the art world and I think that there were probably other turning points. But, in fibres in particular, the feminist art movement of the 60s and 70s is really significant because we saw fibre coming into the contemporary art world. And we saw the inclusion of work that had fibres directly challenging what was considered art. I think that that’s a really significant point in fibre history in particular, and there were lots of men and women who were doing that work at the time, and that’s not my era—I’m too young for that. But I think that in general, particularly in North America, it is a very interesting time to look back on with what was happening politically and socially. There were just so many massive shifts. It’s easy to sort of overlook those now, but when I do the research and think of what sorts of things have changed... You know, this is sort of a grim fact, but in the early 70s, it became illegal for a husband to rape his wife. And that’s something we just take for granted now. Or as a woman, you couldn’t rent an apartment on your own, or have a credit card. So, I find that that shift happened so so quickly and so dramatically. But in terms of a golden era for feminism, I think that’s yet to come. I think that that hasn’t happened yet. We haven’t seen a truly inclusive form of feminism. I think it’s still predominantly a white movement, and the historical relationship that feminism has with issues around race is well-documented and obviously hugely problematic. And I think there’s still a really really long way to go. VF: Part two of this question is: Why do you think the world still needs feminism today? Perhaps if you could point towards that. JH: Oh wow, because we have a long way to go! When I think of feminism today, it is much more inclusive and I think that there are—or at least I hope, I really hope— more and more young women and men embracing the ideas of feminism. And I certainly know a lot of young men and women who see it as being important, and valid, and valuable in their work in regards to what they’re doing. You know, living in America is so different than being home in Canada. Not to say that Canada is perfect by any stretch of the imagination—I know that there are all sorts of problems that are happening there. But being sort of new living in America, the amount of derogatory problematics—I mean, just with the recent election and the ideas around a woman’s body were just unbelievable. And there are obvious instruments for people to address those kinds of comments that are being made. I don’t know... I think that there is so much room for improve- 15 �ment. And I could get into the nitpicky things like: women are still not paid the same as men, access to health care, access to child care—all those kinds of things are still very much up for debate. I feel like abortion is always possibly on the chopping block. And I feel like there is this particularly strong right-wing backlash over the last few years that is really scary. It’s also like living in the South is a whole other thing. VF: And you’ve been in the States now for quite a few years? JH: I’ve been here for five years. I’ve been in Virginia for a year and a half, and then I was in Chicago before that. VF: Do you consider your art to be activism? And do you think that art can ever be divorced from politics? JH: No. I don’t actually think that art can ever be divorced from politics. As much as a lot of people would like it to be or think that their art is not political, I think it’s always political on some level or another. And sometimes it’s more obvious and more in your face, and other times it’s more subtle. But ultimately, I think it’s always political. And I think that that is something that’s really hard for some people to wrap their heads around and come to terms with. And is my art activism? I mean, it’s hard because I have done activism. I have participated and continue to participate in activism when it’s sort of more obvious and direct. But I think yes, ultimately in my work, I’m taking into consideration all of the things that I think about in relationship to the activist work I do, the social justice work I do. And my work is questioning and thinking about all of those things in a visual way—manifesting themselves in different ways than participating in a protest or the other ways I’ve done community work. VF: How important is teaching and collaboration to you in regards to art making? JH: Oh, I love teaching (laughs). Which is really nice, because you spend a certain amount of your life thinking, “Okay I’m going to do this thing,” and when you finally get there, and you do it and you’re like, “Oh, I like this.” Okay, that’s good because sometimes you don’t know. It could be really terrible if you get there and you’re like, “God, this sucks.” No, I love teaching. I love being with students. And I feel that through my teaching—and I could really see this in the last couple of years—when you’re working adjunct, it’s hard because you’re sort of moving all over the place. When I was working adjunct, I was teaching four, 16 five or six classes a year which was really challenging. But being full-time now, I’m able to really guide into my research for a class. So a lot of my practice—the work that I’m making in my studio—is so connected to the research that I’m doing for my teaching. It’s such a gift, you know, to be able to see that connection. And I think that whenever I’m teaching people how to do a technique or to think about a process, it’s just forcing me to consider how I’m using that process or technique. And so I think that that’s enriching in ways that I never knew it would be. VF: Is there a piece of advice that you give to all of your students and could you share it with us? JH: That’s a big question (laughs). Well, there’s a piece of advice that I was given. I think that when you’re in school, just to be a sponge and try to take every opportunity to learn, participate and just engage. Someone told me to say yes to everything when I was in grad school. They told me, “For the next few years, just say yes to everything.” And I did. And it was such a good piece of advice. At a certain point, you have to stop saying yes to everything but for those first couple years after grad school, it was really helpful to just be open in that way. I guess that the other thing is to find good friends, good people that will be honest with you about your work and be hard on you. And oh, there’s so many things that I want to say. And just to be kind. I know that sounds really cheesy, but I really believe that the art world can do with a lot more kindness and generosity of spirit, rather than of objects or money. I mean, that’s not a spirit. What else would I say? I guess one of the things that I hear a lot from my students when they graduate is, “Oh, thank God I don’t have to read anymore” (laughs). You know? “I can stop thinking for awhile.” And it’s just so depressing to hear that. You have to be constantly engaged with your practice. VF: Who are some artists, either historical or contemporary, that have influenced you? JH: Wow, okay. Faith Wilding. I think she’s amazing. She has a big show in Chicago right now. Tanya Aguiñiga, she’s an American artist. She was raised in Tijuana, and she does a lot of community-based work. She’ll make art objects, and she also does furniture stuff —she has a very varied art practice. Who else would I say? Allyson Mitchell has been the biggest influence on my life, personally and creatively. I think she definitely takes incredible risks and has this really interesting background as not being trained as an artist. And she’s Canadian. �cians, and visual artists. I really try to engage in that kind of circular way and think about how someone like David Bowie could influence my work. Or how Chris Kraus, who’s a writer. Or, you know, Jess Ardnt—she’s a poet and a writer in New York—she really influences my work. This kind of myriad of places that I’m thinking from. VF: And how you can get inspiration from really any kind of artistic expression. JH: Exactly. VF: I have one last question, maybe the most important one. If you were a mythical creature, which one would you be? JH: Are there options for me to choose from? VF: Nope. JH: Oh wow, I don’t know! (Laughs). If I was a mythical creature... I think I would definitely be something in the water. I would definitely be some kind of water-bound mythical creature. VF: Maybe like a mermaid? JH: Maybe a mermaid, yeah. The water is the place that I belong. Pensile Arrangements 1, 2, 3 paracord, metal rings, beads, cock rings 2013/14 VF: Yes! Woohoo! Jesse Harrod currently has her macrame series “Pensile Arrangements” on display in the “Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community” exhibition at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay & Lesbian Art in New York until March 16th. In April, she will be exhibiting new works in both a show at the American University Museum in Washington, DC and at Charlotte Street in Kansas City. JH: Yes, she’s awesome. There’s so many people. I really love John Waters. He doesn’t make objects—he’s a filmmaker and a writer—and I truly love his work, and his persona, and his sort of performance of himself. If he started a religion, I would join it (laughs). And there’s a lot of musicians. I know this is so cheesy, but David Bowie... Like, I love David Bowie. I wrote my thesis on David Bowie. (Laughs). I think he is a god. There are a million more but that’s maybe a good sampling. VF: This is a great sampling, yes. JH: I would also say that when I think of artists that I love, there are poets, and writers, and filmmakers, and musi- 17 �BUST Julie Villeneuve Montreal, Quebec Concordia University Specialization in Fibre and Studio Arts, Specialization in Ceramics Porcelain and earthenware 12” x 18” x 23.6” 2013 18 While both a testament to the traditional craft of ceramics and a nod to fibre practices, Bust is an investigation of the implications of fashion towards women. Villeneuve is interested in the ambiguity of the corset, as a constraining garment during its historical pinnacle on the one hand, and as a contemporary symbol of sexual empowerment on the other. This detailed work invites the viewer’s gaze to admire its craftsmanship and material process, the artist here implic- itly paralleling the way we admire women for their appearances and their bodies. The viewer’s gaze is then confounded by the embellished painted vulvas that adorn the porcelain surface, at first glance appearing to be mere floral motifs, which address the historic repression of female sexuality. Villeneuve’s work thereby conveys the “beheading” legacy of oppression towards women, while also pointing to the double standards that continue to afflict women today. �COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE 2007-2012 Megan Moore Montreal, Quebec Concordia University Marjor in Photography Embroidery on cloth (2x) 15” x 12”, 16” x 11”, 11” x 8.5” 2013 Moore’s series is a collection of headlines from Cosmo, a magazine geared towards young women that speaks of relationship advice, sex tips and beauty regimes. These works make use of feminized modes of production; namely embroidery, to mimic the aesthetics of home decor and the domestic qualities of textile art. Moore draws on these elements of domesticity to reconsider the gender roles they imply and the societal construct of femininity. By demonstrating the ways Cosmo reinforces heteronormativity and female body image anxiety, the artist points to the distorted ways femininity is represented in the media. Juxtaposing the decorative and “girly” aesthetic of the embroidery with the sensationalist nature of the headlines, Moore probes into what it means to be feminine and looks at how our society teaches these ideals to its young women. 19 �AUTO-IDENTIFICATION Laïla Mestari Casablanca, Maroc Université Concordia Majeure en Fibres and Material Practices, Mineure en Women’s Studies Impression sur tissu 50” x 30” par pièce 2013 Cette œuvre de Laïla Mestari présente deux autoportraits photographiques imprimés sur tissu. Le tissage étant l’une des plus anciennes formes d’identification de l’humanité, elle cherche à créer un dialogue entre ce code visuel ancestral et les modes d’identification propres à aujourd’hui. Le type de textile utilisé provient des campagnes environnantes de Tanger au Maroc, où les femmes de la région le portent comme un pagne. Ce lien entre le tissage et le lieu d’origine de l’artiste est juxtaposé avec l’apparence de passeport de ses autoportraits. Le fait qu’elle semble être emprisonnée derrière les bandes colorées met en relief l’encombrement de la nécessité de classification, que ce soit par le genre, la sexualité, la culture, l’origine ou le statut social. Laïla Mestari subvertit les codes visuels sur lesquels nous formulons nos hypothèses et notre confort identitaire, et espère encourager une réflexion critique sur les mécanismes qui les construisent. 20 �BUS STOP Sophie Morro San Clemente, California Concordia University Major in Studio Arts Oil on canvas 18” x 24” per panel 2013 Interested in channelling the nuances of everyday life, this painted diptych by Sophie Morro depicts a middle-aged man observing a faraway female lost in thought. This male figure can be interpreted as preying on the oblivious solitary woman from his high vantage point, however he can also be interpreted as being lost in an innocent reverie of his own, conjuring the woman from his imagination. In contemporary society, women are largely taught to be aware of poten- tial male sexual predators, especially when in public spaces, and the violating threat they may pose. Depending on the viewer, and perhaps even on their gender, Bus Stop can represent a menacing situation to one viewer and a completely ordinary scene to another. The way in which this scene can severely shift in its meaning is reflective of how one experiences the world around them, and how gender delineates these experiences. 21 �A GIRL WALKS INTO A BAR: THE FEMINIST POTENTIAL FOR RAPE JOKES Anna Frey Montreal, Quebec Concordia University Major in Communications and Cultural Studies 2013 Introduction In the study of communication, humour has been theorized to be a socially acceptable outlet for complicated or unpopular feelings that would otherwise have no available release.1 However, the question is often raised whether all topics should be available for comedians to cover, or whether the moral weight of certain subjects is too heavy to be dealt with through laughter.2 I am speaking here, in particular, about rape. In the case of misogynistic rape jokes, the divisive power of humour is especially poignant. Given that, I argue that feminist rape humour has the potential to unify and empower all people to be aware of and work to end rape culture. Through a comparative analysis of two rape jokes—one negative, one positive—the function of humour regarding rape will be discussed. First, I will present the controversy surrounding Daniel Tosh’s use of a rape joke in response to a heckler during one of his sets at a comedy club. I will explore the question of whether rape jokes can ever be considered funny by studying the major actors of these arguments. Drawing extensively from Dr. John Meyer’s article, “Humour as a Double-Edged Sword: Four Functions of Humour in Communication,” I will dissect Tosh’s jokes which centre on rape and elucidate their theoretical framework. The second example of rape humour will be taken from stand-up 22 comic and comedy writer John Mulaney. I will unpack the differences between the two jokes and ultimately explain how feminist rape jokes can work to dismantle rape culture if they follow Mulaney’s example. Rape culture Before discussing the jokes themselves, however, a brief contextualization of the topic and its relevance to our current cultural climate is in order. Rape culture is most easily understood as a culture in which sexual assault is normalized, expected, and excused.3 Sexual assault can be perpetrated against and by people of any gender, but the context of this paper will focus on heterosexual acts where a man aggresses a woman. Men do not typically live with the same fear of sexual assault as women do, and therefore are not as negatively affected in their everyday lives by rape culture. Indeed, the prevalence of sexual violence against women in North America is staggering: reports have stated that a rape occurs in the United States every two minutes.4 Even more disturbing is the notion that, due to the vast amount of non-reported rapes, statistics like these are considered to be on the low end of the spectrum.5 When we consider the humiliating ways in which many sexual assault survivors are treated when they do report their experiences to the police, such as by being �asked how many sexual partners they have previously had or how much alcohol they typically consume, it is not surprising that less than half of all rapes go unreported.6 Cases which have recently gained major media attention, such as the Steubenville trial and Rehtaeh Parsons’ suicide, illustrate the cruel and sexist ways in which women can be treated after an assault.7 In our North American cultural community, some of the most pervasive myths concerning rape are “the idea that ‘no’ really means ‘yes’; that women can resist rape if they wish; that in most cases the victim is promiscuous; and that women falsely report rape to protect their reputations or because they are angry at someone.”8 These myths are harmful because they shift the blame from the attacker to the survivor, simultaneously silencing the (statistically female) survivor and reinforcing the notion that rape is not a serious crime. This, as well as other factors, contributes to the normalization of rape. Daniel Tosh It is in this overwhelming social context that Daniel Tosh, a stand-up comedian, emerged on the comedy scene in Montreal in 2000, landing himself a spot on The Late Show with David Letterman a year later. Since then, Tosh has developed a reputation for insensitivity in his routines. One particularly crude joke of his details how he pranked his sister by swapping the pepper spray in her purse for silly string, a switch she only discovers when trying to ward off a male attacker. He mimics her calling him after being raped, saying that he really got her, and “that really hurt.”9 Tosh claims that he and his sister both have sick senses of humour, implying that she would appreciate the comedy in her own assault.10 In this instance, which can be found on YouTube, the joke ends with the audience laughing approvingly along with Tosh. Those who became familiar with Tosh’s abrasive presence on-stage were not surprised when, in the summer of 2012, a blog post surfaced detailing an insult hurled by Tosh to a female audience member during a live performance. There is no video of this event, but multiple news sources report that Tosh was expanding on the notion that rape jokes are “always amusing” when one women in the audience shouted out that rape jokes were, actually, never funny.11 Tosh retaliated immediately, asking the audience: “wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by, like, five guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her?”12 It was in the middle of this speech that the heckler and her friend left the club, stopping to complain with the manager on their way out. The manager apologized for the verbal assault and offered the heckler and her friend free tickets to any future show at the Laugh Factory, though allegedly stated they would understand if the two women never returned.13 A number of tensions developed as a result of this event. The five main actors were Tosh, the heckler, the rest of the audience, the manager of the Laugh Factory comedy club, and—later—Internet commenters. Tosh’s comedy history makes it clear that this was not an isolated incident of misogyny, but just one example of a worldview developed over his lifetime and career. Though relatively little is known about the heckler, her frank objection to Tosh’s content was certainly a feminist act, whether she self-identifies as a feminist or not. The shocking inertia of the remaining audience members demonstrates Dr. Meyer’s claims that laughter is a social action that can unify a group of people around accepted norms.14 It was these norms that were called into question in the weeks after the incident, as details and opinions spread across the Internet. The two major camps of commenters were those who supported Tosh and who believed that comedy could be used to handle any topic, no matter how polemic; and those who identified as feminist, mainly women, and who believed that such sensitive material should be treated with respect. Dr. Elise Kramer has found, after conducting an intensive study of Internet conversations about rape jokes, that these exchanges, “quickly develop, in many cases, into [arguments] over free speech.”15 In fact, she reports that all participants, whether they are pro or anti-rape jokes, will admit to the disturbing nature of sexual assault.16 It is only in the communicative representations of the act that disagreement is found: “The distinction being made is one between the joke and the contents of the joke. The framing of a joke, [pro-rape humour] commenters argue, somehow transforms a disturbing image into a funny one, without changing the image’s inherently disturbing nature.”17 It would seem, then, that this transformation from a physical act to a communicative act occurs more easily for some people than others. An individual’s personal experience with sexual assault may greatly affect this, as those with bodily memories of an event might find it difficult to treat that event as purely hypothetical. People who have questioned the misogyny implicit in rape culture, whether they have survived rape or not, will be more likely to view rape humour as a destructive social force. 23 �What does humour do? In his essay “Humour as a Double-Edged Sword,” Dr. Meyer states that, “laughter produces simultaneously a strong fellow-feeling among participants and joint aggressiveness against outsiders.”18 Although we may believe this to be true in theory, it takes quantitative studies like those conducted by Katheryn M. Ryan and Jeanne Kanjorski, and Mónica Romero-Sanchez’s team, to translate Dr. Meyer’s statement into concrete data. Both of these studies tested whether a higher enjoyment of sexist humour in men would correlate with a greater likelihood of self-reported aggression and rape proclivity. In line with Dr. Meyer’s understanding of laughter as a social phenomenon,19 Ryan and Kanjorski found that “men who were high in the likelihood to sexually harass and who enjoyed the sexist cartoons together were likely to model each others’ sexually harassing behaviour when given the opportunity.”20 Conversely, both investigations concluded that men who reported less amusement when faced with sexist humour presented a lower likelihood to support or practice sexual aggression against women.2122 Placed in the context of a comedy nightclub, this research lends itself to the theory that pro-rape ideologies would have been fostered and encouraged among the crowd at Tosh’s show. According to Romero-Sanchez, constantly reinforcing the positive valuation of sexual assault through humour has the danger of reinforcing the normalization of rape and sexism in the social sphere.23 In light of these two studies, which helped establish the link between the enjoyment of sexist humour and the performance of sexist behaviour, it becomes valid to explore the existence of feminist rape humour. Ryan and Kanjorski suggest that, “one avenue for reducing sexual and physical relationship violence may be in expressing intolerance for sexist humour and rape-supportive beliefs,”24 but shy away from any discussion of anti-rape comedy. I suggest that by nurturing feminist humour, communities have the opportunity to create a social context that lessens the prevalence of sexual assault and increases support systems for survivors. In “Dissecting the Frog,” an online article by Whitney Phillips, the author claims that “what a person laughs at reveals who that person is.”25 If laughter is used as a form of social control, as Dr. Meyer suggests it can be, are we not responsible for what we choose to laugh at? If, as Ryan and Kanjorski and Romero-Sanchez have shown, laughing at sexist humour produces conditions in which 24 men feel comfortable admitting to non-consensual desires, do we not have a duty to shift our laughter and our humour away from the victims, and towards those who choose to do them harm? In his description of superiority theory, Dr. Meyer writes, “[Gary Alan] Fine has described how sexual humour sets and enforces the relevant social norms in a culture by ridiculing ‘lower’ forms of behaviour or language from the perspective of society’s mainstream.”26 He offers no elaboration on what type of “lower” behaviour is being referenced here, but the assumption is that jokes targeting homosexuality, transsexualism, and sex all work to increase stigma around marginalized groups, and to deter anyone from joining them. There is no reason why rape can’t also be included in the list of “low” sexual behaviours that deserve to be derided. If humour can be such an effective tool of alienation, perhaps comedy can intervene as a driving force of feminist social change. But what can we consider to be a feminist rape joke? John Mulaney As a stand-up comic and former writer for Saturday Night Live, Mulaney offers an excellent example of a feminist rape joke. In one monologue he recounts the anecdote of walking through a New York City train transfer corridor at 2:00 a.m., accompanied only by a woman he didn’t know, who was walking a few paces ahead of him.27 Mulaney comments on the woman’s uneasiness as she began looking over her shoulder at him and quickened her pace. In this joke, Mulaney positions himself as a man of such small stature that it is inconceivable to him that anyone would perceive him as dangerous. The joke climaxes with Mulaney chasing this woman down the corridor, only to realize once he caught up to her that she was, in fact, running away from him, and not, as he had thought, towards an approaching train. He finishes by poking fun at himself, reiterating the obliviousness with which most men perceive rape culture: “In her eyes, I’m an adult. And adults rape each other, kind of a lot… But I’m not like that. [Mimes a stabbing motion, and a pelvic thrust.] I’m not a man.”28 It is his own ignorance that is being mocked here, while he completely rationalizes the woman’s behaviour. Though Mulaney’s depiction purports an absolute unawareness of the effects of rape culture within the context of the joke, the humour wouldn’t work without the crucial insight he offers near its end. His emphasis on “man” shows an understanding of the conditions of rape culture, which positions all men as aggressors and all women as �victims. As Dr. Kramer suggests, “according to this perspective, women are inherently rape-able, which leads to a certain blurring between the categories of ‘rape victim’ and ‘woman.’”29 When Mulaney states, “I’m not a man,” he is pleading against the cultural positioning of all men as potential rapists in the eyes of women. However, his assertion of un-manliness is served to the audience as a joke, and their laughter works as an acknowledgement of the essentializing nature of rape culture. Not once in Mulaney’s skit is the woman the butt of the joke. Although he describes the woman’s fear, it is the clueless man who is the target of the joke specifically because he does not understand why the woman is justified in being afraid. In this way, the monologue is heavily informed by Meyer’s superiority theory of humour. Instead of positioning himself as the superior party, Mulaney uses his own faulty behaviour as an example of what not to do, while the woman is represented as adhering to the social norms created by rape culture. In one joke under three minutes long, Mulaney manages to highlight the pervasiveness of rape culture, shame men who rape, and deplore the fact that women are forced to live in fear of even the most harmless men. Similarities and differences between instances When we look at the similarities between Tosh and Mulaney’s jokes, it becomes clear that stand up comedy is a highly variable medium that has no inherent ideological position. Both Tosh and Mulaney are straight, white men under 40, living in North America. They both benefit from a certain level of success, and are generally well known across the continent. The performances detailed above both took place in comedy nightclubs in front of live audiences. Those in attendance were people with expectations of laughter, and who may or may not have had previous knowledge of the type of humour they would be encountering, but nonetheless paid to enter. Tosh and Mulaney both employ generally casual modes of address, and neither of them is known for any major use of physical humour. Despite these contextual similarities, Tosh and Mulaney experienced vastly different reactions to their rape jokes. It is clear, then, that the controversy occurred over the content of Tosh’s communicative act, and not over where, when or by whom the act was performed. Tosh’s language is considered to have done something in the crowd, and the larger audience of the Internet, to have garnered such an impassioned response. Kramer expands on this theory of words producing action: “The performative nature of rape jokes and the arguments about them would not be possible without humour ideologies that allow jokes to go beyond individually instantiated pragmatic acts and enable them to carry social and political valence.”30 In encouraging his fans to critically and specifically laugh at women who have been raped, Tosh positioned himself as a certain type of person, and forced the audience, in their choice to laugh or not, to also position themselves on the subject.31 In this case, the audience’s public reaction defined what they considered to be acceptable behaviour. Choosing not to laugh, or choosing to openly oppose a joke, can be a risky political act. The heckler at Tosh’s show suffered significantly more emotional duress having verbalised her displeasure than she likely would have had she remained silent. Perhaps, especially in the context of a comedy show, “the person who does not merely fail to laugh but refuses to laugh is violating a sacred social rule by failing to cooperate with [their] interlocutor.”32 Being a woman in a room full of men laughing at the image of you “being raped by, like, five guys right now,” is not a safe position to be in, especially considering the studies that prove that those men would rank high in the likelihood to be aggressors of sexual violence. This circumstance is evidence of the concept of misogyny as norm created by Tosh in the Laugh Factory. According to Dr. Meyer, “differentiation and enforcement humour show the violation, though laughable, to be an unacceptable violation that needs to be focused on, corrected, or avoided in the future.”33 We can easily apply this quote to Mulaney’s anecdote, which uses humour to take down rape culture. Sexual violence is an unacceptable violation of a woman’s body. What is laughable is the continued reinforcement of this rape culture as “normal,” a perspective that certainly needs to be corrected. Conclusion The dissection of two jokes told by stand up comedians Daniel Tosh and John Mulaney make it clear that there is a wide diversity in humour concerning rape. Misogynist rape humour, as I have labelled it, uses laughter to mock the experiences of women in rape culture and, whether overtly or implicitly, promotes the use of sexual aggression by men. When people speak of “rape jokes,” this is typically the genre to which they are referring. By introducing Mulaney to the conversation, however, the 25 �total feminist refusal of any humour involving rape is complicated. Through an analysis of his stand-up routine, we can see that all of the oppressive power wielded by misogynist rape jokes can be reversed onto the rapists themselves. Humour is a useful method of delivery for sensitive conversations, as it has the power to put people at ease and to create unity within a group.34 I call for the creative use of humour and jokes to bind women and feminists of all genders together to denounce the critical level of rape in our communities. 19 Ibid., 310. 20 Kathryn M. Ryan and Jeanne Kanjorski, “The Enjoyment Of Sexist Humor, Rape Attitudes, And Relationship Aggression In College Students,” Sex Roles 38.9/10 (1998): 745. 21 Ibid., 753. 22 Mónica Romero-Sánchez, Mercedes Durán, Hugo Carretero-Dios, Jesús L. Megías and Miguel Moya, “Exposure To Sexist Humor And Rape Proclivity: The Moderator Effect Of Aversiveness Ratings,”  Journal Of Interpersonal Violence 25.12 (2010): 2345. 23 Ibid., 2340. 24 Ryan and Kanjorski, “The Enjoyment Of Sexist Humor, Rape Attitudes, And Relationship Aggression In College Students,” 753. 1 John C. Meyer, “Humor as a Double-Edged Sword: Four Functions of Humor in Communication,” Communication Theory 10 (2000): 318. 25 Whitney Phillips, “Dissecting the Frog,”  The New Inquiry, accessed Nov. 1, 2013, http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/dissecting-the-frog/. 2 Elise Kramer, “The Playful Is Political: The Metapragmatics Of Internet Rape-Joke Arguments,” Language In Society 40.2 (2011): 138. 26 Meyer, “Humor as a Double-Edged Sword,” 315. 3 Ann Burnett et al., “Communicating/Muting Date Rape: A Co-Cultural Theoretical Analysis Of Communication Factors Related to Rape Culture On a College Campus,” Journal of Applied Communication Research 37.4 (2009): 466. 27 Lindy West, “How to Make a Rape Joke,” Jezebel, accessed Nov. 1, 2013, http://jezebel.com/5925186/how-to-make-a-rape-joke. 28 Ibid. 29 Kramer, “The Playful Is Political,” 148. 4 Ibid., 465. 30 Ibid., 163. 5 Ibid. 31 Ibid., 138. 6 Ibid. 32 Ibid., 153. 7 Marco Oved and Laura Kane, “Rape Culture: What Do Steubenville, Rehtaeh Parsons and Frosh Chants Have in Common?”  The Star, accessed Nov. 9, 2013, http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2013/10/19/ rape_culture_what_do_steubenville_rehtaeh_parsons_and_frosh_ chants_have_in_common.html. 33 Meyer, “Humor as a Double-Edged Sword,” 325. 8 Burnett, “Communicating/Muting Date Rape,” 466. 9 “Daniel Tosh - rape,” 2012, video clip, accessed Nov. 1, 2013, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isSJjwdXgho. 10 Ibid. 11 Hollie McKay, “Comedy Central Star Daniel Tosh Slammed for Gang Rape Joke, Tweets Apology,” Fox News, accessed 01 Nov. 2013, http:// www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2012/07/11/comedy-central-stardaniel-tosh-slammed-for-rape-joke/. 12 “So a Girl Walks into a Comedy Club...” Cookies for Breakfast, accessed Nov. 1, 2013, http://breakfastcookie.tumblr.com/post/26879625651/soa-girl-walks-into-a-comedy-club. 13 Ibid. 14 Meyer, “Humor as a Double-Edged Sword,” 317. 15 Kramer, “The Playful Is Political,” 157. 16 Ibid., 141. 17 Ibid., 142. 18 Meyer, “Humor as a Double-Edged Sword,” 317. 26 34 Ibid, 320 and 323. �BOUNDARIES Alysia Piatkowski Oakville, Ontario Concordia University Major in Studio Arts Pouring medium with acrylic on canvas 42” x 15”, 36.5” x 14”, 43” x 15” 2013 Noticing the manner in which she was becoming more reserved as she got older, Alysia Piatkowski wanted to address the suppression of emotions she was experiencing. Influenced by a specific ideal of what womanhood should aspire to be, the artist wanted to address the notion that women should repress their ideas and emotions in order to be successful in society. In this painted triptych, Piatkowski renders colourful and fluid imagery as a reminder to herself and to her fellow women to allow for the flow of feelings in everyday life and to value the importance of self-expression. The vivid colours and overflowing manner of the paint off the canvas signify the inherent emotionality of beings and the breaking of set boundaries, whether those be gender, sexual or emotional barriers. 27 �GENDER MENDER: AN XXY REVIEW Miia Piironen Sudbury, Ontario Concordia University Major in Film Studies 2013 From a purely organizational standpoint, there are plenty of reasons for the gender binary. The system delineates male and female characteristics as separate and static, ostensibly facilitating a natural and sustainable social order, while readily assigning roles and packaging gender identity. It can be convenient, that is, when it works. The problem with the system is that it bifurcates an establishment with numerous variants. What should resemble a scale becomes more of a lineup. The question becomes how many individuals will be, or are already, wrongly condemned by this system each and every day? 28 For those who bravely feel that sex and gender are a scrambled egg, Lucía Puenzo’s film XXY (2007) is a work of transformative power. What happens when a third sex is introduced, one without accompanying gender cues? The whole film exists in a sort of grey area, one so uncharted that expectations, or rather predictions, are next to meaningless. XXY tells the story of Alex Kraken (Inés Efron), a fifteen year-old living with an intersex condition in rural Uruguay. While she possesses both male and female sex organs, Alex has been raised as a girl, taking medication �to suppress her more male characteristics. Although androgynous, Alex is typically male in her behaviour, which is listless and incredibly aggressive. With puberty already underway, her mother Suli (Valeria Berucelli) grows increasingly anxious for Alex, especially when she stops taking her medication. Unbeknownst to both her husband Néstor (Ricardo Darín)—a marine biologist who cares for the region’s endangered sea turtles— and Alex, Suli invites Ramiro, an old surgeon friend and his family, to stay with the purpose of convincing Alex to get the surgery that will physically affirm her as a woman. The distress is understandable. Alex’s very sex is a scrambled egg. How then can her gender be defined? And what are her parents to expect of her future? Being an intersex individual is not as rare as its almost complete lack of representation might lead one to assume. According to the Intersex Society of North America, the condition occurs once in every 1,500 births, making it a more common congenital disorder than Cystic Fibrosis.1 Given that many people are still unfamiliar with the term intersex, this may be surprising. Society has long had an uncomfortable relationship with hermaphroditic figures. The condition’s namesake, Hermaphroditus the revered son of Hermes and Aphrodite, embodies one of intersex’s only positive representations which have historically been few and far between. Usually, hermaphroditism only makes an appearance in popular culture as something ethereal, alien, often monstrous. However, not all intersex people are hermaphroditic, and indeed, the latter is a term deemed dated by most of the community. There are many forms of intersexuality. The overarching definition is merely a general term used to describe a variety of conditions in which a person is born with atypical reproductive or sexual anatomy.2 Perhaps intersex people are so feared in myth and culture because their condition is inherently subversive to a failing system. As I have noted, XXY is something rare. It is one of the first instances in the realm of media I have seen to portray the subject of intersexuality with such thoughtful sensitivity. Indeed, it is the first film that I have ever seen on the subject. The story begins with Ramiro, his wife, and their teenage son Álvaro (Martín Piroyansky) arriving in the Kraken’s bucolic island fishing village. Álvaro quickly makes the acquaintance of Alex who immediately proposes that the two of them have sex. He is alarmed by Alex’s forthrightness and unnerved by it. What kind of girl acts this way? In fact Álvaro and Alex are not too different. Both are young outcasts exploring their burgeoning sexuality and as Alex points out, their fathers are actually in the same line of work (well-meaning butchers is the gist). A mutual attraction develops between the two, but it is not the only one that Alex is fostering. She is also developing feelings for her friend Roberta, the daughter of one of Néstor’s co-workers. We see this unfolding when Roberta gets in the shower with Alex and the two wash each other’s hair. This is one of the film’s most loaded scenes, in part because there is no dialogue. Theirs is not a merely homosocial engagement. What their interaction indicates is that Roberta is aware of Alex’s difference, and her curiosity does not seem to be biological. Alex’s gaze is likewise communicative of a queer discernment. The scene, carried through in a single take, is a disorienting one. Álvaro’s attraction to Alex complicates established notions of sexual orientation. As the film progresses, the idea that Álvaro is gay is raised several times. However, Alex is, to his initial comprehension, a girl. The eventual sexual encounter between the two – potentially the first for both characters – is just as confusing for him as it is for Alex, who may be gay herself. This happens in a scene interrupted by Néstor who is initially deeply distraught by what he witnesses. Alex is the penetrative partner, something neither he nor the audience had little way of anticipating. Thankfully, Alex is able to keep the reaction idle, which is more than can be said for those close to her; for instance, Vando, her best friend, spreads her secret at school. After a restorative visit with Scherer, a former intersex individual now living as a man, Néstor comes to view the event as his child making the choice to shed her female branding. Twice in the film’s second act, he refers to her as “my son.” It is not until Alex is sexually assaulted by the boys that Vando betrayed her to that Néstor realizes – as Alex does – that living falsely in one world is not a tenable reality. Not when Alex is straddling two. Although the film is set in Uruguay, XXY is an Argentinian production; a country known to be the most progressive state on queer issues in all of Latin America. Of course, this was not always the case. While Argentina remains surpassingly Catholic in its demographic, a rapid secularization of government has seen many developments in the expansion of LGBT rights, several of which directly affect those in the intersex community. Most notably, a new national law now defines gender as “the inner and individual gender experience as each person feels it, which can coincide or not with gender assigned at birth time.”3 29 �This is arguably the most progressive legislation of its kind anywhere in the world. The Catholic Church has blocked many social reform bills in the past, underscoring how swiftly the remarkable shift in public perception has occurred. XXY certainly seems to have come at a historically opportune moment, and its fearless treatment of intersexuality is still, by any standard, exceptional. This is a quality Puenzo does not allow us to forget. The island village the Krakens inhabit reflects society’s isolation of intersex people, whether well-meaning or not (the last thing Alex’s parents want is for any harm to come to their child). They have relocated from Argentina so that Alex may grow up with more privacy, but soon learn that cultural anxiety about gender is pervasive and not just restricted to urban centers. “We came here to stop hearing every idiot’s opinion,” Suli says when Álvaro’s mother attempts to goad her into agreeing to surgery.4 Suli knows that Alex is tired of being prodded at for the sake of medical curiosity, but she is also weary of constant relocation. Being forced into taking decisive action to situate Alex’s gender is just another form of this. XXY is filled with sumptuous ocean imagery. The sublime nature of the island that surrounds Alex (most notably in the film’s opening sequence) speaks to her condition, which is, though uncommon, natural. Puenzo often frames her protagonist with her father’s live-in sea creatures, popularly the gender-fluid clownfish. The family name Kraken is another not-too-subtle nod to this sea creature motif. One scene in particular shows it best: Alex is floating in an inlet wearing only her underwear. The image is so tranquil it brings to mind an almost pre-birth stage in her development. She lingers here until she is interrupted by Álvaro who drags her back into a world where the human creations of gender and judgment are realities. As previously mentioned, the entirety of XXY exists in a grey area, reflected in Puenzo’s choice of colour palette. Tints are cool and melancholic, creating a foreboding cinematic landscape. The approach is subdued, yet highly dramatic – a dormant energy charges every frame. Because dialogue is minimal in the film, many characters’ emotions must be expressed visually. Certain shots, like Suli distractedly cutting carrots, are abrasive, but have their place in the narrative.   It also follows an interesting pattern in terms of cogency. For example, when Alex says to Álvaro, pre-revelation, that she pities her parents because they are waiting all the time, Álvaro does not ask 30 why. He asks another question instead. The film’s editing follows a similar pattern. Cuts are not made in favour of diegesis, but of mood, which results in a somewhat disjointed narrative structure, albeit one that always flows emotionally. Put simply, nothing comes pre-packaged in XXY. It is to the viewer to sort out the pieces that Puenzo is supplying. Is the film successful in portraying intersexuality in a new and insightful way? There can be no doubt. However, this is not something the film establishes through its central character, because Alex is so fiercely cautious and off-putting she shuts out even the viewer. It goes without saying that few will identify with her. Rather, it is her parents, Suli in particular, that the audience can see themselves in. Their behavior, despite having been thrust into a difficult situation, is supportive and emblematic of new accepting currents of thought in regards to the intersex community. Though uncommon for film criticism, perhaps XXY should have been longer. At only 91 minutes, the film lacks the screen-time required to create nuance in a protagonist that needed it. It is not to say that Efron is in any way deficient in her performance. She has an extremely challenging role and, for the most part, she triumphs. Her body is repeatedly scrutinized throughout the film. At one point she is shown inspecting it – as we can only imagine she has done countless times before. However, virtual- �ly nothing is revealed of Alex’s life in Argentina, and she is rarely seen outside of her inner circle. Similarly, the discourse on her condition is frustratingly fragmented. Alex never speaks of it at any length with Álvaro or her parents, which is only undercut by the fact that we are never shown the critical exchange she has with Vando. Her journal provides us with a rare interior mirror. It contains crudely drawn images of mutant-like creatures with ambiguous and frightening genitalia, clearly indicative of Alex’s tormented psyche regarding her condition. We glimpse her vulnerability here and, in a way, it is eerily prophetic of her sexual assault. Despite this, Alex is never fleshed out in the way she needs to be. Also problematic is the film’s assumption that the whole of its audience is readily familiar with intersexuality. Little is explained in the way of Alex’s diagnosis and what we are given perpetuates the negative stereotype that intersex people are simple hermaphrodites. There is, however, a level of redemption to this. Puenzo must be commended for her refusal to show Alex in the full flesh. Such a shot would clearly be exploitative and possibly alienating for much of the intersex community in which variation abounds. In lieu, one of the film’s final shots dwells on Álvaro’s reaction to Alex’s body, which communicates to us clemency, and even (dare I say it) empathy.   From her father’s book Alex dully reads: “In all vertebrates, including the human being, the female sex is dominant in an evolutionary and embryological sense.” This is one of several hints the film offers that Alex may be making the decision to reject her womanhood permanently. Between her already masculine comportment and Néstor’s visit with Scherer, it certainly seems like a distinct possibility. The film’s greater realization however, is that for an intersex individual, deciding on a gender is actually not the pressing decision that it first seems to be. Alex is like one of her father’s sea turtles. Try though he may, there is little he can do to protect them while still allowing them to be free. In the end, Néstor learns that, one day, he has to let the turtle go. “Until you can choose,” as he puts it.5 It is Alex, however, who cinches the film’s most vital message when she says, “What if there isn’t a decision to make?”6 It is visibly a new concept for Néstor just as it surely is for many. Here we are also able to see the significance of what her parents have done for her. As Anne Tamar-Mattis notes, Alex has the right to choose because her parents have not taken this away.7 XXY is an invaluable teaching tool for anyone with an essentialist view on sex and gender, without a trace of didacticism. Puenzo never lectures. She avoids the egregious exploitation of her subject matter, which is in itself an accomplishment, and she proves it is not always wise to eschew poetics for politics. XXY posits that intersex can be its own identity. Alex’s sex is not something that needs fixing, and by proxy there is nothing in disrepair about her gender. Decidedly, the real scrambled egg is gender and anxiety. In problematizing an age-old social institution, XXY is able to offer a remedy. 1 Intersex Society of North America, “How Common is Intersex?” accessed 21 Sept., 2013, http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency. 2 Anne Tamar-Mattis, “Film Review XXY Offers a New View of Life in an Intersex Body,” Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice 24.1 (2009): 69. 3 Roy Heale, “Argentina’s Gender Identity Bill easily passes in Senate,” San Diego Gay and Lesbian News, accessed 24 Sept., 2013, http://sdgln.com/news/2012/05/14/argentinas-gender-identity-bill-easily-passes-senate. 4 XXY, dir. Lucía Puenzo, 2007, Film Movement, Video. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Tamar-Mattis, “Film Review XXY Offers a New View of Life in an Intersex Body,” 73. 31 �BEADING NEW WORLDS: NADIA MYRE, CHRISTI BELCOURT, AND INDIGENOUS WOMEN’S ART OF RESURGENCE Claire Stewart-Kanigan Visitor on Kanien’kehá:ka territory McGill University Major in Canadian Studies and Political Science 2013 Michi Saagig Nishnaabeg writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson posits that “[t]he act of visioning for Nishnaageg people is a powerful act of resurgence, because these visions create Shki-kiin, new worlds … [However, in] terms of resurgence, vision alone isn’t enough. Vision must be couple with intent for transformation, re-creation, intent for resurgence [italics added].”1 Art-making holds the potential to act as both an actualization of these visions through an intent-guided process of realization, and as an act of resistance through the generation of Shki-kiin through the process of creation and in resurgent responses to experiences of the final piece—a stone cast in the water radiating “more subtle waves of disruption that … echo out from [the place of impact].”2 Nishnaabeg scholar Damien Lee describes ‘resurgence’ as the following: …[C]olonialism has impacted our relationships to our territories and, by extension, to Anishinabe-inaadiziwin (our way of being). We must admit that over 500 years of colonial attacks have ripped holes in the fabric of our relationships within our places. But colonialism was unsuccessful in extermination: we are still here. And today we are darning those holes by reconnecting with our traditions, places and ways of being. Our resurgence is deepening these connections.3 Indigenous resurgence offers a complement to Indigenous resistance: while resistance focuses on the deconstruction and transformation of the Settler state, resurgence 32 turns this focus inward to the rebuilding of what Simpson calls “the Indigenous inside”4 (see Simpson (2013) esp. 24-35 for a more thorough discussion of resistance versus resurgence). Given Indigenous women of many nations’ traditional jurisdiction over certain visual/art-related skills—for instance, the beadwork and quillwork of Anishinaabekweg (Anishinaabe women)5, and Métis women’s jurisdiction over garment design and adornment6 —women’s art-making can serve as means of reasserting Indigenous women’s traditional roles and responsibilities—a vehicle of resurgence. Women’s art-making may also help build resurgence into resistance movements. Indeed, as Andrea Smith underlines, Indigenous feminist/womanist practices “simultaneously [critique] … the logics of heteropatriarchy within the structures of colonialism and white supremacy, as well as within the structures of [Indigenous] liberation movements designed to dismantle colonialism and white supremacy.”7 Hence, Indigenous women’s art-making is helpful in strengthening internal decolonization, a process resurgence authors such as Simpson view as of paramount importance to an empowering resurgence.8 Further, Settler9 recognition of Indigenous women’s art-making may assist in the decolonization of the Settler gaze which erases the subjectivities of Indigenous women. �fig.1 - Nadia Myre, Indian Act, 2000-2002, Glass beads, stroud cloth, string, paper. http://themedicineproject.com/nadia-myre.html#null However, mainstream discourse surrounding Indigenous resistance to colonialism is largely centred on combative, masculinized imagery. For example, Cherokee scholar Donna Hightower-Langston (2003) notes that during the American Indian Movement, Settler media became fixated on the image of the male warrior at the exclusion of other non-male participants (125), a tendency which continues today. Further, given the relegation of Indigenous women’s art forms to a lower class than those of Indigenous men within the Settler art world—for instance, the market preference of Inuit sculpture over Inuit basket-weaving and treatment of the former as ‘art’ and the latter as ‘craft’—as well as the treatment of women’s broader contributions to decolonization as ‘less than’ or ‘softer’ than those of Indigenous men by Settler media and academia10, it is important to emphasize Indigenous women’s contributions to resurgence. As underlined by Indigenous feminists such as Smith and resurgence authors such as Simpson, this patriarchal categorization extends beyond Settler societies. In effect, “too often … [Indigenous women’s] contributions [to resistance and nation-building] go unrecognized, unappreciated and uncelebrated” by the Indigenous nations themselves who have internalized exclusionary Eurowestern heteropatriarchy. Thus, as Simpson states, “the interrogation of heteropatriarchy needs to become part of [Indigenous peoples’] decolonizing project”11 to ensure that women’s contributions to Indigenous resurgence, such as those offered by art-making, are recognized. This interrogation and recognition are also key in the Settler decolonization project, and it is the aim of this article to contribute to these imperatives This article will discuss Indigenous women’s contributions to resurgence through art and art-making while applying a framework informed by a Settler understanding of the Nishnaabeg theorization of resurgence outlined in Simpson’s Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back.12 As a Settler visitor on Kanien’kehá:ka territory, my understanding of these philosophies at present comes primarily through academic engagement, not sustained relationships to Nishnaabeg lands and peoples. Hence, my application of the Nishnaabeg concepts outlined by Simpson will be restricted to the extent that it is possible to embrace the pedagogical recommendation to “use Aboriginal processes to engage with Aboriginal knowledge”13 without over-reaching my current positioning in relation to this knowledge. Further, I acknowledge that the given definitions of the included Nishnaabeg concepts are limited, and highly advise engaging with Simpson’s text for a fuller discussion of these theories. These concepts will be discussed through the study of two particular artworks which interweave traditional women’s practices and resurgent action: Indian Act by Nadia Myre and Walking with our Sisters by Christi Belcourt. Nadia Myre: Indian Act and Beading Beginning with the Indian Act revisions of 1951, Indigenous women and their children were subject to the loss of their Indian Status and band membership if they married a non-Status man, Indigenous or non-Indigenous. As the daughter of a woman who lost her Status under these provisions, Nadia Myre’s work has been shaped significantly by her mother’s struggle to “prove she was Native” under the 1982 Indian Act revisions of Bill C-31, and her eventual reclamation of her family’s status as Algonquin members of the Kitigan Zibi Anishnabeg in 1997. Myre cites this experience in combination with her exposure to an exhibition of Iroquoian beadwork in 1999 as the motivation for arguably her most acclaimed work: Indian Act.14 The piece is composed of all 56 pages of the Indian Act each printed on its own individually framed 8.5” x 11” sheet. Each page is mounted on stroud cloth, and covered either fully or partially by red and white glass beads (red covering the white portions of the page and white replacing the text) [fig.1]. From 2000 to 2002, Myre hosted ‘beading bees’ to which she invited over 230 Indigenous and non-Indigenous community members to teach, learn about, and participate in the beading process. The names of all contributors have been painted alongside the frames, underlining the value of collective creation in the artist’s eyes. 33 �“‘Beading is political,” says Myre of her work, “I really do see beading as an act of silent resistance.’”15 However, Myre’s work is all but silent—it is an act of resurgence in process and product. Indian Act sits within Simpson’s framework of resurgence in its focus on vision, intentionality, and the practice of Nishnaabeg philosophies. Simpson underlines the responsibility one has of ‘acting on’ Pauwauwaein (“a vision that gives meaning to something previously obscure”) when one receives them.16 Though it cannot be ascertained that Myre regards her initial desire to bead the Indian Act as Pauwauwaein, it can still be said that she acted upon her ‘vision’ by literally realizing it. Indian Act creates Shki-kiin by depicting a world in which “language functioning as an arm of the state” is made illegible by those whom the text seeks to control—a world in which the scars of every “conditioned and controlled Indian [life]” are represented through the piercing and stitching of paper with beads and made beautiful.17 The replacement of a destructive colonial document with an Anishinaabekwe-led, communally-generated project is in itself a resurgent action which appears to move towards mino bimaadiziwin (‘living the good life’) through practicing Aabawaadiziiwin (‘being together’).18 Resurgent intent is also clear in Indian Act, which Myre describes as a “communal … act of rebellion … [aiming fig.2 - Nadia Myre, Indian Act, 2000-2002, Glass beads, stroud cloth, string, paper. http://artmur.com/en/artists/nadia-myre/indian-act/ to obscure] the Law and [render] it finally illegible.”19 Like a stone cast into water, this piece creates resurgence in the actions of every Indigenous beader involved in its creation, as well as inspiring resurgence and resistance in its viewers. As a Settler viewer whose tangible interaction with the Indian Act has been limited to the invisibilized benefiting from the regulation of Indigenous peoples, I was led to examine the words exposed between the beads, and feel the overwhelming temporal and emotional weight of the thousands of beads. It is inescapable to be struck by the immensity of the work and the conviction required to complete the piece. From a Settler perspective, the result generated by this piece is an ironic re-visibilizing of the Indian Act itself achieved through its physical obfuscation*. In David Cappell’s analysis of Indian Act, he states that “[t]he appropriation of the Indian Act, in material and in name, expresses a resistance to the subject-made-passive that the Act defines:” the Indian.20 One of the ‘subjects-made-passive’ by the Indian Act are Indigenous women who were subjugated via displacement from governance and kinship responsibilities. Yet, the spearheading of the work by an Indigenous woman and the use of Indigenous women’s skills in appropriation, which give the work a gendered dimension, remains unaddressed by Cappell. Taiaiake Alfred and Jeff Corntassel emphasize colonialism’s use of “[confining] Indigenous identities to state-sanctioned legal and political definitional approaches”21 as a tool of conquest—a strategy epitomized by the state-defined membership provisions of the Indian Act. Simpson argues that, given women’s traditional responsibility over marriage and adoption traditions through which individuals are brought into a community, women are the rightful determiners of E-Dbendaagzijig (‘those who belong’; an approximation of the Euro-western concept of ‘citizenship’).22 The Indian Act relocates this responsibility from Indigenous women to the state via status-defining provisions and to masculinized band councils via membership provisions. The Act further pacifies Indigenous women by excluding women from governance and from communities themselves, namely via the pre-C-31 exodus experienced by Myre’s mother.23 Myre and the beaders’ appropriation of the Act thus provides a double challenge to the “subject-made-passive” of the Indian Act. Indian Act asserts not only Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determine their identity, but Indigenous wom- 34 �fig.3 - Charlene Touchette, vamp submission for Walking with our Sisters, 2013. en’s right to access their traditional responsibilities relating to citizenship and community participation more broadly. 24 By appropriating and obscuring the text of the Indian Act using traditional women’s skills, Myre’s piece is an act— note the titular pun—undertaken by Indigenous women which physically asserts the continuity of traditional female roles onto a document that sought to erase these very roles and, by extension, Indigenous women themselves—an Indigenous act on a document seeking to make Indigenous action impossible.25 Christi Belcourt: Walking with our Sisters and Sewing Walking with our Sisters is a collaborative art project spearheaded by Métis visual artist Christi Belcourt composed of 1,725 moccasin vamps (tops or “uppers,” see fig.3) created by over 1,300 Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island (fig. 4).26 The project honours the lives of missing and murdered Indigenous women across Turtle Island—the 600+ pairs of vamps are intended to reflect the 600+ Indigenous women reported missing or murdered over the last 20 years.27 The incompletion of the moccasins is intended to represent the incomplete lives of these lost women.28 The project is displayed as an interactive installation: The work exists as a floor installation made up of beaded vamps arranged in a winding path formation on fabric and includes cedar boughs. Viewers remove their shoes to walk on a path of cloth alongside the vamps.29 This project also posses the markers of Simpson’s framework of resurgence: the materialization of a vision fuelled by intention and the fostering of individual resurgence supported by group participation. Similarly to Indian Act, Walking with our Sisters conceptualizes a world in which trauma is visible and recognized, and those who have experienced trauma are acknowledged and honoured. Thanks to the installation’s participatory element, viewers are drawn into the Shki-kiin generated by Walking with our Sisters. It is through the viewer’s experience that the artwork’s ‘new world’ is actualized. In the piece, the vamps are the lost women. When viewers walk the path alongside the moccasins, they are forced to physically acknowledge the lives of each woman by twisting their steps around the vamps which embody the victim’s experience. Viewers are invited to admire the intricate beauty of the moccasins; this admiration is in turn extended to the women the vamps represent. The bowing of the head necessitated in order to appreciate the piece also compels viewers to adopt a physical positioning of respect and discourages eye contact with others during the experience.30 By creating a posturing of aloneness, Walking with our Sisters encourages viewers to reflect introspectively on their position in relation to the disappearance and murder of Native women, to consider those affected by the issue, and perhaps even propel them to action. Shki-kiin was created for contributors to the piece as well. Over 65 new beading circles were established following the initial project call-out, and the number of individuals who learned or re-engaged with sewing and beading thanks to the piece cannot be calculated. 31 With the formation of each beading group, a ‘new world’ is created, shaped by Indigenous women practicing their skills for their own peoples and purposes. In her contribution to Honoring Indigenous Women: Hearts of the Nation, multi-ethnic interdisciplinary doctoral student Saya Bobick emphasizes the significance of the reclamation of beading and ‘handy-work’—such as garment sewing— for Indigenous women. Bobick interviewed several elder women from Eastern Woodlands nations who expressed that they found reconnecting with traditional skills on their own terms empowering. Many were still haunted by the memories of forced artistic production—for some of these women, their first contact with ‘craft’ was during their stays in residential schools where children were obliged to produce craftwork that was later resold by missionaries. To the contrary, the creation process of Walking with our Sisters serves as a site of collective self-determination where Indigenous women can assert their right to work for their own people and can affirm their agency by harnessing traditional skills.32 33 35 �Bobick also discusses that the reclamation of traditional women’s skills is a challenge to the relegation of women’s artistic contributions to a ‘second-class’ status—devalued as ‘craft’ versus high ‘art.’34 By choosing to use traditional women’s skills—sewing and beading—to express a response to one of the most significant, serious realities of colonialism, Belcourt affirms the value of Indigenous women’s art forms. This, in combination with the stated intent of the work—honouring the lives of lost Indigenous women and pushing for action to prevent further loss35 —it may be read as a broader affirmation of the value of Indigenous women. The physical and emotional space occupied by the work deterritorializes Settler space; dismantling the institutionalized invisibility of Indigenous women while criticizing historical and ongoing gendered colonial violence.36 37 The presentation of the piece in urban spaces also challenges “the relegation of Native authority exclusively to reserves and traditional land bases [which serves to impoverish] the complexity of First Nations subjectivity.” Settler art historian Elizabeth Kalblfleisch discusses the importance of mediating spatial occupation in the context of decolonization, particularly in relation to the complications of the ‘urban Indian.’38 Walking with our Sisters asserts the presence of Indigenous women in city spaces, stating that Indigeneity is not erased by urban life. In this way, it challenges the erasure tactics used by the media in depictions of missing and murdered Indigenous women, which serve to atomize and erase Indigenous women and minimize the significance of their loss.39 The temporal space of Walking with our Sisters vis-a-vis the immense number of collective hours required to create the project visually and literally asserts that Indigenous women are worth labouring and giving time to. The act of ‘giving time’ may be seen as a tribute to the time lost by the women at the hands of colonial violence. Conclusions and Questions “When resistance is defined solely as large-scale political mobilization, we miss much of what has kept our languages, cultures, and systems of governance alive40 … Our social movements, organizing, and mobilizations are stuck in the cognitive box of imperialism and we need to step out of the box, remove our colonial blinders and at least see the potential for radically different ways of existence.”41 Leanne Simpson’s convictions about the necessity of ‘stepping out of the box’ of colonial conceptions of resistance speak to the centrality of Indigenous women’s 36 fig.4 - Walking with our Sisters, promotional poster, 2013. http://walkingwithoursisters.ca/about/. art-making to decolonization. The Indigenous artists discussed in this essay engage in what appears to fit Simpson’s articulation of resurgence through a returning to the self not only through the practice of traditional art forms, but through engaging in these practices in a way that re-creates individual and collective ‘flourishment’ of culture.42 Both artworks engage in fostering Aabawaadiziiwin (togetherness) and thus move towards the collectivization of action which they stress as essential to building re-emergence.43 However, as emphasized by Simpson, this articulation of resurgence is not representative of all resurgent conceptualizations within her own nation, let alone the entire scope of Indigenous nations across Turtle Island. It is possible that non-Nishnaabeg artists, such as Christi Belcourt, may object to being discussed in reference to a framework that was not generated by her own nation. Furthermore, as a Settler referencing a philosophy that is not my own, my discussions of these concepts come from an outsider perspective that lends itself to the misinterpretation of said concepts. I chose Simpson’s framework as a lens given it’s commitment to anti-fundamentalism, and because it was formulated by an Indigenous woman of Turtle Island. However, should access �have been available to a Métis discussion of resurgence, this may have been more appropriate for the exploration of Belcourt’s work. It is nonetheless important to remember that both of the works examined here were created by hundreds of individuals with hundreds of different backgrounds. In keeping with Eniigaanzid principles of non-authoritarian, non-singular leadership, it may be inappropriate to subsume all of these identities under one national framework.44 45 Further, given the pan-Indigenous bent of Walking with our Sisters and inclusion of Settlers in the creation process, Belcourt opens the project to the representation of multiple identities. Another question that emerges in regards to the methodology of this essay is its focus on objects fitting the Settler definition of ‘high art’ (art able to be exhibited in galleries and analyzed by art critics as opposed to sold in tourist shops). While beading and moccasin-making alone are regarded as more craft than art, Myre and Belcourt articulate these practices in a format that elevates them to high art status. Is this version of art accessible to Indigenous peoples? Galleries and other formal spaces can act as zones of exclusion for many Indigenous peoples who face racism and socioeconomic oppression. Although both projects invited individuals from all backgrounds to participate in their creation, this invitation presupposes availability of time and access to the knowledge of traditional skills, both of which may serve as limiting factors to Indigenous peoples without either. However, given the 1,725 pairs of vamps collected to date from individuals and beading groups across Turtle Island for Walking with our Sisters and thousands of beads beaded to Myre’s Indian Act, it appears that collaborative art has the potential to transcend these barriers. Additionally, it may be argued that if those with access to art and art-making continue to build re-emergence through experiencing and creating intentional, resurgent art, these limiting factors could be eventually eradicated, resulting in a re-strengthening of nations and an increased ability for Indigenous peoples to exist outside the divisions imposed by colonialism. Myre and Belcourt—as well as every Indigenous woman who contributed to the projects discussed—are taking steps towards this by challenging individualized Settler conceptions of artistic creation, and moving towards the collective reclamation of skills. Indigenous women’s ongoing commitment to the building of resurgence and moving beyond the boundaries of high art allow us to hope that the transformative potential of such endeavours will continue to create space for the honouring and empowerment of Indigenous women in both Settler and Indigenous societies. 1 Leanne Simpson, Dancing on our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2013) 146-147. 2 Simpson, 145. 3 Damien Lee, “Coming Home through Active Presence – Project Introduction,” Dibaajimowinan: Four Stories of Resurgence in Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg Territory, posted August 30, 2011, http://dibaajimowin. wordpress.com/. 4 Simpson, 27. 5 see “I am known for my quilts” by Minaachimo-Kwe/Alice Olsen Williams inThe Strength of Women: Âh-kamêyimowak edited by Priscilla Settee (2011) for a fuller discussion of the distinctions between Anishi-naabe women and men’s art forms. 6 Yvonne Vizina, “Métis Culture,” Kinanskomitin: Cree History at the University of Saskatchewan Ar-chives, posted 2008, http://scaa.sk.ca/ ourlegacy/exhibit_metisculture. 7 This is not intended to equate Indigenous feminisms with Indigenous womanisms. However, the dis-course between Indigenous feminisms and Indigenous womanisms are outside the scope of this paper. See Kahente Horn-Miller’s “Otiyaner: The ‘Women’s Path’ Through Colonialsim” (2005) for a critique of Indigenous feminisms in favour of womanism. Andrea Smith, “American Studies without America: Native Feminisms and the Nation-State,” American Quarterly 60 (2008): 312. 8 This importance is expressed by Simpson’s emphasis of practicing Aanjigone (non-interference/focusing inwards), making internally focused resurgence central. See “Queering Resurgence: Taking on Heteropatriarchy in Indigenous Nation Building” for further discussion of Simpson’s (2013) em-phasis on deconstructing sexual axes of internal oppression within Indigenous resistance movements and nations. 9 Borrowing the definition offered by Adam Barker (2010) in “From Adversaries to Allies,” ’Settler’ refers to “any non-Indigenous individual who is living on Indigenous lands and participating in contemporary Euro-American society … For a more complete discussion of the nature of Settler identity, please see Being Colonial (Barker, 2006)” (229-330). 10 Leanne Simpson, Wanda Nanibush, and Carol Williams, “The Resurgence of Indigenous Women’s Knowledge and Resistance in Relation to Land and Territoriality: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Perspectives,” InTensions Journal, issue 6, Fall/Winter 2012, http://www.yorku. ca/intent/issue6/notefromtheeditor/notefromtheeditor.pdf, 2. 11 Leanne Simpson, “Queering Resurgence: Taking on Heteropatriarchy in Indigenous Nation Building,” leannesimpson.ca, posted June 1, 37 �2012, http://leannesimpson.ca/2012/06/01/queering-resurgence-taking-on-heteropatriarchy-in-indigenous-nation-building/. 12 Simpson, Dancing on our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence, 50. 13 Tyson Yunkaporta, “Aboriginal Pedagogies at the Cultural Interface,” http://www.truworld.ca/__shared/assets/Yunkaporta_draft_report29338.pdf, 28. 14 Nadia Myre, “About ‘Indian Act,’” interview with Indigenous Foundations UBC, accessed December 2, 2013, http://indigenousfoundations. arts.ubc.ca/home/culture/artistic-expressions/nadia-myre/about-indian-act.html?type=123&filename=About%20%22Indian%20Act%22.pdf. 15 Martin. 16 Simpson, 146. 17 Richard William Hill (Cree), “The Unreadable Present: Nadia Myre and Kent Monkman,” C Magazine, September 2002, http://kentmonkman.com/images/press/cmagazine-sept02.pdf. Nadia Myre, “Artist Statement,” Canadian Heritage Information Network, 2007, accessed December 2, 2013, http://www.museevirtuel-virtualmu-seum.ca/edu/ViewLoitDa.do;jsessionid=6E87709401C6B7F3C1C4F709572DC3EA?method=preview&lang=EN&id=15030. 18 Simpson, 122. 19 Myre, 2007. 20 David Cappell, “The Invention of Line: Nadia Myre’s Indian Act,” Parachute vol.111, September 2003, 101. 21 Taiaiake Alfred and Jeff Corntassel, “Being Indigenous: Resurgences against Contemporary Colonial-ism,” Government and Opposition 40 (2005), accessed September 30, 2013, http://web.uvic.ca/igov/uploads/ pdf/Being%20Indigenous%20GOOP.pdf, 600. 22 Simpson, 90. 23 For example, until 1951, women were denied the ability to “vote, run for leadership, or even speak at public meetings” within the band council governance system created by the Indian Act. Although these provisions have been altered, masculinized political cultures persist in many communities. Kim Anderson, Life Stages and Native Women: Memory, Teachings, and Story Medicine (Winnipeg: Uni-versity of Manitoba Press, 2011) 136. 24 Problematic associations with the term ‘right’ have been noted. Indigenous frameworks of nationhood as defined by ‘responsibilities’ rather than ‘rights’ have received amble scholarly attention. 25 Simpson states that “to have a Nishnaabeg identity, one must live that identity” (Simpson, 26). Indige-nous identity is described by members of multiple nations as defined by the fulfillment of relationships and responsibilities. Hence, by removing the ability to fulfill these, full access to actively being Indigenous is limited. James Martin, “Nadia Myre’s art project is already at the McCord,” Concordia’s Thursday Report Online, June 6 2002, http://ctr.concordia. ca/2001-02/June_6/08-Myre/index.shtml. 26 Walking with our Sisters, “About: A Commemorative Art Installation for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women of Canada and the United States,” Walking with our Sisters, 2013, http://walkingwithoursisters.ca/about/. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 I cannot speak to the ‘traditional’ meaning of bowing one’s head in Indigenous cultures or Belcourt’s Métis culture in particular. However, given the piece’s intent to also speak to non-Indigenous viewers and invite their participation in the honouring, the association non-Indigenous people have with the bowing of the head may have been considered. 31 Robert Everett-Green, “Moccasins with a message: Art project honours lost aboriginal women,” Globe and Mail, October 1, 2013, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/art-and-architecture/moccasins-with-a-message-art-project-honours-missing-aboriginal-women/article14649936/. 32 This is not to deny the agency of Indigenous women in participating in trade using their own skills for survival and adaptation to colonial realities. The language used reflects Bobick’s representation of the statements of her interviewees. 33 Saya Bobick, “Effects of Participation in Cultural Practices on Elder Women,” Honour Indigenous Women: Hearts of Nations, vol.2, 2012, http://thesoundofmyheart.weebly.com/uploads/1/5/3/1/15317854/honouring_indigenous_women_vol2.pdf, 66. 34 Ibid. 35 Walking with our Sisters. 36 Vis-a-vis the physical and visual confrontation of the issue—and one’s positioning in relation to it via the forced aloneness of inward-facing posturing—that must be consciously navigated via the path-walking process described earlier. 37 This concept of ‘deterritorialization’ and ‘dismantling’ is borrowed from David Capell’s discussion of Nadia Myre’s Indian Act. See Capell (2003) for further discussion in its original context. 38 Elizabeth Kalbfleisch, “Bordering on Feminism: Space, Solidarity, and Transnationalism in Rebecca Belmore’s Vigil,” in Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politics, Activism, Culture, ed. Cheryl Suzack, Shari M. Huhndorf, Jeanne Perrault, and Jean Barman, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010, 288. 39 Missing Justice Montreal, presentation to Indigenous Traditions, Women, and Colonialism at Concordia University, Montreal, 2013. 40 Simpson, 24. 41 Ibid., 148. 42 Ibid., 53. 43 Ibid., 147. 44 Ibid., 121. 45 It is noted that not all Indigenous nations are non-hierarchical. 38 �LET ME COUNT THE WAYS... Naakita Feldman-Kiss Ottawa, Ontario Concordia University Major in Intermedia/Cyberarts Video performance 53:19 minutes 2013 In this durational video performance, Feldman-Kiss creates a shared skin by sewing herself with a cloth around her male counterpart’s leg. During this process, the artist removes herself from her environment while giving herself to her partner, the intimacy of this gesture informed by patriarchal power structures. As a young girl, her grandmother instilled in her the value of craft art and the artist’s mother taught her to value her self-worth and to be autono- mous. The work acts as both a meditation on what the artist has learned from the matriarchies she has been exposed to, and a portrayal of her own discovery of the significance of feminine fragility. Feldman-Kiss is seen negotiating the vulnerability and intimacy that occur when entering into a co-dependent relationship with her own need to assert herself as independent and strong, offering a thoughtful reflection on traditional gender roles. 39 �GAZING BACK: SPECTACLE AND SPECTATOR IN JOYCE’S “NAUSICAA” Rudrapriya Rathore New Delhi, India / Toronto, Ontario Concordia University Major in English and Creative Writing 2013 Embedded within the structure of James Joyce’s “Nausicaa” – the thirteenth chapter of his Ulysses masterpiece – are various dualities that split and layer the episode. The chapter depicts girlish Gerty Macdowell, tomboy Cissy Caffrey and her twin brothers on the beach at sunset along with the novel’s lone protagonist, Leopold Bloom. The focal interaction between Gerty and Bloom involves no direct conversation but is extremely wrought with gendered conflict – as Bloom watches from afar and masturbates, Gerty positions her skirt, legs and hair to exhibit herself to him. The episode is halved into the two characters’ distinct interior voices, resulting in very different literary styles and narrative concerns. The shift in point of view is especially interesting when one considers the Gilbert schema – a table created by Joyce and Stuart Gilbert that organizes the structure of Ulysses so that each chapter corresponds with an organ, a colour, a symbol, an art and a literary technique. One of the organs associated with “Nausicaa” is the eye, emphasizing the importance of the act of looking and the subjective nature of representation. While scholars have argued that Gerty is not meant to be a character of flesh and blood but rather a stylistic sum of the fragments of patriarchally constructed femininity, this interpretation fails to acknowledge the effects that reductive constructions of gender have in this text upon both herself and Bloom. 40 Joyce does not seem to be feminizing “bad” or “commercial” literature in order to contrast it to the supposedly unsentimental style of Bloom’s narrative voice. Nor does he seem to only be pointing to the plight of working-class, disabled women like Gerty and attributing her problems to misogynistic, oppressive social discourses on gender. Rather, his characterization of Gerty emphasizes the way in which Bloomian thought is also aestheticized. The filtered, representational jumble of her thoughts reveals the ways in which she too constructs Bloom as a gendered object. Through an examination of the characters’ subjectivities and sexual exchange, it can be argued that “Nausicaa” is structured on a gender-normative binary of oppressed woman/oppressive man – yet, this chapter troubles and complicates the assumed boundaries of that binary by investigating the multilayered implications of represented desire. Undoubtedly, both characters act and think within a set of power relations tied to their social contexts: Gerty is plainly concerned with every minutiae of her appearance, scandalized by a body that betrays her with its urges and inner mechanics. She is also deeply influenced by consumer culture’s singular vision of desirable womanhood. Though Bloom is also preoccupied with the ways in which the opposite sex perceives him, he does not police his thoughts and desires �according to cultural constructions of propriety. The overarching issue with the interiors of both characters has to do with the ways in which their subjectivities are represented on the page. Because Gerty’s thoughts are written in the third person, it is assumed that she does not speak for herself but is merely focalized, either by a separate narrator or by Bloom. Bloom, on the other hand, identifies himself with the phallic, masculine “I”. This gendered difference is also reflected in the very ways they reference themselves: Gerty by her first name and Bloom by his surname. Suzette Henke argues that as “a Bloomian projection of the ‘woman,’ Gerty MacDowell is […] a male sculpted figure of female desire…a blank screen for the inscription of male masturbatory titillation”.1 This interpretation assumes that Gerty is in fact successful in assembling herself as a “panoply of fetishistic images”2 that are fed to her through magazines such as the “Princess novelette”.3 However, this view neglects to examine the distinct breakages in Gerty’s sentimental, idyllic, maternal voice that reveal a selfish irritation with her friend’s younger twin brothers playing nearby. If one sees instead the first half of the episode as narrated by a Gerty who speaks in the third person because she is narrating herself from an outsider’s perspective, having internalized a misogynistic discourse that demands she perform her femininity for others, the breakages in voice become indications that Gerty is more self-aware than a first glance gives her credit for. By allowing Gerty to narrate herself seemingly from above, Joyce reflexively points to an inherent problem in feminist thought: he allows us to see the extent to which she has internalized the discourses of “winsome Irish girlhood”4 while simultaneously pointing to the ways in which she manipulates this discourse. In the text, she is presented as a victim of a pervasive ideology that dictates that in order to validate herself, she must marry and in order to marry, she must exude nothing but “ivorylike purity”5 and “a languid queenly hauteur.”6 This victimhood, however, does not deny Gerty all agency, nor does it wash clean her own gendered presumptions of the world around her. In her cinematic narrativizing, Gerty actively turns herself into a spectacle and thus entirely controls the reader’s perception of her. We have no choice but to believe what she presents to us, from “her hands of finely veiled alabaster”7 to her opinions on “Madcap Ciss.”8 Everything is told deliberately and with the careful calculations of a young woman who has been effectively taught by society how to manipulate the gaze of others. Just as Bloom later feels that “there was a kind of language between [himself and Gerty],”9 there is a genuine communication – filtered carefully through the third person – that is established between Gerty and the reader. She describes Cissy both as “sincerity itself, one of the bravest and truest hearts […] not one of your two-faced things”10 and later on as “the tomboy […] a forward piece whenever she thought she had a good opportunity to show off,”11 displaying that she is able to twist those definitions to serve her own purposes, whether they are to seem wife-like, kindly and generous, or to make herself look more attractive and feminine by contrast. Similarly, the twins go from being “darling little fellows”12 to “little monkeys common as ditchwater”13 when they begin to interfere with Gerty’s aims to attract Bloom’s attention. These instances expose the fragility of her girly, consumerist rhetoric as well as its incapability to express what she really means. The noted suppression of bodily acts such as defecation and menstruation call attention to the voice as constructed, communicating under the disguise of feminine euphemisms; the “certain purpose”14 (defecating) that Gerty goes to “that place”15 (the lavatory) for is made more obvious by the forbidding undertones she uses – a cover that subtly allows the reader glimpses of the truth. She possesses a sexual agency that allows her to describe Bloom as her “latest conquest.”16 In this way, she not only muddies the problematic waters of phallic sexuality with the use of the oppressor’s language but also “[calls] into being a performance of virginity that seeks simultaneously to mask and to enact her desire.”17 This episode thus troubles the binary of oppressor/oppressed by first placing Gerty within a sexist framework that informs her identity, but then allowing her in turn to manipulate it for her own purposes. Both Bloom and Gerty imagine each other according to a system of difference that plays into patriarchal notions of gender. They each desire a construction of the other that demands a denial of certain realities – especially, among other things, Gerty’s limp. After his masturbatory orgasm, Bloom is “glad [he] didn’t know [Gerty’s limp] when she was on show” and reduces her disability to a pornographic niche in line with a “curiosity like a nun or a negress or a girl with glasses.”18 Gerty fashions Bloom out to be precisely the “manly man with a strong quiet face […] perhaps his hair slightly flecked with grey”19 that she has always desired, imbuing him with an imaginary story: “She could see at once […] that he was a foreigner 41 �[…] the story of a haunting sorrow was written on his face […] she wanted him because she felt instinctively that he was like no-one else.”20 This narrative of a lonely, sorrowful man corresponds to her own release of “pentup feelings”21 that she performs in front a mirror, making sure even her “gnawing sorrow”22 is cinematically “lovely.”23 The notion of Bloom as a “widower who had lost his wife”24 also complements her own loss of Reggy Wylie’s affections. Thus, the pleasure of looking and imagining is not Bloom’s alone, because Gerty validates herself by projecting her own story onto him. She reaches a certain level of satisfaction in believing that she has accomplished something by “[trying] to understand him because men were so different.”25 The fact of her looking back upsets the binary of spectator and spectacle because Bloom becomes as much a spectacle to her as she is to him. It is not possible to simply understand her as the object of the gaze while Bloom occupies the position of subject; the reflexivity of the gaze prevents both characters from being entirely objectified or possessing full subjectivity. The problem of representation is informed by the kind of myth-making of gendered discourse that produces convoluted information, such as Gerty’s understandings of “manly men”26 and “womanly women”27 and Bloom’s musings that “virgins go mad in the end I suppose. […] Devils they are when that’s coming on them. […] Turns milk, makes fiddlestrings snap.”28 Bloom comprehends women, sex and menstruation in the same tidbit-collecting, superstitious, illogically narrativized way that Gerty does. On the beach, Gerty wishes to paint the scene not because she believes the act will accurately relay her feelings but because she knows precisely the opposite is true: “She could see far away the lights of the lighthouses so picturesque she would have loved to do with a box of paints because it was easier than to make a man.”29 In other words, it is “easier” to represent somebody – even oneself – through the filters of aesthetic narrative than to absorb the reality of an absurdly complex, conflicted human being. It is easier to seek expression through a predetermined, repressive framework of coded femininity than to examine the code itself. Interestingly, Bloom’s attempt at self-definition builds on this to some extent. He writes the words “I AM A” in the sand, hoping to leave a message for Gerty: “Will she come here tomorrow? Wait for her somewhere for ever. Must come back. Murderers do. Will I?”30 In an attempt to communicate with her, he touches on an acknowledgement of having victimized her by wondering if his behaviour is like a murderer’s – but 42 he is ultimately incapable of grounding his identity in language, which is itself sand-like in its instability. There is “no room”31 for what he might want to say with the “I” of the masculine ego. Thus, both Bloom’s and Gerty’s uses of language are coded within a gendered ideology and both are incapable of expressing theirsubjectivities. The eye that paints the episode into being is not Bloom’s or Gerty’s, however – it is the reader’s, because reading is filtered through the experiences and understandings one brings to a text. The third person viewpoint of Gerty’s narration not only allows her to maneuver the reader but also places the reader’s eye somewhere above her. When she becomes the distant, other “she,” the reader by consequence becomes an “I” that plays a part in bringing to life this Gerty struggling with gender norms. Though she performs for herself split into spectator and spectacle, she aligns the reader with the masculine, phallic ego that also looks on, interprets, and analyzes her: the audience becomes implicated in the sexual exchange, in Gerty’s position in society and in Bloom’s compelling perversity. The situation fascinates and yet repels the reader because it is as easy to identify with Gerty’s willing, narcissistic performance as it is with Bloom’s sexual transgression. Thus, the gaze is layered in ways that problematize the duality of viewer and viewed, oppressor and oppressed; these layers convolute the power relations presumed by the reader in order to demonstrate that there are no absolutes in Joyce’s world. 1 Susette Henke, “Joyce’s Naughty Nausicaa: Gerty MacDowell Refashioned,” Papers on Joyce (2004-5): 87, Papers on Joyce, accessed October 16, 2013, http://www.papersonjoyce.es/poj/docus/poj10/8.pdf. 2 James Joyce, Ulysses: Annotated Students’ Edition (London: Penguin, 2011), 87. 3 Ibid., 453. 4 Ibid., 452. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., 453. 7 Ibid., 452. 8 Ibid., 459. 9 Ibid., 485. 10 Ibid., 460. �11 Ibid., 467. 12 Ibid., 450. 13 Ibid., 467. 14 Ibid., 462. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., 471. 17 Jen Shelton, “Bad Girls: Gerty, Cissy, and the Erotics of Unruly Speech,” James Joyce Quarterly 34.1/2 (1996-97): 91, JSTOR, accessed October 16, 2013, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/25473789. 18 Joyce, Ulysses, 479. SORCIÈRES Gabrielle Brais Harvey 20 Ibid., 465. Abitibi-Temiscamingue / Montréal, Québec Université Concordia Majeure en Studio Art 21 Ibid., 456. 2012 19 Ibid., 457. 22 Ibid. Celle qui boite, 23 Ibid. Celle qui est laide, 24 Ibid., 474. Celle qui baise, 25 Ibid., 475. Celle qui s’isole, 26 Ibid., 457. Celle qui sort du lot, 27 Ibid. Celle qui crie, 28 Ibid., 479, 481. Celle qui vit seule, 29 Ibid., 473. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., 498 Celle qui rit, Celle qui ne prie pas, Celle qui soigne, Celle qui conteste, Celle qui fait sa propre vie, Celle qui s’émancipe, Celle qui est lynchée, Sorcières. 43 �YIARA’S STAFF Editor-in-Chief: Tess Juan-Gaillot Associate French Editor: Isabelle l’Heureux Social Media Coordinator: Mallika Guhan Tess Juan-Gaillot was born in Paris, raised in New Jersey, and now resides in Montreal as she completes her final year of a BFA in Art History at Concordia University. Through an open and self-reflexive dialogue, Tess aims to expose the ubiquity of patriarchal and colonial frameworks that shape her daily life. For her, this dialogue usually takes the form of curatorial projects and art historical writing that explore the intersectionality of race, gender, Isabelle L’Heureux est montréalaise. Elle complète une majeure en histoire de l’art à l’Université de Montréal. En plus de son implication auprès de Yiara Magazine, elle a récemment rejoint l’équipe de l’ARgoT, revue du département où elle étudie présentement. Elle souhaiterait écrire, organiser, exposer et archiver le monde de l’art dans son exhaustivité. Les questions de mise en valeur de l’art actuel et des relations de l’image et du texte inspirent Mallika Guhan is a Communication Studies student specializing in Sound Production in the city of Montreal. The nature of her degree has her exploring the questions and the relationships between art, media and the world around us. With a growing interest in feminism as a sex positive female, she strives to immerse herself in projects that promote both healthy and intellectual artistic expression, which is how she found herself working with and sexuality in hopes of creating real social change. Participating in Yiara Magazine has been a joy thanks to all the beautiful, colorful minds that made it happen. ses réflexions et ses actions les plus récentes. Yiara Magazine. While Mallika’s desire is to transport a listener into another world through her sound art, Yiara lets her sink her teeth into meaningful work that promotes bold visual art of all forms. Assistant Editor: Ellen Belshaw Ellen Belshaw, originally from New Brunswick but raised in Ottawa, Ontario, is currently in her third year studying Art History and Photography at Concordia University. Focusing more recently on written rather than visual work, she finds herself most interested in analyzing the spiritual facets of secular-made artworks throughout history. In her visual work she is mostly interested in the personal and social implications of portraiture. In addition to working as the Assistant Editor for Yiara Magazine’s second edition, Ellen is also the Exhibitions Coordinator for the Art Matters Festival. Associate English Editor: Stéphanie Hornstein Stéphanie Hornstein is a native Montrealer who is currently completing her third year as an undergraduate student in Concordia University’s department of Art History in addition to a minor in Creative Writing. In the realm of art, her interests are numerous and varied. She is fascinated by forays into new modes of visual expression as well as contemporary reactions to social issues such as sexism, racism, colonialism and warfare. Questions of the artist’s role and that of art institutions in society also intrigue her. She is extremely pleased to participate in Yiara Magazine’s second edition as the Associate English editor. 44 Head Writer: Valérie Frappier Valérie Frappier hails from the town of Aurora, Ontario and is currently completing her final year at Concordia University in the Art History/ Studio Arts program with a minor in English Literature. In her visual art, Val explores notions related to gender dynamics, femininity, ageing and the mythical while primarily working with paint. She is interested in many types of art including community projects, street art as well as interactive installations, and is fascinated by art’s ability to become social-engagement and a transmitter of knowledge. Val is proud to be Yiara’s Head Writer for its second issue. Photographer: Ana Caicedo Ana Caicedo is from Vancouver B.C. and currently completing her first year in the Photography program at Concordia University. She is interested in how different forms of femininity can be visually actualized through photography. Ana is thrilled to have been a part of Yiara’s second edition. To view her work, check out her website at: cargocollective.com/ Anacaicedo. Graphic Deisgner: Bianca Su Events Coordinator: Cassandra Marsillo Cassandra Marsillo is a native Montrealer currently studying History at Concordia University, after having completed her BFA in Studio Arts and Italian in December 2013. She is a multi-disciplinary artist working in sculpture, installation, fibres and performance. Usually dealing with themes of nostalgia, memory and relationships, her pieces are often self-referential yet open to interpretation, personal exploration and audience interaction. Her academic interests include Italian Humanism, as well as the study of feminism and education Born in California and raised in Montreal (with much of her childhood spent in Taiwan), home to Bianca is a mix of cultures. She enjoys experiencing new scenarios as she delves deeper into the field of design. Following her professional graphic design degree at Dawson College, she decided to dive into a new, exciting direction: digital and interactive designs. This change was completed by joining the Computation Arts program at Concordia University. She is skilled in page layout, poster creations, website designs, packaging, promotional materials, and corporate identity. Bianca loves to in Renaissance culture and issues concerning contemporary education. work on projects big and small, feel free to get in touch: bianca.su8d@gmail.com. Copy Editors: Elsbeth Cossar, Karen Lee, Althea Thompson, Kathlene Whiteway ��� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Other publications Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Issue 2 Page Number(s) 1-44 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data PDF Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014-04-01 Title A name given to the resource Yiara Magazine Issue 2 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Yiara Magazine Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Yiara Magazine Description An account of the resource The second issue of Yiara Magazine, an undergraduate feminist art &amp; art history publication. Concordia McGill non-McGill UQAM https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62030/archive/files/0dff7142177ede82a95c1298ddfdba5b.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=hST5EzbEULHiUqf71HlP5J9daVdHKKMVClLgsgI7tXoxT%7EIkW0E527J-%7Ecq8gjMDXT93VRNFYqotBf9l30nRn7AnPyBEf8S4tVaXyK3KLac%7E0Q-f%7EOJurBCGZr1eGkQKDpGNIx9Tl9gRSESTNHWlFqGqfzSXnasZ06BdJJ5h7vo6a78vFBzmiNW0PiltX4ufVX2AvyDEs9FwUjs9giXyforlfab763jmPxW6H06kKaE6NUez-ENFhacR3-oktMtAkIXzd06ksCAA-hMeXD0zFQBz71Adg%7E7s6RufwB17FCq2yLvDtE749XMFUGwJfF3sOokMrBGHNELXXZLFkLC1aw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 7641553cbda8db567097db5175339907 PDF Text Text 03 Yiara Magazine March 2015 / Mars 2015 An undergraduate feminist art publication Une revue étudiante d’art féministe �IARA MAGAZINE Issue 03, ed. 3 / March 2015 / Montréal, Qc, Canada / yiaramagazine.com �Yiara was an indigenous mythological Brazilian Queen, legendarily beautiful, but also a mighty warrior. She thus embodies many different issues of interest to feminist art history: sexuality, power and racial and cultural identity. Yiara est une reine indigène brésilienne mythique dont la beauté est aussi légendaire que les talents de guerrière. Elle incarne de ce fait un ensemble de facettes se trouvant au croisement de l’histoire de l’art et du féminisme : sexualité, pouvoir et identité culturelle. �Table Of Contents / Table des matières 5 Letter from the editor 32 Untitled 6 How has Feminism Informed my 34 Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9 & Sexual Stéphanie Hornstein Art Historical Practice? Dr. Eric Weichel 8 Pavilions Sophia Borowska 10 An Ordinary, Well Conducted Household Zoë Wonfor Brady Winrob Paradigms of Expression Rebecca Anderson 38 Badlands Archive Alexandra Reghina Draghici 40 ‘‘White Guys Won’t Get It, But That’s Not The Intention’’ Amelia Wong-Mersereau 14 Female Mythology 46 Heritage 18 Aging, Frailty & Death 48 “Man is a true Narcissus: he makes Kate MacMullin Muriel Jaouich Fannie Gadouas the whole world his mirror” Kimberly Glassman 20 À mes amies les licornes et Another Perfect Day Marie-Lise Poirier 25 Doll Gesture Triptych Sarah Riley Mathewson 54 My Vagina Vanessa Fleising 55 In Conversation with: Claudia Edwards Rudrapriya Rathore 26 The New Woman Painting Alyse Tunnell 31 A Handbook for Lonely People Sophie Tupholme 58 Yiara’s Staff / L’équipe Yiara 60 Notes �Letter from the editor In 1986, Marie Shear, riding the briny toss of second-wave feminism, famously proclaimed that “feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” The first time I ever experienced this quote was not in a book, or a journal, or even a pamphlet. No, the first time I read those words, they were emblazoned on a classmate’s t-shirt—lame, I know. Still, I was instantly taken by the directness of Shear’s statement (whose name, of course, I did not yet know). “Yes!” I thought. “That’s exactly what it’s all about!” For a long time, I held those words close as a quick and concise answer for anyone who asked for my opinion on feminism. Like a mantra, it consoled me against the snide comments of those who thought that feminists were ugly, angry creatures and helped me convince friends and family who were wary to associate with the F word. “See,” I’d insist. “We’re not threatening. It’s all about equality. Don’t you think women and men should be equal?” But one day, in the midst of a heated art history class, I realized that Shear’s witty sentence wasn’t the be-all and end-all of feminism. Yes, gender parity is a great thing to strive towards, and yes this was once a revolutionary idea...but is feminism really only about equality, only about women? Surely not. It dawned on me then that my constant wielding of Shear’s quote stemmed from my desire to encapsulate, to tame, to justify my beliefs in feminism so that others wouldn’t think me a raging man-hater. But why shouldn’t I be angry when I peer into the art historical past only to find an overwhelming under-representation of female artists, collectors and thinkers; to find that elaborate tapestries, baskets, and quilts are cloaked in anonymity? How can I not cringe as I rewatch Warner Brothers’ Thumbelina or my favourite episodes of Star Trek? More importantly, how can I ignore the staggering amount of Indigenous women still missing in Canada today? Yet, in the face of all these realities, I also know that indignation isn’t enough—it’s just the ignition. Over time, I stopped trying to formulate abridged definitions of feminism. I learned to see that the movement’s wonder lies in the fact that it is a wriggling snake, impossible to pin down, constantly branching off in different directions; irritable to all who fear its power and kind to those who make the daring effort to understand it. Feminism is a controversial idea that is not easily defined even by those who subscribe to it and that bothers people—it really irks them. Why? Because how can you knock something down when it keeps transforming and dodging blows, when it is still extraordinarily relevant to the world we live in? Nowadays, those of us who are lucky to live in open-minded places like Montreal can be proud that feminism has become strong enough to swim in the mainstream—the endless trail of Shear quote shirts and “We can do it!” memes attests to this. But we must also be extremely wary of the distillations that occur when ‘radical notions’ become t-shirt selling tactics. The golden balance to strike is to promote feminism in every way, shape and form without diffusing it for the sake of popularity. This issue of Yiara, as well as those that came before, is about maintaining an inclusive discussion that is open to all conceptions of feminism. This magazine is shaped by our wonderful contributors, the tremendous efforts of our team, and the valuable support of our funders. Of course, this labour of love is dedicated to all those who believe that feminism is so much more than the sum of its parts. Thanks for reading! Stéphanie Hornstein Editor-in-Chief March, 2015 5 �How has Feminism Informed my Art Historical Practice? Dr. Eric Weichel Faculty contributor Concordia University My first experience of feminist theory and art history came in 2001, as a first-year undergraduate in English at Nipissing University. The studio classes were all full, so I took an art history course as an elective. At that time, J.W Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott (1888) was (and still in some ways is) my favourite painting: I knew almost nothing of the Pre-Raphaelites, but had loved the work as much for its shimmer of grey water as for the loveliness of its flame-haired maiden. In my parents’ house in Northern Ontario, the image was a controversial one: I bought a big poster of the painting at a university poster sale, and my mother’s religious scruples led her to put butterfly stickers over the crucifix and its guttering flame. At that time in my life, the realism of the scene was a wonderful inspiration: its believability, and yet at the same time its evocation of a beautiful, sensual, mysterious world of the past, stimulated my interest in art history. Waterhouse pursued a near archaeological rigour in his study of medieval material culture, and I just loved how easily you could “jump” into the painting. The Lady of Shalott represented all the romance of late 19th-century British history painting and, perhaps through that even, the entire tradition of European history painting itself, which at the time I only dimly glimpsed. I’d assumed all art historians were also lovers of my own standard of beauty, and thought that feminist art historians would also love the work. Reading feminist critiques of the motif of the Lady 6 of Shalott, and of representations of gender, sexuality and ideal beauty in Pre-Raphaelite painting, have certainly changed my opinion on Waterhouse’s famous piece. I am now certainly far more wary of the image, of how its referential literary text by Tennyson can be read as discourse that reflects Victorian social obsessions with patriarchal control, female death and unfulfilled female sexuality (the latter an almost necrophilic device of scopophilia, right?). I now read Millais’ Mariana (1851), Collier’s Lady Godiva (1898), and Dicksee’s La Belle Dame sans Merci (1901), all personal teenage favourites, through a critical lens informed by feminism: what do these paintings have in common in their treatment of beauty, sexuality, or the female body? Why are these narratives of sexualized control and coercion not more informed by consent? Does the allure of the object itself (its composition, colouring, demonstration of the artist’s skill) help to naturalize social attitudes towards women? This initial experience of engaging with feminist art history was both a shocking and stimulating one. In the years that followed, Michelle Roycroft and Cynthia Hammond were the first of what would be many passionate, hardworking and incredibly inspiring women professors, whose personal practice of feminism much informed their scholarly practice. The majority of my fellow students were women. I learned that you could identify as a feminist man. Artists and groups like the Guerilla Girls, Kiki Smith, Niki St. Phalle, Tracey Emin, and Ana Mendez were all fascinating discoveries in those years, partially because their aesthetic was so contrary to the established canon of late 19th and early 20th century aesthetic beauty showcased in The Lady �of Shalott and replicated, to a large extent, by the beauty industries of our own society. Engaging with the work of feminist scholars of gender and art was an indispensable part of graduate school: I (privately) suffered through Spivak, bounded through Butler, grew entranced by Eve Kofosky Sedgewick. Laura Mulvey’s ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ remains a foundational text in my own art historical practice of “looking at looking”. Feminism and feminist theory became valuable methodologies to appreciate the distinctiveness of women artists across history, many of whom lived outside the confines of normative gender in their own time and place. Feminism is helpful in grasping the resilience and innovation of older women artists, some of whom come to art making late in life. Anna Maria Garthwaithe’s painstaking design process is reflected in a life’s worth of productivity, from the cut-out paper landscapes of her youth to the glittering colours and complex compositions of her late textiles. Mary Delaney’s delicate paper collages of flowers, Julia Margaret Cameron’s careful and striking photography, or Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s beautiful tributes to the desert landscapes of her outback home are all works that have suffered in the past from (male) critical neglect, and are beginning to be valued by new generations of feminist scholars. An enhanced appreciation of the sharply critical, versatile and creative outlook of many older female artists has been of immense value to me as a teacher. Ageism continues to negatively impact our society, and finding space in my own career to appreciate the cultural production of older women has been of irreplaceable personal and professional value. Practicing feminism as a queer male art historian means balancing theory with practice, experimental reading with experiential knowledge, knowing (and this is very difficult as a teacher on occasion) when to speak up and when to stay silent. Reading histories and theories of gender, sexual identity and discourses of being is useful, but the day-to-day practice of learning different and disparate modes of listening is something I have found that, as a scholar and teacher of art history, feminism is absolutely central to. Each student’s approach to an image is a highly distinct one. Any pedagogical strategy that does not maintain a focus on equality, inclusion and consent fails to consider the value of these multiple ways of seeing. Even my mother’s butterfly stickers, placed over a laundry-room poster, are in some ways a performance of the self: iconographic screens, the stickers protected her from seeing a religious symbol that made her deeply uncomfortable, while the act of placing them was a poignant and powerful re-claiming of looking. Feminist art history has given me the ability to recognize this aspect of her approach to art, and for that, and for so many other things, I am deeply grateful. 7 �Pavilions Sophia Borowska Major in Fibres and Material Practices Concordia University, 2015 Hand-woven tapestry, nylon mason line, synthetic yarns, plexi-glass, plywood, aluminium panels. Approx. 12’’ x 18’’ x 6’’ each Borowska’s tapestry maquette tributes to four women of the 20th century Bauhaus weaving workshop pose some innovative questions about design: where does the architectural end and textile begin? What counts as “structure,” and what can and cannot be built in full-scale? The weavings involve synthetic as well as traditional materials as homage to the experimentations of artists such as Gunta Stölzl and Annie Albers. The textiles incorporate slits that notch them into 8 the plexiglass, aluminum and plywood panels, permitting the materials more associated with the feminine and the domestic to self-support while retaining soft and draping elements. Partially unraveled, and able to shift and change shapes each time they are taken apart and reinstalled, the structures gesture to a more dynamic and fluid relation between gendered experience and its spatial possibilities. �9 �An Ordinary, Well Conducted Household Idealistic Architecture and Toronto’s Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Females Zoë Wonfor Joint Major in Art History and Studio Art Concordia University, 2014 The Toronto neighborhood of Liberty Village has undergone rapid and intense gentrification in the past several decades and is now home to several condo developments. Liberty Village—a rather ironic name1—was once home to Toronto’s notorious Central Prison, the Provincial Lunatic Asylum and the Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Females. This paper addresses the legacy of punishment and reform in Toronto that has for both obvious and unknown reasons been omitted from public memory. Specifically I will discuss the architecture of the Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Females—Canada’s first correctional facility for women— that operated in Toronto from 1880-1969, and was initially praised for being “innovative and humane.”2 This paper will briefly acknowledge the theoretical contributions of French philosopher Michel Foucault, and will then unpack the social and political climate that lead to the construction of an all-women correctional facility in Ontario. This will be followed by an examination of the architecture and design of the institution itself, and how spatial divisions affected inmate experiences. Finally I will investigate how this institution functioned, how it failed, and how it’s history has been socially and structurally obscured. After closing its doors in 1969, the Mercer Reformatory is now the site of a multi-use sport arena called Allen A. Lamport Stadium.3 Michel Foucault’s seminal text on the invention of the modern prison provides an important theoretical framework for this discussion of the Mercer Reformatory as it allows us to better understand the employment of architecture as a method of control. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault proposes that the built space is an active agent in the dis- 10 semination of power and institutional control. This idea is best articulated in the chapter on ‘Panopticism.’ According to this vision, architecture and space control the function and understanding of power relations within an institutional setting.4 Viewed in this light, the educational and punitive measures employed at Mercer should be discernable in the reformatory’s very architecture. The Andrew Mercer Reformatory was built on a swath of land east of Dufferin Street and South of King Street near Toronto’s waterfront. The edifice was built as a site of reform through confinement and labor, and the location of the Reformatory was in line with these ideals. Farms and factories surrounded Mercer—a landscape that symbolically and physically cut it and its inmates off from urban society. The north and east edges of the site were met by the Grand Trunk Railway, while the south and west ones were met by the Industrial Exhibition Grounds. The Mercer Reformatory was constructed in tandem with a spike in the criminalization and punishment of single, urban, wage-earning women. Unmarried women in nineteenth-century Toronto were seen as “icons of unsettling change,”5 because they resisted the societal expectation that girls should become mothers and wives. Women associated with vagrancy, disruption of urban space, inter-racial dating, or having a child out of wedlock (to name a few) were perceived as deviant, and their ‘unconventional’ lives were considered a threat to the family unit.6 This supposed social deviance eventually became synonymous for legal deviance, justifying legislative action.7 The division of men and women in penal institutions first appeared in the United States and Britain �Aerial View of Andrew Mercer Reformatory in Metro Toronto (Mercer Reformatory distinguishable by its cruciform plan to the South-West of train tracks), 1957. Photo reproduced with permission from and courtesy of the Archives of Ontario, C 30, job #1390, roll 4411. before making its way into Canada. This nineteenth-century Victorian archetype promoted the idea that because “men’s and women’s natures…were distinct,”8 their correctional facilities should be as well. While it was not all that complicated to create separate buildings for female offenders, “no one was quite so sure how they might be ‘reformed’ once they were behind bars.”9 Scottish-Canadian businessman, politician and prison inspector, John Woodburn Langmuir (18351915) spearheaded the construction of Mercer Reformatory in the late 1870s.10 Langmuir modeled this institution after the architectural and pedagogical designs of American and British institutions. For example, the similarities of Mercer to the Reformatory Prison for Women in South Framingham, Massachusetts (1906) are striking. Langmuir was optimistic about Mercer and he hoped that by employing an all-female staff, the inmates could be ‘mothered’ back “into respectable womanhood.”11 Langmuir oversaw every detail at Mercer, from the accounting to the architecture. When he hired architect Kivas Tully (1820-1905) in 1872, he specifically demanded that the building’s design appear “more like a college than a prison.”12 This stylistic choice matched Tully’s previous architectural work for Trinity College as well as Toronto’s Central Prison and the Provincial Lunatic Asylum.13 The proposed collegiate style would also symbolize the educational mandate that the Reformatory sought to carry out. To avoid Mercer’s looking like a prison Tully was to disregard the following conventions of prison architecture: “rustication; large pieces of masonry; spare use of windows…; round arches for windows or flat arcades’ moralistic inscriptions or symbols; [or] plans dominated by geometrical dispositions.”14 Tully’s choice to design Mercer in Modern Gothic style was as an effort to leave behind “the gloomy or prison-like aspect.”15 While Langmuir’s demands contrast with traditional prison design, underlining just how different the architecture of the reformatory was to be from that of the prison, the success of this effort remains contested. 11 Despite its benevolent (if misogynistic) beginnings, Mercer was nevertheless constructed as a penal institution. The edifice was built as a site of reform through confinement and labor, and was to “combine the uplifting features of a home with austerity of a prison” by tempering severity with “feminine tenderness.”16 One of the most significant things that Langmuir said was that, “if properly managed, [Mercer] would resemble ‘an ordinary, well conducted household’.”17 The combination of the domestic and the institutional became the keystone of Mercer’s mandate. One of Mercer’s first superintendent’s, Mary Jane O’Reilly, believed that domestic labor was critical for the reformation of ‘fallen’ women.18 This was enforced through laundry and sewing that was undertaken in the reformatory’s workshops. Anthropologist Mary Douglas explains how the nineteenth-century obsession with cleanliness and hygiene upheld the notion that abnormal behavior was transgressive, dirty and dangerous.19 The various laundry tasks undertaken by Mercer women—bleaching, cleaning and re- �Mercer Reformatory [Andrew Mercer Ontario Reformatory for Females], ca. 1895, Photograph. Photo reproduced with permission from and courtesy of Library and Archives Canada/Credit: Frank W. Micklethwaite/ John Harold Micklethwaite fonds/e003894555. moval of dirt—were not only a physical duty, but worked as metaphors for the ‘cleansing’ of the inmate’s societal transgressions. Cleaning was believed to have the ability to rid these insurgents of their “unclean and filthy habits,”20 by banishing the evils of idleness seen in the earlier jails (gaols) of Ontario.21 The Mercer Reformatory was built, as evidenced by aerial views, in an irregular cruciform plan, and constructed in red brick. The original brick was presumably similar if not identical to the brick used for the superintendent’s house, which still stands today. The words of Velma Demerson—an inmate at Mercer—offer one of the most detailed descriptions of the exterior, as she remembers driving up to Mercer for the first time: ‘‘I see the Andrew Mercer Reformatory for females as a dark formidable fortress penciled black against the white sky. The enormous structure with its jutting turrets appears to stretch an entire city block. It casts a shadow over the grassy exterior extending to a wide spiked iron fence and onto the street beyond. The tall steeple gives a church-like appearance but the numerous iron barred windows embedded in the dark stone exterior frighten me.’’22 In the same vein, Historian Frederick Armstrong describes Mercer as a “forbidding and grubby” gothic fortress.23 However, what is most known about Mercer’s architecture is that—like any correctional facility—the division of space was highly articulated and incredibly important. Historian Jennifer Brown, who did extensive research on Mercer for her 1975 doctoral thesis, lists the following spatial divisions: 12 wards; 130 cells; 66 small rooms; isolation 12 cells in the basement; a hospital; a chapel; a storeroom; and offices for administration.24 Inmates slept in cells with barred steel doors. There were workshops where inmates would sew or do laundry,25 a nursery for women with children,26 a large communal dining hall and a medical examination room. Prisoner cells were located on three floors in the rear of the main building and were designed for single occupancy, measuring 7 feet long and 4 feet wide.27 There were four ‘grades’ of inmates at Mercer, and unsurprisingly the more compliant women received less austere cells. Incoming inmates, however, were invariably placed in the east wing where the architecture was the “most prison-like.”28 A large part of the Reformatory was dedicated to workshops. The workshops at Mercer became an important part of daily life and the economy of urban Toronto. Formally called “Mercer Industries Ltd,”29 these facilities earned the province of Ontario thousands of dollars a year by employing inmates 9 hours a day at a cost of 6 cents per hour.30 As previously mentioned, this labor was understood by enforcers as a critical component of criminal reformation and moreover, in this context, it was employed to teach women “their proper roles and prepare them for an eventual reintegration into the community and hopefully into their traditional functions.”31 Superintendent O’Reilly, Mercer’s superintendent from 1880-1901, declared that Mercer was unable to successfully reform many of its inmates due to a structural deficit; in other words, the design introduced by Langmuir and modeled on American and British systems, was inflexible �Photograph of Women’s State Prison, 1980. Farmingham Illustrated, Lithotype Printing Co. of New York. Photo reproduced with permission from and courtesy of the Farmingham History Center. and incapable of providing different care for different offenders.32 This meant that women who had been indicted for vagrancy received identical treatment as women who were incarcerated for interracial dating.33 Accounts of O’Reilly’s rule suggest that while she may have been invested in the rehabilitation of the inmates, Mercer’s architectural inadequacies kept it a prison.34 No matter how motherly the superintendent, she could never transform the cells, workrooms and dungeons into a home. Every inmate who walked through Mercer’s archway knew she had been sentenced to prison, even though the words above her spelled “Reformatory.”35 Mercer began as a highly idealistic institution, one that saw a domestic setting, maternal guidance and physical labor as capable of ‘saving’ women whose habits and lives existed outside nineteenth-century norms. Despite its benevolent beginning, Mercer was met with difficulties and controversy during its 89 years of operation. Mercer closed in 1969 after a slew of scandals surfaced concerning the mistreatment and abuse of inmates, and the building was demolished for $10,000 more than it had cost to build. The remaining bricks and rubble were dumped in Lake Ontario where they formed the base of the man-made islands on which Ontario Place was built.36 This institution’s peculiar, frightening, and fascinating history merits recognition in Canadian architectural studies. So far unfortunately, what has proven most significant about Mercer’s history is its lack thereof. The scarcity of writing and research on such an important and unique Canadian institution raises questions concerning the cause of its historical omission. Collegiate, domestic and punitive architecture informed the construction and design of the Andrew Mercer Reformatory. These models were thoughtfully employed by Langmuir and Tully in the hopes of creating a space of education and reform. In actuality, however, these very prototypes lead to the dysfunctional and abusive methods employed at Mercer. This research has not revealed answers or conclusions about Mercer’s historical significance, but has rather provoked the following questions: Why has this institution been so neglected in the study of Canadian architecture? How can oral histories contribute to our comprehension of architectural history? How does the history of women’s reformation in Canada fit within the current discourse of feminist politics? How has the Andrew Mercer Reformatory affected contemporary institutions for female criminals? Linda Cobon, a Toronto-based archivist, has noted “how [quickly] awful things like this [Mercer] disappear from view.”37 Cobon’s observation aptly summarizes the effects of collective forgetfulness, and its direct impact on the writing and understanding of history. Despite the fact that Liberty Village as it now stands in Toronto was built up on the lofty idea of cultural history, politicians, community leaders, citizens and virtually everyone has largely ignored the physicality and cultural significance of what previously occupied this not-so-liberated place. ∆ 13 �Female Mythology Kate MacMullin Major in Creative Writing, Concordia University, 2013 Maybe this sort of thing comes naturally to the girls who slide out of the womb straightening their hair. Definitely not for the girls who spend the first fourteen years of their lives thinking that liking Star Wars makes them zany or offbeat, or when they do become zany or offbeat, they think it’s a good thing. No. From the moment God or whoever wrote out my DNA, no matter what I did, it was going to be a big deal. It was the summer after I turned seventeen. My birthday was in January so I had had time to grow comfortable with the age. I knew its limits and its privileges. The limits were mainly concerned with all the spaces I was still in, such as my parents’ house, a small, conservative town, and high school. The privileges did not appeal to me much more. They included bottomless angst, and an acutely painful awareness of my own shaky self-indulgence. The awareness, unfortunately did not aid in restraining the indulgence. Neither did the conservative, small town. Oh yes, I was progressive. High on feminism, my school bag was stuffed with Second Sex, A Room of One’s Own, The Beauty Myth, The Purity Myth, and every other book that dispelled every other myth. I was fully ready to accept that woman was a state of mind. My vagina was but a biological coincidence, my period was proof God has a weird sense of humor, and the rest of my disadvantages were merely social constructs. I was poised to take on the world. I was a seventeen-year-old feminist warrior. He was 14 six months older and when he kissed me in his car after Winter Carnival, I disappeared. Not in a dumb way. In a way that had me certain that vaginas and penises were irrelevant, even if we weren’t defying social norms by being together. They just didn’t matter. He kissed me and our souls collided in a way that broke us both to pieces and left me unsure of which bits belonged to him and which bits belonged to me. But combined, we were bigger than the universe. That was what mattered. *** The months after our climactic kiss were spent slowing fading away from the rest of the world and into our newly discovered lives. We fell out of the school clubs we had joined together earlier in the year one by one. Gradually, our old friends felt dull in comparison to the supernova our entwinement had created. We were the obnoxious high school couple that spent all their time together and who I had previously seen as juvenile when I was on the outside looking in. What little I knew. Lunch time at school was spent sneaking �kisses in hallway corners and Saturday nights at the movies. We didn’t get much time alone, though. His mom was a school teacher so she got home shortly after we did and my mom worked nine to five as an administrative assistant. There wasn’t much time for wildly inappropriate exploration and we were both too paranoid about getting caught to take too many risks. Still, we had fun together, watching movies and doing homework. We flew through the rest of eleventh grade on cupid’s candied wings and found ourselves in yet another new place. The summer. It was warm, carefree and most importantly, school free, which meant we suddenly had entire days to ourselves in empty houses. Oddly, it took us a little while to realize the full potential of this. He also had a car so we drove out to the beach almost every day that I wasn’t working at the Children’s Place for the first two weeks of July. Then one day it was raining so we holed up in my house to watch the comedy network. We were sitting close on the couch when he suddenly grabbed me and kissed me in a way I wouldn’t want my mother to see. I didn’t quite know what to do at first. He was practically on top of me and pinning my arms down. I tried to shift into a position where I could move if need to, but I realized my mom wouldn’t be home for hours. Then I began to kiss him back in a way I wouldn’t want his mother to see. It wasn’t like we were saints before, but discovering this new freedom had us becoming recluses in my house for the next two weeks of July. One day, while we were making out to The Big Bang Theory, he popped the question: “What do you think about sex?” I considered it for a minute and shrugged. “It doesn’t sound so bad,” I said in what I thought was a matter-of-fact tone. “Right.” He looked terrified. “Do you want to plan it out?” “Aren’t you not supposed to?” I asked. He looked confused. “I just mean, don’t they say it’s not something you plan, it just happens, or whatever.” “Who’s they?” There was genuine curiosity in his voice. “I don’t know. I never thought to ask.” We both laughed and then proceeded to set a time at his house for Monday the following week. Twelve minutes late, I arrived at his house at 11:42 a.m. that Monday. I was nervous but not overly so. I had read enough and heard enough from friends’ older siblings that I thought I had a good grasp on the concept. It wasn’t a big deal and occasionally it was fun. That seemed to be the consensus. He kissed me at the door and told me I was beautiful, before taking me into the kitchen where he offered me something to drink or eat. I declined everything but water, figuring maintaining clean breath could only heighten my experience. We made polite, if a little awkward, adult conversation before he asked if I would like to go upstairs. I 15 gulped down the rest of my water in an unladylike fashion and agreed. He took my hand and led me up a staircase that was so narrow, with its three or four tiny landings, that it felt like a spiral staircase when in reality, it was a regular staircase that changed direction a couple times. When we finally emerged from the last set of stairs, onto the third floor, I found myself in his room rather suddenly. Up until now, we had usually hung out in his rec room, on the second floor, to keep his parents’ minds at ease. This was the first time I was seeing his room and in that moment, it looked so wonderful. It was small, in a cozy way. The walls were white with exposed wooden moulding around his window and there was an alcove to sit. The curtains were orange and ugly but perfectly so. His overhead light was off and soft light was coming in through a small part in his curtains. He had wooden shelves on the wall opposite his bed, filled with books. I let go of his hand to explore, moving straight to the bookshelf. Hearing him sit down on the bed behind me, I felt him watch me. Brave New World and Freakonomics annoyed me, but I felt better upon seeing The Sun Also Rises, and The Beautiful and Damned. I ran my fingertips across the spines of the books slowly, as you do when you’re discovering someone’s literary tastes in such an intimate way. Intimate because he didn’t have any opportunity to justify or explain what was on his shelf. He couldn’t even see my face to determine if I was pleased or disappointed �with my findings. Something about it aroused me, so I went slower still, revelling in tangibly pleasurable discomfort that warmed the air between us. I noticed some markings on the wall behind Pornographer’s Poem. “What’s this?” I asked, tipping some of the books towards their bindings to get a better look. “Oh, it’s nothing. I mean, it’s a cheesecake.” he answered, quickly. “A cheesecake?” And it was, drawn in pencil on the white wall. “Why?” I asked, pushing the books back in their places so they kept it hidden. “My parents told me when we first moved in that we would be painting my room but it never ended up happening.” He laughed quietly. “But why a cheesecake?” I turned to face him and almost fell into him, not realizing he had gotten off the bed and was now standing behind me. “I don’t know. That’s what the muses were hungry for that day?” The corners of his eyes were crinkling spectacularly. “I like you,” I blurted the words out. “That’s reassuring,” he smiled, his nose brushing against mine. I get along with you, you know? You’re funny and I like that, I guess. I just thought you should know.” His hands slipped behind my back. They were warm, like everything else in the room. I couldn’t think of a time when I felt more comfortably warm in all my life. “Well, I like and love you, too.” He smiled down at me. I looked up into his blue eyes and forgot that I was supposed to be nervous. The next thing I knew, his soft lips were on mine, moving quickly and gently like a whisper. I felt how vast this person was, how much more I could get to know beyond his bookshelf. I still didn’t know which book was his favourite, though I prayed it wasn’t Brave New World. I didn’t even know what he liked for breakfast, yet I loved him. It all seemed so spectacular. I felt myself swell in his arms, with every breath. I felt my life expand, as I saw all the things I never knew I wanted. A home. A dog. Wedding rings. Kids. And calm. I felt so calm. It wasn’t like I had all the answers all of a sudden. I just had certainty about the important things. About him. With great readiness, we fell on to the And calm. I felt so calm. It wasn’t like I had all the answers all of a sudden. I just had certainty about the important things. About him. “I mean, I obviously love you…” the words were spilling out of my mouth now, taking on a life of their own. “Right…” he swallowed a laugh, and his hair flopped in his eyes. “I just want you to know I don’t just love you. I also really like you. I mean, bed, pulling off socks, and sweaters, pushing pants and underwear to the floor. Getting naked took no time at all and he quickly wrapped us up in blankets. He took my face in his hands and kissed my cheeks, my nose and finally my bottom lip. He pulled back 16 just a bit and I had the clarity to debate breathing through my nose or my mouth in the instant before he began. And. And. And. And nothing. Nothing. Still nothing. Not a single thing. No feeling whatsoever. I felt numb in every sense. Physically and mentally. Worse than numb. My body felt far away and all I wanted was to be in it, with it. And my mind was vaguely disappointed for a few minutes before anxiety raced from the pit of my stomach to the back of my throat where it was making my mouth dry. I tried to calm down. I reminded myself that none of the feminist literature I read promised an orgasm the first time. It wasn’t like I was going in with expectations. But still nothing? I hadn’t expected to feel nothing. Just like this person was jumping around on top of me. It occurred to me that maybe if I expected to get something out of it I needed to put something into it. So I tried moving, too. It just felt like we were in each other’s way. I wanted to say something to him, to take charge of my sexuality, like all those feminist bloggers had been telling me to, all along, but it looked like he was enjoying himself. And he seemed to think I was, too. Probably because of all the heavy breathing (through my mouth incidentally, forced out with all the pressure on my stomach). All of a sudden, I felt like I couldn’t tell him. Like it wasn’t something he needed to know. What if I hurt his feelings? Maybe he’d think it was his fault. Maybe it was his fault. Maybe it was rude to point that out. Eventually it was over. He seemed reluctant to end it. He even looked at me a bit expectantly right before he stopped. I wish I could say my decision not to fake my own finale �was a deliberate one, but if I’m being truthful I just didn’t have any sense to, then. He fixed the covers around us, and I started to feel a bit better but when he kissed me and said he loved me, that distant numbness came back worse than before. After spending a half hour still in his bed (it seemed like the appropriate amount of time) I said I had a headache so I needed to go home. When I got home, my mom was still at work so I crawled back into my bed and it was as if it hadn’t even happened. As if. Not quite. I was over taken by a madness crazier than love that drove me to find a satisfactory explanation for my unsuccessful first time. I started my research that week. I found a table at the back of the public library the following Thursday at 10 a.m. and set up camp with my laptop. My first hypothesis was that I must have some sort of bodily dysfunction preventing me from feeling sexual enjoyment. I poured over a wide variety of literature, including medical journals, women’s health magazines, sex guides for women, and whatever else I could get my hands on through the public library or the internet. I read all about vulvas, clitorises and the female prostate I never knew I had. Different positions that stimulated all thirty-something parts of the vagina at once were suggested, but in all my readings, there seemed to be little consensus on which parts of the vagina were actually involved in sex, and if some parts even existed, let alone what was key to female pleasure. By 3 p.m., it finally dawned on me that while the human race was so concerned with putting a man on the moon, somehow, it slipped our minds to figure out how the female body worked. My anatomy was still mythical to the top scientists in the world. My confusion quickly turned to anger, as I felt cheated from a biologi- cal endowment by these men in white lab coats that were trying to convince me my body was simply not as susceptible to pleasure as a man’s. I was positive they just hadn’t put in their time researching female anatomy. My mission for the rest of the summer quickly made itself apparent. If science didn’t have the answers I was looking for, my path needed to be experimental. I took matters into my own hands. I decided practice would make perfect, spending all my days off in his room and evenings masturbating on my own, until I was sore. I wanted to expand my horizons. There was no way I would be leaving any stone unturned. I even tried watching porn a couple times until I realized how little it did for me when I was left literally watching porn and forgetting to touch myself. It did get better, physically, by the end of the summer, but while I was so caught up in my self-discovery, he sort of fell to the wayside. Not to say he wasn’t there in all of it, but even when I started to enjoy what we were doing, some of the numbness didn’t go away. His neuroses just seemed a little over-dramatic. His laugh kind of bugged me. And finally, on one of our last summer mornings in his room, I noticed how it just felt hot and cramped now. And I was rubbing up against our insignificance until I got sore on it. “Why would you draw a cheesecake on your wall?” I asked crabbily. “I don’t know. I just did.” He sighed. I paused. “Do you regret it?” He got still for a minute. “No. It just turned out differently than I thought it would.” I smiled, despite myself. The August heat didn’t lessen but it stopped being quite so unbearable. ∆ 17 �Aging, Frailty & Death Muriel Jaouich Major in Studio: Painting Concordia University, 2014 Paint on 4 canvases 16cm x 20cm and 40.6cm x 50.8 cm 18 �Muriel Jaouich’s series consists of four portraits showcasing the latter stages of a woman’s life that address the lack of images in contemporary culture of femininity and aging. Investigating the invisibility of older women and their subjectivities through colour and shape, Jaouich destabilizes preconceptions of ugliness and beauty associated with the youthful and the elderly. The portraits emphasize the element of transformation and growth through time. In pain- ting the subject’s features from a new perspective in each frame, the metamorphosis of aging develops as a generative process rather than a degenerative one. Chaotic but recognizable, human but otherworldly, the subject of the paintings becomes abstract and expansive as she breaks the boundaries of her form and splinters the viewer’s expectations of aging as an unseemly decline. 19 �À mes amies les licornes et Another Perfect Day Réflexions féministes chez Cynthia Girard et Janet Werner Marie-Lise Poirier Histoire de l’art UQÀM, 2014 «Il y a un principe bon qui a créé l’ordre, la lumière et l’homme et un principe mauvais qui a créé le chaos, les ténèbres et la femme.»1 — Pythagore La pratique artistique de plusieurs Québécoises souligne, encore aujourd’hui, une filiation manifeste aux théories féministes des années 1970 héritées de Simone de Beauvoir et de son célèbre Deuxième sexe paru pour la première fois en 1949. Représentant, analysant et critiquant le rapport homme-femme, ces artistes dénoncent l’aliénation féminine et le dogme phallocentrique du patriarcat2 par une approche multidisciplinaire qui n’est définie ni par des constantes stylistiques ni par des sujets prédéterminés.3 À la lumière de cette affirmation, comment pourrait-on définir l’art à discours féministe4 du Québec actuel? Nous croyons que les expositions À mes amies les licornes de Cynthia Girard et Another Perfect Day de Janet Werner présentées entre septembre et décembre 2013 peuvent répondre de manière subjective et fragmentaire à cette question. Nous tenterons de définir, à l’aide du texte de Rose-Marie Arbour, l’art à discours féministe, ce qui nous permettra d’établir les bases pour l’analyse subséquente. Nous vous proposons d’étudier les différents moyens adoptés par Cynthia Girard et Janet Werner pour représenter les rapports homme-femme ainsi que la relation dominant-dominé qui leur est inhérente. Puisque ce sujet compte parmi les préoccupations des femmes artistes depuis leur insertion dans le champ de l’art, nous pensons qu’il est pertinent de l’aborder en nous appuyant sur les textes de 20 Simone de Beauvoir, de Judith Butler, de Kate Linker et de Rose-Marie Arbour. L’art à discours féministe «Le mâle est par nature supérieur, et la femme inférieure; l’un gouverne et l’autre est gouvernée; ce principe, établi par nécessité, s’applique à l’ensemble de l’humanité.»5 Cette citation, prise hors de son contexte initial, paraît offensante; on se gardera toutefois de commenter les propos d’Aristote, car ceci nous éloignerait de la définition du féminisme de Linda Nochlin, qui stipule que ce mouvement doit se fixer dans le présent.6 Pour l’auteure, l’histoire étant marquée par des rapports homme-femme où le premier domine la seconde, il serait vain d’étudier et de critiquer ses manifestations historiques.7 Pourtant, l’art à discours féministe québécois ne cesse de graviter autour de cette relation, car il porte en lui « les signes et les marques […] d’une distance critique par rapport au modèle traditionnel imposé aux femmes et dont les critères ont été acceptés et intériorisés.»8 C’est donc dans une tentative de conscientisation du spectateur de la naturalisation des identités sexuelles9 que les artistes se tournent vers l’historicité des rapports homme-femme. Hantée par sa féminité, la femme est confinée «dans un rôle passif plutôt qu’actif, comme objet plutôt que sujet.»10 Ce constat pessimiste est tributaire du caractère normatif du stéréotype féminin modelé par le regard masculin. S’appuyant sur les écrits de Freud et de Lacan, Kate Linker affirme que la fixation des identités socio-sexuelles dépend de la présence ou de l’absence de pénis, se rattachant ainsi à une vision essentialiste de la féminité.11 Ce «manque» convie �Janet Werner, Sisters, 2012, Huile sur toile, 56 x 51 cm. Parisian Laundry, Montréal. Photo reproduite avec la permission de Parisian Laundry. Image de Parisian Laundry. une image négative de la femme, parce qu’elle incarne une altérité qui la différencie par rapport au sujet masculin.12 À la manière d’un miroir, elle devient le reflet d’une entité homogène qui l’oblige à renoncer à sa féminité. Puisqu’il n’existe aucune réalité en dehors de la représentation,13 celle-ci devient l’instance par excellence de la subordination de la femme, car elle lui impose de s’insinuer à l’intérieur d’un éventail restreint de stéréotypes. Bref, son identité lui préexiste. Pour Rose-Marie Arbour, deux pôles émergent des conceptions féministes  : le politique et le spiritualisme.14 Alors que le premier repose sur une question sociale à la fois inspirée du marxisme et d’un modèle de revendication intellectuelle, le second s’ancre dans une volonté de réécrire l’histoire des femmes à partir d’un imaginaire propre à celles-ci.15 Ainsi, la pratique des artistes féminines s’oriente sur leur expérience en tant que sujet féminin individuel et collectif et adopte un point de vue spécifique à la femme en abordant des thématiques liées à leur quotidien.16 Se positionnant contre le modernisme, les femmes artistes adoptent un processus de production qui s’éloigne des médiums traditionnels, leur permettant de développer une pratique qui leur est propre, notamment grâce à l’artisanat et à la performance. Le corps devient alors le médium de prédilection de plusieurs artistes. Bien que l’art corporel soit toujours d’actualité, mentionnons que la peinture est (re)devenue le moteur utilitaire de l’expression d’un soi intérieur pour plusieurs femmes artistes entre la fin du XXe et le début du XXIe siècle.17 À titre d’exemple, mentionnons Janet Werner et Cynthia Girard. Alors que la première restreint sa pratique au seul médium de la peinture, la seconde développe une pluridisciplinarité que l’on associe à la postmodernité.18 En effet, Girard utilise des matériaux diversifiés comme le papier mâché, la céramique, l’acrylique, la gouache et le tissu. Par ailleurs, un engouement pour les stratégies d’appropriation pousse ces artistes à puiser leur inspiration dans la culture populaire et dans l’histoire de l’art : les images de la tradition artistique étant porteuses non seulement d’une représentation de la femme objet, mais également d’un regard strictement masculin,19 ces emprunts sont significatifs pour l’art à discours féministe, car ils permettent aux artistes de se positionner contre une iconographie réductrice séculaire. Femme grotesque devient sujet : le laid ne peut être un objet Au Québec, comme à l’international, un processus d’émancipation s’opère entre 1960 et 1970 et permet (enfin) aux femmes de s’affranchir des stéréotypes qui les affligent en «prenant possession de leur image, en affirmant leur identité sexuelle autant qu’artistique.»20 Ceci leur permet de découvrir qu’elles font l’objet de discriminations par l’intermédiaire des stéréotypes socioculturels : elles remettent alors en question les valeurs qui leur ont été enseignées depuis l’enfance. Afin de s’extraire de ces stéréotypes, Stuart Hall et Kate Linker suggèrent de s’y introduire pour mieux les exposer et les déconstruire.21 Pour Judith Butler, dont la théorie féministe se rattache à une vision culturaliste, l’homme se voit déstabilisé lorsqu’un «objet» féminin soutient le regard de celui qui l’observe, ce qui lui permet de défier la place et l’autorité 21 �du sujet masculin par l’affirmation de son existence.22 C’est donc en confrontant directement et indirectement la figure paradigmatique du patriarcat qu’il est possible de mettre au jour le phallocentrisme qui édicte la hiérarchie des genres et de prouver que celle-ci est le point d’ancrage de la misogynie qui accable la société contemporaine (mais surtout historique). Déconstruire les stéréotypes (ou les genres, selon Butler), c’est «défaire la représentation que nous avons de ce que nous sommes […] pour en inaugurer une autre, relativement nouvelle, dont la finalité est une vie plus viable.»23 C’est donc dire que d’embrasser sa différence est la première étape de l’émancipation féminine. Plusieurs stratégies permettent de dévoiler les stéréotypes, mais la plus courante est sans doute celle du grotesque. L’artiste américaine Cindy Sherman est l’une des figures phare de l’art contemporain s’étant intéressée à la représentation du grotesque par le truchement de la photographie. Lors d’une entrevue, elle explique sa pratique :  Les gens n’aiment pas a priori le grotesque parce qu’ils en ont peur. Or si vous vous confrontez à votre peur, ce n’est plus dérangeant. Il y a du beau dans le grotesque, voire du sublime. Nous devrions embrasser tout ce qui nous entoure et pas seulement la perfection.24 Janet Werner appuie les propos de Sherman, car elle croit que «l’art accorde parfois trop d’importance à la beauté.»25 Werner préconise, au même titre que Cynthia Girard, une approche fondée sur un antagonisme qui oppose la beauté classique idéalisée de la féminité au grotesque du corps matériel de la femme. Ces artistes, à travers leur œuvre respective, illustrent en effet ce stratagème, notamment grâce à une déformation délibérée des corps qui se moque des canons véhiculés tant par l’art que par les magazines de mode. La facture naïve, mais puissante, employée par Werner et Girard convoque d’ailleurs une impression d’immédiateté qui met l’accent sur l’exagération de la déformation de la figure humaine. À travers l’analyse qui suit, nous verrons quelques exemples du grotesque chez Girard et Werner, notamment dans Justine (2013) et Sisters (2012). Domination, aliénation et stéréotypes. Femme objet  : constat d’une situation historique chez Cynthia Girard Bien que les œuvres de Cynthia Girard puissent se confondre à l’univers onirique des contes pour enfants, nous aurions tort de nous fier à cette seule impression. En effet, derrière la reproduction naïve d’un bestiaire, traité à la fois de manière réaliste et arbitraire,26 l’artiste évoque des préoccupations sociales et des rapports de pouvoir en convoquant diverses valeurs démocratiques. L’exposition À mes amies les licornes, présentée à la Parisian Laundry du 6 septembre au 12 oc22 tobre 2013, poursuit d’ailleurs cette réflexion, qui concilie contestation et revendication, en proposant une relecture des bouleversements sociaux survenus lors du Printemps érable27 et en présentant quelques paradigmes de la domination qui sont personnifiés, entre autres, par le marquis de Sade. Les manifestations matérielles du pouvoir sont omniprésentes dans l’exposition À mes amies les licornes et ses représentations permettent de les lier à un passé historique. Parmi celles-ci, mentionnons le phallus, symbole par excellence de l’organisation patriarcale de la société; God I en est d’ailleurs un exemple probant. Cette sculpture de papier mâché, de céramique et d’acrylique révèle, en effet, l’autorité masculine ainsi que le processus de sujétion de la figure féminine qui lui est inhérent. En érigeant ce phallus comme entité autonome, l’artiste illustre la fixation et la naturalisation des identités selon des concepts sociaux normalisés. Afin de maximiser la compréhension du spectateur, Girard retranscrit le titre de son œuvre au centre de celle-ci dans une sorte d’allégation propagandiste. En utilisant la religion (God) comme principal référent, l’artiste expose une nouvelle source de subordination dans laquelle la femme est littéralement considérée comme l’extension de l’homme (n’oublions pas qu’Ève fut créée à partir d’une des côtes d’Adam). Finalement, grâce à la couleur employée, qui rappelle celle du cuivre vieillissant, Girard signale la longévité du patriarcat. Dans Justine, Girard expose les traces d’une conception idéalisée de la féminité, d’abord en littérature, puis en peinture. Le titre de l’œuvre renvoie au prénom du personnage principal d’un roman écrit par le marquis de Sade au XVIIIe  siècle dont la trame narrative retrace les malheurs d’une jeune fille trop vertueuse pour la société dans laquelle elle évolue. Orpheline et sans le sou, Justine est faussement accusée de vol, violée, maltraitée, incarcérée et torturée. Son corps est au cœur de plusieurs dialogues, dont celui-ci, qui affirme que la femme, «[…] n’existant que pour servir de jouissance aux hommes, c’est visiblement l’outrager que de résister à l’intention qu’elle a sur vous; c’est vouloir être une créature inutile au monde et par conséquence méprisable.»28 Selon cette logique, Justine doit adhérer au modèle féminin qui la condamne à une vie de sujétion et de passivité. Justine est non seulement perçue et exhibée comme objet sexuel, mais utilisée à cette fin, sans aucune considération pour un désir de chasteté qu’elle ne cesse de revendiquer tout au long du roman. L’image utilisée par Girard pour sa Justine a pour source la mythologie grecque, mais plus spécifiquement la légende de Persée où il est brièvement question de Danaé, sa mère. Le père de celle-ci, Acrisios, apprend par l’intermédiaire d’un oracle que Danaé mettra au monde un gar- �Cynthia Girard, Table 1 (Justine, God 1, Matraque 1, La cave), 2013, Papier mâché, céramique et acrylique, 17 x 11 x 3,5 cm; 30 x 19 x 13 cm; 21 x 14 x 3,5 cm. Parisian Laundry, Montréal. Photo reproduite avec la permission de Parisian Laundry. Image de Parisian Laundry. çon qui le tuera. Horrifié, Acrisios s’empresse d’enfermer sa fille pour éviter sa propre mort. Malheureusement pour lui, Zeus, séduit par la beauté de Danaé, se présente à elle sous la forme d’une pluie d’or, réalisant ainsi la prophétie.29 L’emprisonnement de la femme est un aspect récurrent de la mythologie et, dans le cas de Danaé, il permet (théoriquement) de prévenir les conséquences de sa sexualité.30 Bien que Danaé soit souvent dépeinte en convoquant les nobles concepts de chasteté, de beauté spirituelle et d’humilité,31 cette image virginale est abandonnée au tournant du XIXe  siècle au profit de l’incarnation de la perversité débridée et de l’immoralité.32 Malgré les discours profondément misogynes de l’époque, la femme demeure, paradoxalement, le fantasme masculin par excellence. En peinture, les modèles sont fortement idéalisés selon les préceptes de l’académisme et leur apparence implique une invitation sans équivoque à la luxure;33 leur suggestivité sexuelle exacerbée et leur expression extatique démontrent une passivité toute féminine. À travers Justine, Girard s’attaque directement à la représentation : elle propose une version «enlaidie» de Danaé en présentant un corps disproportionné à la peau fade, aux cheveux ternes et aux traits grossiers soulignés par de larges cloisons maladroitement esquissées. Cette opposition entre beauté et grotesque permet une forme de résistance à l’égard des canons esthétiques traditionnels et demeure, comme nous l’avons déjà mentionné, une stratégie communément employée dans l’art à discours féministe. Bref, les images de Justine et de Danaé confirment que l’identité féminine est constituée de stéréotypes construits selon les fantasmes d’un sujet exclusivement masculin. De plus, ceci nous permet de constater que Cynthia Girard puise ses références dans un passé historique où la femme est davantage considérée comme un objet de désir que comme un sujet de représentation. Girard critique non seulement la relation homme-femme, mais aussi les déterminismes sexuels féminins, comme la passivité et la sentimentalité.34 Mentionnons par ailleurs que God I et Justine sont intrinsèquement liées, car elles permettent d’appréhender, mais surtout d’apprécier, la profondeur de la réflexion de l’artiste. Le malaise et le silence  : fascination et oppression chez Janet Werner Les portraits de Janet Werner ne sont pas réalisés pour commémorer un individu; la question de la ressemblance s’efface pour laisser place à une vision ironique de la représentation dans laquelle l’artiste explore les thématiques de la subjectivité et du désir. Opposant la beauté au grotesque, Werner manipule, massacre et transforme délibérément les corps, imposant ainsi au regard une étrangeté déconcertante qui combine photographie de mode et référents à l’histoire de l’art tout en incitant la réflexion sur la nature fictive de ces portraits, sur la notion de sujet dans la peinture contemporaine et sur l’image de la femme dans la société. Cette idée est d’ailleurs au cœur du travail de Werner35 et est évoquée dans Another Perfect Day, une exposition présentée à la Galerie de l’UQÀM du 31 octobre au 14 décembre 2013. Les œuvres de Werner sont le résultat d’un étonnant amalgame entre les référents culturels historiques ou ac23 �tuels et la liberté créatrice de l’artiste. Ces fragments épars, souvent anonymes, rassemblés en un tout intelligible, permettent à Werner de subvertir les conventions du portrait en provoquant, chez le spectateur, de multiples émotions qui font écho aux affects des personnages qu’elle représente.36 Puisque puisés dans la culture populaire, le spectateur s’identifie davantage à ces portraits, car il a l’habitude de réagir face à l’anonymat des figures publicitaires.37 Évacuant le fantasme évoqué par ces représentations grâce à une dysmorphie corporelle presque caricaturale, Werner suggère donc un message plus profond qu’une simple démonstration du caractère iconoclaste de sa démarche.38 Elle met au jour non plus la femme comme objet du désir fantasmé, mais comme une inquiétante fascination narcissique du sujet regardant, car l’artiste nous montre, par le truchement de ses portraits, la véritable nature de notre identité.39 Dans Big Girl, par exemple, Werner allonge considérablement le corps de son modèle, tout en conservant la maigreur quasi anorexique de ses bras et en élargissant ses hanches. Par ailleurs, son visage pâle et son maquillage lui donnent l’aspect d’un cadavre. Son regard demeure néanmoins pénétrant et d’une profonde humanité. Cet antagonisme entre humanité et monstruosité est sans doute ce qui déclenche le malaise chez le spectateur, et ce, quel que soit son sexe. En faisant appel à notre conceptualisation idéalisée de la beauté féminine, Werner en révèle à la fois le stéréotype et l’initiateur, c’est-à-dire le patriarcat. Le malaise se poursuit avec Sisters, un double portrait peint avec une maladresse calculée. Werner dévoile ici une nouvelle forme d’assujettissement de la femme : le silence. La voix féminine a souvent été étouffée par l’hégémonie masculine. En effet, afin de conserver l’emprise qu’il a sur elle,40 l’homme a toujours refusé l’auto-détermination de la femme.41 Étant réduite au silence, elle devient une victime de la société et, du coup, ne peut que ressentir un puissant sentiment d’oppression qui l’empêche de se définir en tant que sujet pensant.42 «Bien trop de femmes dans bien trop de pays parlent la même langue : le silence.»43 C’est donc ce silence que Werner tente de le briser grâce à Sisters. Les deux femmes sont représentées côte à côte; l’une d’elle, vêtue d’un pull orange, se tient légèrement de profil, à droite de la composition, alors que l’autre, arborant un chemisier bleu, nous fait face. Bien que cette œuvre soit manifestement figurative, la représentation des corps y est négligée, voire abstraite. L’anatomie humaine n’y est effectivement pas respectée : les cous sont anormalement longs, les têtes minuscules et les visages expulsent toute notion de réalisme. Werner a même volontairement mutilé le visage de la femme située à gauche du tableau : deux cercles noirs définissent ses yeux, et un autre, béant, remplace sa bouche. Muette, quelque chose semble entraver sa gorge; rien ne sort 24 de sa bouche qui, pourtant, est prête à prendre la parole.44 Un examen plus attentif de ce visage déformé nous incite à rétracter notre pensée  : il semble en effet que ce portrait ne soit pas la représentation d’un silence oppresseur, mais bien celle d’un acte de résistance, un silence qualifié de révolutionnaire par Magda Gere Lewis.45 En plus de déconstruire le stéréotype d’une beauté classique idéalisée, Sisters devient l’emblème d’une colère revendiquée, d’une tension entre le portrait et quelque chose d’autre, qui semble destiné non seulement à saisir la violence des passions féminines par le grotesque, mais également à ruiner les conventions d’un genre pictural. De minces sourcils froncés surmontent des yeux qui ne sont pas tout à fait rond et de cette bouche béante, cette tache «qui produit l’effet le plus choquant du monde, sans parler de l’aspect repoussant qu’elle donne au reste du visage tordu et grimaçant»46, s’échappe un cri. Celui-ci reste sourd à travers le médium de la peinture; toutefois, au-delà de la beauté «irreprésentable» des figures de Werner s’élève une émancipation des codes d’un langage dont les femmes ont toujours été exclues : l’art, mais plus précisément le formalisme de Greenberg, dont les préceptes sont construits autour d’une pensée linéaire et hiérarchique.47 Grâce à Sisters, Werner met de l’avant un discours dont la teneur est étroitement liée au corps et aux émotions d’un sujet féminin qui se réclame du modernisme. Bref, les tableaux de Janet Werner dévoilent le stéréotype de la beauté idéale tout en le subvertissant par le grotesque et un discours profondément féministe. Le chemin qu’il nous reste Depuis Simone de Beauvoir, les femmes n’ont cessé de revendiquer leurs droits. Pour certaines d’entre elles, l’art est devenu le véhicule d’une profonde critique sociale. En analysant quelques-unes des œuvres de Cynthia Girard et de Janet Werner, on dégage une volonté de révéler le phallocentrisme de la société et la construction de stéréotypes naturalisés par un regard exclusivement masculin. Girard et Werner utilisent le grotesque afin de subvertir ces clichés : chez Werner, cette subversion va plus loin, en ce sens qu’elle réussit à déconstruire les conventions du portrait traditionnel en refusant la commémoration d’un individu par l’anonymat de ses figures. Pourtant, malgré tous les efforts entrepris et les victoires accomplies, il reste encore beaucoup de chemin à parcourir avant d’évincer de notre bagage culturel tous les stéréotypes générés par notre société. ∆ �Doll Gesture Triptych Sarah Riley Mathewson Joint Major in Art History and Studio Arts Concordia University, 2014 Digital collage on inkjet printer 13” x 19” each Mathewson’s Triptych of images emerges from a close study of modernist media portrayals of women in the 20th century. Utilizing the collagist methods popularized during the period, the series comments on the hyperfeminizing tactics of pop culture, advertisement and fashion industries in their creation of a marketable female body. The YSL Habit, named so by Mathewson due to its resemblance to a nun’s habit, references both the absurdity of such a modest and simultaneously phallic wedding dress as well as its function in erasing the female subjectivity, as the image itself partially erases the body. Open Legged Spine alludes to the “backbone” of the media’s ideal subject: a long, dehumanized line-up of sexually available women. Finally, the tabbed shoulders and faceless depiction of the woman in the third image indicate the replaceable nature of the wife as is she is figured by the advertisement; this paper doll tells us, simply, What June Brides Wear in July. The series calls for a critical and yet thoughtful, humourous and empathetic reflection on the consistent lifelessness and lack of autonomy characterizing these media representations of womanhood. 25 �The New Woman Painting Sexual Subversion Through the Image & Imagery of Tamara de Lempicka Alyse Tunnell Major in Art History, Minor in Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality Concordia University, 2014 In the era of Modernity, where political landscapes were shifting as quickly as the newly-industrialized urban environment, expectations of femininity changed considerably. During the early 20th century, particularly in Paris, a new archetype of the Modern woman emerged1 and was increasingly portrayed by artists such as Tamara de Lempicka. By the 1920s, figures known as the New Woman, the flapper, and the garçonne, had begun to permeate public perceptions of femininity, furthering ideas of female emancipation; these women smoked in the streets, drove cars, were sexually liberated, and generally less reliant on their male counterparts.2 The domesticated ideal of bourgeois femininity had fallen out of fashion. An unprecedented number of women artists began creating portraits of other women as well as themselves. In doing so, they constructed the appearance of radical femininity in Modern portraiture. Each of these women used their work to illustrate alternative types of femininity, many of which were dramatically different than those of their male counterparts. From Mary Cassatt’s depictions of mothers and children, to Romaine Brook and Gluck’s dandy-esque self-portraits, or Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore’s critical explorations of gender, women developed a new paradigm of female representation in art. All of these artists questioned and challenged the role of women in Parisian society by representing women in ways which were previously unseen and often taboo. The New Woman was one of the many subversive characters of the era. Sexual emancipation is an integral aspect of the New Woman and essential to the independence and auto- 26 nomy that she symbolized.3 This new-found sexual liberation was due in part to the shifting cultural dynamics which allowed women of higher social standing to claim more agency than had previously been available.4 The most significant development was the availability of birth control; this gave way to the shift in female sexuality and enabled sex for women to be recreational as well as procreational.5 The New Woman was encouraged to experiment not only with heterosexual prenuptial affairs, but also extramarital liaisons with both men and women.6 For the New Woman, lesbianism, bisexuality, interracial relationships, and various other forms of sexual experimentation or dissident sexuality were acceptable as being non-heterosexual was synonymous with being Modern.7 As an artist, Tamara de Lempicka pushed the boundaries of how the sexual liberation of the Modern woman was represented. Her practice is remarkable not only because of its huge commercial success, but also due to her role in setting a precedent for sapphic homoerotic imagery. In many of de Lempicka’s depictions of women, tension and desire are palpable. She makes no concessions for censorship—depicting only pure voyeuristic infatuation. The dynamic sexuality de Lempicka chooses to portray reinforces her persona as a rebellious New Woman. This essay will explore both the implicit and explicit methods Tamara de Lempicka uses to subvert traditional expectations of female sexuality in art and life during the interwar period considering her portraits, fashion paintings and nudes. In many ways, subversion was inherent to de Lempicka’s practise; the very action of painting female nudes as �Tamara de Lempicka, La Belle Rafaëla, 1927, Oil on canvas. Private collection, United States of Ameria. Courtesy of Tamara Art Heritage. a woman artist was radical in itself. Even without the emphasized sensuality of the subject, which is distinct in de Lempicka’s work, her adoption of the traditionally male role of Artist/Creator was rebellious. With her appropriation of this role, she destabilized the active/male and passive/female paradigm that continues to dominate visual culture.8 Her paintings continue to undermine this paradigm by reclaiming the female body as something other than its traditional role as a signifier of masculine creativity.9 De Lempicka further performed the role of the Artist10 by participating in practices that were condoned for the Artist but were inaccessible for women of any status. For instance, de Lempicka’s adopted the prostitute-as-model tradition, wherein she painted a prostitute named Rafaëla regularly for more than a year.11 According to her daughter’s biography, de Lempicka was walking down a Parisian boulevard when she saw Rafaëla; she was then so struck by her beauty that she became instantly infatuated.12 This story demonstrates not only the amount of agency that de Lempicka had, but also suggests that she was able to experience the same lust/love that had roused her male predecessors since the beginning of Art. Through the coalescence of her artistic and sexual identity, de Lempicka provocatively shifted the female gaze, creating space for sapphic desires to unfold in her objectification of the female body.13 Her treatment of Rafaëla’s body is clearly erotic—the often-dramatic lighting and sensual poses highlight the fleshiness and sexuality of Rafaëla’s body. There is no question of the pleasure that the artist takes in painting her model. In La Belle Rafaëla, de Lempicka chooses to portray her prostitute-model in the traditional pose of the odalisque—a genre of reclining nude that can be seen throughout the Western canon of Art in infinite variations. French painters such as Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Édouard Manet have most famously employed the form of the odalisque in the 19th and 20th century.14 This pose adds to the sexual complexity of de Lempicka’s painting due its historic relevance. The term ‘odalisque’ is rooted in the Turkish word odalik and is used to describe slave women from a harem.15 De Lempicka’s use of this form complicates her relationship with the model and by extension her role as an aggressor/ gazer/owner. Academics such as Emmanuel Cooper have questioned who de Lempicka was creating these erotic images for and what her intentions in doing so might have been.16 Throughout her career, de Lempicka produced work for important patrons who were heterosexual men as well as patrons who were non-heterosexual women.17 Whether she was creating her paintings for heterosexual men, non-heterosexual women, herself, or all of the above, I would argue that each situation is subversive in its own right. In the case of heterosexual male patrons, de Lempicka’s work provocatively suggests that she, as a woman (sapphically inclined or not), understands male desire. If she created these works for women, then through her work she acknowledges, and indulges, female sexuality and desire, which have historically been ignored, particularly within the context of lesbianism.18 Furthermore, if she is painting these women for herself, not only is she acknowledging female sexuality, she is manifesting her own sapphic desire through art. However, if de Lempicka’s 27 �Tamara de Lempicka, Portrait of Marquis Sommi, 1925, Oil on canvas. Private collection, United States of America. Courtesy of Tamara Art Heritage. paintings are meant to appeal to anybody interested in female bodies, then they suggest that heterosexual male and sapphic female desires are not so different. Each of these situations lead to the questioning of accepted paradigms of sexuality. Since there is little scholarship which pertains to de Lempicka’s portraits of men, my findings are based in personal observation. Compared to her portrayals of women, de Lempicka’s depictions of men are much less sensual—the air of voyeurism and painterly pleasure that are so prominent in her portraits of women are absent.19 The only occasion that de Lempicka depicted a male nude was for her commissioned piece Adam and Eve, which was requested for use as an advertisement for the contemporary French film Sexualism.20 Other than Adam and Eve, de Lempicka treats her male subjects with a sense of professionalism. Much like in Italian Mannerist portraiture, de Lempicka portrays men accompanied by objects that signify their occupation. For instance, in Portrait of Dr. Boucard, the doctor is represented with a test tube and microscope. In this painting, similar to her many other scenes which depict men, there is little to no focus on the actual body. In most cases, de Lempicka was commissioned to portray her male models and only painted them once, though a few exceptions do exist. Many of the men whom she painted were rich patrons and her lovers—she painted the Marquis Sommi Picenardi twice during their affair.21 The sexual 28 energy that works like Portrait of Marquis Sommi Picenardi exert differs dramatically from that of the artist’s paintings of women. In de Lempicka’s portraits of men, the allure lies in the sense of power that she imbues these figures with, rather than seduction being based in sensuously painted bodies. There is a sense of authority and prestige that works such as Portrait of Marquis Sommi Picenardi convey; the harshness and austere quality that emanates from the figure is due in part to the way de Lempicka positions the model to dominate the canvas, as well as from the geometric strength of the moderate abstraction. As a mother and married woman, de Lempicka’s artistic chronicling of her sexual liaisons can be seen as a subversion of sorts. Not only did she enjoy the company of the Parisian and Italian elite, she had flagrant affairs with some of the most prominent figures of the era.22 Through her biographies, it becomes apparent that there is an interplay between her seductiveness as an artist and as a lover, for both men and women. De Lempicka’s depictions of women vary much more than her depictions of men. They loosely fall into four categories: professional portraits, glamorous fashion paintings, erotic nudes, and works with religious themes (these, however, are outside the scope of this essay and were mostly painted later in her career). Though her depictions of bodies in these genres are often markedly different, works from each of these categories have facets which subvert expectations of how �female sexuality was portrayed. De Lempicka’s Portrait of Duchess de La Salle is the work which most closely resembles that of her male portraits, depicting the duchess as an androgynous figure in dandyesque dress. The painting places the model in an ambiguous cityscape—the centre of Modernity itself. This woman is modern in a distinctly different way than the fashionable flappers de Lempicka often depicted; she has appropriated characteristics of the dandy, which acts as a clear signifier of her dissident sexuality.23 This model’s sexual preference is unquestionable, if not explicit. Despite the lack of sexuality in the work, this portrait maintains sexual implications through the codified dress—the black coat and pants combined with a white shirt—and the masculine positioning of the model. Possibly even more so than her nudes, de Lempicka’s fashion paintings are the works that she is best known for as she was often commissioned to create works for European magazines, and was a featured artist in Harper’s Bazaar.24 Many of her portraits, whether intended for fashion publications or not, are imbued with a strong sense of the fashionable. With very little exception, her portraits of women depict variations of the fashionable New Woman, sporting short-cropped hair and red lipstick. Often accessories and clothes are emphasized, heightening the air of glamour. Tricia Laughlin goes so far as to suggest that de Lempicka fetishizes these objects of fashion.25 De Lempicka pushed the sexual implications of her fashion portraiture even further with her emphasis on the bodies of women in these paintings. In Young Lady With Gloves she depicts the model in a dress so tight that the indent of her navel is distinctly visible; it is as if the cloth is melded to her skin. This painting is more anatomically explicit than some of her nudes, such as La Belle Rafaëla, which do not feature details such as nipples and navels. There is an unmistakable sexuality in this painting despite the model’s clothing. It has been noted by Laughlin that fashion portraiture is a safe way for women to gaze upon other women while avoiding be suspect of sapphic desire.26 De Lempicka’s paintings make this type of scopophilia more accessible because many of them were featured in magazines and, oc- Tamara de Lempicka, Portrait of the Duchess of La Salle, 1925, Oil on canvas. Private collection, Germany. Courtesy of Tamara Art Heritage. 29 �casionally, galleries. She has numerous works that are not nudes, and thus ostensibly less explicit, which might have been viewed by a non-heterosexual population without revealing any sapphic inclination. The political and personal implications of the masculine fashion of the garçonnes and flappers were sometimes quite severe, particularly in terms of the popular short-cropped hair.27 When the style was first introduced, reception was so harsh that in some cases husbands and fathers took legal action against hairdressers, wives, and daughters, if their permission had not been granted.28 Much of the violent reactions towards this style were based in the anxiety surrounding the rebellious shedding of bourgeois expectations of femininity. This figure, with short hair and rouged lips, was not confined to the home; she existed in the streets and nightclubs of Paris, using fashion to deemphasize the maternal aspects of her womanliness, which were the basis of bourgeois feminine ideals. Though de Lempicka’s political intentions were never recorded, it would be doing her a great disservice to assume that she was unaware of the politics that the fashions she portrayed were imbued with. De Lempicka was involved with an exclusively female group that exhibited the work of Modern women artists and was known as Société des Femmes Artistes Modernes (FAM)29—a group that has almost been completely ignored by scholars of Modern Art.30 These women regularly experienced the political constraints associated with being a woman through their ongoing struggles to be exhibited and respected within patriarchal society.31 FAM thus created a platform for these women to have representation and establish their own exhibitions. Many other women artists who also explored female bodies in a variety of ways, such as Suzanne Valadon, were included in the FAM’s exhibitions.32 Despite never having made any direct political statements, de Lempicka expresses a conscious choice to represent sexually emancipated women in her work.33 The final category of de Lempicka’s paintings which I will be discussing is her nudes, some of which are undoubtedly the most provocative pieces of the early 20th century. They are remarkable for a number of reasons. One of the most compelling aspects of these nudes is the enticing voyeurism which the viewer is invited to experience. Unlike other famous odalisques by male artists (Odalisque by Ingres, or L’Odalisque by François Boucher), in de Lempicka’s La Belle Rafaëla, one of her more famous renditions of the nude, her model’s attention is directed inwards.34 The model is not looking out towards the assumed male viewer, vulnerable and in anticipation of his desire; rather she is completely focused on her own self. A man is not needed to complete this act of pleasure, nor is he seemingly wanted. The viewer is invited to gaze upon Rafaëla’s own intimate moment. De 30 Tamara de Lempicka, Group of Four Nudes, ca. 1925, Oil on canvas. Private collection, United States of America. Courtesy of Tamara Art Heritage. Lempicka’s groups of nudes are similarly composed, particularly Group of Four Nudes, and Rhythm, wherein the models are being looked upon without showing any awareness of being viewed.35 It is precisely her denial of the necessity of a male presence in her artistic practise that makes Tamara de Lempicka the epitome of the New Woman. Not only did she support herself, her daughter, and her husband through painting, but in doing so she was able to attain extraordinary amounts of agency for herself—both in the professional realm of heterosexual men and in the bohemian subculture of sapphically-inclined socialites and intellectuals. She was extremely successful commercially and sought after as a well-known femme fatale. In many ways her art is a catalogue of both her lovers and her lovers’ lovers. Having lived in a time where domestic bourgeois ideals of femininity were the established, and often unchallenged, values, de Lempicka was a radical presence in the art world. The clarity of her style and candidness of her scenes allowed her to capture a raw sexuality and emotionalism that set her apart from her contemporaries. De Lempicka’s paintings are dynamic as both masterful works of portraiture and socially complex depictions of women. ∆ �A Handbook for Lonely People Sophie Tupholme Major in Cultural Studies McGill University, 2014 The fastest I ever came was midway through morning yoga I was a plane on the mat, the floor sticky with sweat and dust, that charcoal self-portrait – timidly drawn, roughly torn – gazed warily from my wall, and my own lids kept closed deep inhalation long exhalation You looked asleep when I’d started I looked asleep when you started So you caught me – my lower back lifted, hips pulsed, I opened and I loathed us for it, we were fluid as if you did that all the time. Dazed, hollowed, muddled, my stomach contracted, sick with my self but only after, not during – I should know better because I don’t put up with that sort of thing. And then we were silent. The mat, the room, the portrait, my ordinary witnesses deep exhalation deep exhalation 31 �Untitled Brady Winrob Major in Judaic Studies Concordia University, 2014 Film Photography and Poetry The hypersexualized female body is ever-present in a contemporary culture obsessed with voyeurism and nudity. Constantly constructed as serving an external purpose or existing to reinforce a patriarchal entity, whether that is through advertisement or entertainment, the body is rarely represented as belonging to its owner. Winrob’s series of 32 images confronts the difficulty of reclaiming beauty in an environment that allows others to repeatedly co-opt it. In alternatively depicting the subject’s desire to freely expose and to hide the body, Winrob calls attention to the ways that misogyny acts as an obstruction between the female self and its own physicality. �he said he wanted to take my virginity from me “as friends” take it from me take it back from me back because he owned it back because he owned me i wish it weren’t years later when he and i went for a walk his girlfriend and his disdain for her the main topic of conversation he said “i’m hard for you” grabbed my hand and put it on his pants i hope i never see him again so i don’t have to tell him that he sexually assaulted me because men don’t tend to take that confrontation well men don’t take walks well june two thousand twelve 33 �Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9 & Sexual Paradigms of Expression Rebecca Anderson Major in English Literature (Honours) Concordia University, 2014 Before the twentieth century, the tradition of theatre took its cues from Aristotle’s Poetics. According to this Greek philosopher, drama is both calculated and mimetic; it represents or imitates the material world through a number of characteristics that promote stability and unification. These techniques, it is assumed, express universality as they mirror human experience—but in the myriad of people that populate our societies is there really one static, essential, universal experience? This idea of individuality challenges Aristotle’s notion that a character should be “appropriate…consistent and the same throughout.”1 His emphasis on the “natural order of things,”2 which he uses to justify much of his theory, merits to be called into question by the contemporary reader—who decides what is, or is not, privileged by this paradigm? For feminist thinkers, the conventions of mimetic art are inherently male-dominated and shaped by phallocentric traditions. According to Aristotle, comedy originated from the celebration of the cult of Dionysus, specifically in the practice of the phallic procession and its songs. This cult that glorified masculine virility in rites and ceremonies organized processions “in which giant phalluses made of wood were carried through the streets to the temple.”3 This exclusively male expression of sexuality is mirrored in the model of Aristotle’s theatrical structure that crescendoes in the climax, emulating “the male sexual experience, proceeding from foreplay to arousal to ejaculation.”4 This privileging of the male experience is at the crux of feminist critique; while man is valorized by society, woman is represented as peripheral and outside of humanity. For this model to succeed, femininity must be eternalized and unchanging so femininity and sexual difference come across as synonymous terms. Men become the norm, women the problem to be explained; men embody humanity, women remain imprisoned in their feminine difference”5 (emphasis in original). Thus, Aristotelian theatre limits the creation of new, culturally progressive meanings, while imposing “a standard of narrative and thematic unity that mimics the artificial unity of the engendered subject in 34 patriarchy.”6 Alternatively, Brecht’s modern definition of epic theatre formulates a new paradigm through which feminist re-imaginings are possible, and where “the structure of epic is more like the female experience of multiple consecutive orgasms.”7 The value of Caryl Churchill’s approach to theatre lies in its refusal to perpetuate the Aristotelian tradition in favor of engaging with Brechtian modes. Rather than reproducing the hegemonic, male-centered discourse that defines classical conventions, her work aims to disrupt the notion of fixity. If Aristotelian theatre encompasses an exclusively patriarchal project, then Churchill’s feminist theatre subverts the phallocentric tradition and its inherent marginalization of the female experience. As masculine subjectivity relies on the construct of the mythologized woman, Churchill dissents from the archetype of the eternal feminine that serves to uphold these masculine ideals. In doing so, Churchill maintains control of her own tradition, effectually breaking the cyclical pattern whereby “an innovation will pass if it is calculated to rejuvenate existing society, �Cylla von Tiedemann, Mirvish Productions’ Cloud 9, 2010. Courtesy of Mirvish Productions. All attempts were made to contact the owners of this image. but not if it is going to change it—irrespective whether the form of the society in question is good or bad.”8 By showing a capacity for change and fluidity within the characters, Churchill’s Cloud 9 deconstructs, de-historicizes ancient conceptions of theatre and most importantly produces new meanings that do not rely on the oppression of others for the perpetuation of self-serving discourses. Churchill opens her feminist play with a monologue given by the patriarch of the family, disrupting any illusion of reality. He presents his wife Betty, whose role is played by a man. Churchill’s cross-casting technique employs the Brechtian alienation effect to expose the strictures of gender, effectually revealing, “gender-as-appearance, as the effect, not the precondition of regulatory practices.”9 By explicitly reminding the audience that the theatre does not directly mirror reality, Churchill limits the audience’s emotional investment in the play in order to allow for the exploration of a critical social commentary. The decision to cross-cast forces the audience to question the legitimacy of gender as a natural and fixed identity. For Judith Butler, “gender is in no way a stable identity… it is an identity tenuously constituted in time—an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts”10 (emphasis in original). The character of Betty is an astute example of this theory. As the man cast to play her must continually put on the role of woman by submitting to the patriarch, Churchill demonstrates the performative nature of gender as well as the oppressive quality of these constraints; to be recognized as a woman becomes synonymous with the sacrifice of one’s subjectivity. Throughout Act I, language plays an integral role in defining Betty as a wife and mother. Upon Betty’s introduction, she sings “I live for Clive, the whole aim of my life Is to be what he looks for in a wife, And what men want is what I want to be,”11 signaling her internalization of this gender role. Betty assumes an identity that entirely conforms to her husband’s projection of the feminine ideal—as such, she embodies all female stereotypes, from her susceptibility to fainting and hysteria,12 to her blind acceptance of these expectations. Harry, Clive’s friend and Betty’s lover, similarly projects Victorian notions of femininity onto Betty, calling her “safety and light and peace and home,”13 while she begs, “Please like me… Please want me.”14 As Betty confesses that her aim in life is to fulfill the masculine ideal of wife, her identity is portrayed as dependent on these male projections. Harry admits that “when I think of you I always think of you with Edward in your lap.”15 This line exemplifies the fact that he is unable to separate Betty from the essentialized image of maternity and femininity through which he defines her. When she does attempt to stray from these conventions, asking Harry, “Can’t we ever be alone?” he quickly reinforces her position as inferior to him, stating, “You are a mother. And a daughter. And a wife.”16 Harry emphasizes Betty’s sexual difference, as “from patriarchy’s earliest times [men] have deemed it useful to keep woman in a state of dependence; their codes were set up against her; she was thus concretely established as the Other.”17 Harry and Clive reproduce the patriarchal discourse of woman as myth and perpetuate the notion that man “attains himself only through the reality of what he is not.”18 (ie: woman). And yet, Churchill’s decision to cast Betty as a man 35 �entirely undermines this portrayal of womanhood. For Aristotle, “imitation is natural to man from childhood,”19 but Churchill’s cross-casting seems to suggest more than this. While Betty imitates the gendered identity of a woman, the cross-casting indicated that gender is “capable of being constituted differently.”20 Churchill subverts the Aristotelian notion of imitation by utilizing it to disprove the very continuity it is meant to portray. Because Churchill re-appropriates traditional conventions to serve her own feminist project, she prevents the reproduction of problematic ideologies by disturbing the male gaze of the spectator. According to Laura Mulvey, in conventional theatre, “the spectator identifies with the male protagonist” who then actively “participates in his power.”21 If a play mirrors a patriarchal, phallocentric society and its dynamism, the spectator is given authority over the objectified female, because he “can indirectly possess her too.”22 By cross-casting Betty as a man, Churchill disrupts this gaze and effectually disallows the spectator to impose preconceived notions of gender and femininity onto Betty’s character. This inevitably causes the viewer to question the meaning beyond their patriarchally-constructed, and thus limited, knowledge of womanhood. Churchill’s decision to cast Victoria, the other central female figure of the play, as a dummy during Act I, skillfully recalls Simone de Beauvoir’s theory of constructed gendered identity. For Beauvoir, “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”23 Limiting both her presence and dialogue, Churchill presents Victoria as a woman who has not yet entered subjectivity—or, one who has yet to internalize masculine projections of the ideal. Either way, she is a fresh slate. Beauvoir’s suggestion refutes the idea of an inherent femininity and promotes gender as a learned behaviour. As Victoria is a girl, too young for marriage or childbearing, she has not yet become instrumental for the reproduction of patriarchy. Churchill exploits this opportunity to showcase how society values women’s participation—as a secondary figure to the male primary. In reducing Victoria’s character to an entirely dependent and speechless object, Churchill critiques the oppressive extent of constrictions women inherit based on their sex. By using a similar cast for Act II, Churchill is able to explore the ways in which inherited femininity works cross-generationally between female characters. In Act I, Maud, Betty’s mother, functions as a submissive model for her daughter, guiding her on the issues of a woman’s duty, such as, “you have to learn to be patient… My mama was very patient,”24 (15), and “Clive will know what to do. Your father always knew what to do.”25 Maud continually reminds Betty of both their positions under male authority. Maud’s mode of understanding the world is closely related to her 36 identity as a wife, mother and daughter—an ideal she encourages Betty to adhere to. Without realizing the harmful reality of the values she imposes on her daughter, Maud supports the hegemonic discourse that maintains patriarchy as the reigning principle of society. In Act I, Churchill illuminates the inner workings of oppression by challenging the Aristotelian tradition of theatre. To orchestrate to this subversion, she does not restrict her female characters to static and immutable ideals. In Act II, in the absence of Clive, the women begin to question their roles in relation to their gender and sexuality. Victoria emerges in human form as not just a mother and wife, but as a feminist. Now played by a woman, Betty assumes Maud’s role from Act I and imposes her learned notions of femininity onto her daughter: «I think Victoria’s very pretty but she doesn’t make the most of herself, do you darling, it’s not the fashion I’m told but there are still women who read Vogue, we hope that’s not what Martin looks for, though in many ways I wish it was. I don’t know what it is Martin looks for and nor does he I’m afraid.»26 Betty’s long, digressive conversation, not directed towards anyone in particular, shows her attempt to impart the internalized masculine discourses she learned through Maud and Clive. However, her evident confusion in the passage suggests that she is unaware of why she believes, or is articulating, these thoughts. The fact that Victoria is no longer listening to Betty suggests that discord is emerging in the cross-generational imparting of these patriarchal narratives. Victoria represents the first generation of active feminism (as it exists in the play) and thus the potential to end the reproduction of harmful gendered constructs, at least on the behalf of women. Victoria’s feminism is evident in her dissatisfaction towards the roles she is expected to assume. In response to Betty’s persistent reproaches on her subpar performance of femininity, Victoria replies: “Does everybody hate their mothers?”27 This outburst counters the force of inherited femininity by directly addressing its source. By acknowledging the ways in which these internalized behaviors are passed down through generations, Victoria draws attention to the larger discourses at play, stating: “You have to look at it [men] in a historical perspective in terms of learnt behaviour since the industrial revolution.”28 By bringing into focus the historical perspective, Victoria roots behaviour in experiential rather than essentialist terms. The crux of Victoria’s development as a character occurs during her ritualistic acts that take place in the park in the company of Lin and Edward. Victoria leads the chant: “Goddess hear us calling you back through time, hear us, Lady, give us back what we were, give us the history we haven’t had, make us the women we can’t be.”29 Calling upon a �Cylla von Tiedemann, Mirvish Productions’ Cloud 9, 2010. Courtesy of Mirvish Productions. All attempts were made to contact the owners of this image. female power in order to recognize the real and lived consequences of women in a male-written history, Churchill establishes woman as a product of circumstance. While this scene is an act of empowerment, it also implies that female voices have been so lost and excluded that a supernatural recuperation of history is required. Betty struggles to find her place once she no longer serves as a wife and is cast aside as a mother. In Act I, her identity is entirely reliant on male perceptions, causing her to think that “if Clive wasn’t looking at [her] there wasn’t a person there.”30 In Act II, Betty regains possession of her subjectivity; she embraces her sexual autonomy and recognizes her desires as a force separate from her duty to a husband. The play closes with Betty reflecting on her sexual identity. She recalls the repression of her sexual curiosity as a child in an instance when her mother dragged her out from under the table where she saw Betty “with [her] hand under [her] dress rubbing away.”31 Once she rediscovers her sexuality, she expresses: “I felt myself gathering more and more… I felt triumphant because I was a separate person from them. And I cried because I didn’t want to be. But I don’t cry about it anymore.”32 In these poignant terms, Betty is reconciled with her subjectivity, and no longer depends on others to define her. Churchill ends the play with the Bettys from Act I and II meeting in an embrace—an encounter that symbolically reunites the women with the history that was stolen from them. Betty acknowledges her oppression and no longer blindly accepts what others impose on her. In a liberating moment, she declares her autonomy from patriarchal society, forging the way for others to do the same. As Churchill disrupts the tradition of theatre, she deconstructs the oppressive male systems that they are built on. By using cross-casting, the playwright questions numerous issues of identity—be it performativity of gender or the disconnect between subjectivity and its expression. In doing so, Churchill champions innovation, she refuses to “rejuvenate existing society”33 and the patriarchal ideologies that it is built on. The number of critical feminist and gender theories that are seamlessly articulated in Cloud 9 attests to the play as an innovation in both theatre and feminist justice. ∆ 37 �Badlands Archive Alexandra Reghina Draghici Major in Theatre Concordia University, 2014 Performance Performance, painting, dance and photography fuse with research and intertext in Draghici’s Badlands Archive Series. Through an investigation of the light, darkness and atmosphere of the setting as well as the physical experience of the body in relation to it, Draghici engages with the sublime as it has been famously represented in works by Rodin and Turner. Using the body as an archival space in which 38 imprints of experiences are stored, the series highlights a dialogue between itself and the material objects, landscape and architecture of its environs. The erotic and embodied aspects of woman’s way of being in the world are thereby brought to light, and with them come possibilities of the conscious and unconscious, the energetic and alchemical, and the transcendent and creative. �Photo Credits Fieldwork photos: Peter Eaton Performance photo: Danielle La Valle Imprint photo: Alexandra R. Draghici 39 �“White Guys Won’t Get It, But That’s Not The Intention” Discussing the Colonial Gaze in Archival Photographs with Sanaa Hamid Amelia Wong-Mersereau Major in Communication and Cultural Studies Concordia University, 2014 Four months ago, Sanaa Hamid (b. 1993) was just a person on the Internet that I never thought I would connect with in a tangible way. Scrolling through Tumblr one night, I came across her Kickstarter project entitled, “My Body is Not Your Battleground in Pakistan.” After contributing to her fundraiser, I followed Hamid on the social networks to track her burgeoning career. Her work became increasingly relevant and important to my studies; I was determined to write about her, speak with her, and perhaps even collaborate. The interview that follows was conducted in the context of a research methods course in the Communication and Cultural Studies program, but I believe it goes beyond that class. Here, Hamid and I discuss “Ethnographic Selfies” and “Colonialism Sucks” (2014), two of her works that explore problematic archival photographs, the colonialist male gaze, the politics of image making, and how to address this material in a contemporary photography practice. 40 AMELIA: I guess we can start by discussing Sorryyoufeeluncomfortable because I’d really like to hear about that residency and the work “Ethnographic Selfies,” which you did as a result of it. SANAA: Sorryyoufeeluncomfortable was created by artist Barby Asante and the educational curator at Iniva, Teresa Cisneros. I came into it really late, they had already formed. They had to do proposals and then they chose who was part of it. Two days before their show, Teresa emailed me saying, “Can you come in, we can just talk? I’ve seen your work.” So I was like, okay that’s fine. So I went and at the end of our meeting, she just like, proper got my work. And she’s the one that picked up on the “Colonialism Sucks” video. I did that just as a stupid little thing on the side. I didn’t put it on my website or anything. But she said, “This is amazing, what you’ve done here!” and I was like, “Shit really?” I’ve been told by everyone that it’s offensive, it’s rubbish, it’s not very good, it’s a bit silly, whatever, so I didn’t really think of it. I thought, “Hmm, I could get along with these people [at Iniva].” She asked me to join the collective, but I was really scared because collectives are such a tight knit thing and you really have to have that sense of trust and growing up together. They had already been there for a month, like, they knew each other. So I was a bit scared. But they were all so nice! And literally, within an hour, I was low key in love with half of them. They are just so intelligent, and really young. And not all of them were necessarily artists. There was a history student, one hasn’t even gone to university, he’s in a gap year, but he’s so clever. It was just this group of critically-minded creative thinkers. The feed- �Sanaa Hamid, Still from Ethnographic Selfies #1, 2014, Gif. Photo reproduced with permission from and courtesy of Sanaa Hamid. back we got on the first night [of the show] was amazing. Then the residency...we’re not based in Iniva, but Iniva’s been accommodating us. So the residency was a month, I think? And they basically wanted us to expand on the work that we’d produced beforehand, which was supposed to be a response to the film Baldwin’s Nigger by Horace Ove. I hadn’t seen it before. So I was like, okay, I don’t know how my work is a response, but they said it fit. [About coming to “Ethnographic Selfies”]: So kind of, extending on “Colonialism Sucks,” with that in hindsight and watching Baldwin’s Nigger I incorporated and developed on all that. At the same time I thought, “Shit I don’t have a camera because I’ve left university, how do I do this?” At first, I was trying to get really technical. I wanted to get a video camera and a green screen and make it really slick. And then we were talking about it, in a group crit, and they said, “No! Use your Mac!” But you know when it starts getting all funny [in reference to the Photo Booth application], when you try and have a background? Like, WHY WON’T YOU STAY? A: [Laughs] There’s a serious problem. S: Seriously! How could they, I mean it’s Apple come on! It stressed me out so much sometimes. Like you move a bit and then it’s gone. But they said embrace it, work with it. That’s the nature of technology. It turned out quite fun! I showed my mum and she said, “I don’t get it.” [Laughs] I try and explain but she’s like, “I don’t get it.” When she says she doesn’t get it, I’m on to something. In the photos from the archive that I used, we see the women through the colonial white male gaze. I am kind of inserting myself into that space. I was reclaiming that accessibility of image making. Now, you can take a picture on anything, your phone, your computer, it’s not a privilege. In those days, it was a privilege reserved to the white male scene, wasn’t it, photography? So now, I’m kind of reclaiming photography and reclaiming my own agency as a photographer, as a Muslim woman, and engaging with the figures that are in the pictures. When I first looked at the archive I was just looking into these women’s eyes and I could see the fear, the oppression, I could see all of that in their faces. I just wanted to fuck those guys up for them! It was just horrible to see. How do I respond to that in not such a serious way? Because it’s definitely serious. But my work is often…I try and make it a bit tongue in cheek, and like, take the piss. Them [the white males] photographing these women, it was dehumanizing. It was cold. My response to that is, you dehumanized them, I’m going to dehumanize you by taking the piss out of you. The military, especially in this country, they’re so overly patriotic. But what are they even supporting? I think the museum and my university had problems with it when I started making it [“Colonialism Sucks”]. The Royal Engineers Museum is placed right next to the barracks where some of the training army is based. It’s kind of…weird? We had to be escorted to and from the museum, and there’s all these military kids walking around. It’s almost a justification of what the Western military is doing. By placing all this history next to it [the barracks], and trying to say, “Oh we’ve had such a long history of fighting all these battles.” And I was the only one looking at these pictures and saying, “What? Can you see how fucked up it is what they’re doing? 41 �This is photographic evidence of that!” A: Yes and now it’s the hundred years since World War I and it’s really weird to see the kind of artwork that people are doing that is prettifying this terrible thing. S: Exactly, and painting them as such heroes...But I’m really anti-military anyway. Have you seen in England there’s these poppy hijabs that have been made? A: No? S: Hijabs with poppy prints on them. In Canada as well, the poppy is the symbol that remembers, yeah? A: Yeah, yeah. S: And they do the poppy badge appeals, and everyone’s supposed to wear a poppy at this time. Which is bullshit anyway…But they made some hijabs with poppy prints on them. There’s articles that say, “Muslims are encouraged to wear this.” And I’m like, hold up! They try and force Muslims to have the same bullshit patriotism but…why would Muslims support the oppression of other people when we’re being oppressed right now? A : Yeah that is odd. S: It is really odd. But I think that’s why the museum was so edgy about what I was doing. It’s within their own archives, what I’m highlighting. A: Good on you, seriously, for going into those archives. It makes sense being next to the military kids walking around, to feel incentive. I would feel the same way. S: It’s uncomfortable, isn’t it? The kind of environment where you’re being escorted to and from a bloody museum. A: I’m kind of wondering how you came to animation in “Colonialism Sucks” and “Ethnographic Selfies” because you said you didn’t feel so confident in the film you made originally. Then with these gifs, you used animation again from your film. So how did you come to animation? Was it as a means to cut the heads off these men in the photos? S: In a sense…this was a university mini project, and everyone else [in the class] did really serious, borderline boring Sanaa Hamid, Still from Ethnographic Selfies #3, 2014, Gif. Photo reproduced with permission from and courtesy of Sanaa Hamid. 42 work with the archive. So I would be that one who takes the piss a little bit and does something not so serious. It was literally just before I went to Pakistan, so I thought, “right I don’t have a lot of time for this, so I’m going to do something a bit silly.” My ex is an animator so he helped me do that. I was, in a sense, manipulating these figures literally. When I first started it was just small movements and I started making gifs giving them bobble heads and making them move. Then when the museum lady and my head course leader said it was offensive, I thought, “I’m going to push it further! I’m going to make it more offensive!” I suppose animation was just naturally what I thought. Have you seen Monty Python before? The animation style in that is kind of similar. A: Yes! Absolutely. S: Their idea of disrupting Britishness and the sense of British patriotism and all of that, is kind of similar to what I wanted to do. A bit silly, only 52 seconds, there’s not really a narrative within it. It’s just me picking these few images and disrupting the archive a little bit, in a way that people aren’t really used to seeing. A lot of archival work is about either reconstructing a narrative, creating someone’s own narrative, or looking at the object’s physicality and the ephemeral nature of the archive. Transporting it into this thing to be protected, to be touched with cotton gloves and putting it on a digital screen and manipulating it digitally in a way that is there forever now. I thought that was quite interesting, the transformation from physical object rather than image, to something on a screen. A: Right, well let’s talk about the accessibility of image making then. Somebody wrote about you from Digital Women UK and they emphasized your tool kit of social media. What do you think about using your own computer for image making… since a lot of self-ethnography and even mobile ethnography are reduced and invalidated? S: Exactly! Especially by white men! White men love to write articles about how selfies are the narcissistic generation, all of this shit. But look, I am passionate about selfies. I encourage all brown girls to take selfies because it’s YOU reclaiming your representation. You get ready and you think, “Damn I look good why shouldn’t I take a picture?” Years and years ago when photography just started, to take a selfie you had to sit there for ten hours. Was that called a narcissistic generation? White dudes would sit to be painted for hours and hours. Was that not a narcissist experience? It’s just as you said, [a tone, an attitude] to invalidate the image of ourselves. It’s fine if a white man takes a picture of these poor little brown girls in Pakistan or India, but if we take a selfie it’s invalidated. A: Well yes because I think the accessibility of it means that we’re just contributing to the junk space of the Internet. It’s �Sanaa Hamid, Still from Ethnographic Selfies #4, 2014, Gif. Photo reproduced with permission from and courtesy of Sanaa Hamid. equivalent to and it’s associated with the Internet, which is always placed back down to the low genre. S: I have this network of cute brown girls on Tumblr who are the kind of girls that reblog your selfie. They’re always there just to, “Yeah! Yeah!” [cheer you on]. And everyone’s so engaged with representing themselves in whatever damn way they please and not being apologetic for it. Sometimes you do feel a bit apologetic, like “ooh sorry for the double selfies on Instagram, but actually, no I’m not sorry.” Right? A: Yeah absolutely! Now let’s talk about colonialism and let’s unpack your description of “Ethnographic Selfies.” [Reads]“In this series of gifs, I revisit the archive at Royal Engineers Museum, using the idea of self-representation and the selfie as a means to responding to the oppressive colonialist gaze.” How have you worked before with the gaze? I remember your piece “Through Her Eyes” and I think that that was a different exploration of the self and the self-portrait. S: Yes, definitely. A: But so with “Ethnographic Selfies,” how have you moved into a different zone, shall we say? S: Definitely, you know there’s this photographer Marc Garanger, and he did this series called “Femme Algériennes,” and he was a French military photographer. He did thousands and thousands of portraits of Algerian women. You have to see them! The gaze in them is so…that work fuelled my whole project. They were stripped of their veil and he had to photograph them for their I.D. cards for their refugee camp, which was controlled by the French military. The anger and the repulsion, the oppression in their eyes…They’re returning that gaze, with the aggression of having this camera put in front of you and being stripped of your veil. There are hundreds of them, definitely check them out. A: Okay so that series definitely fuelled this project. S: And the whole idea of the gaze, the colonial gaze. A: I was going to ask about contemporary examples that you may have seen of this gaze since your work is with historical archival material, but I know that we are not really in a post-colonial era either. It’s everywhere, this colonial gaze, and I was going to ask, are you seeing any other artists or photographers addressing it or is there a hole that you see your work kind of fits into? S: I mean I would never consider my work particularly revolutionary. I think I’m too immature, and I’ve only been doing this for a few years. There’s this artist Pushpamala N. and she kind of addressed the idea of the ethnographic study and of clinical measurement in photography. She’s kind of taking the piss as well; she’s on the screen with a grid measuring her arm, dressed as the native woman. That was really interesting to me because it isn’t overtly funny, but it’s quite tongue in cheek in the way that she’s playing with the idea of archival imagery and the colonial gaze. Which, again, she’s reclaiming that by taking the photo herself. A: Absolutely, right. I recently went to go see a work by Shirin Neshat and I wanted to know what you think of her. I’m a bit conflicted because I studied her work in my postcolonial art history class and then we were instructed to go see her new film with Natalie Portman, sponsored by Dior, and it’s very aesthetic and nice. It was a very haunting and beautiful film. It’s called Illusions & Mirrors. My issue is that, Neshat was doing work with the motif of the veil in her earlier years and I’m not sure about this shift…She’s claiming she wants to move toward a timeless and universal narrative, which is a bit problematic I feel. Especially because if she is also claiming she wants to leave behind the socio-political issues with Iran etc. S: What’s her new thing called? A: Illusions & Mirrors. S: [types into her computer] I haven’t seen it. I don’t know. I quite liked Shirin Neshat. She is one of those photographers that is brought up whenever there’s any kind of discussion about race and photography or religion and photography. So many people would say to me through my education, “have you heard of Shirin Neshat?” and I’m like “Yes! I’ve bloody heard of Shirin Neshat! Because I’m a Muslim woman!” Some of her video work is beautiful, but I’m not liking this Natalie Portman situation. A: As you were kind of saying, everyone knows her, and also everyone’s paying her the big bucks now. S: Exactly, that happens a lot, the industry will clock onto one person of colour. And they will throw all the money at them and they will highlight them to shit but they’re the one token person. I think that’s what’s happening to Shirin at the moment. A: Yeah. Anyway, I wanted to talk about the way you engage in each specific gif image, since you have specific poses that you chose. You said you felt an interaction with the women in these images already just by looking into their faces in the archives. But how did you go through the pictures and choose how you would engage the female subject? S: I spent literally hours and hours, weeks on weeks at the ar- 43 �chive. And there were so many pictures. I had over 200 that I was whittling down. So I had a lot of stuff, but I was wary of not making a video that was too long, because I wanted something [snaps fingers], short and snappy, bit funny, that’s it, done. And I was also aware that I didn’t really have a lot of time to do this as well as I’d like to. So if I made it too long, I won’t be able to finish it. The pictures that I could manipulate, you know the ones of the guys in the portrait? All of them lined up? A: Yes. S: That kind of thing, I don’t know, I just found it so funny. I would just laugh at them. I would just sit there, look at them, on my own, just laughing at these pictures. And the guys in black face when they’re doing the boxing. A: Oh my goodness… S: Why do you have to be in blackface to do boxing? I don’t understand. I’d take those kind of pictures and I’d show the woman at the museum. I was like, “Look at them!” and she’d make excuses! To follow what they did, “Oh, they’re just playing” and I said…“That’s the point though isn’t it? They’re just playing, as a black person.” That’s not cool, they’re like mocking the nation. A: You were talking a little bit earlier about how you want to go forward, and you’re thinking of future projects and other works. How do you feel now that you’ve worked within your toolbox of homemade work? Are you going to continue addressing these problematics, making the work yourself on your own computer? It’s very trendy right now. There was a blog I saw that was all “Snapchat art.” So people are using apps and their computers to do these things, which is cool because it’s kind of a taking down or a decolonization process. S: Sorryyoufeeluncomfortable are thinking about making our own Vine channel, and making vines that kind of address the issues that affect our lives in that kind of six second punchy way. I definitely know what you mean about it being trendy at the moment and I’m very wary of maintaining a practice as a photographer and an artist. I like my gif series but it is just that isn’t it? It’s a gif series. I want to go back to actual traditional photography. I work with medium format and it’s this long process and I really miss that kind of intimacy with my own work, the kind of long process it takes. For my next project, I’m definitely going to go back to my medium format. It’s just hard because obviously I don’t have access to the processes and everything now, but I’m learning to be a functional artist outside of The Institution. A: Of course. S: That’s my next challenge in life. But I’m going to go back to traditional. Obviously in the future I’m definitely going to bear in mind the Internet and how central that is to my 44 work. I’m going to be editing an issue of Interrupt Magazine soon. You choose one idea to interrupt, and I’m going to interrupt the idea of South Asian stereotypes. I’m really going to incorporate all the South Asian girls from Tumblr from the Internet that I know that do creative things, but their output and their audience is just the rest of us. Do you know what I mean? A: Yes. S: White people don’t really get it, but it’s not for them. It’s just for ourselves. And it’s the kind of work that other girls can see and really relate to. White guys won’t get it, but that’s not the intention. The Oxford talk that I was at, I was asked, “is the reaction to your work important? Who do you want to react to your work?” And I honestly don’t care what people think about my work. All the brown girls, that’s all I care about. I want them to like it and I want them to kind of have some kind of connection to it. Everyone else, I don’t really care. A: Yeah, elicit a response from them. And it does! I want to say, I think your work is moving because, for me especially, it deals with everything at once that I want to see in art. I’m in Communications and we’ve done the history of every kind of media possible. I’m moving now into Art History classes as well, to have access to ones like post-colonial theory in art history. If I could only write on you and your work that would be so cool. It is the culmination of everything! Especially because in my communications classes, and in talking about visual culture, and through feminist media analysis, I was able to talk about M.I.A. a little bit last year. But not enough! So I just feel like your work is the most relevant thing to be talking about right now. And I’m thankful for your work. S: You’re so cute, you’re making me emotional! A: Don’t get emotional, it’s just the reality! One other thing I should ask I suppose is… well your work is so driven by these problematic realities. Even if you can say that “it’s just a series of gifs,” the images, they are really driven with purpose. Your engagement with the person at the archive who, didn’t exactly laugh it off, but reduced or gave excuses [about the past]… that’s problematic. In your piece about cultural appropriation, which is so prevalent and it’s in everything we wear… I wonder, have people understood? You talk about being frustrated by these problematics, but has anyone gotten it? S: The appropriation series specifically? You know that was how my work online actually started because that was in my second year of university. It was just a project. I uploaded it on Tumblr with a few typos here and there. I thought I might get a couple of likes. Went to sleep, woke up, and there was just this debate blowing up on Tumblr. I was like, “shit!” I seriously got so many messages of abuse. �A: Oh my god… S: You know those white girls on Tumblr saying “Why can’t I wear a fucking bindi?” [Laughs] well I got a million of those…but I got hundreds and hundreds from other people, and I still get to this day, emails from people pouring their hearts out to me. Some people really did get it, and some people said “Thank you so much for just highlighting that, leaving it out there as a discussion.” That’s all I wanted to do, I didn’t really put my opinion about appropriation in the work because I’m not really aggressive about it, but I left it completely neutral. People emailed me saying, “Oh I didn’t realize that I was appropriating until I saw this and I thought maybe I shouldn’t, maybe I should check with people, maybe I should ask if that’s offensive.” I still get people sending me messages asking me, “Is this offensive?” But I’m not everybody’s one stop, like, am I appropriating or not or like… A: The appropriation police! S: Yeah, that can be really annoying sometimes. So I’m like just Google it, trust me. But no, certain people don’t respond in the way you want, obviously. My work got posted on this awful website, it was like some photography website, like SLR Lounge or something? So obviously, most of the audience for that website is white males. All the comments were just… There was this guy who was like “I’m a fashion photographer and I use the native Indian headdress as a prop, and why shouldn’t I?” I don’t usually reply to things like that, but I literally went mental. I wrote that this is the exact problem that I am addressing and you need to Google the term ‘white privilege’ and try and understand it a little bit. A: Google the term ‘white privilege’! S: Some people don’t get it, but I don’t really give a shit. I’m not going to sit down and write these long messages to people that don’t get it and hope that they will try. Some people can’t see past their privilege, so they would never be able to see the work in the perspective that me or you would be able to see it because they know nothing about that. They know nothing about the experience of oppressed people. A: Especially if they see that you’re still working in a medium that they associate with… well they know that the medium of photography is a privileged medium, so how is it that you’re working within this medium but you’re doing something kind of different? S: And then the work, “Through Her Eyes” that was a personal project and I didn’t expect anyone to really relate to that, but so many people did! I got a sweet email from this girl in Pakistan she was like fifteen and she lived in a really tribal area but she said she saw my work and she was so happy to just see something that she could recognize in contemporary art! That’s the only reason I carry on doing my work. Sanaa Hamid and Amelia Wong-Mersereau, 2014, Digital screenshot. Photo reproduced with permission from and courtesy of Amelia Wong-Mersereau. I probably could have just dropped photography and done something more practical by now, if it hadn’t been for the response. A: What you’re doing is so important. I feel like, if you go back to the longer process of photography you were working in, there is something very rewarding in that also. S: Life is so fast-paced now, and we just want everything to be instant. Photography, with a digital camera is just [camera shutter sound], is just done! I like that you can go back and really think a bit more about what you’re doing [slowly]. A: Absolutely! ∆ 45 �Heritage A Work in Progress Fannie Gadouas Major in Studio Arts: Photography Concordia University, 2014 Photography, video and performance In a multimedia work of video, photography and fibres, Gadouas questions the authenticity of heritage and related material objects by dismantling and remaking a family heirloom. She does so alongside her mother and grandmother, repositioning their shared genetic history in a specifically gendered way. Ripping the demure, frilly, white dress to shreds, Gadouas deconstructs the patriarchal values that accompany its material and political existence. Because her 46 mother and grandmother knit and sew the shreds back together, engaging in a domestic and feminine practice, the three female subjectivities participate in a conceptual dialogue about what it means to belong to a tradition. The piece, a cyclical, ongoing process, reflects the nature of heritage and familial belonging as itself ongoing, evolving and unstable rather than fixed. �47 �“Man is a true Narcissus: he makes the whole world his mirror” An Analysis of the Male Artist’s Relation to the Female Figure Kimberly Glassman Major in Art History (Co-op Program) Concordia University, 2014 In Ovid’s “The Story of Pygmalion and the Statue,” featured in his Metamorphoses (8 A.D.), a Cypriot sculptor carves an image of the perfect woman with whom he instantly falls in love. Dissatisfied and even disgusted with the “lascivious life” of ‘real’ women who are “unknowing how to blush, and shameless grown,”1 Ovid’s Pygmalion decidedly carves his perfect (read obedient, beautiful and mute) woman. Infatuated by her goddess-like beauty, he begs Venus to provide him with a wife of the “living likeness of [his] ivory girl.”2 Upon pressing his lips to those of Galatea—the name he gives his sculpture—the stony statue miraculously transforms into a real woman. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the changing role of woman led to many societal anxieties in Europe.3 It is no surprise then that the legend of Pygmalion and Galatea—a story which quite clearly defines the ideal woman as a beautiful speechless statue—features prominently within the art of this period. Fearful of the ‘feminization’ of culture, male artists, in a similar fashion to Pygmalion, looked to their work as a means through which to “control, master, [and] fix the woman of their desire as a reflection of [their] own creative energy.”4 Catherine Maxwell, among others, theorizes that the male-artist’s tendency to depict provocative women was a way of sheltering themselves from their own hidden desires: “Man, succeeding to the position of anthropomorphic and masculine deity, becomes the master of his own match. Women, rather than being a subject in her own right, functions as the device that completes man’s lack, simultaneously reflecting him back to himself in reassuring fullness.”5 As such, male 48 artists hid their socially unacceptable desires by portraying female subjects. Pygmalion, too, turned to “his happy skill” when he wished to resist the shameful lure of the prostitute, and yet “fear[ed] idleness.”6 In this way, as Maxwell judiciously remarks, “male subjects, threatened by woman’s independent spirit, replace her with statues, pictures, prostheses, corpses, which seem to them more than acceptable substitutes for the real thing.”7 Many 19th and 20th century depictions of the Galatea and Pygmalion myth show the period to have been one of simultaneous change and stagnation. In portraying this classical story, the works of Jean-Léon Gérome (who visited the tale in three major pieces), Francisco Goya and Honoré Daumier are all indicative of the male artist’s anxious desire to create and control the female figure through his art-making. Gérome’s Representations of Pygmalion and Galatea (1890) Around the year 1890, the story of Pygmalion and Galatea appears to have become a veritable obsession for Jean-Léon Gérome (1824-1904): he dedicated two major canvases and a sculpture to the subject. Borrowing from theorists Maxwell, Michelet and Blanc, it can be extrapolated that each of these pieces clearly demonstrates Pygmalion’s—and by extension the male artist’s—use of the figure of Galatea as a mask for his hidden desires. They also speak of Gérome’s own masculine anxieties towards the ‘modern woman’ of nineteenth century France. �Jean-Léon Gérôme, Pygmalion and Galatea, 1890, Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. First, Gérome created the sculpture as a model for his subsequent paintings—one that depicts Galatea from behind, the other from a frontal viewpoint. The back view, which was painted after the scandal that the initial frontal version caused, shows Pygmalion, embracing his statue that is in the process of transforming from stone to woman. Cupid hovers nearby, aiming an arrow at the two figures; two masks and a shield rest just beneath him.8 The background is composed of Pygmalion’s old artworks cast in shadow. A carved fish remains inanimate at Galatea’s feet. Unlocking these details is crucial to understanding the painting’s meaning. In this rear-view depiction, Galatea represents both the old and ‘modern’ female nude: “she is newly born,”9 in the midst of being touched while having never been touched before. Galatea therefore possesses a different kind of virginity bequeathed upon her by the goddess Venus of whom she is thought to be an effigy.10 Though not depicted in the work, Venus’ presence is felt, as it is she that grants Pygmalion’s deepest desires. The male artist shields himself from the viewer—a move symbolically echoed in the inclusion of a shield. In hiding his Pygmalion figure behind a woman, Gérome enables him to indulge in his secret desires while holding Galatea responsible for his actions; she is both the passive recipient and the instigator of the embrace,11 the pre-lapsarian and post-lapsarian woman. Here, Gérome’s Pygmalion embodies every man’s ultimately unattainable desire to embrace the virgin and the prostitute—a contradiction that opposes the dual male needs for societal acceptance and personal pleasure. The painting epitomizes what Jennifer L. Shaw terms the “crisis of the nude.” This phenomenon, which according to her “resulted less from internal stresses and contradictions in codes of representation than it did from conflicting discourses about the status of woman as a social and sexual agent and from the nature and terms of man’s relation to and control of the feminine,”12 had its roots in the Salon of 1863 and would continue to have an effect throughout the nineteenth century. In this specific piece, the 49 power of the gaze is very important. Here, the viewer looks on at two figures that do not look back and so is offered up the scene in all its erotic intimacy. Within the work itself, Pygmalion looks upon his Galatea as he embraces her, their hands grasped tightly together. She, who up until her transformation could not gaze at all, is now twisting her body passionately, engulfed in her creator’s attention. The first subject Galatea looks upon will inevitably be the very source that seeks to control her; she “see[s] her lover before she perceives the light.”13 In physically obstructing her view with his body Pygmalion engages in “the taming of the woman’s gaze, the control of her license to survey.”14 The fish resting at Galatea’s feet refers to the sea, which was a common metaphor for women during the nineteenth century.15 According to Michelet, “the sea represents the eternal change” and “the source of both man’s fascination for woman and of woman’s ultimate inferiority.”16 Men possess the power to control the eternal change of woman’s body, which was thought impossible to be control- �Jean-Léon Gérôme, Pygmalion and Galatea, 1890, Oil on canvas. Private collection. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. led by women themselves.17 Indeed, it is only when a man impregnates a woman that her metaphorical cycle of the sea, her menstruation, is tamed: “the uncontrollable sea submits herself to the ‘wound’ which man metaphorically inflicts upon her through sexual intercourse.”18 In addition to the very obvious fish, other elements of the painting make reference to the sea. For one, Pygmalion is dressed in blue silk that recalls briny waves. Furthermore, the traces of broken marble on the floor, which fell from Galatea, give the impression of a small puddle of water, emphasizing the woman as being homogenous with the sea. This effect may as well be an allusion to Galatea’s life-giver, Venus, who was born from the sea. In that case, the image of the sea would have definite erotic connotations. Pygmalion embraces Galatea in a manner that seems to invite her to engage in a sexual act. Her body bends to his pull, acquiesces, mirroring the movement of a wave in its fluidity and curved axis and giving visual support to Michelet’s theory that woman’s “internal physiology…makes her more susceptible to transformation by man.”19 The only power that Galatea is credited with is the power of seduction, which prompts Pygmalion to appeal to Venus. We can assume that, only a moment before the instant that Gérome has depicted, the sculptor would have sat admiring his work like “a man sitting by a chaotic sea [which] is, above all, a metaphor for sexual desire, and represents a fantasy of control over woman’s body.”20 Man then wishes to simultaneously give in to feminine sexual lure whilst maintaining control over her body and mind. 50 Charles Blanc (1813-1882), a nineteenth-century French art critic, believed woman to be “the cause of all that is ugly and foul, her original sin compelling man to transform what she had defiled ‘le beau.’”21 According to his theory, man was put on Earth surrounded by beauty, represented by Eve; however, upon her tasting of the forbidden fruit, she damned the world to a lesser state of beauty. Thereafter, “the purpose of all creative endeavor” was to “reclaim what the feminine ha[d] lost for man.”22 Male artists, conforming to Blanc’s views, must therefore depict nature in its original idealized state, as it was before the Fall caused by woman. Gérome’s Galatea is an artistic depiction created by two male artists—narratively by Pygmalion and practically by Gérome—and so, according to Blanc’s theory should represent woman in all her prelapsarian beauty. Thus, this figure is in a unique position: “as the being whose uncontrolled act caused the need for art in the first place, [she] becomes the very site of transformation back to the original state of grace.”23 Pygmalion’s dramatic movement, his lunging forward, signifies his intense desire to finally embrace the ‘right,’ the untainted woman. Her perfection is contrasted with the two female sculptures that sit in the background: a mother and child ensemble and a seated woman holding a mirror. These stereotypical subjects stand on opposite sides of the ‘mother/whore’ dichotomy, which casts the female body either as a birthing vessel or as a site of male pleasure. Ideally, according to Michelet, motherhood and eroticism would be combined into one ideal body, here represented as Galatea. And what is the viewer to make of the two masks that sit under Cupid? The paired faces of tragedy and comedy, a common theatrical motif, may hint at the dual nature of Galatea’s transformation. While Pygmalion, through the intercession of Venus, has granted his sculpture life, he has also made her mortal and drawn her into the post-Fall world. Furthermore, the masks embody the carnivalesque, the land of folly and madness, all of which can be linked to the spectacle of the woman; prostitution and the corruption of the mind, for which ‘imperfect’ women were supposedly held accountable. Finally Susan Waller proposes another theory on the masks. According to her, “their leers and smirks become the signifiers of a masculine loss of control, a response that contrasts with the artist’s preternatural restraint. Rather than denying or suppressing the erotic gaze, Gérome’s image displaces it, separating it from the aesthetic gaze, which he—the artist—embodies. His masculinity is distinguished by self-discipline and self-control.”24 Thus, Waller enforces Shaw’s claim that paintings such as Gérome’s were “merely an excuse for the titillating display of the naked female body”25 and Maxwell’s claim that male artists are hiding behind a mask, now apparent more than ever �with the displacement of the gaze from the creator of the sculpture to the masks he hides behind. Gérome’s rear view of Pygmalion and Galatea (1890) epitomizes many arguments of Blanc, Maxwell, and Michelet’s theories. However, this is Gérome’s second depiction of the subject, the original painting being overtly controversial and a clear articulation of the male artist’s obsession to control the female figure and indulge in her ‘provocative’ nature. There is no doubt that this first piece is more erotically charged and emotionally vibrant. While the rear-view painting shows a Pygmalion who is simultaneously drawn to and supports his creation, Gérome’s frontal rendition presents a Galatea who does not rely on his support. Pygmalion, on his toes, reaches and yearns for the woman of his dreams; she in turn actively pulls him towards her. Her erotic power is made clear by her left breast, which rests seductively on Pygmalion’s forearm. Galatea does not seem to be leaning as much, but draws Pygmalion towards her. In contrast to the later painting, Galatea’s hair is a very noticeable red—a colour attributed to passion and lust. Furthermore, Pygmalion wears no shoes and a garment lies strewn about lazily on the chair—elements that give off the aura of a man-and-mistress rendez-vous. The black cat sitting on the chair belongs to the tradition of the feline as promiscuity motif.26 This not-so-subtle allusion to prostitution casts Galatea—and by extension women in general—as “an accomplice to the decay of the social order by figuring her as willing partner to the men.”27 Such tropes highlight “the masculine subject and his attempt to police the crumbling borders of social order.”28 A certain narcissistic quality is manifested in this piece through the artist’s signature, found on the statue’s standing block. This branding “represents a projection of the author’s aesthetic ideal or his erotic desire.”29 Gérome then is not so much attempting to realize the ideal original beauty of nature before the Fall as he is depicting his own ideal woman and his deepest primitive longings. Man’s impulses thus drive him to bring about transformation in the opposite sex and fuel his “desire [for] feminine simulacra, static art-objects, whose fixed value will reflect their selfestimation.”30 Similarly to Edouart Manet’s At the FoliesBérgères (1882) where the artist’s signature can be found on a mass-produced bottle, Gérome inscribes his name on his consumer product display: the standing block.31 On the wall closest to Pygmalion we find two theatrical masks, which could hint at her dual role in the situation, and two small sculptures. The sculpture on the far right represents a woman who peers from underneath Jean-Léon Gérôme, Pygmalion and Galatea, c. 1890, Marble. Hearst Castle, California. Photo reproduced with permission from and courtesy of the Hearst Castle. Francisco de Goya, Pygmalion and Galatea, 1812-1820, Brush and sepia wash. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Photo reproduced with permission and courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum. 51 �a garment. This is no doubt a bathing scene, which in the nineteenth century symbolized purity and cleansing. This image of the bather stands in sharp contrast to its neighbor: a female figure that kneels half-hidden behind Galatea. Her head, seat of human intellect and personality, is not visible; instead we find a mask on the other side of Galatea, which recalls the popular tendency of the day to dehumanize and dismember the female body of the prostitute. It would seem that Galatea is to be read as a combination of these figures, at once a pure virgin and a seductive temptress. Differing mainly through form, colour, and juxtaposition, Gérome’s first work scandalized society by confronting audiences with a frontal nude elapsed in a heated embrace—a sight that was considered utterly perverse in the Salon. Gérome also explored the Pygmalion and Galatea myth through sculpture, an appropriate medium considering the subject. In this piece, the figures are sculpted closer together than in his paintings, so much so that it is difficult, at first glance, to determine which figure is the artist and which is the statue. The only other figure in the work is the fish, which in contrast to its position in the paintings, is wedged between the two figures. As the only element separating the two, the animal can be read as the obstacles that bar man from attaining the ideal female and the ‘proper’ woman. The fish lies between them, with enough force to keep Pygmalion at bay, posing as a foil to his plan of “assert[ing] the primacy of masculine creativity and control.”32 So although Galatea is depicted in Gérome’s sculpture as ideally compliant, the fish alludes to the growing self-awareness and autonomy that women enjoyed within society at the time. And this autonomy is portrayed as an obstacle; as “both threatening and morally retrograde.”33 It is within this seemingly innocuous element, the fish, that Gérome’s masculine anxieties towards the growing power of women are articulated. Honoré Daumier, Pygmalion, 1842, Lithography. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Francisco Goya’s Pygmalion and Galatea (1820) and Honoré Daumier’s Pygmalion (1842) In comparison to Gérome’s pieces, Goya and Daumier each produce outstandingly different takes on the same subject matter. While Gérome emphasizes transition, Daumier and Goya seem to draw attention to the pre and post-lapsarian states of the woman respectively. About thirty years prior to Gérome’s work, Francisco Goya adopted a more crude approach towards Ovid’s myth, mocking and practically undermining the idea of the perfect female figure. In his brush and sepia wash, his Galatea is dressed nun-like in a head to toe garment called a ‘habit’. This garb traditionally “serves to shroud the body and to mask the individual…it is the antithesis of extravagance and sexual allure, yet it impresses and arouses.”34 This item of clothing befits a woman who dedicates her life to 52 �God by bearing children and adhering to social convention. Clothed this way, she is “both less than a female but greater than a human.”35 As Goya prepares for another swing at his sculpture, he is symbolically hacking away at this façade, undressing his Galatea and robbing her of “the mission of an order, joining together groups of woman across the globe and across centuries in a common purpose.”36 In Goya’s retelling of Ovid’s myth, the idealized woman is clothed, not nude. However, this clothing does not prevent her maker from figuratively stripping her and asserting his control over her body. Commencing with her private parts where his chisel is directed, he exposes the part of her body where he wishes to gain entry. There are far more narcissistic elements in Goya’s work. Indeed, the work’s composition, with Pygmalion’s open legs and phallic chisel, alludes to the act of masturbation. At this point in the narrative, the sculptor is still technically alone in his studio as there is no indication that Galatea has yet come to life. It appears, as he grasps his hammer in one hand and his chisel in the other, that he is pleasing himself through his own creation with the absence of any companionship. According to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “women functioned as a mirror for masculine desire, reflecting back at the male viewer narcissistic tendencies that could not be represented directly.”37 Not being able to depict masturbation directly, Goya uses a mediator, the figure of an unreal idealized woman, to implicitly represent selfpleasure. Goya’s Galatea does not react, does not transform; she is only a statue, passively reflecting Pygmalion’s nature. Here then, Goethe’s declaration applies directly: “man is a true Narcissus: he makes the whole world his mirror.”38 Unlike his contemporaries, Honoré Daumier’s rendition of the myth focuses on Galatea’s power of seduction and how it acts upon the poor, helpless Pygmalion. In Daumier’s drawing, the creation entices the creator to the point where he loses all reason. The figures are rendered caricature-like and the lusty red of Pygmalion’s garment draws the eye. Galatea seems to dominate Pygmalion, a notion further emphasized in the displacement of the hammer from the artist’s hand, as in Goya’s work, to the sculpture’s pedestal in Daumier’s. This displacement of power is also evident in Galatea’s extended arm pushing into Pygmalion’s ‘real world.’ Framed by artwork, Pygmalion appears more limited in his movement than Galatea, who emerges as an independent individual. The background of Daumier’s work reveals much about his radical stance as an artist on the representation of women in painting. Firstly, the dismembered body parts such as the foot, the faces, the finger and the male torso recall the compartmentalization of the body within the practice of prostitution. Prostitution is also present in the figures’ exchange, which is eerily reminiscent of that of a prostitute and paying customer. Galatea points to his hand as a naive Pygmalion stares back. Mockery is a strong theme in Daumier’s depiction. Unlike Gérome’s work, only one theatrical mask is present, that of tragedy, but the comedic mask can be found in Pygmalion’s features. In making the sculptor the slightly dopey counterpart to the tragic mask, Daumier appears to be mocking the artist’s attempt to seem pious and wholesome. While Goya highlights the animalistic nature of the artist’s instinctive desires, Daumier highlights the pathetic, desperate attempt of the artist to preserve what dignity he has left after giving in to his socially unacceptable desires. Conclusion: A scene from the male-artist’s life Leave the artist’s studio and go outside and look upon nineteenth century France. The women of the street walk among the women in the street as ‘mothers’ or ‘whores’. And yet neither category can match the ‘Galatea standard’ men seek. Male artists turn to their art to find their bliss; they hide behind the female figures they create. Men pass merchandise displays on the street as they walk to and fro looking guiltlessly at the clothing, the gifts, the trinkets; they need not paint such trivially accepted commodities. It is them, the woman of the night, the corruptors of the mind, the flesh eaters, the perverse, the prostitutes, the whores of France who plot together against men. It is these women that men feel the need to aesthetically trap and control within the confines of the canvas. Like sirens, the females in Gérome, Daumier and Goya’s pieces ‘call’ and men have trouble resisting.39 ‘They cannot help it’ they tell themselves, ‘now they are just asking for it’ they say.40 Later, beguiled with remorse and a mixture of immense satisfaction, the male artist turns to his work to portray what he again wants but cannot in good conscious have. To control and dominate is what he desires more than anything, but this is impossible to obtain from the increasingly emancipated ‘modern woman’. Exhausted and spent upon completion of his piece, the artist has resolved nothing, but feels slightly comforted in the fact that, according to society, it is not his fault. In this way, he is able to enjoy all the self-righteousness associated with depicting a virtuous figure like the idealized nude, while indulging in the interaction with the overtly morally ambiguous and demonizing sexuality of the prostitute. ∆ 53 �My Vagina Vanessa Fleising Major in Studio Arts Concordia University, 2013 Woven on hand-made loom, string, feather, toy baby, butterfly wing 9” x 6” x 4” My Vagina is a merkin or pubic wig hand-made out of fibres and natural as well as synthetic materials. Fleising expresses the anxieties, fears, pleasures and joys that play parts in her complex and layered relationship to her vagina. Rather than imagining it as only vulnerable, the work weaves multiple nuances of humour, chaos, sexuality and sadness into a surface that functions as a wearable garment. The various potentials for unwanted pregnancy, pain and creativity—represented by the presence of the doll and the butterfly wing—escape a narrow, socially constructed definition of chastity to instead revel in multifaceted experience. Though playful, the piece addresses notions of consent and ownership as the artist claims the ri- 54 ght to represent her own vagina. The piece’s playfulness extends also to ideas of feminist rebellion and what exactly a reclamation of sexuality entails, suggesting perhaps that empowerment is being unafraid to be either delicate or troubling, and can be related to a slippery boundlessness. �In Conversation with: Claudia Edwards Rudrapriya Rathore for Yiara Magazine February, 2015 Claudia Edwards hails from Vancouver and currently studies at Concordia University. Her practice follows divergent directions, first by seeking to emphasize an immediate social sensitivity and presence through a synthesis of actions—the time-based mediums of sound, voice, movement, video and public interventions—and second by contrasting this with the creation of unreal and self-historicizing social spaces, shared through the web and other mass communication platforms. Alternately, found materials or found spaces in the institutional or public context are reconfigured or rearranged so as to illuminate their origins and problems. Investigating the dynamics of inter/dependency, Edwards applies the dictum ‘think global, act local’ to her artistic practice, where art and activism share the liminal space of the ideal. Her works can be found at claudiaedwardsworks.tumblr.com. Keep an eye out for her upcoming performance as a part of the League of Lady Wrestlers Montreal: a collective of athletes, aesthetes, performers and circus freaks, taking place at the SAT on May 29th, 2015. RUDRAPRIYA RATHORE: I’ve noticed while looking at your work as a body of different pieces, that a lot of them are very preoccupied with different understandings of space and how people move through space, as well as what it means to be on display or what it means to perform. Where did the interest in these concepts come from, and how is it tied to your feminism? CLAUDIA EDWARDS: Performance is interesting to me because I started out as a theatre and dance student, and I started to feel that those weren’t conceptually dense enough for me, so I shifted into visual arts. I explored traditional practices before moving into sculpture, which is so inhe- rently spatial, and the ideas just kept getting bigger. I was asking myself, how are we in this space right now, how is this an intervention into space? That brought me to architecture and thinking about how architecture is a methodology of designing social interactions. It allows certain behaviours or excludes certain people from behaviours as a form of social control. Another reason I give particular attention to space is my own person, my own body, which is very physically sensitive to things like headaches and trouble breathing. So I am generally very aware when I’m in the public domain. I’m 55 �paying attention to things like how much freedom people feel they have to talk to a stranger or have an unconventional interaction. RR: In terms of your specific projects, one that was really interesting to me as a direct confrontation with space was Echo Chamber. Can you talk about this project and why it was carried out in a metro station? CE: That was one of the interventions. I was thinking about social control and surveillance. Metro stations are these very interesting in-between spaces, obviously public but also private spaces in a way because one has to pay to go inside and use the service. They’re also spaces for performers, but people often have to do an audition in order to get permission to use them, which is kind of crazy. So I was thinking about permission, permission to act. I brought a group of about 20 people with me into a station and I had them set up on each of the 4 levels of the station, which had security cameras I’d located. Some of the cameras were dummies. I had participants simply stand in front of a camera with newspapers over their faces. Where the actual turnstiles are located in front of the STM booths, there isn’t a security camera, because someone is there to observe what’s going on. But there are the screens showing footage from the other cameras. So the STM agent was able to see everyone with newspapers over their heads while I was off to the side, unrecorded, performing live. I had these bronze shoes on and I walked over newspapers I had laid out in a kind of musical pattern of a four-panel grid. There was a lot of echoing. I wanted to do something banal and only vaguely musical to disturb the others in the space, to interrupt their way of being in the space. I was also thinking about archives, and how there are cameras all over the metropolis, and most of the time the footage isn’t seen. The presence of the cameras doesn’t necessarily make the space safer to exist in—in fact, I feel less safe when there are cameras around. And the footage gets erased, usually within a month. So we have these ongoing archives of completely banal activity that just disappear, and I wanted to question what their social purpose is. RR: So, knowing that so much of what is recorded, unseen and erased without the explicit permission of people—that 56 made you want to do something deliberate in this space? CE: The thing about activist art like this, this kind of intervention, is that you know it isn’t going to really do anything. It isn’t going to make the STM take out their cameras. It doesn’t make a change. But you plan the action and do the action so that you can have the conversation about it and expand the thinking around it by bringing up questions. And that is really crucial. RR: Yes. Another project you did called Gold Shit also deals with similar subject matter in a very participatory way. Can you talk about that one? CE: The idea behind that was to examine this kind of alchemy of transforming something into art, which has a highculture value ascribed to it. At that level there’s an aesthetic language or a vocabulary that you’re using that comes to only those privileged enough to be educated in it. That vocabulary is supposed to tell you how to identify “good art.” So in the gallery space I dressed up as what I called “Academic Spice,” in a knotted button-down shirt and Union Jack shorts and a whistle. I had a baseball bat that arrived shrink-wrapped from Taiwan that I wanted to use because of the violence embedded in that kind of object. I started off by reading definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary, the first dictionary ever written, supposedly inclusive of every word and meaning, supposedly inclusive of everything that can be communicated in this language. I got audience members to read things too, stuff from the Western canon, Plato, Heart of Darkness, Henry Miller, Homer’s Odyssey. And I had Art in America. Once I decided the quotation they were reading got boring, I blew the whistle, they pitched the book to me and I hit it with the bat into a wall. RR: That’s a very irreverent production of art! I like that it was when you got bored that you smacked the books. That sort of judges their value differently, ascribes to them a new value or lack thereof. The inability to sustain your attention was the moment when the piece of canonical literature became waste. I love that. CE: That kind of ties into what you asked before about Echo Chamber, what these interventions actually do. It’s very anticlimactic. I’m not even going to damage these books materially, really, with this abuse. It was another performance of failure, utter failure. �RR: But I imagine there was something very satisfying in that thunk of making contact with the bat. There seemed to be a very playful, communal appreciation for that moment in the group. And it transformed an institutional space into something else, however temporarily. CE: [laughter] Yeah. RR: With your Whiteny project, as well, I think you’re able to respond to something very big on a smaller scale and in a way that is much more open and relevant to the community around you. Do you want to talk about the process of that? CE: Yeah. This is a long trailing discourse. Joe Scanlon, the artist I was responding to, participated in the Whitney Biennale in 2014. In general he creates these female personas, and in this case he created a Black female persona played by two different actresses at different times. This persona he calls Donelle Woolford went to the Biennale instead of him and did a performance, which itself was a kind of drag reenactment of a Richard Pryor comedy set. So it’s very selfconscious already in terms of the discourses that are going on, and there are a lot of layers to it. But it can also be deconstructed as a pretty racist thing to do, the way he takes advantage of race politics more to get controversy and publicity than out of any desire to actually dive into those problems. I had a friend who I spoke to as part of my project who pointed out that if Scanlon really wanted to raise visibility about these issues, he could have just given up his place at the Biennale and asked a Black female artist to go show her work instead of his, and that would have made a point about the Biennale being almost entirely made up of white artists. But he wanted the credit without any of the accountability. I visited the Whitney museum, which is so beautiful and no longer going to exist—they’ve shut it down and they’re building a new one—and I was thinking about how historically biased this space is, how unaccountable. I wanted to do something that would help me reconfigure what that history means and intervene into how it gets interpreted. So I made these architectural mock-ups where I covered the floor and the walls with hair and skin tones of many different people. I used that as a kind of utopian reclamation, as a surface texture. And then this turned into a bigger project where I actually made this space real in a gal- lery, in the VAV, by projecting footage that scaled the walls. I had interviewed those people I recorded about their thoughts on Scanlon, and I had their opinions available through headphones. I also had a little book I’d made with an essay and some of my sources. This whole thing was basically me reaching out beyond the arts community, because I’d tried to have this conversation with so many people and it never really went anywhere. I wanted to get more perspectives, especially from people that he’s targeting, which seem to be women of colour. And that was very revealing, and great. It really confirmed certain patterns of problematic discourse for me at a more human level. RR: Yes, and I think re-centering those voices in a gallery space is really important, because at the Biennale, Scanlon was still the center of this conversation about race, which is such a problem. On a wider scale, aside from just that project, do you deliberately have a process you use to bring your personal politics into your art? Do you think there’s an artistic responsibility there? CE: Well, at one point after getting immersed in art I was feeling like I had to neutralize myself, in my person and appearance, and the themes I was talking about, which tended to circle around vulnerability and relations of interdependency and marginal experiences, and turn them into something distilled and more concrete. And into something more aesthetically pleasing in order for it to accessible to more people. And then I realized that was kind of baloney, because that aesthetic language is one that you have to be privileged to understand in the first place. So it’s only more accessible to certain kinds of people. I’m trying now to let myself be a part of the work more. Not only because it’s important to speak to the ways that people are made less visible in our social space, through microaggressions in art school, the small forms of injustice and sideways glances in addition to the big things, the fact that 70% of art programs are made up of women but the big names still tend to be white men… but also because it’s way more comfortable to just be honest about the fact that I come from where I come from, and I’m a woman of colour, etc. The fact is that I’ve had experiences that not a lot of people share, and that’s why they really ought to be shared. RR: Thank you so much. ∆ 57 �Yiara’s Staff / L’équipe Yiara Stéphanie Hornstein Chloé Martel Born in Montréal, Stéphanie Hornstein is presently completing her final year as an Art History major and a Creative Writing minor at Concordia University. Her current research interests center around the place of women and memory in amateur photography from the turn of the century. Increasingly, she is also drawn to the study of textiles, more precisely in the activist practice of yarn bombing. Her written work can be found in CUJAH, the Jerusalem Art History Journal and the Architecture Concordia Journal. Being a part of Yiara’s team this year has been an unforgettable experience filled with challenge and fun. Chloé Martel détient un baccalauréat en histoire de l’art de l’Université de Montréal et entâme présentement un diplôme d’études supérieures en gestion d’organismes culturels aux HEC. Elle s’intéresse particulièrement au marché de l’art, à la performance et à l’art vidéo. Chloé est fière de joindre l’équipe de Yiara et espère pouvoir partager son expérience tout en s’enrichissant de celle des autres. Editor-in-Chief Associate French Editor Isabelle L’Heureux Assistant Editor-in-Chief Isabelle L’Heureux complète cette année son baccalauréat avec un certificat en archivistique, après avoir passé deux merveilleuses années en histoire de l’art à l’Université de Montréal. Elle s’intéresse présentement aux stratégies de diffusion de l’art et des archives par le biais de plateformes multipliées, revues, galeries, portails web, et souhaite poursuivre ses réflexions dans le cadre d’une maîtrise en muséologie. 58 Sara Kloepfer Associate English Editor Sara Kloepfer is from San Francisco, California and is currently completing her final year at McGill University in the Cultural Studies program with a double minor in Art History and Communications. Sara is drawn to contemporary art, especially film and photography. In her own writing, she engages with power dynamics relating to gender, race, and sexuality. Sara is also involved in Montreal’s feminist collective F Word and is both cofounder and co-Editor-in-chief of Slate, McGill’s undergraduate film journal. Sara is proud to be part of Yiara’s talented team. �Copy Editors/Réviseurs: Ellen Belshaw, David Blondeau, Elsbeth Cossar, Scott Parsons Rudrapryia Rathore Annie Trudeau Rudrapriya Rathore was born in New Delhi and raised in Kolkata and Toronto. She writes fiction, poetry and essays. Her academic interests include feminist and postcolonial literature and art. During her English & Creative Writing degree, which is quickly coming to an end, she won the Irving Layton Award for Fiction and organized the 3rd annual Literature Undergrads’ Colloquium at Concordia. Her work has been included in Headlight Anthology, Black & Blue Magazine and The Veg. Annie Trudeau a gradué en design graphique au collège Dawson en 2013. Ayant des intérêts variés, elle travaille présentement dans un domaine complètement différent. Elle continue d’approfondir et appliquer ses connaissances graphiques de façon libérale, saisissant diverses occasions d’explorer sa créativité. Annie, qui ne parle pas souvent à la troisième personne, est bien fière de faire partie de l’équipe Yiara! Head Writer Graphic Designer Zara Domingues Photographer Mattia Zylak Zara Domingues is a PortugueseCanadian raised in Montreal who is currently completing her second year as an undergraduate student in the Communications Studies department at Concordia University. Whenever she can, Zara travels off to explore the different cultures on earth. Every country she visits fuels her creativity which translates through photography and soundscape practices. She has considered herself to be a feminist long before she learnt the word. She loves the social impact that various mediums and art forms produce. Her experience working as a photographer for Yiara’s third edition has been magical. Working among the wonderful humans behind this project is a treat! Events Coordinator Mattia Zylak is a second-year undergraduate student majoring in Art History with a minor in Sociology and is also a member of the Co-operative program at Concordia University. While her interest in art is as immense as it is diverse, she is consistently drawn to new modes of visual expression, especially those that deal with issues regarding gender, sexuality, and culture. Mattia has been published in Combine 2014 and is an executive member of CUJAH, Concordia’s undergraduate journal of Art History. 59 �Notes ‘An Ordinary, Well Conducted Household’: Idealistic Architecture and Toronto’s Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Females. By Zoë Wonfor 1 The area of Liberty Village is named after Liberty Street—located in between the Central Prison and Mercer Reformatory, it was the street that a freed inmate would first walk on back towards Toronto. 2 Carolyn Strange, Toronto’s Girl Problem: The Perils and Pleasures of the City 1880-1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 19951), 132. 3 Although Lamport is mentioned in records of Mercer’s history, the reformatory is rarely (if ever) mentioned in the history of this stadium. The Ontario Soccer Association, accessed October 10, 2014. www.ontariosoccer.net. 4 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), 195-230. 5 Strange, Toronto’s Girl Problem, 5. 6 Jennifer M. Brown, Influences Affecting the Treatment of Women Prisoners in Toronto, 1880-1890 (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University, 1975), i. 7 Ibid., 10. 8 Carolyn Strange, “The Criminal and Fallen of Their Sex’: The Establishment of Canada’s First Women’s Prison, 1874-1901,” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, Vol 1 (1985): 81. 9 Ibid. 10 Peter Oliver, “Langmuir, John Woodburn” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, accessed September 28 2014, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/ langmuir_john_woodburn_14E.html. 11 Strange, “The Criminal and Fallen of Their Sex,” 81. 12 Oliver, “Langmuir.” 13 Kivas Tully designed Trinity College as well as the Bank of Montreal (now Hockey Hall of Fame) in Toronto. 14 Jennifer McKendry, “The Early History of the Provincial Penitentiary, Kingston, Ontario,” Bulletin: Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, Vol 14, No. 4 (December 1989): 100. 15 Brown, Influences Affecting the Treatment of Women Prisoners in Toronto, 37. 16 Strange, “The Criminal and Fallen of Their Sex,” 85. 17 Ibid., 86. 18 Ibid., 87. 19 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), 3. 20 Brown, Influences Affecting the Treatment of Women Prisoners in Toronto, 38. 21 Peter Oliver, Terror to Evil-Doers: Prisons and Punishments in Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 424-463. 22 Velma Demerson, Incorrigible (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2004), 1. 23 Frederick H. Armstrong, A City in the Making: Progress, People & Perils in Victorian Toronto (Toronto & Oxford: Dundurn Press, 1988), 227. 24 Brown, Influences Affecting the Treatment of Women Prisoners in Toronto, 37. 25 Women at Mercer did laundry, sewing and knitting for the Central Prison and the CN railway. 26 Many women would enter Mercer pregnant and gave birth while incarcerated. 27 Demerson, Incorrigible, 6. 28 Strange, “The Criminal and Fallen of Their Sex,” 84. 29 Demerson, Incorrigible, 11. 30 Strange, “The Criminal and Fallen of Their Sex,” 87. 31 Brown, Influences Affecting the Treatment of Women Prisoners in Toronto, 10-11. 32 Strange, “The Criminal and Fallen of Their Sex,” 87. 33 Demerson, Incorrigible, 47. 34 Strange, “The Criminal and Fallen of Their Sex,” 91. 35 Ibid., 92. 36 Pat McNenly, “Historic Mercer reformatory falls under wrecker’s hammer,” The Toronto Daily Star, November 12, 1969, 44. 37 Linda Cobon, e-mail to author, November 30, 2014. À mes amies les licornes et Another Perfect Day : réflexions féministes chez Cynthia Girard et Janet Werner Par Marie-Lise Poirier 1 Pythagore cité dans Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième sexe, Paris, Gallimard, Coll. «Folio Essais», tome I: Les faits et les mythes, 2013, 9. 2 Élisabeth Badinter, «Femmes, vous lui devez tout ! », Le Nouvel Observateur, 18-24 avril 1986, 39. 3 Rose-Marie Arbour, Art et féminisme, Catalogue d’exposition, Montréal, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Québec, Ministre des affaires culturelles, 1982, 5. 4 Nous empruntons ici l’expression de Rose-Marie Arbour. Celle-ci distingue en effet l’art féministe, qui implique un engagement explicite de l’artiste en tant que féministe et l’art à discours féministe qui sous-tend un message à caractère féministe émanant des œuvres d’art. Voir Rose-Marie Arbour et al., op. cit., 4. 5 Aristote cité dans Joseph A. Ketsner, Mythology and Misogyny. The Social Discourse of NineteenthCentury British Classical-Subject Painting, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1989, viii. Traduction libre. «The male is by nature superior, 60 and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind». 6 Linda Nochlin, «Pourquoi n’y a-t-il pas eu de grands artistes femmes ?», Femmes, art et pouvoir, Paris, Éditions Jacqueline Cambon, 1993, 201. 7 Ibid. 8 Rose-Marie Arbour et al., op. cit., 9. 9 Bien que le substantif « spectateur » présuppose une forme de neutralité, mais surtout d’universalité du genre masculin, Kate Linker soutient qu’il est marqué par de multiples différences qui alimentent sa subjectivité, dont l’altérité sexuelle. En effet, elle insiste sur la sexualisation du spectateur, car il est « historiquement constitué, formé dans et à travers le langage ». Le langage étant constitué du discours et sa représentation découlant du patriarcat, Linker y voit une forme d’oppression féminine. Par ailleurs, la naturalisation des identités se manifeste à travers un processus inconscient d’assujettissement, car elle implique un classement social des individus dès leur naissance. Voir Kate Linker, « Représentation et sexualité », dans Chantal Pontbriand (dir.), Parachute, essais choisis 1975-1984, Bruxelles, La lettre volée, Montréal, Éditions Parachute, 2004, tome 2, 165-167 et 172. 10 Kate Linker, op. cit., 168. 11 Il existe deux approches pour discuter du féminisme : la première, essentialiste, se rattache à une définition biologique de la femme; la seconde, culturaliste, repose sur la construction du genre et contribue à définir les identités par les codes, le langage et la représentation. Cette approche permet d’engendrer et de maintenir les identités tout en permettant d’établir des barèmes d’identification par des mécanismes de fixation des genres. Bref, l’approche culturaliste soutient que le sujet est dans un processus de formation perpétuel et qu’il n’est pas dépendant de la biologie sexuelle. Simone de Beauvoir a d’ailleurs brillamment exprimé cette idée : «On ne naît pas femme : on le devient». Voir Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième sexe, Paris, Gallimard, Coll. «Folio Essais», tome II : L’expérience vécue, 2013, 13, Judith Butler, Trouble dans le genre. Le féminisme et la subversion de l’identité, Préface d’Éric Fassin, Paris, Éditions La Découverte, 2012, p. 67 et Kate Linker, op. cit., 169-170. 12 Simone de Beauvoir, op. cit., 16-18. 13 Kate Linker, op. cit., 178. 14 Laura Kipnis distingue aussi deux formes de féministes qui se rapprochent des catégories avancées par Rose-Marie Arbour. Kipnis nomme la première la Feisty Feminist (la féministe fougueuse). Celle-ci est revendicatrice d’une égalité entre homme et femme et, dans un effort d’autonomisation, brise les conventions et les traditions. La seconde, l’Eternal Feminine (l’éternel féminin) demande le respect de �ses caractéristiques qui la différencient de l’homme. Le pouvoir de ces femmes est inhérent à leur corps qui, selon Kipnis, terrifie profondément les hommes et la société. Voir Laura Kipnis, The Female Thing: Dirt, Envy, Sex, Vulnerability, New York, Random House, 2009, 4. 15 Rose-Marie Arbour et al., op. cit., 6. 16 Ibid., 9 17 Oli Sorenson, « Frôler la mort : tombeaux ouverts sur le parcours de la peinture du XIXe au XXIe siècle », esse art + opinions, n° 76, 2012, 11. 18 Douglas Crimp, « Images », L’Époque, la mode, la morale, la passion. Aspects de l’art aujourd’hui 1977-1987, Catalogue d’exposition, Paris, Centre Pompidou, 1987, 592. 19 Helen Molesworth (dir.), This Will Have Been: Art Love & Politics in the 1980s, Catalogue d’exposition, Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2012, 33. 20 Julie Gauthier, « Féminin, féministe ? L’art des femmes en question… », esse arts + opinions, n° 51 (printemps/été), 2004, 32. 21 Stuart Hall, « Representation and the Media », (produit et dirigé par Sut Jhally), Transcription (vidéo, 55 minutes, son, couleur), Northampton, Media Education Foundation, 1997, 22. En ligne. <http://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/409/ transcript_409.pdf >. Consulté le 6 avril 2014 et Kate Linker, op. cit., 168. 22 Butler va plus loin : elle affirme que l’un des moyens les plus efficaces pour « semer le trouble dans le genre », est de déconstruire la hiérarchie spécifique du patriarcat par le truchement de la performance, car elle « déstabilise les distinctions mêmes entre le naturel et l’artificiel, le fond et la surface, l’intérieur et l’extérieur, sur lesquelles le langage du genre fonctionne presque toujours ». En effet, Butler voit le genre comme une « performance culturelle ». Judith Butler, op. cit., 52-53. 23 Judith Butler, Défaire le genre, Nouvelle édition augmentée, Paris, Éditions Amsterdam, 2012, 13. 24 Cindy Sherman citée dans Fabrice Bousteau, «Cindy Sherman. Photographe de grotesques», Beaux Arts Magazine, n° 263 (mai 2006), 50. À propos du grotesque dans la pratique de Cindy Sherman, voir aussi Lysanne Duguay-Patenaude, «La mise en relief du caractère construit et normatif de la figure féminine dans les images de mode de Cindy Sherman par l’utilisation de stratégies du grotesques», Mémoire de maîtrise, Montréal, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2012, 62-65 et 67-95. Pour une étude approfondie du grotesque de la figure féminine, voir Mary Russo, The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity, New York, Routledge, 1994, 233 pages. 25 Janet Werner citée dans James D. Campbell, Janet Werner. Too Much Happiness, Catalogue d’expo- sition, Montréal, Parisian Laundry, 2008, 103. 26 Ce contraste marqué entre figuration et abstraction est au cœur de la pratique de l’artiste. Cynthia Girard, Fictions Sylvestres, Montréal, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 2005, 7. 27 Marie-Ève Charron, «Contester sans en avoir l’air», Le Devoir, 21 septembre 2013. En ligne. < http:// www.ledevoir.com/culture/arts-visuels/387904/ contester-sans-en-avoir-l-air >. Consulté le 7 février 2014. 28 Marquis de Sade, Justine ou les malheurs de la vertu, Paris, Gallimard, Coll. «L’imaginaire Gallimard», 2010, 92. 29 Jacques Desautels, Dieux et mythes de la Grèce ancienne, Québec, Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1988, 183-184. 30 Joseph A. Kestner, op. cit., 159 et 347. 31 La Danaé (1527) de Jan Gossaert (c.1478-1532) exemplifie cette affirmation. L’étoffe bleue qui recouvre partiellement son corps souligne une filiation sans équivoque à la Vierge Marie qui, traditionnellement, est vêtue de bleue afin de symboliser sa virginité. 32 L’érotisme est manifeste dans La Danaé (1907) de Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) : la pluie d’or se glisse entre les cuisses de Danaé qui, le visage extatique, est représentée dans une position fœtale, un symbole de la fécondité. 33 Nous pensons notamment à la Danaé (1891) d’Alexandre Jacques Chantron (1842-1918) et à la Danaé (1900) que peint Carolus-Duran (18371917). 34 Rose-Marie Arbour, et al., op. cit., 9. 35 David Balzer et al., Janet Werner. Another Perfect Day, Catalogue d’exposition, Saskatoon, Kenderdine Art Gallery, 2013, 68. 36 James D. Campbell, op. cit., p. 113-114. 37 John Pohl, « Our imperfect view of feminine perfection. Janet Werner’s subversive portraits deconstruct what passes for mainstream beauty today », dans The Gazette, 29 novembre 2013. En ligne. < http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Vis ual+Arts+imperfect+view+feminine+perfection/9228 539/story.html >. Consulté le 6 avril 2014. 38 Marie-Pier Beaulieu, « La beauté subversive : portraits déconstruits de femmes en série », dans Vie des Arts, 29 novembre 2013. En ligne. < http:// viedesarts.com/article432-La-beaute-subversive-portraits-deconstruits-de-femmes-en-serie >. Consulté le 6 avril 2014. 39 James D. Campbell, op. cit., 112. 40 Simone de Beauvoir, op. cit., 111. 41 L’auto-détermination est la décision de se définir, de se nommer et de prendre la parole, au lieu d’être défini par les autres. Voir Audre Lorde, « The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action », 61 Sister/Outsider, Trumansburg, The Crossing Press, 43. 42 Magda Gere Lewis, Without a Word: Teaching Beyond Women’s Silence, New York, Routledge, 1993, 49. 43 Anasuya Sengupta citée dans Assemblée nationale, Journal officiel de la République française. XIVe Législature, 24 juillet 2012, p. 2381. En ligne. < http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/14/pdf/cri/20112012-extra/20121014.pdf >. Consulté le 6 avril 2014. 44 Colleen O’Neill, Janet Werner, Corner Brook, Sir Wilfrid Grenfell College Art Gallery, 1998, 57. 45 Magda Gere Lewis, op. cit., 49. 46 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laocoon, Paris, Éditions Hermann, 1990, 52. 47 Collen O’Neill, op. cit., 57. The New Woman Painting: Sexual Subversion Through the Image and Imagery of Tamara de Lempicka By Alyse Tunnell 1 Whitney Chadwick and Tirza True Latimer, introduction to The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris Between the Wars, ed. Whitney Chadwick and Tirza True Latimer (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), xvi. 2 Whitney Chadwick and Tirza True Latimer, “Becoming Modern: Gender and Sexual Identity after World War 1,” in The Modern Woman Revisited, 1. 3 Chadwick and Latimer, introduction, iiv. 4 Lucy Fischer, “The Art Deco Style: Modernity and the Feminine,” in Designing Women: Cinema, Art Deco, and the Female Form (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 34. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Jasmine Rault, introduction to Eileen Gray and the Design of Sapphic Modernity (Burlington and Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011), 4. 8 Laura Mulvey, “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema,” Screen Vol. 16, No. 3 (1975): 19. 9 Griselda Pollock, “Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity,” in Vision and Difference (London: Routledge, 1988), 54. 10 I use Artist with a capital A to indicate the ideal of the artist. 11 Baroness Kizette de Lempicka, Passion by Design: The Art and Times of Tamara de Lempicka (New York: Cross River Press, 1987), 82. 12 Ibid. 13 Paula Birnbaum, “Painting the Perverse: Tamara de Lempicka and the Modern Woman Artist,” in The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris Between the Wars, ed. Whitney Chadwick and Tirza True Latimer (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, �2003), 97. 14 “Odalisque,” The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms, Oxford Art Online. 15 Ibid. 16 Tricia Laughlin, “Tamara de Lempicka’s Women,” Art Criticism Vol. 13, No. 1 (1998): 97. 17 Laura Claridge, Tamara de Lempicka: A Life of Deco and Decadence (New York: Clarkson Potter Publishers, 1999), 95-140. 18 Erica Rand, “Women and Other Women: One Feminist Focus for Art History,” Art Journal Vol. 50 (1991): 29. 19 Laughlin, “Tamara de Lempicka’s Women,” 99. 20 Paula Birnbaum, Women Artists in Interwar France: Framing Femininities (Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2011), 177-78. 21 de Lempicka, Passion by Design, 59. 22 Birnbaum, “Painting the Perverse,” 95-7. 23 Bridget Elliott, “Performing the Picture or Painting the Other: Romaine Brooks, Gluck and the Question of Decadence in 1923,” in Women Artists and Modernism, ed. Katy Deepwell (Manchester; New York: 1998), 73-5. 24 Alain Blondel, “Tamara de Lempicka: An Introduction,” in Tamara de Lempicka: Art Deco Icon (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2004). 25 Laughlin, “Tamara de Lempicka’s Women,” 100-1. 26 Ibid., 104. 27 Mary Lousie Roberts, “Samson and Delilah Revisited,” in The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris Between the Wars, ed. Whitney Chadwick and Tirza True Latimer (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 65-66. 28 Ibid. 29 Birnbaum, Women Artists in Interwar France, 2. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., 3-4. 33 Ibid., 178. 34 Birnbaum, “Painting the Perverse,” 97. 35 Ibid.,103. Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9 and Sexual Paradigms of Expression By Rebecca Anderson 1 Aristotle, “The Poetics,” in Theatre/Theory/Theatre, ed. Daniel Gerould (New York: Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, 2000), 57. 2 Ibid., 50. 3 J.H. Field, “Sexual Themes in Ancient and Primitive Art,” in The Erotic Arts, Second Edition, ed. P. Webb (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1983), 57. 4 Robert Leach, Makers of Modern Theatre: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2004), 147. 5 Toril Moi, “From Femininity to Finitude: Freud, Lacan and Feminism, Again,” Signs Vol 29, No.3 (2004): 844. 6 Amelia Kritzer, “Theatricality and Empowerment in the Plays of Caryl Churchill,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism Vol 4, No. 1 (1989): 129. 7 Leach, Makers of Modern Theatre, 147. 8 Bertold Brecht, “The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre,” in Theatre/Theory/Theatre, ed. Daniel Gerould (New York: Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, 2000), 447. 9 Elin Diamond, “Theory/Feminist Theory: Toward a Gestic Feminist Criticism,” TDR Vol 32, No. 1 (1988): 46. 10 Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay on Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal Vol. 40 No. 4 (1988): 519. 11 Caryl Churchill, Cloud 9 (New York: Samuel French, 1979), 6. 12 Ibid., 9. 13 Ibid., 19. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., 18. 16 Ibid., 29. 17 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier (New York: Vintage Books, 2011), 159. 18 Ibid., 159. 19 Aristotle, “The Poetics,” 47. 20 Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,” 520. 21 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen Vol. 16, No. 3 (1975): 5. 22 Ibid., 6. 23 de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 283. 24 Churchill, Cloud 9, 15. 25 Ibid., 35. 26 Ibid., 61-62. 27 Ibid., 64. 28 Ibid., 59. 29 Ibid., 82. 30 Ibid., 95. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., 96. 33 Brecht, “The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre,” 447. “Man is a true Narcissus: he makes the whole world his mirror:” An Analysis of the Male Artist’s Relation to the Female Figure By Kimberly Glassman 1 Ovid,“The Story of Pygmalion and the Statue,” Metamorphoses trans. George Patrick Goold and Frank Justus Miller, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), 325. 2 Ibid., 327. 3 Marsha Meskimmon, We Weren’t Modern Enough: Women Artists and the Limits of German Modernism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 41. 4 Catherine Maxwell, “Browning’s Pygmalion and the Revenge of Galatea,” ELH, Vol. 60, No. 4 (1993): 989. 5 Ibid. 6 The prostitutes Ovid describes are more specifically the ‘Propoetides’ prostituting themselves, forced to do so by Aphrodite (Venus) after they denied Aphrodite’s divinity. Ovid, “The Story of Pygmalion and the Statue,” 325. 7 Maxwell, “Browning’s Pygmalion and the Revenge of Galatea,” 990. 8 The inclusion of Cupid is a newer tradition in the Pygmalion and Galatea depictions as J. L. Carr explains: “Gone are the cherubs of a former generation, descending Prometheus-like with fiery brands or infusing life from puckered lips, and in their place is a single cupid, insipidly smiling as he aims his dart.” J. L. Carr, “Pygmalion and the Philosophes: The Animated Statue in Eighteenth Century France,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 23, No. 3/4 (1960): 246. 9 Jennifer L. Shaw, “The Figure of the Venus: Rhetoric of the Ideal and the Salon of 1863,” Art History, Vol. 14, No. 4 (December 1991): 559. 62 10 Carr, “Pygmalion and The Philosophes,” 239. 11 Maxwell, “Browning’s Pygmalion and the Revenge of Galatea,” 989. 12 Shaw, “The Figure of Venus,” 542. 13 Carr, “Pygmalion and The Philosophes,” 249. 14 Maxwell, “Browning’s Pygmalion and the Revenge of Galatea,” 990. 15 Shaw, “The Figure of Venus,” 542. 16 Ibid., 546. 17 Ibid., 547. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 549. 20 Ibid., 547. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., 550. 23 Ibid. 24 Susan Waller, “Fin de partie: A Group of SelfPortraits by Jean Léon Gérome,” Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Spring 2010): 1-37. 25 Shaw, «The Figure of Venus,» 541. 26 See the appearance of this motif in Edouart Manet’s Olympia, 1863. 27 Meskimmon, We Weren’t Modern Enough, 29-31. 28 Ibid. 29 Carr, “Pygmalion and The Philosophes,” 255. 30 Maxwell, “Browning’s Pygmalion and the Revenge of Galatea,” 990. 31 Ruth E. Iskin, “Selling, Seduction, and Soliciting the Eye: Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère,” Art Bulletin Vol 77, No. 1 (March 1995): 41. 32 Shaw, “The Figure of Venus,” 541. 33 Ibid., 554. 34 Elizabeth Kuhns, The Habit: A History of the Clothing of Catholic Nuns (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 7. 35 Ibid., 8. 36 Ibid., 9. 37 Martin A. Danahay, “Mirrors of Masculine Desire: Narcissus and Pygmalion in Victorian Representation,” Victorian Poetry, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Spring 1994): 35. 38 Ibid. 39 Gerald K. Gresseth, “The Homeric Sirens,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 101 (1970): 203-218. This article explores the dual incarnation of sirens: first as Greek idea of anthropomorphic, otherworldly enchantresses who capture men singing their magic song; second, as soul-birds derived from Oriental art. I believe there is room for further comparison in the duality of women roles based on the dual comprehension and analysis of the sirens as artistic figures. 40 Meskimmon, We Weren’t Modern Enough, 42. �Printer Sponsors �An undergraduate feminist art publication Une revue étudiante d’art féministe 64 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Other publications Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Issue 3 Page Number(s) 1-62 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data PDF Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-03-01 Title A name given to the resource Yiara Magazine Issue 3 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Yiara Magazine Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Yiara Magazine Description An account of the resource The third issue of Yiara Magazine, an undergraduate feminist art &amp; art history publication. Concordia McGill non-McGill UQAM https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62030/archive/files/dc36d2c3a91da21b782c5e05a4d1a71e.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=qWtxQPG6vZZpDfQVGpTmnCFL9KbMpeDLUVMwdAPniTAYQHVk8H0aN55Qgj8rvsYjb%7EO590g5AXHawM4-YE7VSnQG8xd4hJquhZic%7EbxSDAZ33xhomy7xuMhHNVlPtlckJ3E7c6utRG6MUBtBQtJtlmwrr6XBPhpoTCn9EBv%7Eh7v7FGs0GJCaOIgW-lu04UwnA1STjAkBtc6eZCLl9bDTRgnsEkEX%7ERsveCwnXYsaz5ECIJZXEGAqnIrNzwhQ0WaQvKk6wTSGcwPxg78fYkx%7EbYDNntfgM8q0S52s9u6pFoYrcZ7peJL9vTt6oP%7E%7Ems3GC3l-3GR2EKI-jEBXfDQrcg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM b960934bd04d9594043d15d80234e522 PDF Text Text 04 Yiara Magazine | April | Avril 2016 Issue | Volume 04 An undergraduate feminist art and art history publication. Une revue étudiante d'art féministe et d'histoire de l'art. �Editor-in-Chief - Rédactrice en chef Amelia Wong-Mersereau Assistant Editor-in-Chief - Assistante rédactrice en chef Sydney Pine Head Writer - Rédactrice Hannah Karpinski Associate English Editor - Rédactrice associée aux textes anglais Lauren Wildgoose Associate French Editor - Rédactrice associée pour textes français Marie-Maxime de Andrade Graphic Designer - Designer graphique Charlotte Bracho Events Coordinators - Coordonnatrices des événements Sarah Riley Mathewson, Pauline Soumet Online English Editor - Éditrice associée pour textes anglais en ligne Mattia Zylak Online French Editor - Éditrice associée pour textes français en ligne Colleen Legrix Copy Editors - Correcteurs Stephanie Barclay, Jordan Beaulieu, and Maya Popovich Printing - Impression Les imprimeries Rubiks inc. Cover - Couverture Charlotte Bracho Contributors/Contributrices Sarah Amarica, Fanny Basque, Marie-Mchèle Beaudoin, Marieke Denil, Sam Ectoplasm, Joelle Géry, Eli Larin, LeDor, Camille Lescarbeau, Carolyn Ligeza, Sophie Panzer, Rae Lavande Pellerin, Marie-Andrée Poulin, Poupie Schneider, Tereza Tacic, Eli-Bella Wood Story - Histoire Mandate - Mandat Yiara is an indigenous mythological Brazilian Queen, legendarily beautiful and also a mighty warrior. She thus embodies many different issues of interest to feminist art history: sexuality, power, and cultural identity. __ Yiara Magazine is an undergraduate feminist art and art history publication. We publish an annual print magazine and organize an exhibition of the featured artworks. Our goal is to provide a platform for students to think about women in art - a subject that we believe still requires considerable exploration - through a diversity of visual and written material. Yiara emphasizes the collaboration of students from various disciplines across Montreal in the interest of forwarding and cultivating an inclusive space for feminist dialogue. Yiara also hosts several academic and cultural events around the magazine for the undergraduate community to share their ideas and engage with people from other programs and backgrounds, as well as established Montreal artists and art institutions. __ Yiara est une reine indigène brésilienne mythique dont la beauté est aussi légendaire que les talents de guerrière. Elle incarne de ce fait un ensemble de facettes se trouvant au croisement de l’histoire de l’art et du feminisme : sexualité, pouvoir et identité culturelle. Special thanks We are especially grateful to the Fine Arts Student Alliance, Anna Waclawek and the Department of Art History at Concordia University, the Concordia Council for Student Life, the Concordia Student Union, the Concordia University Alumni Association, the Students’ Society of McGill University, Cheryl Sim, Allyson Mitchell, Stéphanie Hornstein and Daniel Sàenz for their guidance, our wonderful copy editors for going above and beyond, Ania Swiercz and Zara Domingues for their photography, friends and family of the Yiara team who volunteered and supported this project, and the countless other students and student associations that share our feminist mandate. Yiara Magazine est une publication étudiante d’art féministe et d’histoire de l’art. Au courant de l’année, nous publions une revue annuelle et organisons une exposition qui réunit les oeuvres présentées au sein de notre magazine. A travers la diversité de compositions visuelles et écrites, notre objectif est de promouvoir une plateforme étudiante qui suscite une reflexion autour de la femme au coeur de l’art - un sujet qui, selon nous, requiere encore de l’attention et une exploration continue. Yiara accentue la collaboration entre étudiants de Montréal provenant de différents domaines, dans l’intêret de transmettre et de cultiver un espace ouvert au dialogue féministe. Autour de son magazine, Yiara accueille de nombreux évènements académiques et culturels divers. La communauté d’étudiants de premier cycle universitaire peut ainsi partager ses idées et s’engager avec d’autres étudiants de formations diverses mais aussi avec des artistes et institutions artistiques établis à Montréal. �YIARA04 3 Edito Amelia Wong-Mersereau 4 Cultivating Feminism Guest Contributor Cheryl Sim Ph.D. 6 Tereza Tacic Neither 8 La performance du genre dans l’art post-internet Eli Larin 14 La laide dans le miroir Poupie Schneider 15 Marie-Andrée Poulin Je ne suis pas féministe, je suis helper 16 Marieke Denil Untitled (my body) 18 Rae Lavande Pellerin La chaleur 20 Camille Lescarbeau Traces 22 Tension Sarah Amarica 28 Carolyn Ligeza 32 Re-Presenting the Hero Eli-Bella Wood 36 Flos Marie-Michèle Beaudoin & Joëlle Déry 40 L’histoire de mon amie: Partie 1 Fanny Basque Timeline 42 29 Alleged Moral Ambiguity, Wings Sophie Panzer 30 Sam Ectoplasm Désincarnation LeDor 46 “Let’s Try Doing Lesbian Feminist Everything From Now On” Hannah Karpinski in conversation with Allyson Mitchell ��Issue 04 Edito I can trace my feminism back to a very specific moment. In 2012, Tavi Gevinson gave a TEDxTeen presentation in which she said: “Women are complicated. Women are multifaceted. Not because women are crazy, but because people are crazy and women happen to be people.” From this I realized three things: 1 Until now, I had not been able to identify as a feminist. 2 I am a feminist. 3 Now that I know who I am a bit more, I want to really be a feminist… whatever that means. Even after that moment four years ago, it took me a while to understand that being insecure, conflicted, or not always consistent in my beliefs is no less strong or less feminist. Being a feminist does not mean having all the answers, in the same way that Yiara Magazine does not pretend to have a cohesive feminist voice. Instead, we actively challenge any universalizing of the female experience. Theorist Chandra Talpade Mohanty wrote that “Sisterhood cannot be assumed on the basis of gender; it must be forged in concrete, historical and political practice and analysis.” Yiara is a conversation, with contradictions, convictions, emotions, and a complex and multifaceted identity. This magazine belongs to all the people who wrote, contributed artwork, edited, and designed it, and it also belongs to each one of you that reads it. A special thank you to our sponsors for all your generous support! And finally, I would ask that you please pass on this publication if/when you are finished, because Yiara is made with a special kind of feminist love for humanity, art, and our world. Here’s to creating more conversations! Love and thanks, Amelia Wong-Mersereau Dès lors, je me suis rendue compte de trois choses : 1 2 3 Jusqu’à maintenant, je ne m’étais pas identifiée comme féministe. Je suis féministe. Maintenant que je me connais un peu mieux, je veux être une vraie féministe… et cela peut peut importe que cela implique. Je ne sais pas exactement pourquoi, mais le caractère honnête et humble de la définition du féminisme par Tavi Gevinson a ouvert une porte dans mon esprit. Tout au long de ma scolarité, j’ai été instruite de manière à devenir féministe, et ce féminisme me paraissait bénéfique et important. Mais surtout, le monde m’a soudain paru moins réel. Comment est-il possible que certains se qualifient de féministes, ou de n’importe quel qualificatif avec une définition bien précise ? À l’école on m’a également appris la notion de bonnes réponses, et qu’au fond donner les bonnes réponses c’est être intelligent et être fort. Pourtant, en réalité, comme j’ai pu l’apprendre de Roxanne Gay et Gloria Steinem, au-delà d’une vision binaire du monde avec d’un côté les problèmes et de l’autre les solutions, il y a la conversation. C’est également ce que Tavi Gevinson affirmait dans son discours : « Le féminisme, ce n’est pas un règlement, c’est au contraire une conversation, un débat, un processus. » Même après avoir fait ce constat il y a quatre ans, cela m’a pris du temps pour comprendre que douter, être en désaccord, ou n’être pas toujours cohérente face à mes convictions ne veut pas dire être moins forte ou moins féministe. Être féministe ce n’est pas détenir toutes les réponses, de la même façon que Yiara magazine ne prétend pas porter une voix féministe universelle. Au contraire, nous mettons activement en cause toute universalisation de l’expérience féminine. La théoricienne Chandra Talpade Monhanty a écrit que « la solidarité féminine ne peut avoir pour fondement le genre ; elle doit être forgée par une analyse historique, politique, et concrète. » Yiara est une conversation, avec ses contradictions, ses convictions, ses émotions, et son identité complexe aux multiples facettes. Ce magazine appartient à tous ceux qui ont écrit, qui y ont contribué en partageant leur art, à ceux qui l’ont édité et conçu. Il appartient également à tous ceux d’entre vous qui le lisent. Je voudrais aussi remercier particulièrement nos sponsors pour leur soutien généreux ! Et enfin, je vous demanderais de transmettre cette publication quand vous aurez fini votre lecture, car Yiara est fait avec amour, un amour singulier pour l’humanité, l’art et notre monde. À davantage de conversations passionnantes ! [Traduit de l’anglais par Chloé Schwab] Editor-in-Chief Allyson Mitchell. Hungry Purse: The Vagina Dentata in Late Capitalism. 2004 ongoing. Image reproduced with permission from and courtesy of artist. Photo Credits: Tom Powel Imaging, New York Interview page 46 Yiara | Somehow, in the honest and unassuming way that Tavi Gevinson explained feminism, a door opened in my mind. All through school, I was instructed to be a feminist, and that feminism was good and important. But if anything, this made the word less real for me. How can anyone call themselves a feminist, or any word with a fixed definition? I was also taught in school that there were right answers, and that being right meant being smart and strong. But in reality, of course, as Roxane Gay and Gloria Steinem have taught me, beyond problems and solutions, beyond binaries, there are conversations. In her talk, Tavi Gevinson also said that “feminism is not a rule book, but a conversation, a discussion, a process.” Je me souviens précisément du moment où mon engagement féministe a commencé. En 2012, Tavi Gevinson, qui avait seize ans à l’époque, a fait un discours, dans le cadre de TEDxTeen, où elle disait : « Les femmes sont complexes. Les femmes ont de multiples facettes. Pas parce que les femmes sont folles, mais parce les êtres humains le sont ; et il se trouve que les femmes sont des êtres humains elles aussi. » 3 �Issue 04 Cultivating Feminism Cheryl Sim Ph.D. | Yiara Guest Contributor Curator, DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art 4 My paternal grandmother Charlotte was born in 1906, during the last few years of the Qing dynasty. Her mother had bound feet and never learned to read or write. The fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 and the rise of the Republic Era (1912-1949) ushered in a new vision for China – one of modernization. As the value of women in society grew, the formal education of girls also gained importance among the middle and upper classes. While the template of Charlotte’s life was very much in keeping with the traditional roles of wife and mother as inscribed by a patriarchal society, her life deeply informed my early feminist ideas. She was a well-respected entrepreneur, an influential member of her community and she led many initiatives to improve women’s lives, one of which was to provide on-site daycare services for her employees. There was something else about her that made a deep and lasting impression on me, and that was her impeccable style. In my memories of her she almost always wore the cheongsam or Chinese dress – the garment so elegantly and effortlessly worn by Maggie Cheung in Wong Kar Wai’s film In the Mood for Love. Charlotte’s dresses were often tailor made, her accessories chosen with great care and her hair tied up in a neat chignon. In this spirit, Charlotte embodied substance and splendour, which has become an apt way of describing my approach to feminism and how it plays out in my work as an artist and a curator. I went through adolescence in Quebec during the 1980s, growing up in a rural, anglophone enclave. I became acutely aware of power relations as they were lived through language, culture and history. Against this backdrop, I became further aware of my own otherness as a female of Chinese and Filipino heritage, having encountered many ill-informed cultural assumptions over time. While my opposition to sexism seemed innate, my understanding of how to ‘live’ feminism was certainly nurtured. In the ‘80s, women were beginning to openly question marriage and the fairy tale notion of ‘living happily ever after’ as new female representations emerged in popular culture, offering alternative possibilities. I should also acknowledge the influence of my excellent teachers who equipped me with the necessary tools to approach situations and texts from a critical feminist perspective, allowing me to think through and negotiate tricky terrain to this day. In the early ‘90s, after finishing my undergraduate work in Radio and Television Arts at Ryerson, I turned towards documentary film, which I felt was a genre that allowed for more time to explore and analyze �Issue 04 “I feel feminist ways of being and doing are not rigid or fixed but instead, evolve in order to elicit more possibilities.” “You know what they say about Oriental girls...” In 1995 I produced my first single-channel video work, A Few Colourful Phrases. It explored everything I wanted to say about growing up a Canadian-born woman of colour in the post-settler context of Canada through three commonly heard phrases: “If you don’t mind me asking, where are you from?”; “You know what they say about Oriental girls”; and “Has anyone ever called you a banana?” The works that came after continued to explore and document the lives and experiences of women from a feminist and postcolonial perspective. I began to employ a methodology of separating voice and image that would become a consistent feature in all of my videos – a critical strategy that interrogates the gaze through the privileging of a woman’s voice and words over her image. I began to build up a body of tactics such as the use of humour, music or a specific formal approach to bring pointed observation and commentary to the surface without alienating the viewer. My doctoral project The Fitting Room culminated in a site-specific installation that explored the relationship between Canadian born women of Chinese heritage and the cheongsam through a feminist and postcolonial lens. The tremendous privilege and responsibility of working as curator at DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art has allowed me to further put feminist values into practice. We present a program of two to three major exhibitions a year, as well as a series of public events and an innovative education program, all free of charge, in the interest of promoting accessibility to experiences with contemporary art. Feminist concerns are definitely part of programming and curatorial considerations extending to how we do things. My experience in artist run-centres greatly informs my professional approach, which is to be of service to the mission of the organization, to honour the art and artists that we present and also to nurture our team. Providing a work environment that allows people to contribute meaningfully is vital to being empowered. In this way, it is of utmost importance that the process we go through together is just as successful as the final outcome. Collaborative projects with our peer organizations, Montreal-based artists and independent curators are also ways in which we extend our mandate to make meaningful and productive contributions to the ecosystem on the whole. Like the concept of identity, I feel feminist ways of being and doing are not rigid or fixed but instead, evolve in order to elicit more possibilities. These thoughts ultimately bring me back to my grandmother Charlotte. Her intelligence, compassion and strength, combined with remarkable style, underscored her ability to live powerfully. She provides an impressive model for me and her other granddaughters, informing our way of being, doing, and cultivating feminism in our everyday lives…with splendour and substance. Yiara | a subject. Through my church choir connections and sheer luck, I got my first job at Studio D, the feminist studio at the National Film Board of Canada. My first contract with them was to organize a film institute for women of colour and Aboriginal women filmmakers as part of the New Initiatives in Film Program (NIF). My time there was a total baptism by fire in terms of getting an up close (and at times, too personal) view of power dynamics in action. The mood at the NFB was tense, as it reeled from heavy budget cuts, the looming 1995 Quebec referendum, and heated debates around identity politics. The reality of unequal power relations and how they played out through the entangled threads of gender, race, class and ethnicity was an eye opener, as crucial disparities and tensions both outside of and within feminist circles were more explicitly articulated. While these experiences at the NFB were often disconcerting, they brought me closer to understanding how gendered constructs and interests govern society. 5 �| Yiara Issue 04 6 �Issue 04 Tereza Tacic Studio Arts and Art History Concordia University Neither, 2015 Yiara | “Neither” posits two unfairly gendered materials in dialogue: “feminine” textiles like felt and yarn, and “masculine” machinery, or pneumatic pistons. By juxtaposing these objects, Tacic aims to elicit confusion in the viewer by subverting gender dualism, which in turn raises questions about the way we look at art: Are objects gendered? Does the viewer impose gender on a given subject or work? “Neither” suggests that they do, whether the viewer is aware of it or not. The rhythmic and aggressive firing of the pistons gives the piece an almost militaristic rigidity, which is “softened” by the fabrics. When the materials are considered together, they create a seemingly alive, autonomous entity that is gender ambiguous. It is neither strictly male nor female, neither mechanic nor organic; it is an androgynous creation that forces viewers to think past a binary system of gender. 7 �Issue 04 La performance du genre dans l’art post-internet Eli Larin | Yiara Histoire de l’art Université du Québec à Montréal 8 En 2013, Rhizome, un site web influent dans l’art digital depuis 1993, organise une conférence intitulée Post-Net Aesthetics pour réfléchir éfléchir fléchir échir chir sur une nouvelle tendance esthétique: celle de l’art post-internet 1. Par la suite, une succession d’articles dans divers médias importants2 tentent de faire le point sur ce nouveau terme. Dans ce mouvement, plusieurs jeunes femmes artistes se taillent rapidement une place pour créer un art qui reflète leurs expériences en tant que femme sur le web et dans l’espace public.3 L’usage du web par des femmes artistes n’est en soi pas nouveau. Dès les années 1990, on retrouve sur le net une importante communauté d’artistes féministes, appelées cyberféministes. Cornellia Sollfrank, une des pionnières de ce mouvement, a récemment revu les origines de ce mouvement à la lumière de la montée de l’art dit “post-internet,” qu’elle a accusé d’être vide de critique féministe.4 Toutefois, plusieurs des jeunes artistes de la nouvelle génération évoluent dans des circuits artistiques alternatifs à l’analyse féministe dominante. Deux artistes post-internet bien connues dans ce milieu émergent, Bunny Rogers et Petra Cortright, et explorent un féminisme anti-social, tel que défini par Jack Halberstam. Dans The Queer Art of Failure, iel5 préésente leur incapacité d’atteindre les normes comme d’une porte de secours pour les femmes face aux pressions sociales qu’elles subissent. Cortright, artiste post-internet bien connue pour ses performances filmées et distribuées sur YouTube, élabore depuis 2007 un projet toujours actif. Bunny Rogers, quand à elle, maintient depuis 3 ans un site web: 9years. Elle y publie des photographies de Second Life, un univers virtuel en ligne où les utilisateurs peuvent créer des personnages, des environnements et des mises en scène. �Issue 04 Pour l’artiste post-internet Artie Vierkant, une des importantes particularités de la culture web est l’abolition d’une distinction entre producteurs d’objets culturels et spectateurs dans un continuum constant d’usage et de production, qui ne peut être dissocié de notre nouvelle réalité éalité alité é actuelle où ù l’espace en ligne versus hors-ligne tend également galement à s’abolir. En effet, alors que l’usage de l’internet augmente à travers les téléphones intelligents, les usagers viennent aussi à s’approprier pleinement et de façon çon on immédiate édiate diate la production de l’image culturelle. L’original perd sa prédominance; son remixage étant parfois plus appréécié é que l’original. Cette attitude non-hiéérarchique envers les modes traditionnels de diffusion et production se retrouve d’ailleurs dans l’approche artistique de Vierkant, qui distingue sa production et celle d’autres artistes post-internet par leur intentionnalité d’universalité dans la matérialité et leur mode de diffusion.8 Que les oeuvres soient matérielles érielles rielles ou immatérielles, érielles, rielles, en ligne ou en galerie, l’important est le message transmis par une communication visuelle. Les performances Youtube de Petra Cortright: échec et évaluation L’artiste post-internet Petra Cortright produit des performances et installations vidéos. Elle est surtout connue pour son projet Youtube commencé il y a huit ans et auquel elle continue d’ajouter du nouveau contenu. Ces vidéos éos os sont des performances filmées prenant place souvent dans un cadre intime: une chambre ou un appartement. Plusieurs de ses vidéos éos os utilisent des effets animés ou des effets de distorsion. Les clips durent généralement entre trente secondes et deux minutes. Les performances sont surtout gestuelles et ancrées dans la banalité. Cortright pose pour la caméra en courbant le dos dans « i feel u », tourne sur sa chaise à s’en étourdir dans « sickening chair games », bouge les lèvres en synchronisation avec une chanson, les yeux barbouillés de maquillage dans « burnt out 6 11 13» et danse en chantant dans « suitcaes fail funny selena muji dumb girl stupid gomez hearts» (fig. 1). Le titre de cette dernière ère re vidéo éo o est rempli de mots-clés éss de recherche faisant rééférence à l’importance de l’optimisation des outils de recherche internet et du choix des mots-clés dans la culture web. Ici, le mot « fail » est directement issu de l’argot internet. Plusieurs des vidéos de Cortright jouent aussi avec des motsclés populaires dans leur description. C’est le cas de sa vidéo éo o de 2007 « vvebcam » dont le descriptif incluait les mots « fuck »,, « orgy » et « slut » pour un contenu tout à fait banal. Cortright y apparaît, entièrement habillée, avec une chemise boutonnée jusqu’au col, fixant la caméra et en alternant les effets d’animation. La vidéo fut bannie par YouTube uniquement à cause des mots-clés associés.9 L’oeuvre devient donc aussi un commentaire en soi Yiara | Je tiens d’abord à introduire une définition de ce qu’est l’art post-internet, synthétiétitisée à partir de différents écrits. Le terme fut d’abord élaboré par Marina Olson en 2008 et continue depuis d’être développé par celle-ci, mais aussi par Louis Dolas, Artie Vierkant et Gene McHugh. Dans un essai visant à revoir l’historique du mouvement, Dolas rappelle la première ère re articulation du concept par Olson qui avait éllargie la définition de l’art internet comme n’étant plus limitée par l’espace physique de l’ordinateur/internet, «but rather, can be identified as any type of art that is in some way influenced by the internet and digital media.»6 Elle affirme que l’on peut parler non seulement d’un ensemble de pratiques post-internet, mais surtout que l’on doit considérer que nous sommes dans l’ère post-internet et qu’ainsi toute oeuvre s’y classifie intentionnellement ou non. On entend « post �, »,, comme « postérieur à », et non pas « ayant dépassé » ou « s’étant libéré de ». Par conséquent, l’ère ère re post-internet est donc à la fois tributaire de son héritage éritage ritage de la culture internet et ses plateformes, ainsi que de la critique des conséquences de cellesci7. De cette façon pour Olson, toutes les oeuvres d’art depuis l’adoption généraliénéralinéraliéraliralisée ée e du web sont post-internet, mais certaines sont intentionnellement engagées dans une critique de la culture web. 9 �Issue 04 sur la gestion de contenu offensant par un site qui est aujourd’hui une des plus grandes sources de contenu. | Yiara Les vidéos de Cortright contiennent de plus une facture très novice par la qualité de leur résolution ésolution solution où ù la pixelisation est visible dans plusieurs vidéos éos os (fig. 1). Les performances sont toujours éclairées clairées ées es naturellement ou par des lumières domestiques, sans l’intervention d’un éclairage dosé et professionnel. La constance de ce choix permet de créer une esthétique amateur et de mieux intégrer les performances à leur plateforme. Ainsi, aucune distinction n’est perceptible entre la performance artistique de Cortright et d’autres vidéos dilletantes du Web. Cortright exploite le fait que YouTube pas qu’un lieu de diffusion et d’archivage de ses performances, mais aussi un lieu d’interaction avec son auditoire. 10 Les références textuelles à la culture web par Cortright, l’application des effets faciles d’accès, 10 l’esthétique amateur et l’exploitation de l’interactivité du réseau sont tous des marqueurs de son esthéétique post-internet. Toutefois, son oeuvre ne porte pas que sur la culture web, mais prévoit évoit voit aussi un espace à la critique fémiémiministe, puisque que ses vidéos éos os sont égalegalement des exemples d’échec échec chec de la performance de la féminité dans le cadre de cette culture. L’omniprésence ésence sence de la pornographie sur internet est une des prééoccupations de Cortright. C’est d’ailleurs pourquoi elle considère que d’y travailler avec le corps des femmes est chargé. Dans ce contexte, l’usage de mots-clés pornographiques rattachés à un contenu qui ne l’est pas vient confronter et dééjouer les attentes d’un public m�le �le le hétéététéérosexuel, comme dans sa vidéo éo o « vvebcam.» Cortright utilise de plus l’échec, en se montrant comme incapable de réépondre à ces mêmes attentes, lorsqu’elle s’offre passivement au regard à travers des poses sensuelles, mais empreintes de maladresse au point d’en être ridicules. Pour Halberstam, le passage des luttes fééministes de mère en fille implique aussi la transmission simultanée des paradigmes d’oppression visés 11 . Iel propose plutôt un féminisme anti-social, caractérisé De haut en bas: Figure 1. Petra Cortright. Capture d’écran de la vidéo YouTube « suitcaes fail funny selena muji dumb girl stupid gomez hearts ». Publié le 19 février 2015. Figure 2. Petra Cortright. Capture d’écran de la vidéo YouTube « True Life: I’m a Selfie - (Fake True’s Negativity Remix) ». Publié le 18 janvier 2013. Figure 3. Bunny Rogers. 0068. Image tirée de la série 9years, 20122015. Image reproduite avec la permission de l’artiste. Figure 4. Bunny Rogers. 0176. Image tirée de la série 9years, 20122015. Image reproduite avec la permission de l’artiste. �Issue 04 par la négation, l’évacuation, le refus, la passivité é et de « unbecoming, unbeing. »12 Cortright fait usage de plusieurs de ces tactiques de négation dans ses performances. De haut en bas : Figure 5. Bunny Rogers. hug. Image tirée de la série 9years, 2012-2015. Image reproduite avec la permission de l’artiste. Figure 6. Bunny Rogers. pip20. Image tirée de la série 9years, 20122015. Image reproduite avec la permission de l’artiste. Figure 7. Bunny Rogers. pip21. Image tirée de la série 9years, 2012-2015. Image reproduite avec la permission de l’artiste. Figure 8. Bunny Rogers. pip09. Image tirée de la série 9years, 2012-2015. Image reproduite avec la permission de l’artiste. L’échec échec chec est aussi au coeur de sa performance: « suitcases fail funny selena muji dumb girl stupid gomez hearts, » cette fois-ci explicitement et avec humour. Cortright, habillée très modestement d’une chemise large, boutonnée et d’un jeans, danse en jouant avec des valises, s’appuyant dessus en les faisant rouler puis en les empilant. Les valises, grosses et encombrantes, enlèvent de la gr�ce aux mouvements de l’artiste. Lorsque l’une d’elles tombe alors que Cortright s’y appuyait, elle se tourne vers la camééra et rit. L’évacuation évacuation vacuation du jeu de séducéducduction permet l’expression d’une émotion authentique et humaine, que l’on peut considérer érer rer comme une voie d’issue émermergeant dans la négation telle que définie par Halberstam. La critique de Cortright est donc indirecte, ce qui explique pourquoi son travail et celui d’autres artistes-femmes de sa génération énération nération ération ration travaillant dans un style similaire ont été accusés de complaisance par Jennifer Chan, dans son essai « Why Are There No Great Women Net Artists »: « In Yiara | Dans sa performance « True Life: I’m a Selfie - (Fake True’s Negativity Remix) » (fig. 2) Cortright est assise sur son lit, lourdement maquillée et portant un haut court révélant évélant vélant élant lant tout son abdomen. Elle sautille et danse en réalisant plusieurs égoportraits, tout en regardant la caméra qu’il la filme, se soumettant ainsi à un regard double. Toutefois, son attitude témoigne de son ennui pour cette activité. Elle fait plusieurs fois la moue et grimace. Elle change rapidement d’activité é et commence à boire de l’alcool au goulot, lui donnant les allures d’une rebelle, d’une fêtarde. Toutefois, à chaque gorgée, elle grimace de dégo�t, égo�t, go�t, �t, t, n’ayant donc pas l’habitude d’agir ainsi. En échouant chouant de respecter les codes de représentation d’une cam girl ou party girl, la performance de Cortright souligne le caractère artificiel et le labeur nécessaire écessaire cessaire pour se conformer à ces rôles. 11 �Issue 04 contrast to deliberatively provocative cyberfeminist statements, net art by women currently appears questionably complacent or complex. »13Dans cet essai, Chan parle du travail de Cortright comme d’un échec de déconstruction du regard m�le du au fait que l’artiste se sert d’une esthétique qui satisfait le désir hétérosexuel masculin. Il s’agit d’une analyse de surface des performances de Cortright, qui ne reconnaît des oeuvres féministes que la confrontation directe. Le propos fééministe de l’artiste se découvre toutefois dans l’échec et l’évacuation, tout comme celui de Bunny Rogers qui se trouve dans le masochisme, la passivité é et l’acceptation de l’animalité. | Yiara Animalité, masochisme et soumission dans le projet 9Years de Bunny Rogers 12 Bunny Rogers est une artiste de New York, prolifique sur le web depuis son adolescence, tout comme Cortright. Artiste multidisciplinaire, Rogers est une poètesse publiée ée e et son travail en arts visuels inclut des sites web, des installations et des mises en scène photographiées de Second Life, comme son projet 9years. Le site du projet 9years ne comporte aucune description du projet et les photographies se suivent sans titre14 ou explication. Celles-ci ont été composé à travers la plateforme sociale en ligne Second Life, où ù il est possible de créer éer er des personnages et de les faire poser dans ce que l’artiste mohawk Skawennati qualifierait de “machinamagraphs”: des photographies réalisées éalisées alisées ées es dans un environnement virtuel15. Un avatar aux cheveux blonds revient frééquemment dans les photos, souvent seule dans une série de variations d’une même pose, portant toujours le même ême me déshabiléshabilshabillé (fig. 3 et 5). D’autres avatars féminins apparaissent aussi dans ce projet, souvent accompagnées d’animaux (fig. 4 et 8). Certaines mises en scène ène ne sont sexuellement explicites (fig. 5) et à l’occasion pornographiques. Plusieurs des machinamagraphes montrent les avatars avec des corps marqués par la violence (fig. 6 et 7) ou dans des postures d’humiliation (fig. 3). L’importance du thème animal dans les représentations de la femme pointe vers une exploration de l’animalité de celle-ci. Dans l’analyse de Simone de Beauvoir, l’animalité é de la femme reste plus évividente que l’homme, à cause de son rôle dans la reproduction de l’espèce èce ce humaine. L’animalité est donc spécifique à l’expérience de femme. Beauvoir conclut dans le Deuxième Sexe que par la chasse et la guerre, l’homme transcende son animalité, é,, mais la femme est elle aussi « habitée par la transcendance »16 peut être accomplie en tendant vers des « valeurs qui sont concrètement atteintes par les m�les.» 17 Beauvoir considère donc que ces valeurs ne sont pas m�les en soi, mais générales et universelles. Toutefois, le doute plane dans les analyses sur « […] la vraisemblance de cette non-m�litude des valeurs... » 18 La transcendance de Beauvoir semble se passer à travers des valeurs m�les, qui dénaturent la femme. Dans Animal Lessons: How they teach us to be human, Kelly Oliver commente d’ailleurs cette problématique. Elle en conclue que c’est par la femelle animale que l’on apprend le plus sur notre nature, précisééciséciséément parce qu’elle est comme nous, alors que la femme humaine se définit comme humaine parce qu’elle se distance de la femelle.19 La not ion de “ unbecoming” de Halberstam, qui s’oppose au « devenir femme » de Beauvoir, peut ouvrir une autre issue. C’est ce que semble d’ailleurs faire Rogers à travers une acceptation de l’animalité é de la femme par des représenésensentations qui brouillent les limites entre les deux catégories. Dans la figure 4, un chat se rattache à l’avatar comme s’il s’agissait d’une partie intégrante de son corps. Le corps lisse du personnage, par l’absence totale de pilosité, est marqué de reflets blancs, qui rappellent la blancheur du chat et sa forme fluide, créant éant ant une unité formelle entre les deux. L’avatar de la figure 8 cache dans ses cheveux un chat noir, difficilement repérable à première vue puisqu’il en est de la même ême me couleur. Les deux sont ainsi indissociables. De plus, Rogers profite d’un glitch informatique qui fait passer les cheveux de �Issue 04 son personnage à travers son torse, pour donner l’impression que celle-ci a de la fourrure sur le ventre. Le personnage devient donc un hybride entre femme et chat. Les autres mises en scène insinuent cette nature animalière sans transformer l’apparence des avatars. Dans la figure 3, le personnage féminin est couchée dans une maison à chiens, appelée « Daddy’s Dog House » dans un jeu d’humiliation érotique où l’avatar prend clairement le rôle ôle le de soumission. Elle consomme pleinement cette identité de « chienne » par son rapport sexuel avec un loup/chien dans la figure 5. Les deux artistes explorent donc des outils issus d’une approche féministe antisociale. Les performances de Cortright sont des explorations de l’échec et de la négation, égation, gation, qui permettent une déconstrucéconstrucconstruction du labeur et de l’artificialité é nécesécescessaire pour performer les rôles imposés aux femmes. Les oeuvres de Rogers continuent cette exploration du fémiémiminisme anti-sociale par la passivité et le masochisme, et sont ainsi selon les écrits d’Halberstam des formes de résistance alternatives. De plus, son acceptation de l’animalité de la femme permet une déconstruction du « devenir femme » de Beauvoir, une forme d’unbecoming. Pour conclure, l’analyse féministe éministe ministe anti-sociale pose ainsi plus de questions qu’elle n’en répond épond pond et propose des déconstrucéconstrucconstructions de constats féministes antérieurs sans nécessairement offrir de nouvelles vérités érités rités éss absolues. On peut dès èss lors associer cette analyse à un nihilisme épispistémologique. Le nihilisme semble être dans l’ère ère re du temps avec les slogans politiques populaires comme « fuck toute.» Toutefois, on peut considérer érer rer le fémiémiminisme anti-social etle mouvement « fuck toute », comme non pas des instances de nihilisme passives, mais bien actives, c’est-à-dire activement impliquées dans la déconstruction de fausses croyances et vieux modèles patriarcaux. Le féminisme anti-social nihiliste d’Halberstam ouvre de nouvelles possibilités, car c’est seulement à travers la table rase que l’art post-internet peut réaliser son potentiel. Yiara | Pour Halberstam, le féminisme éminisme minisme de négaégagation passe aussi par la passivité é et le masochisme qu’iel voit comme offrant des alternatives aux définitions de féministes libérales sur ce qu’est être femme. 20 Iel prend l’exemple de la performance de Yoko Ono « Cut Piece » (1965) comme d’une forme de résistance ésistance sistance par l’acceptation passive de la douleur et l’humiliation publique où « Ono inhabits a form of unacting, unbeing, unbecoming.» 21 Les mises en scène de masochisme et d’humiliation sont aussi importantes dans l’oeuvre de Rogers. Dans la figure 6, le personnage est photographié en plongée. La caméra domine le sujet qui arche son dos pour exhiber son derrière rouge de marques. Le personnage n’offre donc aucune résistance à la domination. Toutefois, le personnage portant le plus de blessures est dans la figure 7. L’avatar est photographiée en contre-plongé, positionnant le spectateur presque à ses pieds. Elle adopte une posture de fierté, avec les mains sur les hanches, imitant la pose traditionnelle d’un super-héros. Son corps reste couvert d’ecchymoses et de coupures, mais elle est présentée dans une posture victorieuse. À travers son expérience érience rience du masochisme et la soumission, elle émerge merge donc dans une repréésentation de force et d’assurance, qui ne cherche pas à transcender la réalité de sa chair, voir son animalité. Ainsi, tout comme Cortright, le propos de Rogers n’est pas nécessairement écessairement cessairement ouvertement fééministe. Toutefois, il permet de subvertir une définition de la femme issue d’un féminisme inévitablement pris dans les problématiques qu’il tente de renverser. Le travail de Rogers offre une autre voie, passant par l’acceptation de la réalité éalité alité é animale de nos corps à travers la soumission et la douleur. 13 �Issue 04 La laide dans le miroir Poupie Schneider Histoire de l’art Université du Québec à Montréal | Yiara Je m’affale, je me creuse, je me mords. Aujourd’hui, je suis femme et je suis laide. C’est dans l’attente d’être appétissante que je me laisse fleurir... Vais-je éclore à mon image ? Je me bats dans le miroir et tue celle que je ne veux pas être, celle qui n’est pas assez belle pour moi. Je trépigne de voir ce que les autres verront en me regardant. Serais-je une simple réflexion de leurs désirs et de leurs idéaux ? Non. Je veux qu’ils voient mon âme, à nu, sans déguisement, sans travestissement. Mais je vais me perdre à vouloir contrôler le regard des autres. Je cours à ma perte et je cours vite; comme si j’en soutirais un plaisir macabre. Je cours par peur de la main invisible, je la sens se refermer sur moi pour me contraindre à l’immobilité. 14 Sachez que lorsque vos yeux tombent sur moi, je tremble. Une sourde plainte se meut dans tout mon corps et trouve son chemin jusqu’à ma tête déjà trop pleine. C’est à ce moment que je ne voudrais pas avoir de corps, je voudrais n’être qu’un esprit à l’image de la beauté qui se manifeste partout; sans formes et sans visage. Autant votre regard me révulse, autant son approbation m’est nécessaire. C’est dans votre regard qu’est ma vérité, ma valeur et ma qualité... il y a de quoi avoir peur. Je voudrais avoir une enveloppe transparente qui laisse voir et laisse savoir. Je suis contre l’idée du corps, du corps organique qui commence à pourrir dès qu’il est mis au monde, celui qui sécrète du pus dans sa longue agonie qui ne semble jamais prendre fin. C’est lui qui nous tue, c’est lui qui nous lâche. Il nous tourne le dos et s’en va dormir face contre terre et nous sommes là, à nous demander que faire contre ce corps en constante révolte contre nous et contre la vie. Mon corps charnel, mon corps interrompu, est-il ce à quoi tout se rapporte ? Est-ce en mon corps seul que réside ma féminité ? Je ne sais même pas si seulement j’ai une féminité. Je voudrais être ni homme, ni femme, ni corps. Je ne voudrais qu’être mon essence et rien d’autre, me fondre en moi-même. Je refuse d’être comprise sous l’angle de la féminité et de la corporéité: c’est trop facile et c’est trop peu. Je suis lasse de me traîner de jour en jour. Je suis lasse de ma densité qui m’épuise. Je suis lasse d’être lasse. Je refuse que le regard de l’autre me fasse prendre conscience de ma matérialité, je refuse qu’il me pénètre et me voie. Je sais que je suis, donc je suis. Je n’ai pas besoin d’être pour être. C’est lorsque je me replie sur moi-même et que mes yeux regardent vers l’intérieur que tout éclate: la peur, l’angoisse et la perte s’effacent et se perdent. Je renais selon l’idée que j’ai de moi-même et rien d’autre. Je suis ma dictature et ma junte militaire. Je suis mon refuge et ma forteresse. Je défendrai mon idée de moi jusqu’à la défiguration irrémédiable. Plus on me regarde, plus on me vole mon visage : plus je le perds au regard des autres. Je me trouble dans l’altérité qui m’avale. Je me trouble un instant avant de me reconquérir, de me faire violence. Ce n’est pas facile de s’appartenir et de ne pas laisser les autres prendre possession de nous, d’étendre leur territoire dans notre personne. Mon corps et moi sommes en combat perpétuel. La vie ne se résume qu’à un état de guerre que l’on est voué à perdre. On s’acharne pour gagner d’infimes batailles. Après on se demande pourquoi on est toujours fatigué. On est raide mort et c’est tout. Abdiquons sur les batailles. Laissons notre corps faire son propre chemin et suivons le notre. Chacun pour soi, il n’y a pas de chicane. La laide dans le miroir ne nous concerne plus; elle règne dans l’invisibilité. Nous vivons notre vie en dehors d’elle, nous ne sommes plus à sa portée, elle n’est qu’une carcasse vide et creuse. �Issue 04 Yiara | 15 Marie-Andrée Poulin Arts visuels et médiatiques Université du Québec à Montéal Je ne suis pas féministe, je suis helper, autoreportage, 2015, crédits photo : Mon Patron Poulin’s self-portrait is a direct result of the artist’s musings on the connections between her daily work as an artist, activist, and labourer. The declaration of, “Je ne suis pas féministe, je suis helper,” transcends the personal as political because it negates the idea that being a female construction worker is a feminist career choice, normalizing women’s roles in a traditionally “male” field of physical work. Poulin’s position, facing away from the camera and captured in movement, decentralizes her from the focus of the piece. Although it is a self-portrait, Poulin is an anonymous subject, an anonymous woman suspended in the action of shoveling. She becomes a proxy for women in trades, a “helper” for women at the intersection of art, activism, and manual labour. �| Yiara Issue 04 Marieke Denil Studio Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality Concordia University Untitled (my body), 2015 Photo credits: Ania Swiercz 16 What power relationship exists between the body and identity? In this dynamic series of paintings, Denil reflects on her long-term feelings of discomfort about her body and chronicles her healing process after an elective double mastectomy, otherwise known as “top surgery.” The artist specifies that although she did not have any problem defining herself as female before her surgery, she felt uncomfortable in her body and decided to take agency over it. Through her largely primary palette, juxtaposing clinical blue with flushed yellow, Denil explores the complexity of recoding and reinventing the body as a meaningful site of self-inscription. The pills and the hospital bracelet attest to the bureaucratic “red tape” and the hurdles that the artist had to jump in order to arrive at her desired, breastless female body. Through the visual representation of her choice of an alternative, non-normative female chest, Denil rejects the idea that the body can delimit identity. �Issue 04 Yiara | 17 �| Yiara Issue 04 18 Rae Lavande Pellerin Studio Arts Concordia University La Chaleur, 2015 Four chairs around a table, four voices in conversation: Pellerin’s installation uses sound, objects, space, and text to create a portrait of the woman who once embodied the role of the matriarch in her family. While the voices, belonging to the woman’s three daughters and younger sister, resonate to create a richly layered narrative, they are also alone in their reflection and reveal the intimate complexities of the subject of the piece: they provide accounts of a troubled and giving woman who lost herself in her imposed role. A final voice can be heard on a cassette on a plinth, away from the table. The woman in question sings a song, “Vous Madame,” written by her brother about loving and caring women. “La Chaleur” examines the issue of relationality and multiplicity of internal and external selves, exploring the ideas of motherhood, gender roles, and emotional labour, and how these concepts shape our relationships with others. �Issue 04 La Chaleur Excerpts from French and English texts, 2015. J’pense que ma mère, sa grande qualité-là, c’était la générosité.. Tsé, même au souper, si y’en avait pour cinq, y’en avait pour sept… si quelqu’un se présentait, même si y’avait comme, trois boulettes, ben a les aurait séparées. Était….j‘pense que c’est ça sa grande grande grande qualité. I think the most beautiful thing about my mother was her generosity. Even… Even at supper, if there was room for five there was room for seven… If someone showed up, even if there was, maybe, three meatballs, well she would have separated them. She was… I think that was the most wonderful thing about her. C’est ça, était tellement généreuse que… Tsé, nous on s’en rappelle de la madame Potvin qu’y’était si pas fine, là, mais a s’en occupait pareil. Tsé, moi, je l’aurais envoyée chez l’diable la vieille maudite… Mais, ça s’peut pas du monde généreux d’même, tsé ? Y’avait d’la place pour deux, y’avait d’la place pour quatre. On était tou’l’temps plus de monde à table que notre famille. Yeah, she was so generous that…I mean we all remember the Potvin lady who was so hateful, but, you know she still took care of her. I mean, I would have told her to go to hell, the old hag… People that generous aren’t even possible, you know? I mean there was always... More people at the table than our family. J’me comparais à Hélène des fois pi j’me disais comment ça s’fait que moi, j’suis pas capable de faire ça ? De l’abnégation comme elle, tsé ? D’oublier quelque chose là, de dire j’pense pas à moi j’men vais là ? Moi, souvent souvent je pensais à ça, pi j’me disais si j’étais dans le même contexte qu’Hélène, et ce que j’s’rais capable ? Pi j’me disais non, J’s’rais pas capable. Était couchée la plupart du temps, était couchée, pi là, a l’avait pu…Était… A pesait même pas 95 livres, là. Pi, euh, moi j’y avais dit maman faut que tu manges, faut que tu prennes des forces, j’lui avait fait d’la soupe, avec des p’tits biscuits…Pis euh…A l’avait réussi à manger un peu… Pis tsé on riait parce que je l’applaudissais parce que a l’avait manger toute son bol de soupe comme un enfant. Mais a parlait jamais d’la mort. On dirait que, pour elle, c’tait comme…Mais, une fois, elle avait dit à papa…On dirait que j’suis morte. J’suis tu là ? Pis…Raymond y dit Ben oui t’es là ! Pis a dit C’est drôle, on dirait que j’suis morte. Fa’que a l’avait sentie que ça s’en venait, j’pense, parce que… Pis c’tait, sa faisait deux fois qu’a disait ça, a l’avait dit ça a une de ses amies qui était venue la voir, a l’avait dit Coup donc, Pierrette, est c’que j’suis morte ? Pi que j’te parle ? I think she kind of got trapped, you know, because everyone was always saying Oh, Hélène, she’s always singing…I think she got trapped in this role of…The woman who’s always singing….the woman who’s always…You know, when everyone thinks of you that way, when everyone says Oh, Hélène, Oh, Madame Pellerin, she’s always singing, she’s always happy…Well at some point, consciously or not, you think, Is this who I have to be ? I don’t know if you actually think about it, but somehow it’s like OK, this is me, I’m the lady who’s always happy, I’m the lady that takes care of everyone…I mean, that’s really hard to carry. She slept a lot…and she didn’t have….she….she didn’t even weigh 95 pounds, you know. And I would tell her, Mom, you have to eat, you have to get stronger, and I had made her some soup, and some little crackers…and…and she ate a little. And we were laughing because I was so happy that she had eaten some food… you know, like a little baby. But she never talked about death. It’s as if, for her, it was…But there was one time, she told Dad…I feel like I’m dead. Am I here? And well Raymond said  Of course you’re here! And she said It’s strange, I feel like I’m dead. So I think maybe she knew it was coming, because…and you know, she said that twice, she said that to one of her friends that came to see her, she said Pierrette, am I dead ? Am I dead, and still talking to you ? Yiara | Pi j’pense que maman à moment donné s’est peut-être faite prendre elle-même par son rôle, parce que tou’l’monde disait Oh mais Hélène, a chante toujours….Non mais j’pense qu’a s’est faite, inconsciemment, a s’est prise dans son rôle de...La madame qui chante tou’l’temps….La madame qui’est toujours…Tsé, quand t’es reconnue, quand t’es gratifiée dans ton rôle, quand tou’l’monde te dit Oh, oui, mais toi Hélène, Oh madame Pellerin, c’est tou’l’temps la madame qui chante, est toujours de bonne humeur… Ben a moment donné, consciemment ou inconsciemment, c’est que tu te dis j’suis tu pognée dans ct’rôle là ? Pis je sais pas si c’est quelque chose à laquelle tu penses mais tu dis Ok, moi c’est ça, c’est la madame qu’y’est toujours de bonne humeur, c’est la madame, c’est la madame qui s’occupe des autres, c’est…Écoute c’est…C’est lourd à porter, ça. I would compare myself to Hélène sometimes, and I would think, how is it that I can’t do that? Why can’t I give everything like she does? Not even think about myself and go? I used to think about that a lot, and I would think if I was in that situation, would I be able to do that? And I would always think no, no I couldn’t. 19 ��Issue 04 Art History and Studio Arts Concordia University Traces, 2016 Lescarbeau’s embroidered pillowcase transforms a gift from her grandmother into a palimpsest of intergenerational engagement through handicraft, an art practice historically marginalized as “women’s work.” The artist takes an object already charged with memory and history, and imposes new memories onto it, addressing the power of women’s collaboration in the making of art and recalling traditional practices of community-based art production such as quilt guilds and knitting clubs, which were si milarly trivialized as “craft” rather than “art.” The dark, rich colour palette and floral motif repeated in Lescarbeau’s embroidered journal are a testament to how we achieve memory and history through storytelling, exemplified by the way that the artist has created a narrative in conversation with her grandmother and with women’s roles in art and art history. Yiara | Camille Lescarbeau 21 �Issue 04 Tension | Yiara Featuring Senga Nengudi Edwin Isford Mira Schendel Ernesto Neto Katya Usvitsky 22 Sarah Amarica Art History Concordia University The following is a curatorial proposal for a hypothetical exhibition titled Tension, composed of sculptural works which employ synthetic nylon in its many shifting states as material explorations of the human body. This imagined exhibition consists of five artists varying across many decades and contemporary artistic trends, thus making the feasibility of such an exhibition obviously improbable. Yet there is value in pairing these artists and their sculptural works together, not only to consider the history of such a material and its potential uses in contemporary art, but also for the sake of curatorial creativity. Edwin Isford. Benign Binding. 2014. Image reproduced with permission from and courtesy of artist. ��Issue 04 | Yiara Anyone who has worn a pair of nylon stockings knows the process: bundling the delicate material at one’s toes, stretching the fabric upwards ever so carefully for fear of snagging a thread, then inserting one leg at a time, and finally wiggling one’s hips until the elastic fits snuggly around the waist. Tension manifests this dance between nylon and body. The exhibition features the following sculptural works: Senga Nengudi’s performance RSVP (1973-2013), Edwin Isford’s photographic series Benign Binding (2014), Mira Schendel’s installation Still Waves of Probability (1964-2014), Ernesto Neto’s installation just like drops of time, nothing (2002), and Katya Usvitsky’s interactive sculpture Mama (2011). Artists Schendel, Neto, and Usvitsky encourage viewer participation whereby the simplest movement, smell, or gesture adds to the material complexity of the work. Nengudi and Isford execute their own bodies as sculpture, both constrained and liberated by a stretching yet suffocating material, alluding to notions of race, gender, and queerness. Tension seeks to mediate the cultural history of nylon with its many contemporary sculptural uses, specifically in negotiating the human body. 24 We should consider the history of synthetic materials before delving into the contemporary artworks featured in Tension. Jeffrey L. Meikle describes the history of chemical production corporation DuPont Co., who sought to develop and mass-manufacture the first synthetic fibre for a multitude of domestic uses, even promising American women an alternative to silk and rayon stockings.1 In 1939 the first fibre-forming polymeric compound2 in the form of hosiery was exhibited at the New York and San Fransisco World Fairs alongside accompanying publicity claims that they were “as strong as steel, as fine as the spider’s web”, and accessible to all female consumers, even “the the poorest working girl.”3 Nylon went on sale a year later with incredible popularity.4 In the years that followed, the cultural connotations of nylon fluctuated around the role of the middle-class woman in public and domestic spheres. During World War II nylon gained militaristic value, wherein American women deliberately removed their stockings as a symbol of wartime sacrifice on the home front, then in the aftermath of war rushed to acquire new hosiery “as tangible evidence of the nation’s return to normality.”5 In 1945 a shortage of nylons forced an outbreak of “nylon nylon riots” among female consumers, causing a media frenzy of mockery with newspaper articles reading: “nylon sale, no casualties” and “women risk life and limb in bitter battle for nylons.”6 Towards the end of its wild popularity, nylon became associated primarily with sexual attractiveness, and seen as an intimate garment promoting human reproduction and traditional family values.7 Amid its various gendered associations, nylon embodies the integration of a man-made material into the everyday. The history of plastic is particularly interesting because of its emphasis on transformation, both in terms of its material composition and cultural function. The root of the word’s meaning, explains Meikle, is one of malleability, “capable of change or modification”, 8 and also described as “having the power to give form.”9 Meikle also discusses how the rise of plastic as “both a material and concept”10 generated a discourse of ephemerality as people began questioning what was real and what was not. Thus, within these dualities of realness and non-realness, natural and unnatural, the organic human body offers a counterpoint to plastic’s blatant artificiality. In fact, many aspects of plastic’s composition are distinctly nonhuman; unlike the highly schematized body, plastic is amorphous, capable of moulding then hardening into any shape or form. Moreover, plastic’s chemical composition prevents natural deterioration, remaining somewhat impervious to environmental changes, quite unlike the human body’s vulnerability to various forms of transformation injury, gestation, disease, enhancement, and decay. And yet, despite its unnatural plastic composition, nylon hosiery (and many other variations of the material) attempts to mimic the body. Available in a variety of so-called flesh-tones, the sheerness of nylon acts as a deceptive second skin, and especially resembles formless flesh when the stockings are removed, looking like what Gilles Deleueze would call a “body without organs.”11 Furthermore, nylon’s capacity to stretch, tear, and mould literally and metaphorically points to the body’s similar shifting states, which is the premise for many artworks in this exhibition. Tension is by no means the first exploration of nylon as an abstract artistic material, but rather borrows aspects from various artistic movements and trends, including soft sculpture and anti-form works of the 1960s and 1970s,12 Surrealism’s interest in anthropomorphism, feminism and the fibre art movement,13 and the influence of sex and science on the arts, more broadly. Each of the exhibition’s artworks yields a unique approach to nylon, the body, and the intersection of the two. At once performative and sculptural, Nengudi’s RSVP is both struggle and collaboration between body and material. Long nylon segments are fixed to the gallery wall at various points, hanging lifelessly until activated by the performer. Senga Nengudi. Nylon Mesh Series. Pearl C. Woods Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 1977. Performance with Maren Hassinger. Photos by Harmon Outlaw. Courtesy of the Artist and Thomas Erben Gallery, New York. �Issue 04 Yiara | 25 �Issue 04 | Yiara while they perform.15 As such, the artwork also questions the spaces in which black bodies “have passed through and been barred from,” recognizing how race influences the way figures move through and occupy spaces.16 Moreover, Nengudi’s fusion of skin and nylon may hint at historical violence enacted upon the black female body. 17 By joining her skin with a synthetic one, the artist emphasizes the malleability of flesh, and correspondingly underscores her black body as one that is restricted and thus potentially radical. 26 Senga Nengudi. Nylon Mesh Series. Pearl C. Woods Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 1977. Performance with Maren Hassinger. Photos by Harmon Outlaw. Courtesy of the Artist and Thomas Erben Gallery, New York. Part acrobat, part statue, the performer assumes a variety of gestures and poses while attached to the fabric. The stretchy nature of the nylon allows for a variety of movements while also restricting the performer to a certain proximity from the wall. When coiled around varying limbs, the flesh-coloured nylons create dynamic linear patterns, blurring the boundaries of where body ends and nylon begins. Yet there is also something inherently violent about the tight cables and the corresponding constricted movements, which poses the question: does the material liberate or strangle its wearer? Nengudi’s RSVP was most recently performed at Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art in New York and sought to critically engage notions of “black identity, racial aesthetics and the ongoing evolution of black expressive forms.” 14 The performance focuses primarily on the body’s physical limits, as the dancers must experiment with nylon’s tension and suspension Isford’s work similarly explores the malleability of flesh. Even through a photographic lens, Isford’s Benign Binding seems sculptural in medium. A seated figure, more formless organism than recognizable human, is immersed in a semi-opaque outer shell. The artist claims that his emphasis on anthropomorphic ambiguity “dedenies the viewer corporeal cues that are typically used to decode identity.”18 His use of nylon hose is meant to veil gender and sex, referring to the material’s specific gendered connotations in an attempt to disrupt them and hegemonic notions of gender more broadly.19 Scholar Andrea Eimke studies material and immaterial boundaries, and claims that the liminal space between the two allows notions of identity and belonging to be “open to negotiation, to be posed again from elsewhere, to become iterative, interrogative processes rather than imperative, identitarian designations.”20 Benign Binding also plays with elements of queerness as a “multiplicimultiplicitous state” where identity and sexuality are in constant flux, ultimately revealing the “tensions tensions between this fluid understand[ing] of self and codified binaries.”21 Such interrogations, I believe, would not be made possible without the use of nylon, which itself is fluid. Unlike the other artworks exhibited in Tension, Schendel’s Still Waves of Probability utilizes delicate nylon thread rather than activating the material’s characteristic flexibility. A “quiet compilation”22 of barely visible threads hang effortlessly from the gallery’s ceiling, gently curling like a split-end of human hair right above the floor. While the work is not explicitly interactive, the thin strands respond to any bodily movement, swaying at the exhale of a breath or vibrating at the stomping of feet. As such, the artwork triggers a heightened awareness of our own presence in relation to the artwork. In all its material simplicity, Still Waves of Probability is perhaps most successful in triggering a multitude of intimate associations: drizzling rain, a quiet whisper, a slow rolling wave, the tingle of goose bumps. The activation of the artwork decidedly relies on the viewer’s presence, without which the nylon strands would remain static and meaningless. Thus, Schendel’s participation in Tension is such that nylon does not necessarily mimic the body, but responds to �Issue 04 The exhibition’s final sculpture Mama draws a comforting likeness to a mother’s womb. Usvitsky fills the synthetic material with a cushioned padding, rolling it into balls then structuring them in an orb-like formation. Such a repetitive process hints at the tradition of needlework, which the artist claims to have learned from her mother. 26 Playing with varying sizes and a gradient of pale flesh-tones, the sculpture is textural and organic. The repeating nylon clusters resemble patterns often found in nature, such as the geometric precision of a beehive or the biological phenomena of embryonic cell division.27 The fabric structure is suspended from the ceiling, inviting participants to stick their heads into an open cavity, where a warmth envelops the wearer from within. Mama’s title, shape, and function automatically triggers associations of pregnancy, the artist appropriately selecting a transformative material to represent “womwomen’s bodies in flux.”28 Moreover, alongside the gendered connotations of pantyhose, which the artist claims to not enjoy wearing, the fleshy structure appears distinctly female, referencing elements of female anatomy like eggs and ovaries.29 Similar to the other artworks in the exhibition, Usvitsky plays with the characteristics of nylon to consider bodies in space. Tension embodies the potential and limitations of a material in flux. The featured sculptural works explore the characteristics of nylon in its many contradictions: both transparent and opaque, delicate yet resilient, skinlike but synthetic, alluding to the human body’s many potential transformations. By invoking their surrounding architecture, these artworks also create a dialogue between body and space, ultimately questioning the ways in which our bodies expand, suppress, and interact with the world around us, like a nylon stocking being stretched, worn, then folded up or discarded at the end of a day. The exhibition’s title imagines a taut, twisted piece of nylon on the verge of tearing, an image we might also link to the human body in its many shifting physical and emotional states. Image compilation by the author featuring Ernesto Neto's just like drops of time, nothing (2002), Mira Schendel's Still Waves of Probability (1964-2014) and Katya Usvitsky's Mama (2011). Yiara | its many intimate gestures and movements. Perhaps no other artwork in the exhibition summons as many sensations as Neto’s immersive installation just like drops of time, nothing. The trickles of translucent nylon stretch from ceiling to floor, in a vast network of hovering membranes. Each droplet is weighted by a mass of aromatic powder, some hitting the floor with such force that powder spills out beneath it. A medley of smells diffuse through the pores of fabric; odes of turmeric, cloves, and paprika23 create a rich sensory environment, as inviting as a grandmother’s kitchen yet as sensual as a loved one’s fragrance. The artwork activates the human body not only in its resemblance to organic structures, but through the presence and participation of the viewer.24 The many aromatics activate the viewer’s olfactory system, invading the body and triggering rich memories and associations, ultimately creating an intimate relationship between artwork and viewer. Neto blurs the division between artwork and experience as we question: Is this installation only distinguishable by its material means? Or does the artwork persist so long as the rich smells of spice return to us? The importance of nylon in this artwork is such that the medium is not secondary to a human body, but completely constitutive of bodily experience.25 27 �Issue 04 Carolyn Ligeza Studio Arts Concordia University | Yiara Timeline, 2015 28 At birth, we are oblivious to the largeness and complexity of the world. Over time, we are exposed to an onslaught of external influences and experiences. Timeline juxtaposes individual growth and memory, a constant forward movement deeply rooted in personal history and in national history that positions women as reproductive subjects. Through her use of materials such as white bed sheets, Ligeza acknowledges the cyclical nature of the human timeline, the bed being a point of entry to and exit from this world, as well as a daily resting point. The decision to dye these red by hand speaks to subjectivity and embodiment, and reflects the colours and layout of the Polish flag. While life experiences are unique to every person, we are all unified by birth and death, by coming and going. The piece is Ligeza’s personal reflection on her life and is meant to continue forever, eventually turning into a large-scale visual representation of her own timeline, something woven and textured, like her lived experience and critically contextualized through citizenship. �Issue 04 Wings Sophie Panzer History and Sexual Diversity Studies McGill University Yiara | We change for gym together every day, and at first I noticed only the usual things: swell of breasts, jut of hips slide of jeans over thighs. But over time I’ve come to stare at shoulder blades rolling and flexing like vestigial wings, remnants of angelic ancestry delicate, likely to break into pieces at the wrong kind of touch. In my dreams I wrap my arms around her tether her otherworldly being to the earth reassure myself that she will not fly from my grasp in an hour, a day, a year after we are fired scattershot into the world full of weightless promises to stay in touch. 29 �| Yiara Issue 04 30 Sam Ectoplasm Histoire de l’art Université du Québec à Montréal Désincarnations, 2014 �Issue 04 Yiara | 31 Ectoplasm, when it comes to the paranormal, is a physical byproduct of energy, a substance externalized by the body. In her series of illustrations, the artist known as Ectoplasm opens gashes on the page from which spill fragmented body parts and organic matter. Soft, fleshy forms are connected by a network of veins and thick, live threads that suggest movement, weaving the images together. The artist creates visceral, erotic, sometimes violent representations. Her figures are female, and they open in places, not quite bleeding but oozing from their wounds in a way that evokes entanglement and affect. Interior intimacy is turned outwards and overflows the body. These pieces address how our internal lives fold into others, and show how our affects are intertwined. The paper becomes a surface on which voluptuous forms are made tactile, sensory, and connective. �Issue 04 Re-Presenting the Hero Feminist Intertextuality Through Postmodern ‘Auteur’ship in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Eli-Bella Wood | Yiara Art History and Film Studies Concordia University 32 The feminism of Quentin Tarantino’s film Kill Bill (Vol. 1 and 2) (2003, 2004)1 has been the subject of much critical and cultural debate. Ranging from a movie that represents “strong women who win with great style”2 to “aa scam for liberation”3, these controversial and opposing opinions reflect the complexity of a film that depicts oppressive patriarchy as well as feminist ‘girl power.’ I am interested in discussing the feminist sensibilities behind Tarantino’s intertextual quotations of male heroes. The character of Beatrix strategically quotes characters from action movies, as well as Spaghetti and American Westerns, and through this embodiment she brings a critique on the male and ‘mythic’ heroic codes of these established masculine genres.4 By looking at Kill Bill as a work of postmodern ‘auteur’ship, I will explore how Tarantino’s intertextual references disrupt and re-evaluate gender-coded heroism. Tarantino’s heroine Beatrix (Uma Thurman) transgresses the boundaries of gender to claim hero status through spectacular violence fueled by revenge in Vol. I, and then evolving or resolving in Vol. II to become a mother. Beatrix’s appropriation of male heroic codes counters the gendered boundaries of heroism, which have traditionally been incompatible with domesticity and motherhood. To discuss the feminist quotations achieved through Tarantino’s postmodern auteurship, we must first situate the nature and importance of his unique postmodern style of directing. Auteur theory according to André Bazin, is a response to François Truffaut’s “A Certain Tendency of French Cinema” (1954). Truffaut’s text attacked the commercial cinema’s “tradition of quality” in France, which relied on the screenwriter’s interpretation of novels. Instead, Truffaut argues for the cinema d’auteurs where the director and their personal style ‘authors’ the film autonomous from adapted literature.5 Bazin considers film an art form, in which the sum of the director’s vision and their subject amounts to a work of art, emphasizing that this work of art is realized solely through the vision of the director.6 The auteur visually guides the viewer through an expression of their perspective, “reaching reaching out both emotionally and spiritually to other human beings and/or to God, [transcending] the isolation imposed on one in a corrupt world… [whose characters] rise above the ordinary.”7 Tarantino embodies the ideals of the director, as they are written in the Cahiers du Cinéma, especially emulating the cinematic style of Jean-Luc Godard. Tarantino expresses his vision through an acute individual style, one that is highly marketable and appealing to the capitalist endeavour of director branding. This style reflects Tarantino’s own cinephilia; his movies can be viewed as an expression of his totalizing love for cinema.8 However, Tarantino crucially differentiates himself from the Cahiers and the early cinema of Godard as a postmodern auteur. Godard defines his cinema similarly to how Bazin idealizes the one-to-one ratio of artist and artwork in cinema, “[which] is not a craft. It is an art. One is always alone, on the set before a blank page, nothing could be more classically romantic.”9 �Issue 04 “ Where Beatrix’s opportunity for matriarchal domestic life is destroyed by Bill, her fight becomes the recovery of her motherhood, and her desire for the family institution. Here Godard “turn[s] turn[s] cinematic quotation into a fine art.”10 Where Godard reinvents genre through intertextual references, Tarantino self-reflexively comments on the production of a film and the inflation of the director’s status. He does this by maintaining a God-like presence in his films through commanding and weaving together clips from preexisting films. By adhering to genre conventions he simultaneously claims them. In an interview, Tarantino reiterates his ‘vision’ for Kill Bill, saying In this way, Tarantino challenges the notion of originality, by blatantly stealing and assembling ‘reels’ from other movies, which dually makes ‘the Tarantino film’ iconic through its appropriation of already iconic films, and makes films largely unviewed iconic through their appropriation. He paradoxically reminds the viewer of the “bastarbastardy” inherent in producing an original film, as it is the product of the director’s vision, attained through watching multiple films, and the assigned jobs of multiple people, counter to the claims of the Cahiers.12 Thus, the intertextuality of Kill Bill is informed by Tarantino’s postmodern approach to filmmaking through his consideration of contemporary notions of authenticity.13 If Tarantino can be described as an auteur who presents a world view of postmodernity, what does this perspective look like? And how can this postmodern perspective help us interpret the feminist intertextuality behind Kill Bill? Fredric Jameson describes the postmodern in Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) through a discussion of Van Gogh’s Shoes (1888) and Andy Warhol’s Diamond Dust Shoes (1980). Jameson separates these artworks into two cultural periods, the former being an artistic with the collapse of the high-modernist ideology of style [...] the producers of culture have nowhere to turn but to the past: the imitation of dead styles, speech through all the masks and voices stored up in the imaginary museum of a now global culture.15 The visual articulation of postmodernism as embodied by Warhol marks “the emergence of a new kind of flatness or depthlessness, a new kind of superficiality in the most literal sense.”16 However, Jameson’s dismissive definition of ‘pastiche’ fails to acknowledge its subversive effects, in which the subversion is two-fold. The placement and nature of Warhol and Tarantino’s quotations are not uninventive, nor are they an empty copy gutted of its meaning as spectacle. The ‘depthless’ worldview has self-reflexive value that is defined in Warhol’s Pop art and Tarantino’s postmodern cinema aptly described by Christopher Sharrett as “trashy, exploitive, emptyheaded culture that is media’s depiction of the era.”17 In other words, underlining the hyperbolic inflation of ‘glossy’ images is a pace and production that cynically resembles advertising. Secondly, the works of Warhol and Tarantino create “hybrid hybrid identities:”18 that is, a re-contextualization or reconceptualization of the past image. They claim it and subvert it through what Sarah Smith calls “complicitous critique,” which “provide[s] provide[s] an opportunity for the filmmakfilmmaker to position herself in relation to them.”19 Smith discusses Judith Butler’s strategy of ‘parodic repetition’ which results in the “queering (disrupting) normative categories of identity.”20 Tarantino’s Kill Bill manipulates the original texts through postmodern pastiche to ‘feminize’ the normative patriarchal hero figure in films. ‘Uma’s image,’ which is the visual signifier of her female status, pierces through Tarantino’s curated film history of gendered genres to ensure its revisualization. As Beatrix, Uma Thurman performs a ‘hybrid identity,’21 or rather a battle between the ‘feminine’ values of domesticity Yiara | I want each scene to play like it’s a reel from a different movie, all right? You take this reel from Death Rides a Horse, and this reel from Zatoichi’s Revenge and then that reel from a Shaw Brothers film. We [don’t] need one look to bring the movie together. What will bring the movie together is one voice—my voice, my personality—and Uma’s image, all right?11 ” representation of high modernism, the latter, and in his view lesser, postmodernism.14 His observations of Warhol’s artwork center around what he calls “pastiche,” which he describes: 33 �Issue 04 | Yiara and motherhood and the ‘masculine’ and violent heroism presented in Western films. Tarantino calls the viewer to relate Beatrix to two trees of genre: the action movie—the kung-fu film and the samurai film— and the Western—the Spaghetti Western and the American or Hollywood Western. In this relation, Tarantino literally places her in the boots of Blondie, as well as the set of The Searchers (1956),22 and the yellow and black ‘killer bee’ tracksuit of Bruce Lee. It is these instances where, through first person pointof-view shots, we relate most strongly to the character of Beatrix. 34 Tarantino recreates the antagonistic relationship from Sergio Leone’s film The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966)23 between Tuco (Eli Wallach) and Blondie, or the Man with No Name, (Clint Eastwood) in the characters of Budd (Michael Madsen) and The Bride (Uma Thurman) to deconstruct masculine heroism in the Spaghetti Western. In the beginning of Vol. II after Copperhead (Vernita Green) and O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) have been crossed off her list, our heroine confronts Budd at his lone trailer in a barren desert landscape, a visual cue to this the Leone reference. At this point the heroine has yet to be named, and is referred to as “The Bride,” reflecting her loss of identity through the loss of her honor, which underlines her need for redemptive revenge. Like Tuco, Budd is situated between The Bride and his brother, The Bride’s main enemy and patriarchal tormentor, Bill (David Carradine). Budd has left Bill’s side, where he is subordinate, in order to establish wealth on his own terms (which is replaced with his new subordinate condition: being a bouncer in a “titty titty bar” where he is constantly humiliated by his boss and is forced to plunge clogged toilets). Upon The Bride’s expected ‘roaring rampage of revenge,’ she blasts through the door of Budd’s trailer, Hanzo sword in hand, to find him sitting in a rocking chair with a double-barreled gun pointed at her chest, through which large pellets of rock salts send her flying backwards into the dust of the desert. Following this, Budd eloquently states, “That gentled ya down some. Ain’t nobody a badass with a double dose of rock salt that deep in their tits. Not havin’ tits as fine or big as yours, I can’t even imagine how bad that shit must sting, yet I don’t want to neither. I win.” This action of shooting the heroine in the breasts and the subsequent comment about winning highlight how The Bride is situated in a violent patriarchy. Following this, Budd injects her with tranquilizer, steals her Hanzo sword— arguably her only form of selfidentification, that of the samurai— binds her hands and feet and buries her alive.24 However, Budd, like Tuco to Blondie, gives her a chance at survival by leaving her a flashlight, and the rock salt ammo as opposed to bullets. The camera perspective switches to that of The Bride, allowing us to see Budd towering over her, staying with her once she is in the coffin. The viewer is trapped in the dark coffin with her; her survival becomes our own. Our eyes follow hers as she turns on the flashlight and surveys the edges of the coffin and the heroic soundtrack, “Ecstasy of Gold” from Leone’s film plays, a reference to the final standoff scene between the good, the bad, and the ugly. As The Bride reaches for the knife stored in her boots, the camera makes a close-up shot of her cowboy boots, which the viewer recognizes as Blondie’s cowboy boots. Along with the non-diegetic soundtrack, these boots are a reference to his heroic status that she wishes to occupy. The Bride also ‘becomes’ Blondie in the first scene of Kill Bill in both volumes. A close up shot of The (blood-spattered) Bride shows us that she is all that remains from the scene of carnage that just took place, which we see in the form of a flashback in Vol. II. Bill holds a gun to her head at close range, a shot that exactly resembles the shot in Leone’s film where Tuco torturously forces Blondie to walk in the heat of the desert without food or water, leaving him lying in the sand near death with blistered skin and shriveled lips, about to kill Blondie to finalize his revenge. While The Bride, like Blondie, survives, she is shot in the head, which triggers her revenge narrative. In this intertextual quote Tarantino compares the heroine to her male predecessor through the acts of violence enacted upon them to establish their heroism. Importantly, it is directly after The Bride “ Beatrix’s appropriation of male heroic codes counters the gendered boundaries of heroism, which have traditionally been incompatible with domesticity and motherhood. ” �Issue 04 “ As Beatrix, Uma Thurman performs a ‘hybrid identity,’ or rather a battle between the ‘feminine’ values of domesticity and motherhood and the ‘masculine’ and violent heroism presented in Western films. ” In his book From Shane to Kill Bill: Rethinking the Western (2007), Patrick McGee discusses the reincarnation of the ‘dead’ Western in Kill Bill through analysis of the intertextual reference of recreating the massacre of the family institution in The Searchers (1956) in Vol. II. Before the wedding ceremony, Beatrix, known at this time as Arlene, walks towards the entrance of the chapel and stands in the doorway looking out on the threshold, a visual representation of being on the frontier of domestic life: a barren desert landscape. This shot foreshadows the violence that allows Ethan Edwards and consequently Beatrix to embark on their journey of heroism. The shot directly quotes Martha Edwards, a mother and wife, standing in the doorway of her home on the evening before she and her family are massacred, with the exception of her daughter who is kidnapped by the Comanche.26 In this visual and narrative quotation, Tarantino draws attention to the violence toward the family and the normative convention in the Western genre of being freed from the domestic ties of family through violence. This tradition of ‘heroic’ violence disrupting the domestic is furthered in the violent upbringing of O-Ren, whose parents were murdered while she hid under the bed, or the knife battle scene which took place on the set of the suburban home and lead to the death of Copperhead in front of her own daughter. Beatrix’s quest, however, being compromised by the discovery of her daughter, differs from that of Ethan’s. Ethan “unconsciously desires the destruction of his brother’s family so that he can expropriate his wealth,” which is comparable to the violent acts of Bill who “consciously kills the family and friends of the Bride in order to expropriate her future.”27 Where Beatrix’s opportunity for matriarchal domestic life is destroyed by Bill, her fight becomes the recovery of her motherhood, and her desire for the family institution. Her conflict is the inverse of Ethan’s, which serves as a critique of his masculine heroism. By the end of the film, Beatrix, now Mommy, embodies the violent patriarchal qualities of the hero which, in the conventions of the Western genre, prove damaging and incompatible with the domestic sphere and the notion of a loving nurturing mother. In turn, Tarantino critiques these gendered restrictions of heroism through his use of spectacular hyperbolic violence. Tarantino also feminizes the Western genre and the already ‘bastardized’ Spaghetti Western genre through postmodern quotation: Beatrix is now level to Tarantino’s preferred iconic male heroes, while her embodiment of these figures challenges their patriarchal privilege. By making Beatrix a hero and a mother, or a hero fighting to become a mother, ‘Uma’s image’ overcomes the violent conventions of the patriarchy, engaging in a violence that is maternal and feminist in its necessity. Yiara | digs herself out of her own grave, defying death for the second time, that she reclaims her name: Beatrix. This shift is a reflection of her redemptive progress from an assassin, who unjustly killed as the Black Mamba, to ex-assassin, wife and mother-to-be Arlene Machiavelli, to the revenge-seeking samurai Bride, to the discovery of her daughter and compromise of her quest as Beatrix Kiddo (her birth name), and to her final identity as Mommy when her compromised quest is completed and she is reunited with her child. The Bride’s embodiment of Leone’s hero in this scene and Tarantino’s fondness for Leone’s films are crucial to the reading of Kill Bill. His Dollars Trilogy was heavily criticized upon its release due to its Italian ‘bastardization’ and ‘revision’ of the uniquely American genre. It has been interpreted as an “existenexistential threat” to the noble hero of the cowboy through its seemingly unjustified grittily realistic and cynical violence.25 Tarantino does something similar through quotation in Kill Bill. Yet, instead of cynicism, I argue that the violence innate to heroism is aesthetically hyperbolic. It allows the viewer to become desensitized to violence and to look at it objectively. Tarantino’s excess of violence calls attention to its inseparable relation to and constitution of male-coded heroism, which is further explored in quoting The Searchers. 35 �Issue 04 Flos | Yiara Tout est décuplé par ma décontextualisation. Je n’ai rien d’autre à penser: mon corps et créer. Je refuse d’être passive. Je veux bouger, créer, faire. Je veux faire l’image. Je veux créer ma propre image. Mon image de femme. Je prendrai ce qu’on m’impose et je le transformerai. Propositions qui sont impositions. Cadrer le hors-cadre. Décaler. Juste à côté, vivre. Choisir ce qui reste sur la ligne de cet espace. Si je crée des images de moi, de mon corps, elles engageront non seulement la création d’une façade, que tout le bouillonnement qui le précède. Elles m’engagent à moi, mais surtout aux autres. Elles ne sont ni neutres, ni naïves. 36 Comme si le fait de me traduire par écrit me permettait un nouveau regard sur la personne que je suis. Je n’ai plus besoin de réfléchir aux émotions, d’essayer de les comprendre, elles jaillissent subitement de mon esprit et s’inscrivent dans un temps qui est mien. Comme disait Francesca Woodman : «Il y a le papier et puis il y a la personne.» En m’observant sur photo, je me découvre, moi si pudique, si mal à l’aise, et à la fois belle et délicate dans un décor où je prends place, où je prends vie. Personne ne peut voir ce que je vois, personne ne peut voir le regard que je renvoie de ma propre image. L’impact de ce reflet est direct, est poignant. Je sais ce que je suis, je sais ce que je voie. Le réel me piège parfois. Avancer ou reculer. Ce que je possède me terrorise, me stoppe dans une course contre ce que je voudrais être et ce que je suis vraiment. Il y a le vide et le plein. Je suis pleine et je remplis. Je suis grande. Quelque chose qui tourne en rond, mais qui ne se répète jamais. Unique et surprenante. Le portrait d’une réputation, d’une idée qui ne voudrait pas s’effacer. L’orgueil qui m’habite me freine dans un élan bien présent et m’empêche cette résolution de plonger dans le vrai. Je suis fascinée par ce revers de situation, les choses changent trop vite. Marie-Michèle Beaudoin Arts visuels et médiatiques Université du Québec à Montréal Joëlle Déry Profil Jeu - Conservatoire d’art dramatique de Québec �Issue 04 Je pose mon sac. Me déshabille, retire chaque vêtement. Je guette l’horizon. Je suis nue. �Issue 04 Les traces laissées par le soleil sont visibles, on sent sur ma peau une présence, un camouflage. Pourtant, je suis nue. Je fixe mon regard au ciel, me plonge dans mes pensées et me laisse photographier. Je suis, à ce moment précis, une image. Droite, figée. Mon corps plat est coincé dans ce petit espace choisi. Plus j’y suis coincée, plus ma tête explose et déborde. Elle libère l’énergie accumulée, prise au piège par le manque de temps et la paresse. Je suis là couchée, je suis à cet instant une imparfaite de la nature. Du moins, c’est ce que l’on tente de me faire croire. Me voir, me voir avec mes yeux. Des yeux nouveaux. Les yeux du nous qui dirigent la caméra. �Issue 04 Les pieds complètement gelés, je ne sens plus rien. Je me déplace lentement d’une roche à l’autre, tentant de protéger l’appareil que je transporte. Capter l’espace, sentir l’espace, faire corps avec lui et le laisser me transpercer. Je ne suis pas touriste, je fais partie du monde. J’aime avoir le sentiment que je joue avec la nature, qu’elle m’appartient comme je lui appartiens. La magie opère, je me sens pleine de vie. Je me sens grande, enfin. Je retrouve le sentiment, l’impression de l’enfance, je n’ai ni pudeur, ni barrière. Seuls les passants brisent ce sentiment que nous avons créé. Je l’ai déjà écrit, je le pense : jouer avec la nature, c’est créer, c’est salir. Se salir, c’est créer. Le mouvement, est le point de départ de tout. �Issue 04 L’histoire de mon amie: Partie 1 Fanny Basque Photographie Université Concordia (Personne 1) Tu sais que ma mère habite dans le Nord? Ben quand j’avais 16 ans, j’t’allée là-bas pour vivre avec elle pendant un été, pis hm, j’étais vraiment comme... Pas... T’sais je venais de finir la high school, pis je m’ennuyais à fond chez elle. J’étais vraiment toute seule à la campagne. J’avais rien à faire. J’étais super naïve. Pis y avait comme un... J’veux pas dire un gars, parce qu’il avait comme trente ans t’sais? (Personne 2) Un homme...? | Yiara (Personne 1) 40 Mais messemble qu’un homme c’est pas comme... Pour moi un homme, c’est comme un compliment... C’était comme mon ami. Parce que t’sais, j’avais pas beaucoup d’amies... Ben j’avais des amies mais elles étaient pas là, dans le Nord. Pis hm, je m’ennuyais. Il avait commencé à me dire, ah si tu veux, viens avec moi, j’vais te montrer tel paysage! Ou on va aller faire telle hike! Ou on va aller faire telle affaire! Moi j’étais tout le temps down! Premièrement parce que j’étais touchée que quelqu’un de trente ans s’intéresse à moi! (Rires) Parce que, j’avais 16 ans pis j’me trouvais comme, pas intéressante du tout! Pis j’pense que j’avais peut-être un p’tit kick au début... T’sais lui y avait une femme pis des enfants. Alors c’était juste comme un fan girl crush! J’me disais, il est trop gentil, il m’amène faire des trucs! J’aime ça! Pis ouain, ma mère, j’y pense desfois pis j’me dis qu’elle aurait dû dire quelque chose, mais... Parce qu’on était tout l’temps ensemble, t’sais! Pis au dernier mois de l’été, c’était rendu qu’à chaque jour, il venait chez nous, ben chez ma mère là. Ça commençait à me mettre mal à l’aise parce que, parce que je... Je voulais comme, pas passer autant de temps avec? Je trouvais ça bizarre pis je voulais pas que ma mère trouve ça bizarre aussi. Dans ma tête, là, c’était un bon gars! C’était genre le père de famille! Wow! C’est tellement une bonne personne! Il aime les chevaux, il a un cheval, c’est une bonne personne. Pis hm... On est allé dans le bois faire une hike, pis on était vraiment isolés, pis c’était vraiment loin, dans le bois. Je partais dans comme deux, trois semaines, pour revenir en ville... Pis hm, il m’avait comme pris et il m’avait embrassé. Il était comme, j’ai pas envie que tu partes! Moi je voulais pas vraiment... Mais j’pense que... Je savais pas comment l’exprimer t’sais? J’étais vraiment pas... T’sais je me sens hypocrite de te raconter cette histoire là, parce que maintenant je sais qu’on est toute les deux, yay! Feminism! Men suck... Mais à ce moment là, je savais rien de ça et dans ma tête, je pensais que c’était ce qu’on s’attendait de moi, c’était de rien faire. Alors quand il m’avait embrassé, j’avais genre, rien faite... Pis là hm, je savais pas quoi faire. J’étais en état de panique mais je sais pas, il avait pas l’air de s’en rendre compte que j’étais pas, euh... allo!? Pis là y avait comme une table de piquenique, pis il m’avait assis sur la table, pis y a juste comme... Ça s’est passé super vite! Pis je pense que t’sais, j’ai dit que j’étais pas confortable mais je pense que c’était pas... Hm... C’était pas de la façon que je l’aurais dit maintenant, t’sais? Maintenant c’aurait été une claque dans la face! (Rires) Mais j’étais plus jeune, pis je savais pas. Et il a juste enfilé un condom pis il m’a fourré sur la table de pique- nique... Moi j’ai pas trouvé ça nice, parce que j’avais jamais eu d’expérience sexuelle. Dans ma tête je l’avais tellement idéalisé et le fait qu’il fasse ça... En même temps, je pense que je réfléchissais pas de la même manière à cette époque-là et dans ma tête j’me disais, c’est correcte, t’sais, c’est moi, c’est moi qui la lead on, pis là, maintenant c’est ton lit, c’est toi qui va devoir dormir dedans. C’est toi qui a faite ça, maintenant t’es obligée de coucher avec à chaque fois qu’il veut... C’est dur de dire ça maintenant t’sais parce que c’est con. Mais après c’te fois-là, j’étais revenue à la maison pis... Ce qui m’étonne en plus, c’est que ma mère ne se doutait de rien, fuck all! Elle me disait, je suis tellement contente qu’il t’amène faire des trucs! Quand je suis revenue ce soir là, elle m’a dit, ah! Une chance que tu l’as, lui, hein, pour te montrer des choses! Parce que moi je suis tellement occupée! Et là il continuait tout l’temps de venir à la maison et je savais pas quoi faire parce que moi, je voulais pus y aller avec lui. Et je voulais pas, je voulais pus t’sais, je voulais pas... Et il inventait tout l’temps des affaires comme... Ah! On va aller dans un chalet dans le bois, on va aller là... Pis get it on! ... Je savais pas... Dès que je sortais de la maison et que j’embarquais dans son char, j’avais pus vraiment le choix. J’me sentais comme, si je disais non et que je restais à la maison, là ça se saurait que... T’sais fallait que je fasse comme si de rien n’était parce que j’voulais pas que ma mère le sache. Dans ma tête c’était de ma faute pis �Issue 04 j’avais vraiment honte. Je voulais pas être la homebreaker, parce que j’ai genre séduit... Y a deux, trois personnes qui le savent et qui pensent que c’était pas tant de ma faute. Non mais c’est dur quand ça t’arrive... J’ai repensé à toutes les affaires que je faisais. Un moment donné j’me rappelle, j’étais tellement contente qu’il m’amène faire des trucs que je lui avais fait des biscuits! Après ça j’arrêtais pas d’y repenser et je me disais, j’aurais pas dû lui faire des biscuits, là! Ça voulait dire que je voulais coucher avec! (Rires) Mais ça ne veut pas dire ça... C’était pas du safe sex, alors j’ai eu peur pendant longtemps. Quand t’as jamais eu d’expérience sexuelle tu sais pas à quoi t’attendre. J’ai encore peur que ça sorte, j’ai peur que ma mère le sache. Je sais que ça y ferait fucking de la peine parce que... Parce que... Ma mère est vraiment naïve là. Je pense que le fait que ça se soit passé en dessous de son nez ça y ferait vraiment de la peine. Et je voudrais pas qu’elle le dise à son chum et qu’il lui parle. Ça ne me tente pas. Ça ne me tente juste pus de le voir, jamais. En même temps je sais que, si je le confrontais, je sais ce qu’il se dirait, dans sa tête, que moi j’le voulais. Et je pense que même maintenant il pense comme ça. Et je pense que si je lui disais Ay! c’était fucking pas consensual, il me dirait mais non là, arrête de mettre le blâme sur moi! Do I really want to go through with that? No, I just don’t wanna talk to him anymore... T’sais je me sens mal parce qu’il a une femme pis des enfants. J’me sens mal pour ses enfants! Je voudrais pas fuck up sa vie. Je veux pas fuck up son mariage! C’est con, je devrais pas avoir peur de ça mais... C’est pas que j’suis fâchée, autant qu’il me dégoûte! J’ai pas envie d’interagir avec. Ça me fait chier que toute le monde pense encore que c’est un bon gars. C’est ça qui me fait chier le plus. T’sais, ma mère pis son chum, continuent de me dire, ah! c’est tellement une bonne personne Antoine*, là... *Ce nom fut modifié par soucis d’anonymat afin d’être publié. De plus, l’auteure détient le consentement de toutes les participantes qui ont pris part à son projet./This name has been changed for the purpose of publication. Furthermore, the author has obtained consent from all the participants who contributed to this piece. Yiara | j’étais guilty d’avoir seduce cet homme là qui était marié, qui avait des enfants. Fait que ça s’est passé pendant les deux dernières semaines que j’étais chez ma mère. C’était fucking pas nice. C’était juste moi qui go along with it. Je pense que, ouain, j’ai vraiment réussi à ne pas avoir d’émotions pendant toute ce temps là. Pis j’me rappelle que quand ça arrivait, j’étais juste pas là, j’essayais de ne pas être là. Puis après ça j’suis partie. J’étais fucking contente de ne plus être là-bas. Je me rappelle que je suis revenue en ville. Je venais de commencer le cégep et mes amies m’ont toutes demandé comment s’était passé mon été... Je voulais leur dire mais je voulais pas leur dire en même temps. C’était honteux, t’sais, d’avoir faite ça. Alors je leur avais dit que j’avais rencontré quelqu’un là-bas et que cette personne là avait mon âge, qu’on s’aimait full! (rires) Parce que je voulais pas leur dire la vraie affaire! Il a commencé à m’envoyer des emails, quand je suis revenue à Montréal. Il m’écrivait ah! Je vais descendre à Montréal, je vais nous louer un hôtel, tout ce que tu veux! J’ai arrêté de répondre à ses messages parce que je savais pas quoi faire là. Je me disais I can’t deal with this! Là, ses messages sont devenus haineux. C’est sûr là... Lui, il pensait qu’il l’avait toute de setté son affaire! Je suis retournée chez ma mère cet hiver là. Je... J’avais un chum, je pense, et je restais avec ma mère tout le temps. J’étais comme un petit enfant. Peu importe où elle allait dans la grange, dans la maison, je restais avec elle parce que je voulais pas être prise toute seule avec lui. Finalement on s’en ai juste jamais reparlé. T’sais, il passe pus souvent là, parce que je sais pus... Il travaille pus avec le chum à ma mère... Mais un moment donné j’ai répondu au téléphone et c’était lui qui appelait, je pense qu’il a voulu dire quelque chose, mais j’étais comme, non! C’est bizarre parce que ça s’est jamais réglé. Je lui en ai jamais parlé. Puis maintenant je suis vraiment en tabarnak contre lui! Maintenant je sais que c’était fucking pas nice! C’était pas ce que je voulais! T’sais t’as comme trente ans, là, tu prends pas ce genre de décision-là! C’est plate parce que chez ma mère c’est tellement idyllique pour moi, c’est un endroit, hm, comme, vraiment beau... Et j’ai tout l’temps eu peur de le dire à ma mère, pour ne pas briser ça. Je pense que ça y ferait vraiment de la peine. Pendant vraiment longtemps je l’ai pas dit à personne parce que 41 �| Yiara Issue 04 42 �Issue 04 Photography Concordia University Alleged Moral Ambiguity, 2016 In their series of diptychs, LeDor engages with the word “whore” to confront the way gendered terminology is systematically employed to degrade women and strip them of their social and political power. This word is especially significant because of its historical context as a term used in anti-sex work discourse and slut-shaming. While the first image of every pair shows a woman somehow on display and labeled by the word “whore,” the second image shows the woman claiming agency over her pose and her sexuality, subverting the term and reclaiming it in an act of empowerment and nonviolent rebellion. Each diptych reflects on a different group or institution that oppresses women, from the criminal justice system to the fashion industry, underscoring the insidious nature of institutionalized sexism. Yiara | LeDor 43 �| Yiara Issue 04 44 �Issue 04 Yiara | 45 �Issue 04 “L ET ’ S T RY D OING L ESBIAN F EMINIST E VERYTHING F ROM N OW O N ” Hannah Karpinski in conversation with Allyson Mitchell | Yiara Allyson Mitchell is a maximalist artist who works in the mediums of sculpture, installation, performance, and film, often using found materials like abandoned textiles. She is an Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at York University. I met with her in her bright home in Parkdale, Toronto, where she lives with her partner and co-founder of the Feminist Art Gallery, Deirdre Logue, as well as their four cats. 46 HK: Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me today. So, to jump right into it, I think that Turbo Chicks, your collection of young women’s writing that you co-edited in 2001, was an important publication for third-wave feminism. Where do you think feminism is today? Do you think there’s a “fourth wave,” or is the wave metaphor problematic? Are there new generations of feminisms? AM: I always felt ambivalent about the idea of a third wave, although it’s sometimes useful to use that language. There isn’t a clean and tidy division between generations. Many viewpoints of how to go about making social change, especially in relation to gender or through gender, exist in all time periods. There are people who are of varying ages who are really into rights-based, law-related, what we call “liberal feminism” or “first position” or “first-wave.” At the same time there are people who are eighty and people who are twenty who are radical feminists, “secondwave,” “second position.” So I really think that those things exist multiply and always have simultaneously. Turbo Chicks was initiated out of a frustration with what I was hearing in the ‘90s from “older feminists” about young women being apathetic or not identifying as feminists—it’s the same thing I hear all the time now, which is so infuriating and so demoralizing, and also not true. It makes invisible the work being done by young women, or young people. Allyson Mitchell and Douglas. Image courtesy of Hannah Karpinski. �Issue 04 HK: Totally, I agree. A lot of young women refuse to identify with feminism. AM: And there are lots who do. The problem can be with the definition or misunderstandings about what feminism is and can be, and even a disassociation with what feminism has been and failed to be. So there have been times when I’ve been really interested in thinking about the idea of waves, but then other times where it’s like, “I’m tired of thinking about that.” I just want to get on with the work and do it. So I think that in some ways there is kind of a “fourth wave,” which would be a nuancing of third position feminism to be more nimble and to shift with the demands of politics around changing ideas about bodies and gender and race and class. I also think that there were people who, if you figured out what you would fit under fourth-wave or fourth position, were practicing that in the 1920s, or the 1800s and back. It doesn’t work chronologically. HK: Nonlinear feminism. Fantastic. I wonder how your activism spills into institutional spaces? For example, you are a co-founder of the FAG, which was the “artist” in residence at the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario) last year. Do you think there is hope for queering mainstream gallery space in Canada? I feel like there’s still not enough room in those spaces for queer, alternative art. HK: That’s awesome. AM: While we were in residence we also hung our banners, which are the FAG mantra. They say, “We Can’t Compete,” “We Won’t Compete,” “We Can’t Keep Up,” “We Won’t Keep Down.” It was really exciting to have that work in the gallery, but at the same time those banners are made for protest. Do they do the same thing within the hallowed halls of a museum? Are they interrupting anything or are they being usurped and suppressed and assimilated into the normative politics? Rather than queering mainstream galleries, I worry about mainstreaming queerness. I think both things are happening at the same time. There are costs and “benefits” of having access to that kind of space and legitimization, and it’s very important to bring other people along with you when you have that kind of access. That’s why we also hosted a party for the launch of two feminist zines: Boner Kill and Theory Boner. It is bittersweet. The challenge of nurturing and supporting feminist and queer and politicized art is not simply so that it ends up on a marble plinth in a museum and becomes part of a…what’s the word? HK: A canon? AM: Where it becomes part of the canon and then…does it lose its politics and its potential? Or does it gain in potential by having more people know about it? Do emerging queer and feminist artists gain selfesteem through their public engagement with the institution? Or does the art just become ironic? Yiara | AM: Institutions are just buildings full of people, right? And there are always people within those buildings who want to ensure that queer and feminist work can be seen by large groups of people in order to tell different stories. But at the same time, I know that there are great structural powers that work to keep out diverse stories told through art. Also, when and if those stories do get told, I do wonder about the cost of colluding with the institution and its histories. For example, when FAG was in residence at the AGO, it was a hybrid endeavour where Deirdre and I were making some of our own work and also programming activities that would bring in the public to talk and think through feminism and feminist art. So, we hosted a Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon, where people were taught how to do Wikipedia—which is really hard—to try to answer back to some of that structural stuff because we know that there are big gendered and racialized holes in the representation of artists on Wikipedia. We also hosted a table tennis event in the big, central atrium (Walker Court), where we had snacks and talked about feminist art and writing while we were whacking a ball back and forth. 47 �| Yiara Photo credits: Cat O’Neil Issue 04 48 Allyson Mitchell. Ladies Sasquatch. 2006-2010. Image reproduced with permission from and courtesy of artist. HK: Well, do you find that your work functions differ- ently in different spaces? For example, your “soft spaces,” your huge textile creations—do you find that they function differently depending on where you’ve installed them? AM: Yeah! [Hungry Purse] has been installed in a few different places, including the Textile Museum of Canada, which was cool because it’s called, Hungry Purse: The Vagina Dentata in Late Capitalism, and it was right beside the hands-on—you know, like most museums have those kids spaces? To get to it, kids had to go through the Hungry Purse. [We laugh.] So it was like, having to actually deal with the body. It’s a nice way of asserting politicized bodies in an institutional space. It was very interesting and there were, of course, concerns and conversations. A similar installation called Menstrual Hut Sweet Menstrual Hut also showed at Union Gallery, the student gallery at Queen’s University. And it was amazing because students would come with their computers at lunchtime and hang out and work in the space. So it was very different than the cold way that people usually experience art at a distance as opposed to becoming a part of it, having it touch them and them touch it. I love that. So, yeah, it does function differently in different places. HK: Talking about Queen’s University, I read in an inter- view that you did for a Queen’s publication that you like for your work to “walk the line” between humour and horror. Humour is such an excellent tool in subverting patriarchy. Could you speak to the relationship between those two elements in your work? I know especially that KillJoy’s Kastle was— AM: The epitome of trying to play with horror! Having people laugh is an indicator that, in some way, this thing that you have tried to give to other people is being received. When you’re trying to make politicized work in whatever medium, you need to know—I need to know, anyway—is it working? Do people get it? For me, humour works in some ways to make that happen. And also humour works as a way to soften a message so that it can be received. It can make people feel at ease, in a way, or feel smart, like they’re “getting” the joke. I think art, feminist theory…these things in particular can be scary for people if you don’t have literacy about them. And it’s also, like… I want to have a good time. And not at the cost of politics, not in a “non-serious” way. I want to have serious fun. [We laugh.] HK: Exactly, and that’s what I got from KillJoy’s Kastle, which also seemed to be about “resurrecting” the lesbian. I find that people often choose the term “queer” over “lesbian,” and lesbianism has kind of been “absorbed,” almost, by queerness. Even I sometimes catch myself identifying as queer rather than lesbian. AM: Yeah, I do too. And I do both, too. It depends on the context, and sometimes you’re more lesbian than queer and sometimes lesbian feels more normative than queer, and that doesn’t fit you. And sometimes queer feels less politicized because it’s not as direct. It depends on the context. You can have both. HK: I feel like some people find the term “lesbian” really intense. AM: That’s why I like to use it. [We laugh.] HK: Yeah! I’m trying to make a point of owning my lesbianism. �Issue 04 AM: Exactly! Exactly, me too. HK: Is there anything else you could speak to about this kind of absorption of lesbianism into queerness, or about resurrecting the lesbian? AM: I don’t know if the haunted house was only about resurrecting the lesbian. It was meant more to be this question that I could ask of a politic and a history. In order to do this I used the platform of the hell house, which I learned about through a documentary on Evangelical Christian haunted houses, called Hell House. It’s amazing. I was so intrigued by the theatre and production of the hell house as a method, because it uses community-based art, so you have to have a bunch of people get together and make something together. It’s crafty. You have visual and audio components, you have a script, you have actors, and people are investing in it. So, stealing that for my culture, then asking the question, “What is scary?” Who would be scared inside of a lesbian feminist haunted house, and what would be scary inside it? This haunted house thing is trying to work through the complexities of some of the monstrosity that is projected onto queer bodies, lesbian bodies, bodies that are feminized, and playing with easy go-to pop culture monster tropes like the Frankenstein, the vampire, the swamp monster, and then performing them through feminist historical places. So, there’s a graveyard full of ghosts, but it’s actually a graveyard of dead lesbian feminist organizations, not of patriarchs. The zombies are lesbian zombie folk singers—the undead spirits of womyn’s music from the 1970s and 80s and the recently deceased Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. I guess there was a séance-ish quality to it around resurrecting lesbian histories, but hopefully in a way that’s using the campy medium of the haunted house and the hell house to do it. my dad remembers the balls that hang off the backs of pickup trucks— AM: Truck nutz! HK: Exactly, and the smashing of those— AM: [Laughs.] Which ended up being very controversial. There were butch dykes smashing plaster castings of the truck nutz, and a Women’s Studies professor tour guide explained that these objects are symbolic of the ways that white supremacy and patriarchy combine in ways that are very difficult to separate. Some people read the smashing as potentially transmisogynist but it was meant to be cathartic rather than threatening. KillJoy’s Kastle was meant to be a site of conversation around these histories and ghosts and monsters… I tried to balance it: the monstrosities that are put upon lesbian bodies and queer bodies, but also the monstrous acts of some lesbians and feminists that would be essentializing or hurtful to other people. The haunted house is satire. Satire is meant to stir a pot and reflect back the culture in a wonky way—with critique. HK: Right. You were talking about community-based art, and KillJoy’s Kastle was largely community-based, too. I read your article on Judy Chicago, DIY (Do It Yourself) art, and DICK (Do It with Community Knowledge). And I think that’s so great, because it’s exactly what Yiara’s doing, and what so much of the university art scene is. I just wanted to talk about that a little, your idea that “culture isn’t just ours for the taking but ours for the making.” It’s the idea behind a lot of your work, with your found materials, scouring Value Villages… Could you speak about DICK and the role of community in the production of art? AM: DIY can be reduced to a kind of individualistic, almost neoliberalist idea…and I think we use that term to identify a kind of aesthetic. DIY gets used in a lot of different ways, but it’s more interesting to think about how something gets done with a group of people rather than by some individual genius, right? Because very little actually happens that way. realize your art and cultural production? AM: I rely on people who have known and trusted me and loved me for many, many years, and I also rely on people who are just getting to know me and who are looking for their own voice, and are looking for a way into queer arts communities. So I often end up working with lots of graduate students, formally and informally. I often work with friends and people whom I’ve been working with forever, and my family. My mom and dad are often called in. My dad lent me his truck the whole time we were doing the haunted house in Toronto. My parents (and their dog, Phoebe) have helped in some way with almost every project I have worked on. When I was doing the haunted house in Toronto I was also teaching a course on feminist cultural production, so there were many really awesome graduate students that I was working with, like Jenna Danchuk and Gary Lee Pelletier and Toby Wiggins and Juli Rivera and Ela Przybylo and Naomi de Szegheo-Lang and Tamara de Szegheo-Lang. At the time, we were just getting to know each other through a reading group at York, and many of them helped with the installation. Also, I had the trust and support of the Art Gallery of York University. The entire staff had a hand in helping to pull off the haunted house. So it’s a group effort—new and old, institutional and queer, and biological and chosen. HK: It seems like your identities as an activist, artist, and professor all merge into one in this collaboration. AM: Yeah, they’re totally inseparable—for me. And there were times when I kept the art more separate from my teaching when I hadn’t really found my voice or had enough experience that I felt secure in using it as a tool to teach with. But now there’s no separation between any of it. HK: Are you ever afraid that your art will be commodified? AM: Yes. And I’ve had the opportunity to commodify it and declined in the past. I was asked by a credit card company if they could hire me to do a Deep Lez sculptural project that would exist in a few different cities in Canada, and I would be paid for it. Can you imagine if you saw a sculpture that said “Deep Lez, by [insert credit card name here].” HK: No, not at all. AM: Break your heart, right? So that kind of commercialization…but also the Deep Lez thing is interesting because I started talking about it a really long time ago, and I see it pop up in different places. And it’s not been commodified in the way that, like, American Apparel has a Deep Lez t-shirt, but I could see it potentially happening. I’ve never trademarked it. I don’t want to own it. So there’s a whole other issue around things like copyright and inspiration, inspiring other people. We exist in a kind of zeitgeist where we have similar interests or get excited by each other’s ideas, and sometimes you don’t even realize that you are replicating something, or you get excited about something and you just do it, and then it’s like…oh, I actually heard that yesterday, and you said it. On the other hand, as a queer feminist artist in Canada, in my experience, I haven’t had to worry very much about my work being commodified in the way that people buy it…because they don’t. I’m not really collected by institutions, my work does not sit in the National Gallery of Canada, nobody has ever purchased any large sculpture…it doesn’t sell in that way. I mean, friends have bought small pieces here and there but queer artists don’t have to worry too much about becoming part of the canon, I suppose. HK: To talk about your sculptures—I’m interested in the return of the Ladies Sasquatch in your art. I know they are an older project, but I remember them reappearing in KillJoy’s Kastle. Why are the Sasquatches so important to you? AM: Ladies Sasquatch was a body of work that came out of the fat Yiara | HK: Yeah. I was just speaking about it with my family, and HK: Well, what communities do you rely on in order to 49 �| Yiara Issue 04 activism that I did for many years with Pretty Porky & Pissed Off. In the ‘90s we were doing zines and stickers and buttons, and agitprop politic stuff. Looking in magazines for images to use, we would never see images of fat people. Maybe in a “before” ad for a diet, or something. Now I think there are a few more fat people in magazines, but back then, the one place where we did find sexy images of fat people was in Playboy Magazine. So I started playing with that imagery and made two-dimensional sculptural pieces with fat, voluptuous, feminized bodies using fake fur. Then I started making three-dimensional sculptures, making giant, fuzzy monster ladies. That morphed into adding more hair, to creating half-beast, half-human figures. And also giving them fangs and snouts…I didn’t necessarily have this language at the time—it was very intuitive when I was working on it—but now I can look back and see that it was this progression of trying to find ways to represent other ways of being embodied, trying to think about what gender and sexuality look like outside of culture. HK: How big are the Sasquatches? 50 AM: Well, I’ve never seen an actual Sasquatch but I’ve done some re- search and apparently they are between 7.5 and 10 feet tall, so the sculptures all range within that height. A Sasquatch is a mythological creature that some people have witnessed in the wild, but it also exists largely—especially in the ways that I’ve accessed it— in popular culture rather than through traditional Native cultures where there are multiple meanings and names attached to the figure of the Sasquatch. In popular culture (which is not separable from Native culture) the sasquatch can be interpreted as standing for the fear of the racialized other, the fear of women’s bodies, the fear of the wild, of nature, which women’s bodies are often associated with, as opposed to culture. So the Sasquatch stood as this very interesting figure to think through the social construction of gender/race/sexuality. When the sculptures are installed in a museum or gallery, they are on a platform, in a circle, around a fire, and it looks like some sort of sacred ritual has just happened or is about to happen. The viewer walks around this undulating platform and becomes physically implicated in this circle. The didactic in the museum says, “These are lesbian feminist Sasquatches” (among other things). When the exhibition toured across Canada I learned a lot about the implications of naming art as queer. I would go and install the exhibition and do an artist talk, and at every museum where the work exhibited I had to have intense conversations with somebody who worked there about whether there should be a didactic on the wall that said: WARNING, adult content, or, WARNING, sexual content. I would ask, “What exactly about this is adult? What about this is sexual?” They are not performing any kind of sex acts. They all have engorged genitalia, they have multiple teats, they don’t have breasts… I think that their being proclaimed as “lesbian, feminist” caused a problem for some people. This “problem” was actually a lot of the impetus for doing the haunted house. I was like, “If these half-human, half-animal beasts that I’m naming as lesbian feminists freak you out so much, then let’s try doing lesbian feminist everything from now on.” HK: Yeah! I think that’s a great way of subverting people’s expectations of feminism and femininity. AM: Asking people to name what the thing is that they think they need to warn people about makes them say, if they can, that they don’t want kids seeing lesbian bodies, that they don’t want kids seeing feminist bodies, or that the lesbian is always already sexualized and so therefore children shouldn’t see it. It’s so fucked up, right? HK: I feel like kids would love the Ladies Sasquatch . They’re so tactile. AM: Kids do love them! I really love that thing that pushes against the soft spot in our culture that is proposing to be liberal and open and non-discriminating, but we know it actually isn’t. Some bureaucrat in a museum is stomping their foot, saying, “Children shouldn’t see this!” and I’m wide-eyed and open-eared, replying, “Tell me why children shouldn’t see this. Because I don’t understand. Explain it to me.” And then they have to either say the horrific, hateful thing or pretend that it’s not happening. It is fascinating when you can push through that false veneer of acceptance. That is a gift. HK: You were talking about how you did a lot of fat ac- tivism in the past tense, and I was wondering if there are themes in your work, or subjects that you’ve departed from. How has your art reflected the way that your politics have transformed? Are there themes that you keep going back to? AM: Well, definitely the body. Abject, fear, sadness…even though it’s funny, there’s often a deep sense of dealing with difficult emotions that can be about sadness or depression or isolation. HK: Would you say that those are affects that you address in your work? AM: Yeah! I think that can be confusing because the colour of the work can feel very celebratory and exciting, and candy-coloured and sweet. But the message is often much more depressing than that. HK: You collaborated with affect theorist Ann Cvetkovich on her book, Depression: A Public Feeling. I feel like we are in an era of mainstreaming emotion—everyone is talking about their feelings. Definitely in Montréal I see a lot of young artists addressing affect and emotion. Do you see any articulation between the political dimensions and the affective dimensions of your art? AM: I don’t think that they are separable. I think that feelings are political. Looking at feeling and affect as a new thing is exciting in a way, although I think that people have been doing it for a really long time. �Photo credits: Deirdre Logue Issue 04 Deirdre Logue & Allyson Mitchell. KillJoy’s Kastle: A Lesbian Feminist Haunted House. 2015. Image reproduced with permission from and courtesy of artist. HK: Could you elaborate on the affects that you address in your work? AM: Well, I’ve called the haunted house an “Affect Factory.” A haunted house, whether it’s a lesbian feminist haunted house, or a white patriarchy haunted house, is about creating affect. You shriek, you laugh with your friends, you worry about even walking up to the cashier at the front to pay, and you want it to be over… With KillJoy’s Kastle, the lineup was its own affect factory, where people were meeting each other and waiting. People waited sometimes three hours to get into the haunted house, so they were cold, they were mad, they were excited, they were wondering whether it was worth it…they are in public, they are outside… In the haunted house in Toronto, they went through “The Marvelous Emasculator,” which was the ultimate affect generator and it was the thing that was most like a real haunted house. When I did research for the haunted house, I went to Niagara Falls and into a bunch of “real,” commercial haunted houses. I learned really quickly what is scary about those things and it is not what you can see but what you can’t see. You go in and it’s pitch dark, you’re feeling your way along, and then somebody says something right by your head. So “The Marvelous Emasculator” was perfectly dark. Inside the space there was a super creepy sound piece and it was very cacophonous. All the walls were covered in beautiful tiedyed, black fabric. Something that I learned from doing Hungry Purse is that all of that textile absorbs the sounds, pulls it in, makes it weird… it’s womb-like. I don’t remember what that feels like, but… [We laugh.] That’s what I imagine. And then at the end of the dark tunnel there is a Wizard of Oz-type video projection of a person (Chris Crocker) who is crying for the treatment of Britney Spears, which seems ridiculous and campy, but it’s very beautiful that this person, this human being is… HK: Feeling so much. AM: Feeling so much! That they cannot stand it that anyone would treat this person badly. And their gender is queer and they’re emasculated and it’s a beautiful thing. So “The Marvelous Emasculator” is not meant to be this thing that’s like, “And then, men are hurt!” With shaking up the binary of gender, peoples’ lives are opened up in this way and there’s empathy that can be experienced. That is what is meant to be happening at the end of this space. Finally, at the end of Killjoy’s Kastle you move into another space where you sit down with people and actually talk about your experience. That was the place where it was most interesting to research how people are responding to the artwork. HK: Were performers facilitating discussion? AM: No, it was real-life feminist killjoys! So it was people who are activists, feminists, Women and Gender Studies professors, people who do the work of what Sara Ahmed talks about in The Promise of Happiness around what a feminist killjoy does, which is interrupt the joy of the project of the nation, or patriarchy, or white supremacy, by refusing to go along with it. HK: That’s awesome, too, because then it becomes com- munity-based in another way. It offers visitors the possibility of being immersed in a feminist community, encountering “real” feminist bodies at the end of this journey through the Kastle, and having a safe space to talk about the art and the experience. Thank you so much. AM: Okay, great! You’re welcome. Yiara | Black Feminist thought was doing it well before “legitimated” white theorists were doing it. That work was happening already, this kind of validating experience, listening to truths, and believing people’s stories. That’s all about feelings and experience and politics. Like, it’s political to actually believe a woman who tells you that she was raped, right? I don’t know where I’m going with this. 51 �Issue 04 | Yiara Notes 52 Curatorial Proposal: Tension. Featuring Senga Nengudi, Edwin Isford, Mira Schendel, Ernesto Neto, and Katya Usvitsky, by Sarah Amarica 1 Jeffery L. Meikle, American Plastic: A Cultural History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995): 132; 142. 2 Meikle, American Plastic, 139. 3 Ibid., 141–142. 4 Ibid., 140. 5 Ibid., 149. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., 151. 8 According to The Century Dictionary of 1890, ibid., 4. 9 According to Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), ibid., 4. 10 Ibid., 7. 11 Denise Birkhofer, “Eva Hesse and Mira Schendel: Voiding the Body — Embodying the Void,” Woman’s Art Journal 31 (2010): 4. 12 Lucina Ward, Soft Sculpture, exhibition catalogue, 24 April - 12 July, 2009, National Galley of Australia, Canberra, accessed on 23 November, 2015, http:// nga.gov.au/exhibition/softsculpture/pdf/softsculptureevents.pdf. 13 Ann Coxon, “Stitched, Stuffed, and Stretched,” in Louise Bourgeois, 72-83 (London: Tate Publishing , 2010), 86. 14 Rizvana Bradley, “Transferred Flesh: Reflections of Senga Nengudi’s RSVP,” TDR 59 (2015): 162. 15 Bradley, “Transferred Flesh,” 161. 16 Ibid., 164. 17 Ibid., 165. 18 Edwin Isford (artist), in conversation with Sarah Amarica, 17 November, 2015. 19 Ibid. 20 Erika Eimke, “Liminal Space,” (master’s thesis, Auckland University of Technology School of Art and Design, 2010) accessed on 20 November, 2015, http://aut.researchgateway. ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10292/916/EimkeA.pdf? sequence=3&isAllowed=y. 21 Moynan King, “Queer Performance: Women and Trans Artists,” Canadian Theatre Review 149 (2012): 4-5. 22 Roger Atwood, “Mira Schendel,” ArtNews (2014): 1, accessed on 19 October, 2015, http://www.rogeratwood.com/Mira%20Schendel.pdf. 23 “Conservation and Interpretation or (re) presentation: documenting artist’s intentions in museum collections,” Anthony Bond, accessed 20 November, 2016, http://anthonybond.com.au/wp/wp-content/ uploads/2015/04/ Conservation-and-interpretation-ofContemporary-art.pdf. 24 Bill Arning, “Interview with Ernesto Neto,” BOMB Magazine 70 (2000), accessed on 27 October, 2016, http:// bombmagazine.org/article/2274/ernesto-neto. 25 Bernadette Wegenstein, “Body,” in Critical Terms for Media Studies, Mitchell, W. J. T. and Mark B. N. Hansen, eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2010), 29. 26 Andrea Dinoto, “Bubble Wrap,” American Craft Magazine 73 (2013), accessed on 28 October, 2015, http://craftcouncil.org/magazine/article/bubble-wrap. 27 Janine Stankus, “Polymorph,” Cool Hunting, posted on 12 October, 2012, accessed on 27 October, 2015, http:// www.coolhunting.com/design/polymorph; Dinoto, “Bubble Wrap.” 28 Katya Usvitsky in Dinoto, “Bubble Wrap.” 29 Dinoto, “Bubble Wrap.” La performance du genre dans l’art post-internet, par Eli Larin 1 Michael Connor, «What’s Postinternet Got To Do With Net Art, » Rhizome, 1 novembre, 2013. En ligne. <http://rhizome.org/editorial/2013/nov/1/ postinternet/>. Consultée le 19 février, 2016. 2 Brian Droitcour, «The Perils of Post-Internet Art, » Art in America, 30 octobre, 2014. En ligne. <http:// www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/magazine/the-perils-of-post-internet-art/>. Consultée le 19 février, 2016. Elephant Magazine, What is post-internet art?, numéro 23, été 2015. Felix Petty, « 2014, the year... the post-internet art world went mainstream, » i-D Vice, 23 décembre, 2014. En ligne. <https://id.vice.com/en_gb/article/2014-the-year-the-post-internet-art-world-went-mainstream>. Consultée le 19 février, 2016. 3 Nous pouvons nommer entre autres Ann Hirsh, Kate Durbin, Leah Schrager et Rafia Santana. 4 Cornellia Sollfrank, « Revisiting cyberfeminism, » Art Papers, 6 mai 2015. En ligne. <http://www.artpapers.org/feature_articles/2015_0506-cyberfeminism. html>. Consultée le 2 novembre, 2015. 5 Dans le cadre de mes recherches, j’ai appris que depuis 2012 l’auteur.e préfère le prénom Jack et a opté de ne pas se déclarer d’un genre. Par respect pour l’auteur.e, c’est le pronom non-genré iel qui sera d’usage pour les désigner. 6 Marisa Olson, « POSTINTERNET: art after the internet, » FOAM magazine, numéro 29, hiver 2011– 2012, 60. 7 Olson, « POSTINTERNET: art after the internet, » 60. 8 Artie Vierkant, The Image Object Post-Internet, 2010, http://jstchillin.org/artie/pdf/The_Image_Object_PostInternet_us.pdf, 11. 9 Marina Galperina, « 11 Net Artists You Should Know, » Flavor Wire, 4 septembre, 2012. En ligne. <http://flavorwire.com/324680/10-net-artists-youshould-know>. Consultée le 2 novembre, 2015. 10 Des applications gratuites, comme Alive pour iMac, permettent d’insérer ce genre d’effets et le programme est assez intuitif pour ne pas nécessiter des connaissances techniques avancées. 11 Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure, Durham: Duke University Press, 2011, 125. 12 Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure, 129. 13 Jennifer Chan, « Why Are There No Great Women Net Artists, » Pool: Casual Edition, Juin 2011. En ligne. <http://pooool.info/why-are-there-no-great-womennet-artists-2/>. Page consultée le 29 octobre, 2015. 14 En téléchargeant les photographies et en examinant les métadonnées, nous avons retrouvé des titres. Toutefois, puisque ces titres ne résultent que d’une recherche approfondie et ne sont pas inclus dans le contexte web du visionnement, nous estimons qu’ils n’ont pas été conçus avec la même importance que des titres traditionnels d’oeuvres, d’autant plus que certains « titres » ne sont que des séries de chiffres. 15 «[Skawennati] has also started to use the term “machinimagraph” to describe a photograph taken in a virtual environment [...]» Darian, «Intro to Second Life Workshop at Eastern Bloc,» Initiative For Indigenous Futures Blog, 26 janvier, 2016. En ligne. <http://abtec. org/iif/index.php/intro-to-second-life-workshop-ateastern-bloc/>. Page consultée le 15 février, 2016. 16 Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième Sexe Tome I, Paris: Gallimard, collection Folio, 1949, 114. 17 de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième Sexe Tome I, 114. 18 Nicole-Claude Mathieu, « Les hordes primitives, » dans Ingrid Galster (dir.), Simone de Beauvoir: Le Deuxième Sexe. Le livre fondateur du féminisme moderne en situation, Paris: Honoré Champion, 2004, 100. 19 Kelly Oliver, Animal Lessons: How They Teach Us to Be Human, New York: Columbia University Press, 2009, 159. 20 Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure, 140. 21 Ibid., 145. Re-Presenting the Hero: Feminist Intertextuality Through Postmodern ‘Auteur’ship in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, by Eli-Bella Wood 1 Kill Bill Vol. 1, directed by Quentin Tarantino (Santa Monica, CA: Miramax Films, 2003), DVD, and Kill Bill Vol. 2, directed by Quentin Tarantino (Santa Monica, CA: Miramax Films, 2004), DVD. 2 Marc O’Day, “Beauty in Motion: Gender, Spectacle and Action Babe Cinema,” in Action and Adventure Cinema, ed. Yvonne Tasker (New York: Routledge, 2004), in Ian Reilly, “‘Revenge is Never a Straight Line’: Transgressing Heroic Boundaries: Media and the (Fe)male Body in Kill Bill,” Studies in Popular Culture 30 (2007): 40. 3 bell hooks, Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies (New York, NY: Routledge, 1996), 48, in Ian Reilly, “Revenge is Never a Straight Line,” 40. 4 William McClain, “Western, Go Home! Sergio Leone and the ‘Death of the Western’ in American Film Criticism,” Journal of Film and Video 62 (2010): 52-66. 5 Andre Bazin, “De la politique des auteurs,” in Cahiers du cinema: 1960–1968, ed. Jim Hillier (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 168, quoting François Truffaut, “A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema,” in Auteurs and Authorship: a Film Reader, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 9–28. 6 Bazin, “De la politique des auteurs,” 168. 7 John Hess, “La politique des auteurs: Truffaut’s Manifesto,” Jump Cut 2 (1974): 20-22. 8 Even Tarantino’s production company, named A Band Apart is an intertextual reference to Godard’s film Bande a part (Band of Outsiders, 1964), which reflects Godard’s sizeable influence on Tarantino’s career as a director. 9 John Orr, The Demons of Modernity: Ingmar Bergman and European Cinema (Berghahn Books: New York, 2014), 65. 10 Orr, The Demons of Modernity, 65. 11 Quentin Tarantino interviewed by David Ansen, “Pulp Friction,” Newsweek, October 12, 2003. 12 This is perhaps most evident in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009). 13 Sébastien Lefait and Philippe Ortoli, eds., In Praise of Cinematic Bastardy (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2012), 12. 14 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 9–17. 15 Jameson, Postmodernism, 16-17. 16 Ibid., 8-9. 17 Christopher Sharrett, “Short Takes,” Cinéaste 29 (2004): 96. 18 Phillip Lamarr Cuningham and Melinda Lewis, “‘Taking This from That and That from That’: Examining RZA and Quentin Tarantino’s Use of Pastiche,” M/C Journal 16 (2013), accessed 12 December, 2015, http://journal.media-culture.org.au/ index.php/mcjournal/rt/printerFriendly/669/0. 19 Sarah Smith, “Lip and Love: Subversive Repetition in the Pastiche Films of Tracey Moffat,” Screen 49 (2008): 211. 20 Sarah Smith, “Lip and Love,” 209. 21 Cuningham and Lewis, “Taking This from That and That from That.” 22 The Searchers, directed by John Ford (Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 1956), DVD. 23 The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, directed by Sergio Leone (Burbank, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 1966), DVD. 24 Ian Reilly, “Revenge is Never a Straight Line,” 43. 25 William McClain, “Western, Go Home!,” 62. 26 Patrick McGee, “Kill Bill, or Why Shane Always Comes Back,” in From Shane to Kill Bill: Rethinking the Western (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 237. 27 Patrick McGee, “Kill Bill, or Why Shane Always Comes Back,” 237. ��� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Other publications Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Issue 4 Page Number(s) 1-52 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data PDF Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-04-01 Title A name given to the resource Yiara Magazine Issue 4 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Yiara Magazine Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Yiara Magazine Description An account of the resource The fourth issue of Yiara Magazine, an undergraduate feminist art &amp; art history publication. Concordia McGill non-McGill UQAM https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62030/archive/files/503962d2a0f15b998575d914282b3c47.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=dNhizLK3Sr5y1s-HqeQMdg2gFfabSDqsnCbSk0hRBu%7EdXZL79d2WtRRbGuLEDwxGS2aXpPh0lOLgsaUmAZBGfYgNqp5fDT5FsG5ujJHMMvEhBSYkI5kr0-jszA4kX5UV6Rw5b1wdEV03np75%7EcEBe9w%7ElLcS5kob9p%7EzFus4cF64eC6DpMbFX8hXspI89Zr7i-oNRIL5Iqsl8Fj8hPKb6At0c-6qJ8ZK5RBFU2TTznI-1CMU4qPXA-PQmBvV69MbfOZ8hYDk6JKkwhMrkbNJHREIEUme-LuCJprADh82QsVKTDhhrP2PKl8amY%7EgtMYSCsVd0vvxU1v3xINdo%7EDMqA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM d6f689ac5f701a84edb5cd1ba25b07ce PDF Text Text Yiara Magazine An undergraduate feminist art and art history publication Une revue étudiante d’art féministe et d’histoire de l’art Issue 05 Volume 05 April 2017 Avril 2017 �EDITOR-IN-CHIEF RÉDACTRICE EN CHEF MANDATE MANDAT Amelia Wong-Mersereau Yiara Magazine is an undergraduate feminist art and art history publication. We publish an annual print magazine and organize an exhibition of the featured artworks. Our goal is to provide a platform for students to think about women in art —a subject that we believe still requires considerable exploration—through a diversity of visual and written material. Yiara emphasizes the collaboration of students from various disciplines across Montreal in the interest of forwarding and cultivating an inclusive space for feminist dialogue. Yiara also hosts several academic and cultural events around the magazine for the undergraduate community to share their ideas and engage with people from other programs and backgrounds, as well as established Montreal artists and art institutions. ASSISTANT EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ASSISTANTE RÉDACTRICE EN CHEF Hannah Karpinski HEAD WRITER RÉDACTRICE Maya Popovich ASSOCIATE ENGLISH EDITOR RÉDACTRICE ASSOCIÉE AUX TEXTES ANGLAIS Stephanie Barclay ASSOCIATE FRENCH EDITOR RÉDACTEUR ASSOCIÉ POUR TEXTES FRANÇAIS Philippe Depairon CREATIVE DIRECTOR DIRECTRICE ARTISTIQUE Laura Lalonde EVENTS COORDINATORS COORDONNATRICES DES ÉVÉNEMENTS Colleen Legrix, Willow Cioppa ONLINE ENGLISH EDITOR ÉDITRICE ASSOCIÉE POUR TEXTES ANGLAIS EN LIGNE Lauren Wildgoose ONLINE FRENCH EDITOR ÉDITRICE ASSOCIÉE POUR TEXTES FRANÇAIS EN LIGNE Marie-Maxime de Andrade PERMISSIONS EDITOR ÉDITRICES AUX LICENCES ET AUX DROITS D’AUTEUR Jordan Beaulieu COPY EDITORS CORRECTEURS Muhan Zhang, Danica Pinteric, Klio Fotis-Zoubris PRINTING IMPRESSIONS Les imprimeries Rubiks inc. Yiara Magazine est une publication étudiante d’art féministe et d’histoire de l’art. Au courant de l’année, nous publions une revue annuelle et organisons une exposition qui réunit les oeuvres présentées au sein de notre magazine. A travers la diversité de compositions visuelles et écrites, notre objectif est de promouvoir une plateforme étudiante qui suscite une reflexion autour de la femme au coeur de l’art - un sujet qui, selon nous, requiere encore de l’attention et une exploration continue. Yiara accentue la collaboration entre étudiants de Montréal provenant de différents domaines, dans l’intêret de transmettre et de cultiver un espace ouvert au dialogue féministe. Autour de son magazine, Yiara accueille de nombreux évènements académiques et culturels divers. La communauté d’étudiants de premier cycle universitaire peut ainsi partager ses idées et s’engager avec d’autres étudiants de formations diverses mais aussi avec des artistes et institutions artistiques établis à Montréal. STORY HISTOIRE Yiara is an indigenous mythological Brazilian Queen, legendarily beautiful and also a mighty warrior. She thus embodies many different issues of interest to feminist art history: sexuality, power, and cultural identity. Yiara est une reine indigène brésilienne mythique dont la beauté est aussi légendaire que les talents de guerrière. Elle incarne de ce fait un ensemble de facettes se trouvant au croisement de l’histoire de l’art et du feminisme : sexualité, pouvoir et identité culturelle. SPECIAL THANKS We are especially grateful to the Fine Arts Student Alliance, Anna Waclawek and the Department of Art History at Concordia University, the Concordia Council for Student Life, the Concordia Student Union, la Fédération des associations étudiantes du campus de l’Université de Montréal, Magdalena Olszanowski, Mina Shum, the wonderful friends and family of the Yiara team who volunteered and supported this project, and the countless other students and student associations that share our feminist mandate. COVER COUVERTURE Photo Credit: André Hébert, Arrested Students. Archival footage from Ninth Floor, Mina Shum, 2015. Image reproduced with the permission and courtesy of Mina Shum and the National Film Board of Canada. CONTRIBUTORS CONTRIBUTRICES Marieke Denil, Camille Durand Gauthier, Roxa Hy, Maidina Kadeer Ozbek, Caroline Kinkead, Zezé Le Lin, Zoe Maeve, Natasha Molinari, Laurie Cotton Pigeon, Corinne Spitalier, Emma Wallace, Eli-Bella Wood, Julie Zenderoudi Cover Sketches.indd 4 2017-03-30 11:24 AM �3 Edito Amelia Wong-Mersereau 4 Guest Contributor Magdalena Olszanowski 8 Untitled Natasha Molinari 10 Connective Tissue As a Catalyst for Culture Eli-Bella Wood 15 Unraveling Emma Francis Wallace 16 La Femme Tigre Laurie Cotton Pigeon 18 Accessing the Iranian Public Sphere Julie Zenderoudi 22 Spectrum Camille Durand Gauthier 26 ninetysix Maidina Kadeer Ozbek 28 Le Baptême d’Urine Caroline Kinkead 30 L’Inconnue in the Mirror Zoe Maeve 34 Good Morning Midnight Zoe Maeve 36 Semences Corinne Spitalier 38 Dialect of Desire Zezé Le Lin 40 Blind Love and SHOWTIME! Roxa Hy 44 Me (Diptych) Marieke Denil 45 “How Can I Help You Shine?” Maya Popovich 1 YiaraDocument.indd 1 2017-03-30 11:29 AM �Magdalena Olszanowski. Stills from Milkmaid. 2017. Images reproduced with permission from and courtesy of the artist. 2 YiaraDocument.indd 2 2017-03-30 11:29 AM �Edito “All in life is experimentation, and all in life is failure. Always, always. We die, that’s the demonstration of the fact that life is failure. So, why fear failure? The problem is how much pleasure do you take in that failure, how much sharing can you produce in that failure, how much change your failure is producing. […] I want to attempt my own failure and I think that I will be glad if many people find pleasure and usefulness in my failure.” Ce sont les mots du théoricien Franco « Bifo » Berardi, qu’on entend dans l’œuvre vidéo de Mahmoud Khaled A Memorial to Failure (2013). Entamer ma seconde et dernière année en tant que rédactrice-en-chef de Yiara Magazine s’est révélé à la fois une aventure passionnante et un défi considérable. Après le très grand succès de l’an dernier, il était impossible de ne pas se mettre une certaine pression, celle de vouloir faire mieux encore. Par conséquent, les quelques accidents de parcours ont engendré de plus grandes déceptions. Mais je me suis rapidement rendu compte que vouloir accomplir l’impossible était une caractéristique essentielle chez ceux qui cherchent à créer quelque chose qui ait du sens. En réalité, l’échec est crucial dans toute pratique artistique. Une fois de plus, les artistes et auteurs féministes qui m’accompagnent m’ont rappelé que l’ambition de Yiara n’est pas le succès ou la perfection, et que nous ne nous inscrivons pas non plus dans la logique d’une progression linéaire. Dans une conférence Ted, Roxane Gay, exemple parfait d’une « mauvaise féministe, » l’affirme : « nous exigeons la perfection de la part des féministes parce que nous nous battons toujours pour tellement encore, nous en voulons tellement et nous avons trop besoin de tellement encore ! » J’ai alors décidé d’accepter le fait que n’importe quelle féministe qui tente de créer le changement va rencontrer l’erreur et frustration. Le succès de cette revue réside dans nos approches imparfaites et alternatives. C’est à travers elles que nous avons assemblé un important dialogue d’œuvres d’art et d’articles. Cette année, nous avons une nouvelle fois fait honneur aux paroles prononcées par Gloria Steinem, le 1er décembre 2016, à Montréal : 1. Donne de la visibilité à ce qui n’en a pas, à ce qui est invisible These are the words of theorist Franco “Bifo” Berardi, featured in Mahmoud Khaled’s video work, A Memorial to Failure (2013). Going into my second and final year as Editor-in-Chief for Yiara Magazine was an exciting and daunting venture. The enormous success of last year made it difficult to avoid a selfimposed pressure to perform better. As a result, little bumps in the road felt like bigger disappointments. But I quickly realized that these impossible expectations are characteristic of a person attempting to do something meaningful. Failure is in fact crucial to an artistic practice. I was reminded once more by my favourite feminist writers and artists, that the goal of Yiara is not success or perfection, nor do we adhere to a convention of upward linear progression. In a TED talk by Roxane Gay, the perfect example of a bad feminist, she said that “we demand perfection from feminists because we are still fighting for so much, we want so much, we need so damn much.” I shifted my focus to accept that any feminist attempting to create change will encounter error and frustration. The success of this publication is in our imperfect and alternative approaches, through which we have put together a significant conversation between artworks and writing. This year, we have once more championed the words of Gloria Steinem, who said on December 1st, 2016 in Montreal: 1. Make visible that which isn’t visible or is invisible. 2. People don’t trust anything that only tells us about white women. 2. Un discours qui ne concerne que les femmes blanches n’est pas digne de confiance Ceci étant dit, je suis fière et enchantée de te présenter, cher lecteur, le cinquième numéro de Yiara. Un grand merci à toute l’équipe, les contributeurs, nos sponsors, et bien entendu à nos lecteurs. N’oubliez pas de transmettre ce magazine si/quand vous en avez fini avec lui, parce que Yiara est le fruit de la passion, du travail et de l’amour d’un très grand nombre de personnes… Il est temps pour moi de vous dire au revoir, mais j’espère vous retrouver tous bientôt autour de nouvelles discussions. With that, I am proud and excited to welcome you, dear reader, to the fifth volume of Yiara. An enormous thank you to this team, the contributors, our sponsors, and of course our readers. Please remember to pass on this publication if/when you are finished with it, because Yiara is the product of so many people’s passion, work, and love. This is my farewell for now, but I hope to find you all soon for new conversations! Love and thanks, Amelia Wong-Mersereau Editor-in-Chief 3 YiaraDocument.indd 3 2017-03-30 11:29 AM �Magdalena Olszanowski Guest Contributor Artist, PhD Candidate (ABD), SSHRC/FRQSC Fellow, Communication Studies, Concordia University W hat does it mean to be world that is built to accommodate only some born into an ableist, bodies?”4 How can we preclude certain people ageist, white supremacist and/or institutions with the way we make work, and patriarchal world that or through the work itself, while also holding censors you and your art? awareness that those very institutions are the Put another way, how ones that often make our work possible? can we “dismantle the world that is built to I want my work to operate within a state accommodate only some bodies?”1 of freedom from intrusion, yet I also want to The world that is built to accommodate intrude/interrupt/impinge on/interfere with only some bodies is the world of capital. Its the traditionally secret/private matter of the script, which values profit over people, hinges sexed embodied self and invite others into that on privacy and alienation. That is to say, its space with me, to move and extend my body.5 I operations must remain private and alienated want privacy both ways. from us to uphold its surveillant strategies (its I have been s/censored in various ways freedom), to occlude our freedom.2 Given the by those that uphold the institutions of the pace of the current political climate’s ability to art world and the academy. I use the term strip our sovereignty, feminist artists have had “sensorship” to provoke the notion of a no choice but to develop a tacit knowledge of the censoring of the senses.6 Censorship constitutes concepts of censorship and privacy in relation a removal of objectionable content, while to the internet, artistic production, travel and “sensorship” is a removal of the experience access, communication, working within/against of the senses.7 Feminist artist Carolee institutions and so on—negotiations of survival. Schneemann (1991) notes that censorship is In moving with, “flexible, motile, adaptive; alongside, and counter to boundaries of prohibitions the etymological basis of are shifted, redefined.”8 these concepts we can find The boundaries of what a form of resistance. The is acceptable and what noun ‘privacy’ dates back is obscene shift, and the I will do my best to the 1590s, meaning “a consequences of obscenity to dismantle the private matter, a secret;” shifts. Censorship is multiand developed in the faceted and takes many essentialized 1600s into “seclusion,” forms.9 It can be in the meanings of from the adjective private form of public outrage. It what it means - belonging to oneself can be a slow constraint. to mother as a (not to the state) + -cy. Its It can be critical neglect. meaning in 1814 is defined It can, and often does, feminist and for as a “state of freedom from turn into self-censorship. feminism. intrusion.” Privacy also What happens when we, as stems from Old French feminist artists, “snap?”10 privatie, “a secret, secret When we snap, we refuse deed; solitude, privacy.”3 to accommodate the So then if privacy is a state “social good” and instead of freedom from intrusion, through community and what are our terms of acts of solidarity make freedom? Can there be space for under- and dewelcome intrusions? What valued bodies.11 eyes and desires do we want How many women placed on or inside us, or are instructed by (male) alongside our work, work teachers about the goal that tries to “dismantle the of detached objectivity— 4 YiaraDocument.indd 4 2017-03-30 11:29 AM �The world that is built to accommodate only some bodies is the world of capital. the leading script of the academic and art worlds—and that to be ‘real artists’ of ‘value’ we should conceal our bodies or remove our ‘self’ from our work. This script that has no room for intersectional feminism and, to maintain power, cannot acknowledge the work we make to ensure our survival and the survival of those whose lives and work is deemed valueless.12 We, as feminists, know that expressing modes of sexuality can take many forms and should not be subject to derision, concurrently we know sexuality is, was and continues to be subject to modes of censorship.13 How many of us have been harassed because we were asking for it with our work? How many of us attend classes with sexual predators performing as if nothing has happened because they and we know they will never be punished—a humiliating demonstration that sexual harassment doesn’t bear consequences and that a woman’s body can be subject to this violence and abuse. Instead, the lesson is to hide, put ourselves away, to make our modes of articulation a private matter—to hide what Amelia Jones calls, our “radical narcissism” —which is not a folding inwards of the self to the self, a solipsism, but the enactment of selves in a way that opens up “the radical contingency of the self/other.”14 This rhythm of self/other undergirds my current project, The Prurient Maternal, informed by Maggie Nelson’s auto-theory work The Argonauts (2015). I argue that in the process to re-orient oppressive and violent discourses around the maternal body its sexed potential has been obfuscated. Prurient Maternal foregrounds the sexual and queer potential of mothering and motherhood on my terms. Like Lisa Loveless argues for her Maternal Ecologies (2014) project, Prurient Maternal is also a “conception of mothering as an affective, social, cultural, and material thinking-practice at odds with conceptions of motherhood that see it as a training relation organized around the social good,” acting to de-essentialize the mothering scripts set out for us, and to make visible what white supremacist patriarchy wants to occlude at all costs.15 I can be a mother and an artist. I can use my own body as my art and in my art. Maintenance work is art.16 I will do my best to dismantle the world that doesn’t accommodate mothers.17 I will do my best to dismantle the essentialized meanings of what it means to mother as a feminist and for feminism. I will do so with work that challenges the Canadian Criminal Code and its policies that “makes it an offence to exhibit ‘obscene, indecent, immoral or scurrilous’ matter.”18 If we know that boundaries of obscenity shift, can we, as feminists, shift them? Let’s “dismantle the world that is built to accommodate only some bodies” by doing care work, valuing life over profits and by “supporting women in a struggle to exist in this world.”19 That means making space to be clumsy with our bodies and our orientations, to have time to challenge ourselves and be challenged, and to accommodate shifting needs of privacy. It means not self-censoring because we are unsure of the value of our work. It means not censoring each other because we feel the other person’s work isn’t fitting into “the script” of whatever institution we have made our temporary home. It means engaging critically with each others work. It means meeting each other where we are at rather than where we think or assume we should be. • 5 YiaraDocument.indd 5 2017-03-30 11:29 AM �Photograph from the series Being Body. 2015. Image reproduced with permission from and courtesy of the artist. 6 YiaraDocument.indd 6 2017-03-30 11:29 AM �Photograph from the series Being Body. 2015. Image reproduced with permission from and courtesy of the artist. 7 YiaraDocument.indd 7 2017-03-30 11:29 AM �8 YiaraDocument.indd 8 2017-03-30 11:29 AM �Untitled Natasha Molinari 2015 Studio Arts Concordia University Aging, in Western culture, is rarely viewed as something beautiful or significant. Through her intimate and alluring photographs, Molinari explores the reality of her grandmother’s aging process, and the erasure of her experience as an elderly woman living in a long term care facility. These photographs exemplify the coexistence of strength and vulnerability, and how those often opposing images can collide in the reality and fullness of an individual. The contrast and use of light illustrates this expression; bare feet dangle off the edge of a bed, light catching at the ankles, illuminating the veins and wrinkles that are so often thrown into shadow. There is tenderness and love in these images, but also strength and a plea to be heard and recognized. This sentiment resonates through the dimly lit room and the slow, yet intentional actions of preparing for the day ahead. 9 YiaraDocument.indd 9 2017-03-30 11:29 AM �Connective Tissue as a Catalyst for Culture: Commemorative Craft in Walking With Our Sisters Eli-Bella Wood Concordia University C hristi Belcourt’s project installation that currently consists of 1,820 pairs of Walking With Our Sisters, women’s vamps, as well as 118 pairs of children’s an ongoing collaboration vamps that have been hand-beaded by over 1,400 since 2013, is a call to artists of all ages, genders, and from different action to end gendered parts of the world.3 Of the 1,802 total pairs, 331 and racialized violence pairs were beaded by residents of the United against missing and murdered Indigenous States, and 9 pairs were beaded outside of North women in Canada and the United States America in Scotland, Bulgaria, Germany, and through the display of incomplete moccasins, Australia.4 The installation is currently travelling or “vamps,” that are meant to convey their to select spaces across Canada and some areas of absent presence. As stated on the project’s the U.S. It will continue to tour until its closing website, it aims “to acknowledge the grief and ceremony in Batoche, Saskatchewan in 2019 - the torment families of these women continue site of the end of the North-West Rebellion5 - to to suffer, and to raise awareness of this issue call attention to Canada’s colonial history. The and create opportunity for broad communityproject has so far fostered partner relationships based dialogue on the issue.”1 By honouring with associations such as the Native Youth Sexual traditional Indigenous culture and creating Health Network and the Helen Betty Osborne a social network, on and offline, Walking Memorial Foundation to activate change and With Our Sisters has provide resources for established a platform Indigenous peoples. Indigenous women make for Indigenous agency The vamps are up 10% of all Canadian through a process of displayed on a cloth homicide cases, which is self-representation that covers the floor disturbingly, outrageously, and that bypasses colonial, of the installation “disproportionately high.” heteronormative, and space - usually a sacred patriarchal filters. place, an academic Walking With Our institution, or select Sisters takes a step in the right direction as art galleries and museums - and participants are and traditional craft mobilize and transform to required to remove their shoes, which encourages become a social movement. For the purpose the viewer to walk slowly and carefully across of this paper I will show the productive the soft surface. The participant is led clockwise and transformational power of Indigenous through the exhibition space along a red path traditional craft as activism. In this case, the with the moccasin tops arranged on either art itself becomes a discursive medium of side of the viewer. The vamps, intentionally storytelling that refuses colonial fetishization left unfinished, represent a premature ending and facilitates cross-cultural conversations to the missing and murdered woman’s life about Indigenous women. path or journey.6 If not already within a sacred The project was initiated by Christi Belcourt, space, the ritual-like removal of one’s shoes and a Canadian visual artist and author of Métis the absence of the sound of footsteps asks the descent who is known for her acrylic paintings participant to invest themselves in the present; of intricate floral patterns inspired by traditional to emotionally perform reflection and respect; Métis beadwork. In June 2012 Belcourt released and to actively participate in the honoring of a general call on social media asking for donations these women’s lives. The incredible amount of hand-beaded moccasin tops to honour and of emotional and material detail involved in mourn missing and murdered Indigenous women. each beaded vamp, as well the vast amount of Belcourt originally called for 600 vamps but in just vamps in the installation, create a slow pace over a year she received 1,600 donations, nearly for experiential viewing. Furthermore, the tripling her goal.2 Belcourt’s project is a travelling placement of the vamps upon the floor of the 10 YiaraDocument.indd 10 2017-03-30 11:29 AM �installation space requires the participant to bow their head, a bodily action that also registers feelings of respect and empathy.7 The material and immaterial labour involved in the hand-beading of the vamps is discussed by their beaders as an intense therapeutic, healing, and commemorative act. The beading itself, it’s repetitive and detailoriented labour, takes the crafter through the motions of honoring lost women and children. The thread becomes conductive, allowing memories of those lost, or their own traumatic memories and emotions, to express through traditional Indigenous craft what is often too painful to say in words. In interviews, Belcourt describes the intense emotions she felt upon entering the exhibition space, of being able to feel the people’s careful labour and of feeling “love and care of every stitch of every pair of vamps.”8 Through the Walking With Our Sisters Facebook page moccasin ‘vamp’makers, volunteer installers and coordinators, and exhibition attendees share their personal reflections on how they connected with the missing and murdered women through the making of the vamps, their experience interacting with and installing the vamps, and their reactions to the installation as a whole. ‘Vamp’-maker Catharine Volpe discusses their (emotional) labour process: At several times I had to step away from my vamps... Time for Healing that even I didn’t realize was needed... My Vamps represent the personal One on One that happens on both sides..from the victim and the loved ones who are left with only prayers and broken hearts.....Walk with Our are the victims, hearts broken;future shattered....she wears ‘’Forget-Me-Not” flowers in her hair...as a constant reminder that We can never forget that precious space that they leave with Us... The Stars are surrounded in chaos and the “unknown”.. The *Sisters are all of Us , It is Our Tears and sorrows as We speak Our Prayers of Hope for Their Return…[sic]9 Volunteer Brandy Robertson, who participated in the installation in Brandon, Manitoba, also shares how handling and arranging the vamps was an intense emotional experience that encompassed “sorrow,” “playfulness,” and finally “peace:” I found myself speaking to the vamps/women, asking them to be patient with me as I removed a guide string, fixed a crease in the underlay beneath them, or adjusted one of their sisters. The baby vamps were an entirely different experience. I felt a sense of sorrow as I laid the tiny vamps on the turtles’ backs. The loss of a child is something no parent should ever have to endure. There were some moments, though, that I also felt a sense of playfulness that brought me peace. This installation has had and will continue to have a profound effect on me and am so truly honoured to be a part of it.10 In the case of Walking with Our Sisters, performative immersion and the transmission of emotion become the materials with which Indigenous collaborators and outside participants use to confront the realities of racial, sexual, and colonial violence. The project, while initiated by Belcourt, has been developed under the guidance of elders and seeks to expand beyond the mere display of visual, material culture by incorporating more performative aspects of traditional Indigenous culture. Sixty traditional and ceremonial songs play throughout each installation,11 which is designed to emulate “a lodge.”12 Traditional tobacco13 is placed in a beaded cedar bentwood box made by people in Haida Gwaii at the entrance of the installation. People are meant to take the tobacco and “put prayers into the tobacco in the same way you would a sacred fire.”14 Another box is placed at the end of the installation, where you leave the tobacco. At the end of the exhibition the elders give guidance to the keepers of the vamps of what to do with the tobacco. Belcourt is adamant on not defining 11 YiaraDocument.indd 11 2017-03-30 11:29 AM �Walking With Our Sisters, MSVU Art Gallery, Halifax 2017. Photo credit: Katie Nakaska. Image reproduced with permission and courtesy of MSVU Art Gallery. the installation as an “exhibit;” it exists only in terms of ceremony and memorial.15 Belcourt discusses the display as a respectful immersion into Indigenous tradition under the guidance of elders who are consulted for every decision: During each installation and exhibition of the vamps, the space is smudged, elders are present, circles in the morning, pipe ceremonies, circles in the evening, the whole thing is ceremony, and that’s what is required in order to properly acknowledge and honor women’s lives. We can’t do it by gawking, we can’t do it by seeing pictures, we can’t do it by staring from an outsider’s perspective. We must do it by bringing their lives and the acknowledgment of their value of their lives within us, and within our hearts.16 This sharing of traditional culture, especially within the context of spaces like academic institutions, sites of “legitimate knowledge,” has a powerful effect in the decolonial revaluing of Indigenous knowledge in the realm of a Western public context.17 Indigenous culture is often represented through a colonial lens as commodified and stereotyped images, which are then adopted into Canadian culture.18 An example of this would be the logo for the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, the inuksuk, and its reproduction onto t-shirts, keychains, and plastic lawn ornaments (brought to you by Canadian Tire).19 In this way, Walking With Our Sisters effectively shares traditional Indigenous knowledge of ritual and ceremony with its nonIndigenous participants and collaborators in a manner that avoids the festishization of culture that is still perpetuated by settler representation. Belcourt’s initial goal of 600 moccasin tops reflects the demographical and statistical research done by the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), also called Sisters in Spirit, whose database has documented 582 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and children since the 1980s. However, NWAC notes that 56% of cases go unreported and/or uninvestigated.20 Of these researched 12 YiaraDocument.indd 12 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �cases, 67% are murder cases, 20% are cases of missing women and girls, 4% are of suspicious deaths (suspicious according to the family but are still reported by the police as accidental), and finally, 9% of cases are completely unknown or are “unclear whether the woman was murdered, is missing, or died in suspicious circumstances.”21 Inuit, First Nations, and Métis women make up 3% of the population of female Canadians, and are unfortunately overrepresented in this document. Indigenous women make up 10% of all Canadian homicide cases, which is disturbingly, outrageously, and “disproportionately high.”22 Worse yet, the majority of victims are under the age of thirty-one. In 2014, the RCMP investigated the cases of missing and murdered women and discovered that over a thousand Indigenous women have been murdered since 1980, and 152 have gone missing since 1952.23 Both NWAC and Belcourt note that, in all actuality, the number of cases of racialized and sexualized violence against Indigenous women are likely much higher. In an interview, Belcourt reflects on how receiving almost triple the amount of vamps she called for is “meant to be,” as there is no way to know how many sisters’ lives were lost over the course of hundreds of years of colonial violence. The project works to honor all of their lives, even “the ones who were never talked about.”24 As Belcourt states, these statistics do not even “scratch the surface:” Not included in the statistics of 1,200 cases are: unreported cases; cases not within RCMP jurisdiction; Two-spirit/trans people who were not listed as women; suspicious deaths not listed as homicides; cases where no ethnicity was known or found; data or oral history extending back beyond 30 years; data that incorporates deaths of Indigenous children who are within the child welfare system; data that incorporates the deaths of children from residential schools; data that incorporates the oral history of unreported cases; data that incorporates deaths from domestic violence occurring following years of abuse; the absence of consistent record keeping on the ethnicity of victims; unclear information on the methodology used to assess files for non-status/ Metis women.25 This upsetting research marks young Indigenous women as three times more likely than settler Canadians to be murdered by a stranger.26 In her analysis of media press coverage, Kristen Gilchrist discusses how Native women in Canada are subjugated to everyday institutional and racist violence that are linked to, and constitute, many other forms of oppression. She notes the “intersectional/interlocking” nature of “multiple and connecting dimensions of inequality” that includes racism, sexism, classism, and colonialism, making Indigenous women, according to The Elizabeth Fry Society of Saskatchewan, “the most victimized group in Canadian society.”27 Despite this, Indigenous women are largely ignored by news media, for they are “relegated to the status of invisible ‘Others’ and therefore ‘un newsworthy.’”28 The social construction of who and what are newsworthy subjects is born within a broad landscape of micro-levels of systematic racism, yet are “filtered through a predominantly Western, White, heteronormative, middleclass, male lens,” as Gilchrist aptly argues.29 She argues that not only is there a lack of coverage, but total misrepresentations that perpetuate colonial stereotypes of the “squaw,” who, in opposition to the the “Indian Princess/ Pocahontas” stereotype that took hold in the early colonial period, does not even equate to the already demeaned (white) woman.30 The lack of media coverage on missing and murdered Indigenous women is the result of their systematic exclusion and their representation as unlikeable, inhuman, and self-destructive victims, which further makes them invisible, if not disposable, off screen.31 Social media has been incorporated into the project from its onset and continues to grow and provide a platform for safely sharing outraged, upset, and supportive voices and prayers. The 13 YiaraDocument.indd 13 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �The project has facilitated and united sixty-five Walking With Our Sisters Facebook page (as beading groups in community centers, academic of February 23rd, 2017) has 21,337 members institutions, correctional facilities, and within and has become an online media site where people’s homes to create vamps for the project. Indigenous women and the families of the Many then shared photographs or live videos of missing and murdered can support each other, their beading process, or of their finished vamps, share news stories, and spread information on in real time.35 The project uses these social media cultural events such as film screenings.32 It is also platforms to continue and strengthen traditional used to organize community activism; to call for matriarchal culture through skill-sharing and volunteers and donations; to share participants’ online community-building. thoughts on and experience of the installation; as To conclude, the Walking With Our Sisters well as a forum to discuss oppression. This selfproject brings Indigenous culture to the representation on social media, while it is not greater public by facilitating commemoration broadcasted to the mass public at dinner hour, through emotional labour, performing creates a setting of community-fueled agency that tradition, subverting racism and sexism has transcended beyond updates and press for the in media, and (online) craft activism. Walking With Our Sisters travelling installation. Its participants are navigated through a The Facebook and Twitter pages —in landscape of tragic memory in a performance addition to fostering online solidarity through of deep sincere emotion that actively honours the spreading of alerts and reports on new the lost lives of missing and murdered women. and updated cases on missing and murdered As a massive and ever-expanding communityIndigenous people and children of all genders based and crowdsourced project, Walking — have also become growing networks that With Our Sisters facilitates communication share traditional craft techniques. The sharing and acts as a connective tissue to heal and of traditional craft techniques is important to unite families and communities in mourning, the project’s initiative. According to NWAC’s while engendering solidarity and serving as a database, 88% of known missing and murdered catalyst for culture. The women were mothers. art installation makes NWAC estimates that, the participant feel the The thread becomes “more than 440 children resilience of Indigenous have been impacted by the conductive, allowing women, as Belcourt disappearance or murder memories of those lost, states, “as we go along of their mother.”33 Very or their own traumatic we get stronger and little is known about what memories and emotions, to stronger.”36 Belcourt’s happens to these children express through traditional art installation works following the loss of their Indigenous craft what is often as collective memory, mother. Many Indigenous too painful to say in words. as social movement, communities are as absent presence, as matrilineal in how they protest, and as cultural pass on culture, tradition, production. Most importantly, it “gives people and traditional craft, so there is a large wound felt the vocabulary, and empowers people to begin when a woman, especially a mother, goes missing. to talk about it.”37 It serves to acknowledge The Walking With Our Sisters online community the unacknowledged missing and murdered successfully merges the digital with the tactile. lives of Indigenous women and to make it This online community works to reconnect stop, period. Considering all of the recent these gaps left by missing women by educating news coverage, RCMP investigations, NFB both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, documentary productions, and academic for example the Aberdeen Beading Group in discourse, it seems to be working. • Scotland, in traditional beading over Skype.34 14 YiaraDocument.indd 14 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �Unraveling Emma Francis Wallace 2016 Studio Arts Concordia University Wallace’s painting Unraveling precludes a fixed meaning. The work plays with the themes of constructing and deconstructing identity, as demonstrated through the red yarn wound around the subject’s forearms. Reminiscent of weaving and embroidery, the painting re-opens the dialogue of craftwork as art, subverting the gendered and historically devalued practice of craft by placing it onto the often commodified female body. The subject’s gaze implicates the viewer, balancing bodily agency with the thin red lines that are at once empowering and unraveling. There is a ritualistic unraveling taking place; a fragmentation of blood lines implying a history or lineage of women finding agency within their bodies and practices. The androgyny of the figure suggests an ever-shifting perception of self and the performance of identity. 15 YiaraDocument.indd 15 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �La Femme Tigre Laurie Cotton Pigeon 2016 Certificat muséologie UQAM Drawing from tarot card aesthetics and ritualistic practices, Pigeon’s work Femme Tigre subverts our understanding of the feminine’s relation to feline animals, and visually reclaims the use of the word “pussy” to describe a woman. The three representations of “pussy” in the work are complicated by the use of costume and gaze. The central figure refuses to look directly at the viewer, challenging them to question assumptions of passivity that are usually ascribed to femme-presenting figures. The costume gives her agency, allowing her to choose the parts of her body that are displayed in public. Femme Tigre’s ethereal nature suggests a fluidity of meaning and an acceptance of change and transformation, defying the art historical, and often misogynistic trope, of the naked woman in nature. The use of water colour compliments this reading; a substance that is itself impermanent. 16 YiaraDocument.indd 16 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �17 YiaraDocument.indd 17 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �Accessing the Iranian Public Sphere Through the Women’s Press Julie Zenderoudi Concordia University I t is well known that the sociopolitical climate in Iran today greatly differs from that of Western countries. It is also commonly perceived that the rights of women in Iran, amongst other Middle Eastern countries, do not coincide with European values. This prompts the question, where do these misconceptions stem from? And what are their consequences? One can look to the Western media as being responsible in part for the lack of understanding of the varying degrees of spiritual, political, and cultural diversity amongst Muslims and Muslim nations. Misconceptions are especially dangerous due to what author Mehri Honnarbin-Holliday refers to as “expansionist neo-conservatism and shameless neo-imperialist policies in the Middle East.”1 In other words, the various conflicts in the Middle East instigated by the United States, in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, serve as evidence to what Honnarbin-Holliday criticizes as being the complete disregard for “the development, integrity, identity and the humanity of the lives in such countries.”2 No Middle Eastern country is immune to dangerous rhetoric, which has spread to Iran with recent promises of military attacks, suggesting that occupation and intervention will free its women and the nation as a whole. This idea that Iranian women need to be “liberated” is unsound, and exists on the basis that these women are “kept indoors,” which is far from the reality in Iran.3 The consequence of these misconceptions lies in the fact that Iranian women’s activism, which dates back hundreds of years, is often overlooked despite the fact that it is backed up by thorough academic research. I wish to focus on how women have managed to use the press, specifically women’s magazines and publications, to break into the Iranian public sphere, despite obstacles like gendered discrimination, lack of freedom of speech, and lack of gender solidarity.4 Instances of political progress amongst Iranian women are often overlooked by popular media outlets, and the phenomenon of using Western values as a point of comparison has greatly contributed to this problem. An example of a comparison would be the mystical and spiritual thinking in oriental countries versus rational and scientific ideologies in North America and Europe. Through this lens, countries like Iran will always be seen as underdeveloped, especially in the case of contemporary feminism. The Islamic Regime in Iran places men in a position of superiority to women. However, the patriarchy that women are subject to in Iran by the Islamic Republic is not solely due to the Muslim religion, as it exists to all other major religions.5 Women’s vulnerabilities in Iran, as well as globally, can be attributed to a number of factors, such as “gender old-hierarchies, gendered politics, economic and educational shortcomings as well as constraints, socio-cultural misconceptions, and familial circumstances.”6 When religion is no longer seen as the sole root of the sociopolitical climate in Iran, resilience and fluidity in ideology becomes possible, along with the idea that ideologies can adapt to fit social conditions even within the Islamic regime.7 In order to further contextualize the various women’s movements put forward by the press in the early 1900s, many academics look to the Iranian Constitutional Revolution and its role in propelling women’s activism. In The Iranian Women’s Movement: A Century Long Struggle, Professor Akbar Mahdi marks this event as the first documented account of women who mobilized in order to advance their rights in Iranian society.8 Leading up to the revolution, many Iranians were questioning the repressive social conditions of the current regime. One of the earlier battles within the revolution was the fight against what Mahdi defines as “the Qatar dynasty and foreign domination of the Iranian economy.”9 As women became aware of the increasing injustices of the system, secret societies were established in order for them to address their issues on a personal level. The constitution eventually adapted to meet the demands of many Iranians. However, the demands of women were never met. It became clear that the government saw women as 18 YiaraDocument.indd 18 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �existing in the same category as criminals and the mentally ill. What also became clear was the fact that both religious leaders and male constitutionalists thought of women as being unable to make any sort of rational decisions in regard to politics, further marginalizing them from the public sphere.10 As activists faced government backlash, many revolutionary associations fell apart. The backbone of many female movements crumbled and women were forced to give up. Thus, the task of moving forward with the movement was left to a small group of highly-educated women who were able to fully dedicate themselves to the cause.11 One of the main battlegrounds for these activists became education. As more and more organizations emerged, many of them campaigned for girls’ schools across Iran. These organizations began publishing magazines dealing with women’s issues and thus made room for themselves themselves within the public sphere. Well before women’s publications could play a significant role in society, a handful of predecessors first resorted to other forms of activism to make their messages heard. One of the pioneers of women’s rights in Iran was Fakre Afaq Batul, who first founded the society for women’s revolution and later the magazine Doktaran-e Iran (Daughters of Iran). Batul was one the first woman in Shiraz in modern times to appear in public unveiled. Another prominent figure was Dawlatbadi Seddiqa. Dawlatbadi was a journalist, editor, and a key figure in the movements to emancipate women in Iran. In 1917 she founded the first school for girls in Isfahan. A year after that she established the Association of Women of Isfahan, and in 1919, Zaban e Zanan (voice of women), the third Persian newspaper to be founded and managed by a woman. Similar to Batul, Dawlatbadi also never wore the veil. Her newspaper started out as a biweekly periodical and quickly transitioned into weekly publication after its first year in 1919. The paper advocated for women’s rights through articles that were written and published by women, and by making the radical decision to include the word zan (lady) in the title. The use of the word lady in the title boldly classified the magazine as one that was solely for women. Female students received a discount on the magazine, which spoke to the need for accessible education and political engagement for all girls in Iran—a need that Iranian women have long addressed and continue to address through community collaboration in cultural production. The first feminist newspaper to appear in Iran was the weekly Danesh (Knowledge), which emerged in 1910, four years after the constitutional revolution. The magazine focused mainly on topics dealing with family life, health, and childcare, and a common feature of such magazines was the emphasis on women’s education. A good example of this can be found be in the early editions of Jahan-e Zanan (Women’s World), a magazine When religion is no longer seen as the sole root of the sociopolitical climate in Iran, resilience and fluidity in ideology becomes possible... 19 YiaraDocument.indd 19 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �that was first published in 1921 and stands out in its attempt to educate women and provide a comprehensive history of the women’s struggle.12 In one of its articles published in an issue of Women’s World in Tehran called “From now on,” the author calls for the active involvement of women in all aspects of society. The ideas presented in the article sparked protests from the far right and conservative clergy, which eventually led to the ban of the magazine. Much like Jahan-e Zanan, this publication was met with great backlash from fanatical reactionaries. The publishers of Jahan-e Zanan faced verbal and physical threats to themselves and their publishing houses. As acts of violence such as throwing stones and using firearms intensified, the publishers moved to a new house for safety and managed to go on publishing the paper under the protection of the police, until the end of the magazine in 1921 after 57 issues.13 Contemporary publications continue to uphold the commitment to make every aspect of the publication, from its management to its content, run exclusively by women. The struggles faced by magazines today, like opposition, backlash, and financial struggles, are similar to those faced by magazines published in the 1900s. Lily Farhadpour, author of Women, Gender Roles, Media and Journalism, was also the editor and manager of the editorial “Iranian society is complicated. Journalism is the mirror of such complexity.” — Nima Naghibi, Rethinking Global Sisterhood board of Fekre Rouz in 2003, a weekly feminist publication. In her work, Farhadpour explains the model that ultimately caused the publication to shut down: “We were not prepared to lose our independence and rely on politicians, some of whom wanted to support us, but whose support we turned down. We did not survive and had to cease publication.”14 The magazine stands out amongst others because it reported issues that were especially controversial, such as abortion, freedom of press for women, and women’s participation in local elections. During the U.S attacks against Iraq, they reported on the experiences of Iraqi women, as well as their modes of resistance.15 Magazines such as Zanan-e Farda, amongst many others, have also had to shut down due to bankruptcy. Such closures shed light on the difficulty of maintaining female-centred or all-female initiatives in the context of the Iranian Press. Some magazines have managed to avoid backlash from right-winged religious fanatics all while maintaining strong advertisement revenues, which is usually made possible by labeling publications as “specialty magazines.” Ettela’ate Banovan, which was first published in 1967, quickly became one of Iran’s most popular magazines and maintained its success by using this naming tactic. The publication focused on women’s fashion, gossip, celebrity and royal family news, 20 YiaraDocument.indd 20 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �cooking, health, beauty, and housekeeping. they also proposed reforms. Farzaneh and False However, every now and then these magazines Zanan focused on the research of feminist would include an article addressing changes issues not only in Iran but worldwide, in order in family law and other concerns that leaned to further contextualize local movements within more towards a feminist agenda.16 These a global context. The publication Hoghoghe kinds of publications were funded by ads, Zan focused on the issue of violence against and therefore did not face bankruptcy. They women, while Rouznameh Zan discussed remained predominantly run by women. By issues that women faced in terms of civil society subscribing to the use of the label, “Women’s and democracy.18 Specialty Magazines,” publishers did not Western media fails to portray the face the constraints and backlash that other, radicalization of mainstream Iranian media as more ostentatiously “feminist” publications a result of Iranian women’s press and feminist faced. These slightly more radical articles cultural production. Rather, women are were carefully weaved in perceived and understood between articles about in terms of dangerous fashion and lifestyle. misconceptions. The struggles faced Iran transformed Collectively, they have by magazines today, during the 1978 used the press to voice Revolution. As the opinions on the current like opposition, country transitioned state of affairs affecting backlash, and from being ruled by a women in Iran, to financial struggles, monarchy to an Islamic question unfair laws, and Republic, the freedom to implement ideological are similar to those of the press, amongst and governmental faced by magazines other rights, was under changes. Although published in siege. In From Mission women continue to face To Profession: Journalism gender discrimination, the 1900s. In Iran, 1979-2004, lack of freedom of Hossein Shahidi explains speech, and lack of the state of affairs as the gender solidarity, they government took on new also continue to address legal proceedings that facilitated the shutting and protest daily issues that Iran women face down of publications: by moving them into the public domain.19 The The aftermath of the new regime in terms press is a tool for advancing such movements, of women’s rights was significant. New laws and the relentless drive of Iranian women forced the veiling of all women, segregation who refuse to give up their politicized work in all aspects of life such as transport, sports, in publication makes advancement possible. and public areas, and the overall treatment of In her book, Rethinking Global Sisterhood, women as second class citizens who, ‘have no Nima Naghibi writes: “Iranian society is place in the public arena and no security in the complicated. Journalism is the mirror of such domestic sphere.’17 complexity.”20 This complexity is evident in the While many publications were shut down, history of Iran’s press, especially in regard to the struggle to fight for rights like freedom the incredible amount of adversity that Iranian of press continued. The Magazine Payame women have faced in their attempts to advance Zan interpreted the Quran in a way that was feminist issues. What is clear is the resilience of addressed to women’s issues. Zane Rout and Iranian women, who will not stop fighting for Payame Hajar published articles that criticized their rights until gender equality is achieved, on laws and policies that were unfair to women; their own terms. • 21 YiaraDocument.indd 21 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �Spectrum Camille Durand Gauthier 2017 Studio Arts Concordia University Spectrum explores the contrast between inner and outward physical expression. The photographs are reminiscent of print media and design, suggesting an affinity with the sartorial and a fixation on appearances. The colour pink — so culturally charged — acts as a representation of both lived and projected femininity. It is also a visceral colour, one that runs through our veins and pigments our internal organs and muscles. The work deals with themes of self-representation and an inherited, or forced, self-expression through an almost fantastical lens. Identity is blurred through the obstruction of faces and body parts, leaving the viewer to project their own culturally informed images onto the negative space. It attempts to deconstruct vulnerability through the normalization of bodily substances as well as the externalization of internalized gender norms. Gauthier plays with the ambiguity of bodies in a neutral space while challenging the gender presentations that we would usually associate with stylized print photography. > 22 YiaraDocument.indd 22 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �23 YiaraDocument.indd 23 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �24 YiaraDocument.indd 24 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �25 YiaraDocument.indd 25 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �ninetysix Maidina Kadeer Ozbek Concordia University 26 YiaraDocument.indd 26 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �a blue painted city between once taintless ethereal mountains— north-west up there, stuffed in between the now crowded streets where she had once imagined her great-grandmother’s yurt could be. on the twenty-seventh of May 1996, rain poured softly onto the earth. the giver, gave birth in the shadows of four derelict, cement walls. she heard the tune in their voices when they said existing was resisting. so the givers legs spread, pushing for seventy-two hours, as she had done for seven years past, and seven years to come. she pushed for life, waiting for a cry louder than the streets. slick with sweat, patched with dried tears stiff on her silken skin, the giver pushed to the sound of bitter clouds. at three-thirty in the afternoon when I, with my thick black hair, held onto her pale crooked fingers—she remembered then, how I too would be defined by the caramel dirt and poppy red blood on gulja’s streets. she says I came crying for a home, in ninetysix it all came with a storm. 27 YiaraDocument.indd 27 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �Le Baptême d’Urine Caroline Kinkead 2016 Painting & Drawing Concordia University Ritual, humiliation, and cleanliness are all at play in Kinkead’s Le Baptême d’Urine. The work explores connections between expected feminine roles and the visceral nature of the body. In the painting, two figures participate in a ceremonial bathing that can be seen as both a maternal gesture and a baptism of the older self. It is a preparation for the unrealistic expectations that women are upheld to and a reclaiming of an act of humiliation. The intimacy and care reflected in the touch of one woman to the other is compelling; it propels the interaction into a sensual, almost sexually charged moment. There is something both familial and erotic about the relationship depicted that suggests a kind of self love and self care. Amidst the complicated power dynamics involved in Le Baptême d’Urine, the hand of one woman on the head of the other is a loaded gesture that underscores the intimacy between the two figures. 28 YiaraDocument.indd 28 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �29 YiaraDocument.indd 29 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �L’Inconnue in the Mirror: Trauma, Subversion and the Legacy of Charcot in Jean Rhys’ Good Morning, Midnight Zoe Maeve Concordia University T he character of Sasha Jansen in Jean Rhys’ 1939 novel Good Morning, Midnight has been the subject of interest for readers and scholars alike. A poor, aging, and unmarried woman who struggles to break destructive patterns in her relationships and own mental processes, Sasha represents to many Rhys’ pre-feminist social critique and characteristic cynicism. In her chapter, “‘New Words, New Everything’: Fragmentation and Trauma in Jean Rhys,” literary critic Maren Linett argues that Sasha suffers from what would today be termed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Linett’s analysis however, lacks an in-depth look at the cultural context of women and trauma in 19th century France, as well as the significance of a feminist reading of a character with PTSD. Taking the work of Linett as a critical entry point, I will examine the ways in which 19th century medical eroticizations of female trauma and the myth of the beautiful female suicide play into Rhys’ novel. Rhys reimagines the femininecoded symbols of mirrors and dresses as spaces akin to rooms within which the body can be described outside of the violent sexualizations tradionally imposed upon it. A feminist critique of Jean Rhys’ work often focuses on textual fragmentation as a strategy to subvert dominant modes of narration. However, Linett argues that this “underrate[s] the characters’ unsavory but fundamental helplessness,”1 and that Rhys’ textual strategies seek not only to represent the disjointed modern human condition but also the experience of fragmentation caused by significant trauma.2 Linett goes on to identify three types of fragmentation that are typical of PTSD: “dissociation, [...] traumatic ‘memory,’ [...] and a discomfiting sense of timelessness.”3 All of these traits can be found in the character of Sasha Jansen: she often dissociates her mind and body, especially during sexual encounters, and her experiences are often narrated by two clearly opposed selves, one of whom ridicules the other’s painful experiences.4 Furthermore, her memories from Paris seem to erupt violently, vividly, and are not within her control. Linett’s thesis provides a clear and fitting logic to Sasha’s seemingly illogical behaviour, which is perhaps best represented in the final scene of the novel between Réné and the commis. Her behaviour can be ascribed to the belief that those with PTSD will enter dangerous situations because they see their trauma as a fate they are destined to repeat. In these situations, they will often dissociate mind from body in an act of self preservation. Given Jean Rhys’ well-documented personal history of traumatic experiences, Linett acknowledges the risk of tying women’s writing to their biographies. Nonetheless, Linett carefully distinguishes between symptomatization5 and acknowledging Rhys’ work as “formally innovative because its author was seeking a literary means by which to represent particular mental processes.”6 The context surrounding Rhys’ novel is entrenched in a pathologization that particularly targeted women of Sasha’s social class. The French neuropathologist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893) published several volumes of photographs in the late 1800s of “women diagnosed as hysterical or hystero-epileptic.”7 The photographs are accompanied by lengthy transcriptions from patients which often contained “highly detailed and often gruesome allusions to past [sexual] traumas.”8 These studies of women at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris hold cultural significance because the images helped construct a gendered aesthetic of mental illness. Charcot’s images eroticize and locate signifiers of madness on the body, deeply impacting later understandings of female trauma and mental illness.9 The women institutionalized in hospitals like the Salpêtrière were, like Sasha, impoverished, unmarried, and marginalized. The overarching cause of their mental disturbances, including self-destructive or suicidal behaviour, was widely believed by medical authorities to be the modern urban and industrialized world.10 It was commonly believed that women were more impervious to suicide caused by urban 30 YiaraDocument.indd 30 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �modernity than men, but that this was due to were popular, and hung in the offices of Man a natural affinity with the traditional family and Ray and Albert Camus, despite claims that such the domestic realm, which women like Sasha a perfect cast could not have been taken from existed outside of.11 Charcot’s legacy influenced a real corpse.19 L’Inconnue exemplifies the French culture well into the 20th century, and tradition of suicide by drowning as a uniquely his investigations into hysteria were continued female act, as in literature, Ophelia, and by the neuropathologist he mentored: Sigmund biography, Virginia Woolf.20 Freud.12 Throughout the interwar years, the Rhys reworks the trope of the beautiful mass trauma of WWI caused French suicide suicide throughout the novel in complex rates to climb steadily, reaching a peak in the ways. After her first attempt at suicide, Sasha mid-1930s that was not to be matched for resolves to drink herself to death and describes another fifty years.13 how alcohol ravages her appearance. “I watch In the opening paragraphs of Good my face gradually breaking up - cheeks puffing Morning, Midnight, out, eyes getting smaller,” Sasha describes a literal she says, adding “besides or metaphorical suicide this isn’t my face, this attempt, writing that she tortured and tormented The overarching has been “saved, rescued, mask.”21 This attempt cause of their mental fished-up, half-drowned, to end her life through a disturbances, including out of the deep, dark gradual decline that does self-destructive or river, dry clothes, hair not fulfill the romantic suicidal behaviour, shampooed and set.”14 aesthetic represented This is referenced again by l’Inconnue is was widely believed by when she remembers compounded with medical authorities to be an unknown character Sasha’s status as an the modern urban and in London, possibly aging woman, whose industrialized world. her father, who says to value as an aesthetic her, “We consider you and sexual object is as dead. Why didn’t waning. Her separation you make a hole in the of self from the “mask” water? Why didn’t you drown yourself in the of her physical body recalls the dissociation Seine?”15 In this passage, Rhys places Sasha symptomatic of PTSD. Rhys however, makes in conversation with the trope of aestheticized use of this splitting to critique the conditions female madness or the beautiful suicide. The of traumatized women. She undercuts Sasha’s author’s reference to the river Seine in Paris description of her body with a sardonic recalls “L’Inconnue de la Seine,” a teenage humour, stating that she can take off her girl who was reportedly fished out of the “mask [and] hang it up on a nail [or] place river sometime in the 1870s or ‘80s after on it a tall hat with a green feather [...] and what was believed to be an act of suicide.16 a veil over the lot.” 22 This motif of a mask L’Inconnue’s death mask was noted as having recalls the figure of L’Inconnue. Rhys also beautiful features and a peaceful expression; satirically deconstructs aestheticized female subsequently, her face was used for the CPR trauma by using figure of the aging woman as doll Resusci Annie in the 1950s, making her a metaphor, describing herself as “sad, as an “the most kissed woman in the world.”17 In the eagle without wings [...] sad as a woman who first half of the 20th century, l’Inconnue also is growing old.” 23 became the subject of fascination for modernist Throughout Good Morning, Midnight, writers including Rainer Maria Rilke, Man Ray, Sasha’s encounters with people are constantly and Vladimir Nabokov.18 Replicas of the mask mediated through mirrors. She notes the many 31 YiaraDocument.indd 31 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �mirrors in the lavabos of Parisian bars where she retreats to to cry.24 She looks at herself in the mirror when she is pregnant, later in a hat shop, and at times she cannot bear to look at herself in the mirror at all.25 In a flashback, Sasha recalls the old bald woman who asked to try on every hat, humiliating the woman’s daughter. Sasha describes meeting the daughter’s eyes in the mirror, responding with a hostile gaze, then seeing the mother visibly affected by her child’s mocking comments, appearing “still undaunted but something about her mouth and chin collapsing.” 26 Later she imagines a nearly empty room containing “nothing [...] but a bed and a looking-glass,” seemingly the space in which her trauma is continually reenacted, where she waits for “the door that will open, the thing that is bound to happen...” 27 The experience of looking at oneself as if from the outside through a mirror is clearly linked to dissociation, but in a cultural context in which female trauma is located on the body, Rhys’ use of the mirror has another function. A woman before a mirror is a symbol of female vanity in Western culture, and Sasha’s encounters with herself and other women through the mirror are particularly cold and disjointed. Despite her constantly looking at herself, the reader is never given a description of Sasha’s physical appearance. The mirror does not mediate a connection between she and her body. It becomes a barrier which emphasizes the split between the cérébrale and the unfeeling body where the medical establishment locates and eroticizes trauma as we have seen with the photographs by Jean-Martin Charcot. Given the work of Charcot, where female mental illness is eroticized, Rhys’ representation of a character whose self and body are disjointed is a subversive commentary. While the analysis of Linett construes Réné’s actions in the novel as an attempted rape and the commis’ an actual one, other critics such as Arnold E. Davidson interpret the scene as an act of sexual charity and compassion on the part of Sasha Jansen.28 However, many of the glaringly obvious factors that make this situation one of non-consent, including Réné’s descriptions of gang rapes in Morocco, are their physical altercation and Sasha’s intoxication. In this scene we encounter a description of Sasha’s sudden awareness of her physicality more intense than any encountered in the novel, except in flashbacks. “I feel his hard knee,” she writes, “between my knees. My mouth hurts, my breasts hurt, because it hurts, when you have been dead to come alive...” 29 This is easily interpreted as an erotic awakening and thus a sort of salvation, but I argue that in this coming alive, her being is no longer the dissociated cérébrale mediated by the mirror, but is forced into an embodiedness through the reenactment of sexual trauma. Furthermore, the reading of this experience as a sexual awakening has much in common with the ideology which led Charcot to treat hysteria by inducing orgasms in patients, or the logic of Asmund Laerdal who eroticised the salvational act of resuscitation by using the face of l’Inconnue de la Seine for a CPR doll. Rhys also addresses the traumatized body through the use of another repeated motif: clothes. A simple reading of this theme would be that Sasha is obsessed with clothes because they demonstrate the social pressures of femininity in a consumerist culture which Rhys critiques. Indeed there do seem to be elements of this: scenes frequently take place in the high-class dress shops where Sasha works, and later she describes visiting cheap markets, “just [for] the sensation of spending.” 30 Elsewhere, though, she gives the reader an indication that the garments in the text are operating in other ways. My life, which seems so simple and monotonous, is really a complicated affair of cafés where they like me and cafés where they don’t, streets that are friendly, streets that aren’t, rooms where I might be happy, rooms where I never shall be, looking-glasses I look nice in, looking-glasses I don’t, dresses that will be lucky, dresses that won’t and so on.31 32 YiaraDocument.indd 32 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �In this passage, Rhys draws a parallel between a set of spaces her body moves through and in. The street and the cafe are public spaces in which she is subject to ridicule and threat, and the supposedly private room32 is not a place of agency but of repeated trauma. Like the Parisian hotel rooms which trigger Sasha’s memories, garments becomes physical spaces, the only ones that enclose Sasha’s body alone. Her fixation on certain items of clothing, such as the black dress with colourful sleeves echo fixations on spaces, as seen in her sudden obsession that she must get a certain room at a hotel, number 219, which has “rose-coloured curtains, carpet and bath.” 33 Sasha believes that she “shall exist on a different plane once [she] can get into this room, if only for a couple of nights.” 34 The mention of a “plane” is a reference to her friend Sidonie’s earlier comment to Sasha that “one musn’t put everything on the same plane.” 35 This seems to be exactly Sasha’s problem, and is indicative of the “discomfiting sense of timelessness” and eruptions of traumatic memory that are symptomatic of PTSD.36 Ultimately, she is unable to exit this plane even when she moves to new spaces: when she visits room 219 she finds it faces a brick wall. Elsewhere, Sasha’s bodily experience of her coat becomes the marker by which we understand that she is experiencing past memories in a manner beyond her control. Upon hearing the song L’Arlésienne, she recalls a coat she wore many years ago in Paris, “a black-and-white check with big pockets.” 37 She tells of an encounter with an older man at a bar who complained to her about a girlfriend who wrote him requesting money for shoes, and when she is brought back to the present moment she writes “I feel for the pockets of the check coat, and I am surprised when I touch the fur of the one I am wearing.” 38 Garments, which outline the body but also cover it, are used to approach a description of the traumatized body without the separation from self as we have seen with the mirror. 39 As evidenced by her fur coat given to her by a friend, or the boots she fears her manager will see are ‘shabby,’ Sasha’s garments function as a tenuous barrier between her and the world, often her only constant as she moves from rented room to rented room, past the bounds of traditional domesticity.40 Rhys’ use of garments as a physical space of experience subverts their association with frivolity and aesthetics, reconfiguring them as temporal and semantic markers of Sasha Jansen’s experience. This subversive reconfiguration may not be legible to those who associate women’s clothing with vanity and frivolity, thus making it impervious to the oppressive ideologies that clothes can impose on the body. In Good Morning, Midnight, Jean Rhys writes a character that experiences the symptoms of PTSD, stemming from experiences of sexual assault and abuse by men. An analysis of Sasha Jansen’s trauma considers the context of a French medical establishment that seeks to dominate and oppress marginalized, mentally ill women through the pathologization and eroticization of their bodies. Rhys engages with this social construction to reject the trope that inspired problematic cultural production. Good Morning, Midnight functions to recode the feminized iconography of the mirror and the garment as physical spaces in which she can approach an alternative description of the body. Jean Rhys’ description of Sasha gives voice to a figure in society that would otherwise have been considered too terrible to look at without the gloss of romanticism. Like the words that accompany the photographs of Jean-Martin Charcot’s patients, they remind us that she was there. • Good Morning, Midnight Zoe Maeve 2016 Studio Arts Concordia University > 33 YiaraDocument.indd 33 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �YiaraDocument.indd 34 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �YiaraDocument.indd 35 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �Semences Corinne Spitalier Studio Arts Concordia University 36 YiaraDocument.indd 36 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �Encore parsèment de fragiles semences ton corps, Petit et plein de vie. Ces graines, quelque part imposées, Qui ne peuvent trouver refuge dans tes jours, Qui ne peuvent se développer dans ton futur Et pourtant leurs traces ennuieront tes nuits, Briseront des fragments de toi que tu ignores aujourd’hui. Encore tes yeux gonflés, pleins de désarroi, Tristes de savoir qu’au-delà de nos espoirs, Il y a certains désirs que la volonté ne peut saisir. Encore le deuil d’être délaissée, Par tous, par l’amour, par nous-mêmes, Fruit de l’angoisse de ne pas être assez. Quand ma chère amie viendra le temps, D’abandonner ce mirage si violent, Qui découpe et décortique Nos coeurs et nos corps. Quand ma chère amie viendra le temps, Où ces questions insensées seront effacées, De ce monde trop souvent malmené, Peut-être qu’un de ces jours on se soulèvera, Parmi des quotidiens moins lourds, moins sourds, Où l’on pourra, à notre aise, se dessiner, Dans le respect et la justesse, se retrouver. 37 YiaraDocument.indd 37 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �38 YiaraDocument.indd 38 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �Dialect of Desire: The Female Body Zezé Le Lin Studio Arts Concordia University In Zezé’s drawing Dialect of Desire: The Female Body, the artist positions a naked body in the centre of the blank page, directing the viewer’s eyes to three main focal points: the hand on the leg, the nipple, and finally the heart where the head should be. This movement of the eye along the body presupposes the artist’s intentions, and gives authority to both artist and subject. The work plays with androgyny of the body and complicates the patriarchal idea of what “female” should look like. As the viewer’s gaze is drawn towards the subject’s head, the intricacies and subtle pencil shading illuminate soft and hard contrasts that mirror the complexities of both feeling desire and being desired. Vivid and nearly alive, the anatomical heart over the figure’s face implies a deep rooted connection between heart and brain, and emphasizes physical power and ability over external appearance. 39 YiaraDocument.indd 39 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �40 YiaraDocument.indd 40 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �Blind Love and SHOWTIME! (to be said with an exclamatory voice while raising our hands in the air) Roxa Hy 2016 Intermedia, Minor in Theatre Concordia University In her comical and political performance pieces, Blind Love and SHOWTIME!, Hy works to subvert the objectification of women and challenge structural norms by making literal objects — blinds, a fan, an electric kettle, and a pile of plastic — the lovers and viewers in the scene. In Blind Love, a performer concealed behind a hanging blind moves seductively to the pop song Take My Breath Away (Berlin) while flirting with a pile of plastic that has been wheeled out on stage by a technician. In SHOWTIME!, the expectation of performed femininity is disrupted by the female janitor who takes centre stage. This anti-climactic moment questions the more traditional climactic structures typically seen in theatre and performance, and lends itself to a more self-referential form, emphasizing the labour behind the performance. In both pieces, Hy distills the performative nature of femininity and love into a comical subversion, and challenges traditional performance structures through a feminist lens. The work explores the spectacle of femininity, while reclaiming some of those tropes as intentional actions. > 41 YiaraDocument.indd 41 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �42 YiaraDocument.indd 42 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �43 YiaraDocument.indd 43 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �Me (Diptych) Marieke Denil 2016 Studio Arts Minor in Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality Concordia University Through the use of multiple layers of representation, Denil complicates our understanding of internal and external projections of identity. In the first part of this diptych, the artist has painted her face based off of a photograph. Already we have two mediations: the photograph and the painting, which acts as a translation of the original image. In the second part of the diptych, Denil has painted a hybrid image that combines multiple faces found on the Internet, cut up and manipulated to fit back into the shape and form of her own face. This work questions identity in terms of physical appearance. It prompts the idea that we are made up of the people around us who have shaped us in some way, or even made up of everyone else because of our constant exposure to other forms and people. Finally, the work leaves us wondering what it means if every image of ourselves is a representation. Is there a singular version of any person that can be clearly presented? 44 YiaraDocument.indd 44 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �“How Can I Help You Shine?” An Interview with Mina Shum Maya Popovich Photo Credit: Peter Wunstorf. Photograph of Mina Shum. Image reproduced with the permission and courtesy of Mina Shum. Mina Shum is an independent filmmaker whose work focuses on themes of identity, human relationships, and telling stories that are often excluded from the mainstream dialogue. She is an award winning writer and director of both short and feature length fiction and documentary films, including Double Happiness (1994), Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity (2002), and Ninth Floor (2015). Maya: Hi Mina! It’s so nice to speak with you. To jump right into it, I’ve read that in your work you prefer to be known as an independent filmmaker rather than a Chinese-Canadian filmmaker. I was wondering if you could speak to that choice? Mina: Well, I think it has to do with never being defined by other people. I have the privilege and entitlement just as other people do to make whatever choice their heart wants. So, if you define purely as Chinese-Canadian, that comes with a load of imagery and presumptions from other people, and I am not going to take that on. I just want to make films. I can’t even tell you if they are going to be Chinese-Canadian by definition. I wouldn’t want to limit myself, that’s part of it. And I think I’m a filmmaker first, before identifying. Maya: Do you feel like people, on the flip side of what we were talking about, try to define you by the work that you make? Mina: People are pretty open to the work. Of course there’s going to be the easy sell, but in a film like Ninth Floor that I just did, I’m Chinese, the film’s about a Caribbean community and a group of students in Montreal. Neither of which I am, I’m not any of those, and yet I was able to speak to it, or witness it, you know? So, I think to answer your question, I can’t predict how people interpret me. I can only be true. Maya: Mhm, I guess one of the challenges of being an artist is that you have to let go of how people are going to perceive you. Mina: Yeah. That’s right. I don’t really have a struggle with that, but it could be a struggle. I don’t, otherwise I would have been paralyzed a long time ago. Something will grab me and I’ll be led by it. It’s like you can’t stop it, and then suddenly you’re watching the film [we laugh] Whether that is in the boundaries of everything I could possibly be labeled, I defy it all and say I am here to tell stories. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t take me getting up my courage some days, but I try not to listen to the noise. And you know, it’s asking what are you doing right now, what are you 45 YiaraDocument.indd 45 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �Photo Credit: Peter Wunstorf. Action shot from the filming of Long Life, Happiness, and Prosperity. 2003. Image reproduced with the permission and courtesy of Mina Shum. exploring as a filmmaker? In terms of themes, and what types of films, and all that. I love the craft of it. Maya: Yeah. That kind of reminds me of - do you Maya: This streams into my next question which is Mina: Yeah! Master of None. about your film Double Happiness (1994). The film deals with issues of representation in the film/art world, so I am wondering if you feel that in the years since Double Happiness first screened, diversity in the art world is being acknowledged more? Mina: [Sigh] Yes and no. I just screened Double Happiness for the Real Asian Film Festival (2016) in Toronto, and they were screening it as a landmark movie. They were like, “when we saw that film [Double Happiness] we felt a need that was answered to speak to the Asian diaspora in North America.” So, they started this film festival and they screened my film as part of the landmark of that. At the same time, am I seeing the mainstream space being occupied by Chinese-Canadian stories about a girl lead? I don’t see that necessarily. [Double Happiness] was a big film in terms of people realizing “oh my god, we have stories to tell” [laughs]. At the same time, I don’t see a lot of those types of stories in our marketplace. There are so many reasons why films of other cultures aren’t getting the budgets they need, or being green-lit. It’s partly that, “oh, there aren’t enough Asian stars that would green-light a movie.” Okay, but if you never tell stories where that person can shine and you cast them, then of course people don’t know who they are. The thing is, you get Sandra Oh, and it’s like “oh my god, now everybody knows who she is,” right? know Aziz Ansari? Maya: He said in an interview that the solution to diversifying mainstream films and TV isn’t to just stick people of colour into these films and movies where they aren’t allowed to tell their own stories. Instead, it’s about broadening the industry to include those stories and voices. Mina: Yeah, that’s right. But industry is driven by marketplace. I mean, in the 90s when I was making that first film [Double Happiness] we were having this conversation about representation, about the landscape and how it’s disparate, and you know, we’re here again. So, I’m hoping that people are cognizant to the lack of diversity and the stories that are deemed to matter in our world. It seems to me people are going “that ain’t right” [laughs] or real. So, maybe there’s going to be another movement. Maya: I think some people actually believe that we’ve reached this point where everything is great and everyone’s accepted, which definitely isn’t true. I mean just look around [we laugh]. I’ve heard people say things like, “we are in this post-politically correct world,” or this “post-racial world,” which is just another way of oppressing people. Mina: Right. It’s still erasure. 46 YiaraDocument.indd 46 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �Photo Credit: Peter Wunstorf. Action shot from the filming of Long Life, Happiness, and Prosperity. 2003. Image reproduced with the permission and courtesy of Mina Shum. Maya: Exactly. out. I am going to do my darnedest. I just keep making movies. To kind of push thought and create more conversations around people is what I want to be doing. To inspire them to do something about it personally, which might be effecting policy eventually. Every person has to figure out how to aim for the right direction for themselves in terms of what they are going to do. I believe there’s … But you know, I don’t know anything [we laugh]. After Trump won, I really don’t know anything because I didn’t think that was going to happen either. different, the characters in my films. They want something that in their society… maybe it’s encoded in them because of their gender, but they feel that they are supposed to live inside a confine, and they’re like “no, I’m going to try to figure it out for myself, and if I make mistakes it’s okay.” Because other people get to make mistakes, you know? We do have to escape. I don’t know if it’s capitalism, it’s probably capitalism at the root of it, but even before that—hunter gatherer, neanderthals—I’m not sure. We started labeling a long time ago, and what it means is that people don’t feel safe expressing who they are. And that’s important I think, for a society to grow, is that we have to feel safe to be who we are. Maya: Tell me if this is a fair reading of your work. I Maya: That definitely plays out in Jade’s character. think that your films tend to deal with this balance of family and home life, and also a kind of escapism. To me, it seems like the escapism is dual in that it is both— let’s say in Double Happiness—escaping the confines of a traditional home and also the confines of a societal perception of what a Chinese Canadian family is. There are these scenes where she’s rehearsing, and you’re not just watching someone rehearse in front of a mirror in the bedroom, but it feels like you’re getting this inside view of her mind. They feel very fantastical, if that makes sense. Mina: I think that’s fair. I don’t think there is… I you’re seeing her, you’re feeling her. Mina: Yeah, I’m not sure how it’s going to play want to say truer quality but I don’t even mean that. I mean more like true compassion, true compatibility human to human, that doesn’t exist without people being able to love every form. Instead of resisting something that bothers them going, okay be curious, why is this person so different than I? Or, how curious that you chose to express it that way. So, therefore, I ask that we love [laughs] you know, the people who are trying to escape. They’re a bit Mina: Yeah, you’re not just seeing her rehearse, Maya: Exactly, exactly. Mina: Which is, I think, one of the wonderful things you can do in films, and what I like to do, is that you get these great performances from people where it becomes… what they’re expressing connects with the audience so much it’s universal. I mean, all I want is for people to tap into my brain! [We laugh] I’m a 47 YiaraDocument.indd 47 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �filmmaker, it’s why I’m a filmmaker, right? It will feel less alone if you’re all in there with me. about effects your best friend when you talk to them on the phone, and your family. Maya: Do you feel like your work tells intrinsically Maya: So, I am curious about your experience Canadian stories? working with the NFB [National Film Board] on Ninth Floor. I know that in the past the NFB has made efforts to include a diverse range of films and filmmakers. I was wondering if you felt that support in your relationship with the NFB? Mina: No, I feel like I tell stories. I don’t know what that means, Canadian, other than people who live in my neighbourhood. If I make a film and it’s set in China, it’s still Canadian in my mind because it’s my perception that brought that film, right? I am a product of where I grew up and where I was born, so the whole mix of that. The time period I’m in, in terms of cultural revolution, post-punk: a lot of activism, a lot of oppression. Both have grown. I feel like a product of many different things. And then you filter a story of my personal interests through that and it could be anything. It doesn’t have to be set here. Like you know, Ninth Floor is a film I shot in Montreal, and I totally connected with that story. Even though it was not me, it was not my time period —1969—not my story at all, but somewhere in there I found the story that I would tell out of that story. Which is one about racism. Maya: One of the things that resonated a lot for me with Ninth Floor is that it shows how it could be anywhere. So of course telling that specific story is important, but it’s also the universal message that we need to know that this kind of racism and intolerance is going on. Mina: Oh yeah, to be vigilant I think. To be really aware with oneself. One fascist thought could lead to another fascist thought. It’s really easy to have your thoughts prescribed to you, rather than coming at situations fresh and open. Maya: Yeah, I really like the idea of - I mean for me as a white cis person - to constantly check myself. You can’t just give yourself the title of ally and think that it’s permanent. Instead, every single day you have to show up and ask, “what am I doing to uphold that title, and who am I supporting today?” Or even, “what thoughts am I letting into my mind and what am I thinking critically about?” Mina: I think it’s true. Whatever you’re thinking Mina: Oh yeah. This was a great project. I thought it was really great when they told me the story of the ninth floor and the students, that they were under surveillance, and they said, “what would you do with it?” I got to write a treatment according to what I would do with it, and we upheld it. So [laughs] it’s pretty out there for the film board, it’s pretty filmic in some places. At what point is it not a documentary? I could criticize it for that. You’ve got the real people walking around in scenes that are spy scenes in their brains [laughs] … it didn’t exactly happen like that, but my question is all about blurring the lines, right? So it made sense in terms of the form and content, that they were married, and they totally supported it. It was super awesome, they were great. Maya: That’s so cool. I was going to ask you exactly about that, about the line between documentary and fiction. For me at least, I definitely feel—I think that was a good word, did you say a marriage between the two? We go through the world with little bits of fiction interjected into our everyday. We are taking in so many different things at once. That was one of my favourite parts of the film, that there was narrative alongside the documentary. Mina: Mhm. Is it a marriage, a collision, is it making love? [we laugh] I don’t know. I just know I had a story that was really important. A story about how these people were judged, just for the colour of their skin in a time that was paranoid. And to use cinema, quoting those spy movies from the 70s kind of, because representation has to do with everything. If we don’t see ourselves in a positive light, if we don’t see ourselves truly, if we’re always being filtered through surveillance cameras or being watched in a way where we’re wondering why we’re being watched, then that is oppression. You’re not letting 48 YiaraDocument.indd 48 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �a group in society rise up, you’re constantly judging them. It’s really basic to the story that it was literally a series of little judgments that caused their lives to change so much, and it erupted in a fire. really powerful. When I watch it I feel that, and I’ve seen it a million times. Maya: I was really lucky and actually got to see a Maya: It feels almost metaphorical. screening of Ninth Floor at Concordia in the Hall building in H-110. Mina: Yeah, you know? It was attrition, enough Mina: Oh! When I was there? attrition that you ended up… Just looking at it if you sort of zoom out, it starts with a guy complaining, “hey, I think my teacher has racist tendencies, these are the reasons why” and you end up with a room of a hundred students of different races all locked up with a fire going on and only one way out. That’s what happens when you oppress things, when you don’t talk about them, you pretend it’s okay and it will eventually explode on you. That’s part of why I had so much narrative in it. I wanted you to feel what it’s like to make one choice, to make another choice, and then to go, “oh wow, how is it being judged upon?” You know how you said you felt like you were inside Jade’s head, in the theatrical moments of her rehearsing [in Double Happiness]? Maya: Yeah. Mina: It’s similar to that. Those sequences where they’re being watched, it’s us inside their heads, feeling othered. Maya: Mhm, because watching it, you—as the viewer —feel that kind of anxiety and paranoia of being observed. And also a kind of implication. Mina: That’s right. And at one point they look right at you in that—we called it the black box because we literally built a box out of black, light absorbing material. I said, “just look at us. Make us feel like you felt when people looked at you.” It was grim. The participants were amazing. Maya: I think there’s something about having someone look at you in that way. You know exactly why they’re looking at you and also what they’ve faced. Just having that intense connection, which you don’t usually see on film. That eye contact is really powerful. Mina: Yeah, that’s what I was hoping for. I feel it’s Maya: Yeah exactly, I think it was last winter? Mina: Oh cool. That was major, I still remember. Maya: It was amazing! How did it feel for you to be screening it in the place that so many of those events took place? Mina: I love when magic happens, and the screening there was a kind of magic. To me it’s very hopeful. Maya: Do you think, as an artist yourself and within that community, that artists and filmmakers have a responsibility to include stories about experiences of oppression? Mina: All I know is my own choices start with an intention. One of the things on my next film that I am going to do is instead of casting this guy caucasian, why don’t we cast him anything but caucasian? Just to give a great actor a shot at a part that normally would be cast white. Because really, normally it would have been, except we gave a thought to it. I’m not changing the story at all, but I’m… what can I do to let others shine? How can I help other people shine? The rudiments of acting is that whoever you’re acting with you make the other person look good. I was lately thinking that that is life, in a way. How can I help you shine? Whoever that is, whatever that is. We are coming from a place of service then. Maya: Have you heard of the idea “shine theory?” Photo Credit: Paul-Henri Talbot. Archival footage from Ninth Floor. 2015. Image reproduced with the permission and courtesy of Mina Shum. > 49 YiaraDocument.indd 49 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �50 YiaraDocument.indd 50 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �51 YiaraDocument.indd 51 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �Mina: No, what is that? Maya: [laughs] You basically just described it, but I think it was this woman Ann Friedman who coined it. She talks about it within groups of women, but it can really apply to everyone. If you support someone beside you, a friend beside you, and bring them up and let them shine, then in turn you’re going to get the opportunity to shine. It’s really about trying to share the stage in order to make everyone come together and produced their best selves and the best results. Mina: Yeah, and be their best selves. So if you can magnify that into societal exchanges, right, it’s kind of cool. Like the other day—this is going to sound crazy— but the other day I was walking in my neighbourhood and people started walking past me. I decided that I would say hi to everyone until it didn’t feel natural anymore. So anybody I walked past I just said “hello” to, and it either made them giggle, or they said hi back, or they were really happy to say hi to me. It could have happened by accident, my first hello, and I then I was like “that was pretty nice!” to say hi to that person. So that has to do with the shine theory too. That person got to express their personality a little bit, by saying hi to me. I love the woman who giggled at me. She just giggled when I said hello. She said hello too, but inside a giggle! [we laugh] It was adorable. Maya: That’s so great. I feel like—maybe this is a stretch—but I feel like in a way that is also what you can do through film and art. You can acknowledge other people and share yourself, and allow them to react and share themselves, if that makes sense. Mina: Yeah, well it’s one of the things I gravitate towards in movies. Where you give me space to be me inside your film. Have you seen Moonlight? Maya: Yeah! Oh my god, I just saw it. It was amazing. Mina: I really liked it because it allowed me to be in it and to be led by it. It’s both, you know? I had to put the connection together for the story, and when I did I really owned it a lot more. It was so great, there’s lots of space in it, it’s very welcoming. If you give space to people, the film can really affect them. Because then they have to make up their own minds. They have to find their own position in it. It becomes a conversation with the audience member. The actual watching of the movie becomes a conversation. Maya: Mhm, totally. I think while you’re watching any film you’re half in your mind thinking about what you’re watching and half taking it in. I don’t know if it divides exactly that way but— Mina: Oh yeah, I love it when they just take me and I’m not even aware that I’m a filmmaker. I’m just that nine year old kid who’s like “I love movies!” It’s such a good story. I think Moonlight did that for me, because partly I’ve seen so many films and the form was a bit different, the actors were so amazing, and the way they just held on those two shots. Maya: So, looking at a few of the films you’ve made I can see that you’ve used actors—like Sandra Oh—and crew members in multiple films. Do you find that creating a community around you is important in terms of art making? Mina: Oh god, absolutely! I also feel like it’s why we’re alive. To have good experiences with people we like doing cool things with. All you have in the end is the experience you go through making the film. I can’t go to bed and hug my film, but I can think of the lovely memories I have of something that we did. To build a community - I was just calling my hair and make-up person who I’ve worked with a number of times and asking if she was available for my next film, and she was like, “you’re so loyal,” and I was like, “I don’t think I’m loyal actually.” If I like talking to you, and I want to keep talking to you, we’ll just keep talking. I don’t need to be the most popular person in the world, I just need to know some great people really well. I’d rather deepen my relationships with people. I wrote the parts for the actors in my script. I’m already thinking about them when I’m writing. Maya: You made a short film in 2011 called Hip Hop Mom, which I loved. Amidst the humour and the really awesome dance moves, [we laugh] I found this message about community and especially about women coming together and supporting each other. 52 YiaraDocument.indd 52 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �Mina: Mhm, and the women are two different colours, but we’re all there and we’re all dancing. They’re in on the secret together, against the children really—we had this dance off in the parking lot, but kids, we’re just your moms [we laugh]. Yeah, it’s just another label. You grow into different labels as a woman. If you choose to be a mother, but even if you don’t, people might assume you are. Just because we’re women, right? slender, and the right gorgeous, and he’s got it, then I should be able to access what he accesses. And that’s how I live my life. I just assume it’s going to be a yes, until you tell me no. Or else I would be too scared to do anything. There should be no limits. I mean don’t harm yourself or someone else, but if someone is entitled and privileged enough to make those choices, then I should be able to have those opportunities. And everyone should have those opportunities. Maya: Yes… ugh. Maya: Yeah for sure. That’s super inspiring to hear. Mina: Again, talking about how my films have that So I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but lastly, can you tell me about what you’re working on now, and your upcoming film? edge of escaping—they all have to escape the confines of what it means to be a mother. Maya: Yeah, and the confines of all the identities other people put on you. Mina: That’s right. Just so we can dance! Shed it all. Maya: I really do think that dance and movement are super powerful ways to express emotion, and doing them with other people creates this bond. Mina: It’s so important. I actually think it’s primal and we’ve lost contact with it. I dance once a week with people or else I kind of lose my shit. I’ll dance around the house, too. It’s something we do, we naturally just want to shake our bodies! I’m not going to fight it [we laugh]. Maya: Totally! This is maybe a simplistic question to end on because I know there is so much nuance involved, but what is your relationship to feminism and how would you define it, or if you would? Mina: It’s called Meditation Park. I wrote it a couple years ago and we’re about to shoot in January. Meditation Park is a park in my neighbourhood, and the story is about a 60 year old ChineseCanadian woman who immigrated to Canada 40 years ago with her family. She’s raised her kids, devoted to her husband, now she has grandkids, an empty nest, but still taking care of her husband. One day she is doing the laundry and she finds an orange g-string thong in his pants [we laugh] and she’s like, who’s is this, what is this? She realizes she’s completely powerless. She doesn’t speak English that well and she’s not confident. She never had a job, she can’t drive, she has no money of her own, and she realizes that she really has no control over her own life. But in order to find the truth she starts to empower herself. She starts to follow him, and go out into the community. It’s really a story of late in life coming of age. Maya: I’m super excited to see it! Mina: I would say I am a feminist if you asked me. A Mina: It’s going to be so good, I just can’t wait. I’m much as I am a humanist, you know, and feminism to me is me having the same choices, opportunities, and rights as anybody else in terms of basic human rights. There should be no limit. so excited, I’ve got a great team and a great cast. It’s going to be such a great movie! [laughs] Maya: That’s so awesome! Thank you so so much Maya: No limit, I love that. for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to me. Mina: If the sky’s the limit for that dude over there, Mina: Oh yeah! No problem. Write well, think good because he’s tall, and the right colour, and the right thoughts. • 53 YiaraDocument.indd 53 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �Notes Olszanowski news/WCMS_008009/lang--en/index.htm. 1 16 Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), 14. 2 Our here refers to you, gentle reader, and not those that exist to propagate capital. By using our I don’t intend to flatten difference or obfuscate the varying degree of accommodation our bodies receive, but rather hope to find alignments between us. 3 “Privacy,” Etymology Online, accessed February 5, 2017, http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=privacy. 4 Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life, 14. 5 For examples see my interview with Marlaina Read about my menstruation work in issue 39 of No more Potlucks, my tiny letter, Wild Heart, http://tinyletter.com/wildheart, my 8-hour durational performance We Always Make Love with Wor(l)ds: One Hand Moments (2016), and the stills from my Prurient Maternal project on my website, http://raisecain.net. 17 See The Let Down Reflex, curated by Amber Berson and Juliana Driever, discussed in Gregory Sholette, “The Politics of Being a Parent in the Art World,” Hyperallergenic, March 4, 2016, accessed February 27, 2017, http:// hyperallergic. com/280503/the-politics-of-being-a-parent-in-the-art-world. 18 Lyne Casavant and James R. Robertson, “The Evolution of Pornography Law in Canada,” Parliamentary Information and Research Service of the Library of the Parliament of Canada, October 25, 2007, accessed February 27, 2017, http://www.lop. parl.gc.ca/content/lop/researchpublications/843-e.htm. 19 Magdalena Olszanowski, “Feminist Self-Imaging and Instagram: Tactics of Circumventing Sensorship,” Visual Communication Quarterly 21:2 (2014): 83–95. 1 7 2 8 Carolee Schneemann, “The Obscene Body/Politic,” Art Journal 50:4 (1991): 35. 9 Carol Jacobsen, “Redefining Censorship: a Feminist View,” Art Journal 50:4 (1991): 42–55. 10 Ahmed calls moments of refusal, when we cannot endure or uphold something any longer, “snaps.” Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life, 187-190. 11 bell hooks, Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (London: Routledge, 1994). 12 Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (London: Verso Books, 2009). Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life, 14. Wood 6 For example, women are not supposed to take pleasure, especially public pleasure, in nursing. See the stills from Milkmaid (2017) on my website. Christi Belcourt, “The Project,” Walking With Our Sisters, accessed November 28, 2016, http:// walkingwithoursisters.ca/ about/the-project. “The Project.” 3 All of the artists are named on their website, and many vamps have image documentation and includes their (optional) project description. Christi Belcourt, “Moccasin ‘Vamps,’” Walking With Our Sisters, accessed November 28, 2016, http:// walkingwithoursisters.ca/artwork/moccasin-vamps. 4 Christi Belcourt, “1,300 + Artists,” Walking With Our Sisters, accessed November 28, 2016, http:// walkingwithoursisters.ca/ about/artists. 5 The North-West Rebellion was a five-month long violent resistance by the Cree, Blackfoot, Blood, Peigan and Saulteaux tribes against Canadian colonial violence. The battle was won by federal Canada in 1885, resulting in the subjugation of Métis and Plains tribes to the enforcement of Canadian federal law. 6 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume 1 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). Christi Belcourt, “Artwork,” Walking With Our Sisters, accessed November 28, 2016, http:// walkingwithoursisters.ca/ artwork. 14 7 13 Amelia Jones, Body Art/Performing the Subject (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 151. 15 54 Mierle Laderman Ukeles, “Maintenance Art Manifesto, Proposal for an Exhibition, ‘Care,’” in Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology, eds. Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999), 122-125. For example, pro-life advocates in the USA spend a lot of money to put vulnerable and marginalized bodies in danger and to turn all stages of motherhood into profit. In addition, the USA is one of four countries in the world that doesn’t offer paid maternity leave. While Canada offers paid leave we are not immune from the violence, including birth rape, that happens to new mothers in hospitals and postpartum. See: “More than 120 Nations Provide Paid Maternity Leave,” International Labour Organization, February 16, 1998, accessed February 27, 2017, http:// www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/ YiaraDocument.indd 54 While I myself have not experienced the installation, there are many videos online that document them. Stephanie G. Anderson has a very thorough and well written account of her experience of the installation. However, Anderson theorizes the installation only through the lens of “craftivism.” While interesting, craftivism is a Western (largely, wealthy, white woman) construct, which risks a decontextualized analysis of the installation. See: Stephanie G. Anderson, “Stitching through Silence: Walking With Our Sisters, Honoring the Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women in Canada.” Textile 14.1 (2016): 84-97. 8 Christi Belcourt in conversation with Rebeka Tabobondung, 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �“MUSKRAT Magazine interview with Metis artist Christi Belcourt on Walking with our Sisters (WWOS),” Youtube video, 06:53, posted March 14, 2014, https:// www.youtube. com/watch?v=ehyOa05ecNA. 9 Catharine Volpe, Walking With Our Sisters Facebook page, June 26, 2013. https://www.facebook.com/groups/ walkingwithoursisters/permalink/468923253190775. 10 Brandy Robertson, Walking With Our Sisters Facebook page, February 21, 2016, https://www.facebook.com/ groups/ walkingwithoursisters/permalink/941137972635965. 11 All of the singers, duos, or groups that contribute to the installation are credited and listed alphabetically on the Walking With Our Sisters website, including a video link of “Women’s Power Song” by Kontiwennenhawi (Carrier Of The Words) Akwesasne Women Singers. See Christi Belcourt, “Music,” Walking With Our Sisters, accessed November 28, 2016, http://walkingwithoursisters.ca/artwork/music. 22 Ibid. 23 Aaron Wherry, “How an ‘Unflinching Gaze’ on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Might Move Canada Forward,” CBCnews, August 4, 2016, accessed December 10, 2016, http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/wherry-mmiwinquiry-1.3706088. 24 Tabobondung, “MUSKRAT Magazine interview with Metis artist Christi Belcourt.” 25 Christi Belcourt, “Our Sisters,” Walking With Our Sisters, accessed November 28, 2016, http:// walkingwithoursisters.ca/ about/our-sisters. 26 NWAC, “Fact Sheet.” 27 Kristen Gilchrist, “‘Newsworthy’ Victims?” Feminist Media Studies 10.4 (2010): 374. 28 Gilchrist, “‘Newsworthy’ Victims?” 374. 29 Tabobondung, “MUSKRAT Magazine interview with Metis artist Christi Belcourt.” Ibid. 30 Ibid., 384. 13 31 Ibid., 384-385. 12 Traditional tobacco is one of the four sacred plants along with sage, sweetgrass, and red cedar, used only for medicinal and ceremonial purposes. Sacred tobacco - sometimes a blend of kinnikinnick and bark of red osier dogwood - in some indigenous cultures is present and integral to all stages of life including, birthing rituals, marriage, death, and personal prayer. See “Aboriginal Sacred Plants: Tobacco,” Indigenous Corporate Training Inc., accessed November 30, 2016, http:// www.ictinc.ca/blog/aboriginal-sacred-plants-tobacco. 14 32 Including the NFB documentary Finding Dawn (2006) by Christine Welsh. 33 NWAC, “Fact Sheet.” 34 For a list of the names and locations for all 65 beading groups, see Christi Belcourt, “Beading Groups,” Walking With Our Sisters, accessed November 28, 2016, http:// walkingwithoursisters.ca/artwork/beading-groups. Tabobondung, “MUSKRAT Magazine interview with Metis artist Christi Belcourt.” 35 15 Ibid. 16 Tabobondung, “MUSKRAT Magazine interview with Metis artist Christi Belcourt.” Ibid. 37 17 Francis Adyanga Akena, “Critical Analysis of the Production of Western Knowledge and Its Implications for Indigenous Knowledge and Decolonization,” Journal of Black Studies 43, no. 6 (2012): 599. 18 Anne de Stecher, “Souvenir Art, Collectable Craft, Cultural Heritage: The Wendat (Huron) of Wendake, Quebec,” in Craft, Community and the Material Culture of Place and Politics, 19th20th Century, eds. Dr Beverly Lemire, Ms Alena Buis, and Professor Janice Helland (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2014), 37. 19 Alena Buis and Sarah E. K. Smith, “Sanaugait in Nunavut,” The Journal of Modern Craft 6.2 (2015): 189. 20 Native Women’s Association of Canada, “Fact Sheet: Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women and Girls,” accessed March 31, 2010, https://nwac.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ Fact_ Sheet_Missing_and_Murdered_Aboriginal_Women_and_Girls. 21 NWAC, “Fact Sheet.” YiaraDocument.indd 55 “Beading Groups.” 36 Ibid. Maeve 1 Maren Linett, “‘New Words, New Everything’: Fragmentation and Trauma in Jean Rhys,” Twentieth Century Literature 51.4 (2005): 437. 2 Linett, “New Worlds, New Everything,” 438. 3 Ibid., 440. 4 Ibid., 401, 443. 5 In which the text is viewed as the inevitable result of a writer’s social position, gender and mental state. 6 Ibid., 438. 7 Daphne de Marneffe, “Looking and Listening: The Construction of Clinical Knowledge in Charcot and Freud,” Signs 17.1 (1991): 71. 8 Marneffe, “Looking and Listening,” 71. 55 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �9 Ibid., 74. 10 Howard I. Kushner, “Suicide, Gender, and the Fear of Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Medical and Social Thought,” Journal of Social History 26.3 (1993): 461. It is notable that unlike the bourgeois characters of modernists like Woolf, Sasha Jansen does not have the means for her clothing to act as excess or ornamentation. 40 Ibid., 21. 11 Kushner, “Suicide, Gender, and the Fear of Modernity,” 461. Zenderoudi 12 Marneffe, “Looking and Listening,” 91. 1 13 Christian Baudelot and Roger Establet, Suicide: The Hidden Side of Modernity (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2008), 38 14 Baudelot and Establet, Suicide, 10. 15 Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight (London: Penguin, 1939), 36. 16 Barton D. Johnson, “‘L’Inconnue de la Seine’ and Nabokov’s Naiads,” Comparative Literature 44.3 (1992): 230. 17 Angelique Chrisafis, “Ophelia of the Seine,” The Guardian, December 1, 2007, accessed July 15, 2016, https://www. theguardian.com/world/2007/dec/01/france.art. 18 Chrisafis, “Ophelia of the Seine.” 19 Ibid. 20 Mehri Honarbin-Holliday, Becoming Visible in Iran: Women in Contemporary Iranian Society (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2008), 2-4. 2 Honarbin-Holliday, Becoming Visible in Iran, 3. 3 Ibid. 4 Lily Farhadpour, “Women, Gender Roles, Media and Journalism,” in Women, Power and Politics in 21st Century Iran, eds. Tara Povey and Elaheh Rostami-Povey (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012), 98-105. 5 Honarbin-Holliday, Becoming Visible in Iran, 4. 6 Gholam Khiabany and Anabelle Sreberny, “The Women’s Press in Contemporary Iran: Engendering the Public Sphere,” in Women and Media in the Middle East: Power through Selfexpression, ed. Naomi Sakr (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), 20. Virginia Woolf committed suicide in 1941, two years after the publication of Rhys’ book. 7 21 Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight, 37. 8 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., 39. 9 24 Ibid., 130. 10 25 Ibid., 428. Ibid., 114, 58, 68. 11 26 Ibid. Ibid., 20. 12 27 Ibid., 83. 28 Khiabany and Sreberny, The Women’s Press in Contemporary Iran, 20. Ali Akbar Mahdi, “The Iranian Women’s Movement: A Century Long Struggle,” The Muslim World 94.4 (2004): 427448. 13 29 Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight, 153. 14 30 Ibid., 121. 31 Ibid., 25. Which Virginia Woolf construes as a space of middle-class artistic empowerment in “A Room of One’s Own.” 33 Ibid., 25, 32. 34 Ibid., 32. Mahdi, “The Iranian Women’s Movement,” 427. Khiabany and Sreberny, The Women’s Press in Contemporary Iran, 18. Arnold E. Davidson, “The Dark Light is Enough: Affirmation from Despair in Jean Rhys’s ‘Good Morning, Midnight,’” Contemporary Literature 24.3 (1983): 351. 32 56 39 Nassereddin Parvin, Encyclopædia Iranica, s.v. “Jahān-e zanān,” last modified April 10, 2012, accessed November 23, 2016, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/jahan-e-zanan. Farhadpour, “Women, Gender Roles, Media and Journalism,” 105. 15 Khiabany and Sreberny, The Women’s Press in Contemporary Iran, 19-20. 17 Hossein Shahidi, “From Mission to Profession: Journalism in Iran, 1979–2004,” Iranian Studies 39.1 (2006): 1-28. 18 Farhadpour, “Women, Gender Roles, Media and Journalism,” 105. 35 Ibid., 12. 36 Linett, “New Worlds, New Everything,” 440. 19 37 Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight, 72. 20 38 Ibid., 76. YiaraDocument.indd 56 Ibid., 99. 16 Ibid., 105. Nima Naghibi, Rethinking Global Sisterhood: Western Feminism and Iran (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2007), 2. 2017-03-30 11:30 AM �www.yiaramagazine.com Cover Sketches.indd 5 2017-03-30 11:24 AM � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Other publications Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Issue 5 Page Number(s) 1-56 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data PDF Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-01 Title A name given to the resource Yiara Magazine Issue 5 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Yiara Magazine Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Yiara Magazine Description An account of the resource The fifth issue of Yiara Magazine, an undergraduate feminist art &amp; art history publication. Concordia McGill non-McGill UQAM https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62030/archive/files/a9dda16adcd3a0ad4e72a01ad8db0972.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=nKXMQmcC5Uj0diif2mlRfjvT6HdqulUSNTnlVPrDZtSX9mY6Gw%7ExJ32g-0cQzlkP7-sJWKQtHL59LzHSoFMSlIQsERHhj9Ifo3gCsl0AQRrMFSpTf%7EgiIbxet22l6uLFTcbJtY5rB5tcag1MxxFZ3hyrBSMb%7Epa4vnf3QpxE%7EUtLbD4etkO7bpoRK7qH%7ENhN6VDQu-Udyq3LEgPrXt5UizfN8MTAHUyIoXSmYtdk7WnRVUU7tC6YK2GOx5JOYaEgM2yqb7NdieXgxhvPZ4GlsgIv-f1ujYUFyvafl98%7EEjcPaSVVjZwAGqba2Q3uj5mVmPW5yV3rqAvdCdswYxJYcg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 3b2b1ffdb6f0ba1e284bb672046214b9 PDF Text Text �Co-Editors-in-Chief Rédactrices en Chef MANDATE MANDAT STORY HISTOIRE Stephanie Barclay & Hannah Karpinski Yiara Magazine is an undergraduate feminist art and art history publication. We publish an annual print magazine and organize an exhibition of the featured artworks. Our goal is to provide a platform for students to think about women in art—a subject that we believe still requires considerable exploration— through a diversity of visual and written material. Yiara emphasizes the collaboration of students from various disciplines across Montréal in the interest of forwarding and cultivating an inclusive space for feminist dialogue. Yiara also hosts several academic and cultural events around the magazine for the undergraduate community to share their ideas and engage with people from other programs and backgrounds, as well as established Montréal artists and art institutions. Yiara is an indigenous mythological Brazilian Queen, legendarily beautiful and a mighty warrior. She thus embodies many different issues of interest to feminist art history: sexuality, power, and cultural identity. Head Writer Rédactrice Julie Brown Associate English Editor Rédactrice Associée aux Textes Anglais Danica Pinteric Associate French Editor Rédactrice Associée aux Textes Français Simone Bertrand Creative Director Directrice Artistique Jacqui Bush Events Coordinators Coordonnatrices des Événements Tina Le Justine McKenna Online Media Manager Gestionnaire de Médias en Ligne Klio Foti Online Head Writer Rédactrice en Ligne Céline Cardineau Copy Editors Correcteurs Hannah Braithewaite Sara Hashemi Miles Norton Social Media Coordinator Coordonatrice des Réseaux Sociaux Danica Pinteric Contributors Contributrices Kayla Breaker, Liane Decary-Chen, Krysten Krulik, Chloe Le Guen, Pamela Lisa, Alyag Malkhassian, Maggie Mills, Alison Moule, Vanille Salé.e, Justice Thelot, Krystale Tremblay-Moll, Julia Woldmo, Florence Yee Yiara Magazine est une publication étudiante d’art féministe et d’histoire de l’art. Au courant de l’année, nous publions une revue annuelle et organisons une exposition qui réunit les oeuvres présentées au sein de notre magazine. A travers la diversité de compositions visuelles et écrites, notre objectif est de promouvoir une plateforme étudiante qui suscite une reflexion autour de la femme au coeur de l’art - un sujet qui, selon nous, requiere encore de l’attention et une exploration continue. Yiara accentue la collaboration entre étudiants de Montréal provenant de différents domaines, dans l’intêret de transmettre et de cultiver un espace ouvert au dialogue féministe. Autour de son magazine, Yiara accueille de nombreux évènements académiques et culturels divers. La communauté d’étudiants de premier cycle universitaire peut ainsi partager ses idées et s’engager avec d’autres étudiants de formations diverses mais aussi avec des artistes et institutions artistiques établis à Montréal Yiara est une reine indigène brésilienne mythique dont la beauté est aussi légendaire que les talents de guerrière. Elle incarne de ce fait un ensemble de facettes se trouvant au croisement de l’histoire de l’art et du feminisme : sexualité, pouvoir et identité culturelle. SPECIAL THANKS We are especially grateful to the Fine Arts Student Alliance, the Concordia Council for Student Life, the Concordia University Alumni Association, and the Concordia Student Union for their financial support. We would like to extend our thanks to Anna Waclawek of the Department of Art History at Concordia University and to Dr. Cynthia Hammond for their continued support of our project. Last but not least, we are grateful for the assistance of Philippe Depairon and for each member of the Yiara team who volunteered their time to this project, as well as the countless other students and student associations that share our feminist mandate. DESIGN The primary typeface used in this issue is Torrent—in regular, regular italic, and bold weights—designed by Manushi Parikh for Indian Type Foundry in 2015. Typeface design continues to be a particularly male-dominated field within the design industry, so this typeface was chosen with the intention of acknowledging this imbalance and promoting the visibility of women’s designs. �02 Edito Hannah Karpinski Stephanie Barclay 04 IG HOE MANIFESTO Liane Decary-Chen 07 The Powerful Woman or the Old Hag Krystale Tremblay-Moll 12 Why Don’t You Just Leave? Kayla Breaker 16 Untitled Justice Thelot 34 Summer Self 35 First Time Human, Long Time Being Inventory 18 « �Lonely Two-Legged Creatures » Vanille Salé.e 26 Drag Me Krysten Krulik 28 L’oeuvre de Virginie Despentes Chloe Le Guen Julia Woldmo 32 Just-So Anonymous Pamela Lisa 40 Hybrid Interiors Maggie Mills 47 Stuffed Kitsch Florence Yee 36 Primitive Archetypes 37 Dream: Flip the Mattress Dream: Only Two 38 Crown of Ar Alyag Malkhassian 48 Antibody Alison Moule 50 “Is it Art, and Does it Matter?” Julie Brown �Mot des rédactrices C Letter from the Editors T 4 ette année, l’industrie culturelle a été envahie par les voix de survivant.e.s qui ont dénoncé des agressions sexuelles et des abus de pouvoir. Tel que nous l’avons témoigné, il n’a suffi que quelques voix s’élèvent pour donner confiance à plusieurs autres de prendre la parole. Nous avons vu émerger le pouvoir de la collectivité et demandons maintenant de passer à la responsabilité— une responsabilité durable— pour tout ce que cela a demandé d’un point de vue émotionnel, sans compter l’analyse publique scrutée à la loupe de notre traumatisme. Voici les mots de Tarana Burke, “it’s not just a moment, it’s a movement.” 1 Si on compare aux années précédentes, nous avons reçu un très grand nombre de soumissions démontrant une vulnérabilité radicale, ainsi qu’une conscience féministe profondément personnelle, dans la façon d’adresser un traumatisme sexuel. À toutes celles et ceux qui ont eu le courage d'aborder leurs expériences et d’en partager la véracité dans leurs oeuvres, souvent viscérales, nous vous admirons et vous sommes redevables pour votre travail. Pour certaines, ce débordement de protestations confessionnelles a été cathartique et validateur pour ne pas dire, carrément victorieux. Toutefois, pour plusieurs autres personnes, nous imaginons bien que le fait d’être confronté à l’actualité quotidienne sur le sujet de dénonciation ait pu provoquer une réévaluation non désirée d’un traumatisme. Pour cette raison, nous tenons à transmettre un avertissement relatif au contenu de la page 12, qui contient des références graphiques liées à la violence conjugale. À la fin du semestre d’automne, l'Université Concordia a fait l'objet d'un examen minutieux pour inconduite sexuelle dans le programme de Creative Writing. Beaucoup d'entre nous ont vécu cette implosion tout en la regardant prendre forme sur la place publique. Pour nous, ce n’est pas qu’un fait divers mais une réalité au quotidien. Plusieurs d’entre nous avons eu la chance de pouvoir éviter ce mal grâce aux alertes lancées par les étudiantes des cohortes antérieures. Nous sommes les corps dans ces corridors et nous sommes ici à chaque jour pour créer, et nous soutenir les unes et les autres. Nous choisissons de répondre à notre manière en tant qu’artistes, écrivain.e.s et facilitateur.e.s. Nous sommes fières et solidaires avec nos camarades. Nous sommes réconfortées de savoir que notre communauté a la capacité d’arriver et d’imaginer un futur alternatif au sein de notre université. his year’s cultural climate has been saturated with the voices of survivors speaking out against sexual harassment and abuses of power. As we have witnessed, the voices of a few give rise to the confidence of many. We have found power in collectivity and now we demand accountability—sustained accountability—for the expense of our emotional labour and for the public scrutiny of our trauma. In the words of Tarana Burke, “it’s not just a moment, it’s a movement.” 1 A disproportionate number of submissions this year compared to previous years exhibited a radical vulnerability and a deeply personal feminist consciousness in their addresses of sexual trauma. To all those who had the courage to engage with these experiences and to share their honest, often visceral work, we admire you and are indebted to your labour. For some this outflowing of confessional protest has been cathartic and validating—more than that, it has been downright victorious— but we are sure that for many others checking the news every day has provoked an unwanted reevaluation of trauma. For this reason we are issuing a content warning for page 12, which contains graphic reference to domestic abuse. At the turn of the semester, Concordia University came under scrutiny for sexual misconduct within the Creative Writing program. Many of us have been living this implosion while simultaneously watching it unfold in public. For us it is not just a headline; it is a daily reality. Many of us are lucky to be part of a lineage of students who have avoided harm thanks to warnings from our older peers. We are the bodies in the halls and we are here every day. And still we are creating in abundance and supporting one another, and we choose to respond on our own terms, as artists and writers and facilitators. We are proud of and stand with our fellow students. We find comfort in the knowledge that our community can imagine and arrive at alternative futures within and beyond the university. �Alors que le présent peut parfois sembler accablant, nous pouvons puiser notre force dans la solidarité et envisager des possibilités radicales. Et comment commençons-nous aujourd'hui? Qu'est-ce qu'un présent radical? L'avenir du mouvement n'est pas #MeStill ou #TimesStillUp. Nous proposons #MeTooNowWhat? Ceci n'est pas une question mais bien une demande dirigée vers les responsables - nous vous avons dénoncé et continuerons à le faire. Maintenant, comment allez-vous assumer la responsabilité de vos actions passées et celles pour l’avenir ? Nous devons beaucoup aux femmes qui nous ont précédées—à notre fondatrice Raissa Paes, à Amelia WongMersereau et à nos éditrices en chef précédentes—qui sont à l’origine du travail politique engagé que fait Yiara aujourd’hui. Dans la tradition du féminisme de la deuxième vague, nous saluons nos aïeules. While the present may, at times, feel overwhelming, we can draw strength from solidarity and envision radical possibilities. And how do we begin today? What is a radical present? The future of the movement is not #MeStill or #TimesStillUp. We propose #MeTooNowWhat? This is not so much a question as it is a demand directed towards those responsible—we’ve called you out and will continue to do so, now how are you going to claim accountability for your actions, past and future? Too often the conversation regarding victims of gender-based discrimination, harassment, and assault has prioritized the stories of cis white women to the detriment of the multiplicity of voices and experiences belonging to people of colour; trans and queer folk; and male victims of sexual violence. We are a feminist magazine but the current editors do not subscribe to essentialist definitions of biological womanhood, nor do we wish to promote cis women to the exclusion of our trans and non-binary peers. We are a feminist magazine in that we desire to create a platform for the exploration of gender, across the spectrum, as it intersects with sexuality, class, race, and ethnicity. We are indebted to those women who came before us—to our founder Raissa Paes, to Amelia Wong-Mersereau, and to all the former Editors-in-Chief—who laid the foundation for the type of political work that Yiara does today. In the tradition of second-wave feminism, we salute our foremothers. Stephanie Barclay & Hannah Karpinski Co-Editors-in-Chief Rédactrices en chef 5 La conversation concernant les victimes de discrimination sexiste, d’harcèlement et d'agression a donné trop souvent la priorité aux histoires de femmes blanches. Et cela, au détriment de la multiplicité des voix et des expériences appartenant aux personnes de couleur, aux personnes trans et queer ainsi qu’aux hommes victimes de violence sexuelle. Nous sommes un magazine féministe mais les éditrices ne souscrivent pas à la définition essentialiste et biologique du fait d’être femme, et ne souhaitons pas promouvoir les femmes en excluant nos pairs trans et non-binaires. Nous sommes un magazine féministe et désirons créer une plateforme pour l’exploration du genre, peu importe où cela se situe sur le spectrum, tout en étant intersecté avec la sexualité, la classe sociale, la race et l’ethnicité. ��AN ODE TO QUEER, TRANS, NON-BINARY, INTERSEX, POC, INDIGENOUS, SLUT, POOR, FAT, NEURODIVERGENT & OTHERWISE MARGINALIZED INSTAGRAM HOES OUR STORIES ARE WORTH TELLING OUR EXISTENCE IS ART OUR SURVIVAL IS ART OUR IMAGE IS SACRED MAY OUR CONFIDENCE GROW TALL MAY OUR SELFIES GLOW STRONG MAY THEY FINALLY SEE US AS WE WANT TO BE SEEN REPEAT AFTER ME: I AM THE LENS, THE EYE, AND THE BEHOLDER I WILL CONTROL THE GAZE IG HOE MANIFESTO LIANE DECARY-CHEN COMPUTATION ARTS CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY IG HOE MANIFESTO celebrates Instagram as a subversive, radically accessible medium for empowerment and self-representation. Spanning print, video, and social media, the project is a multiplatform initiative that questions the distinctions of high and low art; the artist sees social media sites like Instagram, which provide users with the cultural capital to call themselves creators and see their posts as art, as refutation of the “credentials” of artistry. The work denounces the fetishism of survival and of the “starving artist” by giving cultural and financial capital to underrepresented creators, and recognition to those without other means of distributing their work. It also promotes the networks of identity which allow marginalized people to take control of their own narratives and reclaim their representations. With this work, Decary-Chen proclaims their survival as a form of art and an act of self-love. Poetic, strong-willed, and unapologetic, IG HOE MANIFESTO confidently captures the spirit of reclamation that leaves no room for reductionist barriers. 7 REPEAT AFTER ME: I WILL LIVE WITHOUT SHAME I WILL MAKE CLOUT OUT OF DUST I WILL WRITE MY OWN STORIES ��The Powerful Woman or the Old Hag KRYSTALE TREMBLAY-MOLL ENGLISH LITERATURE CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY W Frans van Mieris, Woman with a Lapdog, Accompanied by a Maidservant (probably Bathsheba with King David’s Letter), 1680, oil on panel, 19.3 x 15.5 cm. Image courtesy of The Leiden Collection, New York. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an anonymously written text from the 14th century, was originally composed in Middle English and depicts a chivalric romance story. The text describes the conflict between Sir Gawain, a knight from King Arthur’s court, and the Green Knight, a giant green figure, who challenges him. While this synopsis would make it seem that this tale would predominantly explore themes of masculinity, as the narrative goes on, readers discover that women play an important role in the unravelling of the plot. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer, a 14th century Middle English text, is part of a larger body of work entitled The Canterbury Tales. The Wife of Bath, a woman among a group of mostly male pilgrims journeying from London to Canterbury, is outspoken, blunt and wise. She recounts her story in two parts. In the prologue, the Wife of Bath goes into detail about her five different marriages and the lessons she has learned from them. The tale, on the other hand, is a description of a young, licentious knight in King Arthur’s court who is sentenced to death for having raped a woman in the town. At the Queen Guinevere’s 9 hat it means to be a woman has always been a sort of conundrum. Western society constantly tries to define what women should be and what roles they should play. Does being a woman mean being submissive, caring, selfless? Can it be the opposite, as well— domineering, careless, selfish? In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer, the authors portray women who break prescribed molds of “feminine” behaviour. Both texts depict women conducting themselves in positions of power to show women’s resilience and the diversity of their experiences. Power dynamics are examined by invoking binaries using stereotypically masculine versus feminine language, and the weak/beautiful versus ugly/ powerful trope. �10 insistence, he is given the opportunity to escape death if he can provide an answer for what women want within a year and a day. This proves to be an almost impossible feat for the rapist, until he meets an old woman who claims she has the answer, but sharing it comes at a cost. In Sir Gawain, the author uses role reversals and masculinized language when discussing female characters to show how gender does not dictate one’s personality traits. As Sir Gawain struggles to find the Green Chapel where he has vowed to meet the Green Knight for their final duel, he happens upon a castle, where he is invited to spend the night by an unnamed benevolent knight. The author utilizes a ‘predator versus prey’ dynamic repeatedly, but in unexpected ways: the woman is the predator and the man is the prey. Indeed, when this knight’s wife, who is unnamed in the story, first enters Sir Gawain’s bedchambers, she is described with animalistic language, wherein the narrator warns the reader that Gawain may be the prey: “she stole towards him with silent steps, / then cast up the curtain and crept inside.” 1 The alliteration of the letter “s” creates a sense of quiet movement, as if she were some kind of reptile. This calls to mind the fall of Adam and Eve in Eden, except in this instance, Eve is the temptress. She is both the forbidden fruit and Satan disguised as a serpent. This moment establishes the role reversals that continue throughout the narrative. Furthermore, the knight’s wife exclaims that she has “tricked and trapped” 2 and “pinned” 3 Sir Gawain. The vocabulary of force and immobility adds another link to the chain of hunting metaphors, masculinizing her. Interestingly, this violent language is continually juxtaposed with her joyful demeanor: she is always laughing and smiling. For instance, she is described as “settling by his side and laughing sweetly, / looking at him lovingly before launching her words.” 4 On the one hand, the author alliterates the letter “l” – a soft consonant that evokes a certain gentleness. Even on the level of diction the knight’s wife appears harmless. That is, until the word “launching” is used and, although it also begins with the letter “l,” the masculinized language of weaponry returns. Towards the end of the text, the Green Knight reveals that a woman named Morgan Le Fay was behind Sir Gawain’s quest— a shocking revelation. For most of the narrative, Le Fay seems to serve little to no purpose; she is first introduced as “an ancient dame … withered by years.” 5 She is described as the antithesis of beauty, an ugly, old woman “noosed and knotted at the neck” 6 lurking behind her beautiful, young counterpart. Nevertheless, the Green Knight describes her as “mighty,” 7 stating “There is no nobleness / she cannot take and tame.” 8 By using the word “mighty,” an inherently masculine word that usually describes men with a superior power or strength, the Green Knight’s description of Le Fay’s behaviour breaks down the stereotype of the submissive woman. Furthermore, the author once again employs the predator versus prey dynamic; Le Fay has the ability to “take and tame.” There is nothing polite, reserved or subservient about her. The Green Knight’s words imply a certain ruthlessness and position her as the predator. It is she who tames, not the other way around. This contrasts with the way women are usually described in other texts from this period, such as Petrarch’s sonnets. The romance genre tends to focus on more conventionally female attributes, like beauty and politeness, but this text subverts this norm by using inherently violent language to describe Le Fay. The Wife of Bath operates in a similar way to Sir Gawain, in that it also applies masculinized language to describe the actions of feminine characters. However, since Chaucer employs a first-person narrator, it is the female character who performs the role reversals through her language, rather than a third-person narrator who remarks it. The Wife of Bath describes herself with traditionally masculine language. For instance, she boasts about having power over her husband and his body: “Upon his flessh, whil that I am his wyf / I have the power durynge al my lyf” 9 [“Upon his flesh, while I am his wife. / I have the power during all my life.”] 10 Moreover, she continuously compares herself to men; the link is therefore not solely made through language, but also through relating actual male figures to herself. This further emphasizes the similarities in character traits across genders and challenges traditional norms. The Wife of Bath compares herself with King Solomon from the Bible: “I trowe he hadde wyves many oon, / As wolde God it leveful were to me / To be refresshed half so ofte as he” 11 [“I believe he had wives more than one. /As would God it were lawful unto me / To be refreshed half so often as he!”] 12 If God would allow Solomon to have 700 wives and 300 �given a name, although readers only encounter her in the narrative once and, at that moment, she is not named. In the story, she is presented as a repulsive old woman whose “trunk [is] square and squat, / her buttocks bulg[e] and swel[l].” 17 Since Le Fay is absent for most of the narrative, she The Wife of Bath’s crass and unashamed behaviour can easily be overlooked. Nevertheless, she is the is another example of the way she is masculinized mastermind behind the story’s conflict. The Green through language. When she states that Knight tells Sir Gawain that she she has picked her husbands for “Bothe “guided [him]” 18 through the plot to of here nether purs and of here cheste” 13 test him. This language places the [“Both of their lower purse (scrotum) The alliteration of the letter Green Knight in subordination to and of their strongbox,”] 14 this becomes “s” creates a sense of quiet her, the guide, but unlike Gawain, he does not seem to mind. increasingly apparent. This description movement, as if she were resembles the blazoning found in sonnets, wherein a woman’s body parts are some kind of reptile. This Moreover, Le Fay’s plot is objectified. In this passage, she engages calls to mind the fall of Adam driven by revenge against another woman: her motive in this rhetorical convention, but reverses and Eve in Eden, except is to undermine the reputed the power roles. This is furthered by the in this instance, Eve is the Guinevere and the Round Table. lack of romanticism in it: she equates men to their reproductive organs and temptress. She is both the She employs the Green Knight’s their size. Moreover, she sets herself forbidden fruit and Satan young and beautiful wife to tempt Sir Gawain. Therefore, the plot against maidenhood, an inherently disguised as a serpent. can actually be interpreted to be feminine concept, which describes the about two women who use men preservation of a woman’s virginity, as pawns in their feud against never a man’s. one another. This is a duel, not of swords, but of women’s minds. It is refreshing to Similarly to Sir Gawain, the Wife of Bath also creates see this happen in such a masculine space, yet, at a reversal of power dynamics as she describes her first, it seems more contextualizing than significant. husbands as “bothe my dettour and my thral” 15 Sir Gawain still remains a story of a knight’s quest [“both my debtor and my slave.”] 16 As this quote to prove his honour. Even though the Green Knight reveals, power dynamics, such as the debtor/slave is the one that causes him actual bodily harm, relationship, are a recurring theme in this text. Gawain seems more upset about being a puppet in Firstly, there is the master and the slave. Then, there a woman’s game. He victimizes himself and blames is the debtor and the person to whom the debt is women for his woes: “But no wonder if a fool finds owed, the creditor. These metaphors are interesting his way into folly / and be wiped of his wits by because the Wife of Bath establishes herself as the womanly guile / it’s the way of the world. Adam power figure in each case. She is both the master fell because of a woman, / and Solomon because of and the creditor. Both are relationships of force and several... if only / we could love our ladies without obligation. Indeed, this language of power is what believing their lies.” 19 In the end, his wounded pride masculinizes the wife of Bath in the same way that the language of hunting and violence masculinizes is more significant than the gash on his neck and the knight’s wife. This masculinity achieved this is how the women in this text exert their power. through language allows women a more active By emasculating him, their power functions on a role in the narrative. psychological level rather than a physical one, yet it is just as pernicious. The author shows that, despite Women are often portrayed as props in being constrained by traditional and rigid gender hypermasculine narratives like the chivalric roles, women can wield their power romance, but in these texts, women are the puppet to make an impact. masters who test men’s virtue and honour. In Sir Gawain, Morgan Le Fay is a character mentioned in passing. Unlike the knight’s wife, she is at least concubines, then what is the harm in her having five husbands? She says that she is shamed for marrying so many times, yet the Bible condones Solomon’s multiple marriages. Through this lens, the double standard becomes obvious. 11 �12 The Wife of Bath’s Prologue posits a similar argument through the depiction of the woman and her relationship with her fifth husband. This husband almost breaks her down with physical and verbal abuse. He torments her by reading aloud from his misogynistic book of “wikked wyves” 20 [“wicked wives.”] 21 Nevertheless, as the story progresses, she teaches him a lesson that changes their relationship entirely. After enduring constant mental torture, she rips out pages from his book and hits him. When he hits her back, which she describes as “he smoot me so that I was deef” 22 [“he hit me so hard that I was deaf,”] 23 she pretends to be dead, so that he feels remorseful. She uses that moment to “... fille acorded by us selven If God would allow two. / He yaf me al the Solomon to have bridel in myn hand, / To 700 wives and 300 han the governance of hous and land, / And of his concubines, then what is tonge, and his hand also;” 24 the harm in her having [ma[k]e an agreement five husbands? between [their] two selves / He [gives her] all the control in [her] hand / To have the governance of house and land, / And of his tongue, and of his hand also.] 25 Unlike Sir Gawain wherein Le Fay does not use physical violence, the Wife of Bath combines both the power of manipulation and violence to get what she wants. As is usual with her description of power struggles, she employs the word “bridel,” which relates to a horse’s harness, thus, once again, conveying a relationship of subordination. In this instance, the comparison is between between master and animal, rather than master and slave. Nevertheless, what she wants is power and she will take it forcefully if necessary. In The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, the husband submits to her and, simply put, they live happily ever after. In The Wife of Bath’s Tale, the dynamic is slightly different. In this version, Chaucer uses the old hag archetype to present a much more active and strategic agent in the narrative: she is the puppet master. The rapist knight, or “lusty bacheler” 26 [“lusty bachelor,”] 27 must find out what women want and trusts that the old woman has the answer. She takes advantage of his vulnerability and the fact that she has the wisdom that could save his life. He is at her mercy and says “Koude ye me wisse, I wolde wel quite youre hire” 28 [“If you could teach me, I would well repay you.”] 29 Unbeknownst to him, she has a different idea of repayment than what he offers. From that moment on, she takes on the role of teacher and he becomes her student. When he discovers that she has tricked him into pledging to marry her, he exclaims: “Taak al my good and lat my body go” 30 [Take all my goods and let my body go,] 31 but nothing can be reversed. He is devastated that he must marry the old hag, but through her immeasurable wisdom, she succeeds in teaching him how to appreciate ugliness, poverty and old age. Both Chaucer and the author of Gawain show that the puppet masters exert their power not just for the power itself, but to impart some sort of wisdom. Yet it is interesting that, regardless of their power, the knight’s wife and the Wife of Bath are, for the most part, nameless. The name Alisoun appears twice in The Wife of Bath, but it is as though it is used as a stock name because it seems to be both a friend’s name 32 and the protagonist’s name. 33 Nevertheless, Chaucer chooses to omit this name from the title of the text. Both the knight’s wife and the Wife of Bath are named simply by how they relate to the male characters: they are wives. Moreover, there is something unsettling about the way the authors portray women in power as somehow inseparable from ugliness: “And if that she be foul, thou saist that she / Coveiteth every man that she may see … And saist it is an hard thing for to weelde / A thing that no man wol, his thankes, heelde” 34 [“And if she be ugly, thou sayest that she / Covets every man that she may see … And thou sayest it is a hard thing to control / A thing that no man will, willingly, hold.”] 35 The authors propagate the superficial value that beauty is of utmost importance, but often avoid portraying beautiful women as powerful. �and rough tree trunk. The readers must then ask themselves, if they had to choose, who would they align themselves with? The powerful hag or the beautiful weakling? The authors take advantage of the fact that beauty is more attractive to make the reader suspicious of women in power. to be beautiful. Moreover, beauty and youth is a reward, which places an inextricable value on the superficial. The authors perpetuate the idea that beauty and power should not coexist in a woman. If a woman must have power, then a physical compromise must be made. In The Wife of Bath’s Tale, the knight learns his lesson from the old crone who “a fouler wight ther may no man devyse” 37 [“There can no man imagine an uglier creature.”] 38 The use of the word “foul” demonstrates the utter disgust that the knight has for this woman. The word is repeated again later: “Sholde evere so foule disparaged be!” 39 [“ Should ever be so foully degraded!”] 40 and “his wyf looked so foule” 41 [“his wife looked so ugly.”] 42 The repetition of the word convinces the reader that she must be the worst looking woman that ever lived. Yet, despite her foulness, the knight becomes a better man through her instruction. When it is presumed that he has learned his lesson, he surrenders to her. In return, she gives the power right back to him and rewards him by becoming young and beautiful. There are two ways that this transformation can be interpreted. On the one hand, she may have actually become beautiful through magic. On the other, the knight’s perception may have changed because of all the knowledge she has instilled in him and suddenly he sees her inner beauty. Either way, it is only when she hands the power back to the knight that the author allows her Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale are texts that explore the place of women in a male-dominated narrative tradition. They each complicate gender conventions by describing women with conventionally masculine language and placing them in positions of power over men. However, these depictions also provide a criticism of this type of femininity. Should women be capable of being powerful, manipulative, masculine? If they are, then should they be punished for it? Although the authors describe powerful women, it seems like they are attempting to compensate for it by depicting them with monstrous, even disgusting, physical attributes. This is where the punishment comes into play. This punishment seems to be taken further in allowing for the knight’s wife and the Wife of Bath to remain nameless and, therefore, in eternal subordination to men. ◊ 13 The authors use the old hag archetype to show how power in a woman manifests itself into a physical attribute — one that makes them repulsive. This could be interpreted as a conflict for reading these texts through a feminist lens, because it seems as if the authors are punishing women who have the potential to undermine men. The two dominant women in Sir Gawain are introduced side by side, the Green Knight’s wife and Morgan Le Fay. Their physical attributes are opposite in every way, yet there is a similarity between them. While one is young and beautiful, the other is old and horrifyingly ugly, yet they are both women. There is a kind of mirroring effect that posits that the knight’s wife may be beautiful now, but her fate, the withering of her beauty, is foreshadowed through Le Fay. The author suggests that the radiant young beauty will inevitably become the old hag. Moreover, it is as if the Green Knight’s wife can hold on to her beauty because she is just an accomplice in Morgan Le Fay’s plot. Indeed, it seems as though Le Fay takes on the ugliness for the both of them. The description of Le Fay is thoroughly unforgiving: “The other was noosed and knotted at the neck,/ her chin enveloped in chalkwhite veils … A grand old mother, a matriarch she might/ be hailed./ Her trunk was square and squat,/ her buttockes bulged and swelled.” 36 She is monstrous, but, more importantly, she has a masculinized body. In a time when women are conventionally depicted as dainty and curvy, she is “square and squat.” The author uses the word “trunk” which, more than a torso, calls forth the idea of a rigid �14 �15 Why Don’t You Just Leave? KAYLA BREAKER 2017 STUDIO ARTS CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY “Why Don’t You Just Leave?” is a question heard by many women in abusive relationships. With this piece, Breaker posits a hard-to-phrase answer to the work’s title. Materiality and surface are significant factors in this response: the hospital gown was once worn by the artist after she was hospitalized due to domestic abuse. Smiling faces, referenced from photos of herself and her ex-partner together, seem to have fallen like tears onto the gown. Breaker’s creative use of materials give her drawings the illusion of bloodstained fabric, but traces of real blood on the gown’s sleeve push past any purely aesthetic readings. It is impossible to look at this piece without sensing the honest, conflicting emotions at work—the reasons why so many women do not leave their abusers. The interaction between the artist, the act of drawing, and the surface itself place artmaking as a therapeutic practice, a potent way of coping with trauma. Nailed into the wall, pinning viewers in its orbit, Why Don’t You Just Leave? is a powerful work about pain, peace, the passage of time, and the healing of wounds. �16 �17 �Untitled JUSTICE THELOT COMMERCE MCGILL UNIVERSITY la grenouille qui voulait se faire aussi grosse que le boeuf la grenouille qui voulait se faire aussi grosse que le boeuf la grenouille qui voulait se faire aussi grosse que le boeuf 18 my body is my contention i bought a set of dumbells on amazon put a picture of tyrese on my wall my dad called me skinny glance at myself in the mirror skin like wet cloth over thin bones i drank a protein shake what is masculinity if not a punch in the face a fist in the gut outside an overcrowded bar what is masculinity if not something I’ve barely possessed like a language where i can only say hello but mostly goodbye �three sets of five repetitions 1 dad asked what was in the box 2 he walked in on me doing concentration curls 3 he cleared the basement so i can have a workout space 5 stymied flesh and cancerous shame one day I’ll be as big as he wants me to be are you a woman are you gay yelled showing me the door outside yes all that stuff is outside not inside his house maybe-yes-yes-maybe i wish i could answer i lift my weight in silence i dreamt one day that i was beautiful but i woke up as a monstrous insect the small kind the kind you squish on your way to better things the kind that survives any apocalypse 19 4 a bright future ahead for his big boy the look on his face as he fears i might be wearing a “woman’s coat” the shame and disgrace heavy on my shoulders like a barbell �Fig 1. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye (2011), Press Photo, Adopt Films. Photo courtesy of Adopt Films. 20 �« �Lonely Two-Legged Creatures » : the Erotic and Creative Potential of the Soulmate for Queer Lovers VANILLE SALÉ.E SEXUALITY AND WOMEN’S STUDIES CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY Can the soulmate myth be reclaimed by those it never acknowledged? Is that even desirable? In this essay, I will argue that it can become an erotically creative drive for queer people – both in art and life. How can this reclamation of coalescence be put in practice? Drawing on Susan Stryker’s exploration of her own body modifications and Donna Haraway’s cult classic Cyborg Manifesto, I will demonstrate that engaging creatively with the body is an efficient tool for blurring boundaries between animal/machine, man/woman, pain/pleasure and lover/loved. Of course, this is not to say that remaining celibate, single, slutty or polyamorous is a lesser option. The goal of this analysis is in no way to perpetuate homonormative and transnormative discourses, but to lay claim that, if one’s desire is to be completely devoted to their partner, there are productive ways to reinvent and effectively queer this soulmate fantasy. To that effect, we will be analyzing a fiction film and a documentary. John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch (HATAI) is a well-known musical adapted for the screen in 2001 starring an “internationally ignored” transfeminine punk rocker named Hedwig from East Berlin who follows h/er* famous ex-lover and pupil, Tommy Gnosis, across the United States, recounting h/er life story and the many disappointments it entails through songs. After a difficult childhood on the East side of the wall with an absent father and a distant mother, s/he is convinced into a vaginoplasty by Luther, an older man attracted to h/er daintiness. Luther later abandons h/er somewhere in rural USA after the surgery is severely botched, leaving behind an “angry inch.” Although poor and unknown, s/ he enjoys the support of a tiny but dedicated fan base which follows h/er to every single Olive Garden-type restaurant h/er band plays at. S/he is eventually discovered as Tommy’s lover in an incident involving a blow job and a limousine and uses this sudden fame to propel h/er career to stardom. Marie Losier’s The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye (TBOGALJ), is a meditative documentary about Breyer P-Orridge, the body hacking lovechild of Genesis and Lady Jaye, two performers, musicians, and most importantly, soulmates who become one through the concept of Pandrogeny. Genesis is a pioneer of England’s industrial art and music scene, notably with their visual arts group Throbbing Gristle and the COUM Transmissions collective. They met the extreme performer Lady Jaye at a fetish party in New York City where they fell in love immediately and irredeemably. They married on Friday the 13th of June, 1995, and Lady Jaye eventually joined their newest musical project, Psychic TV, which is still active today. Largely * Throughout this piece, I detail how both Genesis and Hedwig exist somewhere under the nonbinary umbrella, more than in any fixed binary gender identity. The question of pronouns is of course fundamental in this conversation. As a transmasculine person, I had to be particularly careful not to use generalizing language when talking about these specific transfemininities. Although some writers used “he/him” or “she/her” when discussing Genesis, it felt evident to use “they/them” here, as they use the pronoun “we” when talking about themselves. Choosing a pronoun for Hedwig was more complicated. Most articles, reviews, interviews and the movie itself use “she/ her”—except a few academic papers which opted for “s/he//h/er.” Considering that s/he does not really choose to transition (as we will examine in greater details later in this essay); and considering that the last scenes present h/er wigless and bare-chested, suggesting h/er liberation implies an outing as AMAB (assigned male at birth), my conclusion is that “she/her” is inappropriate and that “they/them” is inaccurate (as it is never used in the movie or in subsequent publications). “S/he//h/er” allows for an accurate representation of the way Hedwig is gendered while creating space for h/er liminality. 21 The romanticized, commodified and omnipresent Western ideal of the soulmate is historically cisheteronormative. The merger of man and woman is socially productive in the sense that it can lead to the birth of a child, but it is also spiritually productive as the union of divine opposites which finally come to a balance. As such, it has been a site of pain for queer and trans folks who have been denied this fantasy both legally, through issues of marriage equality and homoparentality, and culturally, through lack of representation in popular culture (a fortiori in romance). Its enforced appeal has led to romantic disappointment and disillusion in queer lives, ultimately rendering us distrustful and negatively affecting our own definitions of relationships: “Lauren Berlant uses the term ‘cruel optimism’ to describe the ways in which culture and society hold out hopes that are unrealizable; hopes that in chasing, we inevitably destroy our chances at achieving.” 1 �influenced by their friends William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin’s repurposing of the dadaïst concept of cut-ups—random poetic collages of texts—the pair developed Pandrogeny, a form in which the collage material is their own bodies and the scissors are a plastic surgeon’s. The documentary focuses on their love story, but it is presented as one project in a wide creative process spanning a lifetime. Fig 2. “Newlyweds,” 1995, The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, Press Photo, Visions du Réel: International Film Festival Nyon. Photo courtesy of Visions du Réel. 22 MYTHS Mythology is the guiding principle for both of these films. Hedwig engages with the mythology of the soulmate in a literal way: h/er life and work revolve around the myth of the Hermaphrodites, described by Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium. “The Origin of Love,” probably the musical’s most iconic song, explains in detail the: “[…] sad story How we became Lonely two-legged creatures” 2 As the myth goes, the children of the sun (two men conjoined), the children of the earth (two women conjoined) and the children of the moon (a man and a woman conjoined) were separated in ancient times by angry gods. When we make love, we are trying to become one, to find this missing half again—that is why human destiny is, at least in the conventional narrative, to find The One™ and remain attached to this partner like a tick til death do us part. HATAI’s strength is that it “[…] does not reject the [soulmate] narrative, it embodies it—and makes it new” by revisiting various myths, fairy tales and cult movies: Tommy, but also Hansel & Gretel (both embodied by Hedwig) and the Evil Witch who tempts them with sweets (embodied by Luther, the “sugar daddy”).3 Luther’s betrayal, among many others, eventually leads Hedwig to understand that “[…] Aristophanes’ erotic doctrine is temporary, its aim neither fully possible nor desirable. The original whole must be found elsewhere.” 4 But that realization takes a while. In a very telling mise en scène, Hedwig “gives birth” to Tommy’s future artistic self by naming him and, through this collaborative creation, finds h/erself, or so it seems, closer than ever to the merger s/he’s been longing for—s/he grabs a hand mirror and shows him how a simple silver cross drawn with makeup on his forehead has transformed him into a rock star; their faces blend together seamlessly in the mirror, hinting at an harmonious connection. As if to lead h/er further into this fantasy, Tommy (who until then had nothing but disregard for the front of Hedwig’s body) finally faces, kisses and embraces h/er, murmuring his usual weirdly kinky biblical references: “When Eve was still inside Adam, she was in Paradise.” 5 At that precise moment, Hedwig is in heaven. The bliss is short lived. As soon as Tommy reaches in h/er pants and feels the so-called angry inch, he backs off with horror, eventually leaving h/er for good. The worst has yet to come: this sneaky little weasel steals all the music Hedwig wrote and composed and becomes a famous pop star on h/er blood and sweat. Once again, a lover uses and abuses h/er, something s/he is also guilty of towards her husband, back-up singer and �assistant Yitzhak, who s/he torments throughout the film until he abandons her as well; the soulmate ideal fades further and further away in the distance: “[…] you will never, no matter how hard you hold onto someone, become one person. And is that useful to think about in the real world? Or, why do we need heaven? We’ll never know until it’s over. It’s like the yearning is more important than the possibility.” 6 myth be reclaimed by those it never acknowledged? Is that even desirable? For an entity like Breyer P-Orridge, this “oceanic feeling” becomes mandatory, and the goal is to make it last forever: both Genesis and Lady Jaye felt extremely burdened by gender roles and stereotypes before engaging in Pandrogeny.9 The majority of Lady Jaye’s performance pieces were based on refusing the prescribed female identity; it’s not that she felt trapped in a woman’s body, she was simply trapped in a body: “She always called the human body a flesh suitcase.” 10 As for Genesis, there is an almost political instinct to genderfuck, at one point in the film, they state: “I REFUSE TO BE THE SAME!” 11 Lady Jaye immediately recognizes this when they meet for the first time, and dresses them up in feminine clothing. Their respective desires to escape their bodies take on a whole new layer of meaning when they fall in love so hard that they “[…] just want to consume each other.” 12 This is, in fact, a pretty accurate image of their love story: instead of creating a third being through procreation, they devour each other’s personalities and bodies until a single being (a child?) is born. Where Hedwig reimagines known myths, Breyer P-Orridge becomes one. CYBORGS In her crucial book Invisible Lives (2000), which focuses on the day-to-day lived experiences, struggles and needs of trans folks and criticizes queer theory’s passivity towards these material concerns, Viviane Namaste argues that “[…] Butler proposes a representationalist conception of language: she demands that her citation of specific instances of gendered performance stand in for gendered relations […].” 13 She is referring here to Judith Butler’s unrestrained interest towards drag and a potential conflation between drag and transness in her analysis of Paris is Burning. This tension is related to the possibility for an interpretation of both HATAI and TBOGALJ as transphobic movies. The protagonists’ gender identities are conflated with their gender performance; they are artists, experiencing their feminized bodies in daily life but also on stage. This paper does not set out to resolve these tensions—rather, it expresses that queer theory exists precisely as a means to analyze representations of such liminal and blurry gender and 23 This yearning for merger is precisely the motor of Breyer P-Orridge’s relationship: “That was the first step—a deeply romantic urge to blend. The mutual orgasm can be a transcendent experience where two people seem to become one.” 7 This vision of orgasm as a state of dissolution of one’s ego is echoed in psychoanalysis: “[…] for Freud love, Eros, and sexuality tend to break down the feeling of separateness, to melt away boundaries between self and other, Can the soulmate and to link us back to that original experience of the undifferentiated ego.” 8 �24 sexual identities (like that of Hedwig and Genesis) without robbing more binary-inclined trans folks of their theoretical framework, their voices, their subjectivities and, by extension, their legitimacy. rock star persona that allows h/er to cope with h/er trauma and rage, but also to build h/er confidence and agency from shambles. Being femme is both a curse and a method of survival and healing for h/ er. Without branding h/er peculiar blend of trauma, mutilation, drag and artistic expression as a trans woman’s identity (and without undermining the potential harm the tropes discussed above might have had on trans women), there are ways to acknowledge h/er nonbinary-ness and to appreciate the impact it can have on a nonbinary audience. It is important to question Mitchell and his cowriter Stephen Trask’s positionality as gay men writing about a transfeminine person in a musical which garnered critical and commercial success, more than a dozen awards, and big bucks. On Broadway as well as in the film, Hedwig is always played by a cis Although we gay man—most recently Neil Patrick Harris. Some aspects of the script could are somewhat be considered borderline-offensive disillusioned and trans tropes, or at least tired stereotypes: hurt by the myth Hedwig/Hansel is regularly raped by men in h/er childhood, a trauma too of the soulmate, often associated to gay desire and I would argue transfemininity; half of h/er songs, and that there is h/er band’s name itself, focus on the something botched genital surgery s/he endured, mirroring the infamous cis obsession to be gained with bottom surgery (often perceived as politically, the “be all, end all” of trans experience). creatively and Unsurprisingly, Hedwig also ends up erotically for doing street-based sex work—which is both a legitimate line of work and queer people in one which many transfeminine folks reclaiming it. practice—but which is, in this film as in so many others, presented as an act of desperation rather than a choice. That being said, this is not a trans woman’s story; rather, it’s about a person whose genitals are grotesque, whose gender escapes all classifications and vocabularies and whose transition story is so fantastical that it demands suspension of disbelief. Having been mutilated at a young age and without h/er informed consent, Hedwig has not willfully decided to transition—nonetheless, s/he continues to live as a woman in h/er adult life, developing a Hedwig is a modified human who floats somewhere on the spectrums of gender and sex because of this modification. Breyer P-Orridge are more akin in their gender expression to the idea of the cyborg, in the sense that they willfully integrate technology to create a third entity which inscribes itself “[…] in the utopian tradition of imagining a world without gender, which is perhaps a world without genesis, but maybe also a world without end. The cyborg incarnation is outside salvation history.” 14 There is something erotic about Genesis’ transfemininity (without it being merely fetishistic crossdressing). Resembling the person one is most attracted to probably leads to a form of auto-eroticism, and the transformative process in itself can inspire awe: “Jaye and I both got breast implants three years ago on Valentine’s Day 2003 and we woke up together in the room where you come back from being under the anaesthetic, and we held hands, and as I looked down I found myself saying, ‘Oh, these are our angelic bodies.’” 15 Other aspects of femininity seem to produce pleasure for �25 Sadly, this way of life ends when one half of this them. Within the first ten minutes of the film, there indivisible entity dies—or does it? Similarly to how is a fascinating scene where they describe their post-humanist Lissette Olivares’ intense desire to erotic rapport to housework: whenever they have keep their dead dog Luk with to vacuum or do the dishes, they them forever “[…] led to the idea adorn their most sophisticated of incorporating him physically lingerie, deriving pleasure from This monstrous ininto our bodies, and so, in a ritualizing and eroticizing betweenness is an commemorative ritual, my the mundane. inextricable part of partner and I used his ashes to Many hints lead us to understand Genesis—instead of create a tattoo ink for our skins, literally trying to fuse part of that Genesis’ entire life is in choosing a simpler, Luk’s corporeal trace into our itself a work of art. Their two more socially acceptable flesh,” the integration of Lady children, Genesse and Caresse, are sometimes involved in their body expression and Jaye’s body and soul within musical projects, blurring the line lifestyle, they decided Genesis through plastic surgery allows them to never feel alone, between family and work; their to dive in head first to consider their soulmate as house is a gigantic archive filled into this identitary not entirely gone.18 They go so to the brim with various artworks and reviews of their multiple puzzle, to explore far as to state that they are still bands, blurring the line between without restraints their collaborating creatively with office and home; and their Lady Jaye: “It is quite obvious body like they would a she is still manipulating romantic and sexual life is a work of art, which ultimate objective playground and, perhaps my life.” 19 is to blur the line between the more crucially, to reject lovers themselves. This effort to If Genesis is much more than a naturalness’ authority by cross-dresser for fun or for kink, dive into unexplored territories is engaging with the idea of they are not precisely a trans completely in tune with Haraway’s cyborg myth, which “[...] is the cyborg. woman either: “This is Genesis, about transgressed boundaries, and she has no idea what she potent fusions, and dangerous is.” 20 Stryker makes fascinating possibilities which progressive statements concerning her people might explore as one part of needed political own body modifications: “As we rise up from the work.” 16 If work is creation and creation is pleasure, operating tables of our rebirth, we transsexuals are something more, and something other, than then Breyer P-Orridge exists in a perpetual state of the creatures our makers intended us to be,” 21 all work and all play: “Committed to blurring the boundaries between ‘art and life’—to borrow Allen and: “I will say this as bluntly as I know how: I am a Kaprow’s infamous credo—Genesis and Lady Jaye’s transsexual, and therefore I am a monster.” 22 This embodiment of a third, indivisible entity, Breyer monstrous in-betweenness is an inextricable part P-Orridge, is not only an artistic project, but also of Genesis—instead of choosing a simpler, more a way of life.” 17 socially acceptable body expression and lifestyle, �26 they decided to dive in head first into this identitary puzzle, to explore without restraints their body like they would a playground and, perhaps more crucially, to reject naturalness’ authority by engaging with the idea of the cyborg. These bold choices were worth it, since, through altering/creating themselves, they have revealed their purest, most honest self. As the brilliant Stryker would conclude: “Though we forego the privilege of naturalness, we are not deterred, for we ally ourselves instead with the chaos and blackness from which Nature itself spills forth.” 23 We tend to be cynical in romance, in partnership, in love— especially normative, almost compulsory expressions like marriage, monogamy and cohabitation. Although we are somewhat disillusioned and hurt by the myth of the soulmate, I would argue that there is something to be gained politically, creatively and erotically for queer people in reclaiming it. We can reinterpret ancient mythologies in accordance with our experience and aesthetic, like Hedwig, or create our own mythology, like Breyer P-Orridge. We could say that, for the former, the fusional ideal is a creative drive, a hopeful future to strive for which gives h/er plenty of musical inspiration. Ultimately, after many hardships and betrayals, s/he learns that s/he is already complete, that s/he’s h/er own special creation. Once h/er illusions fall, s/he finally reaches success and is liberated—the tattoo of a face cut in half on h/er thigh even melts into one unified face in the last scene. For the latter, the fusional ideal is the art piece in itself: they integrate and embody every aspect of their artistic practice to create their magnum opus, “Almost a physical orgasm,” their eternal muse being each other/ themselves.24 Here, creating and sustaining the illusion is the richest source of liberation. When asked about their ambition, Lady Jaye answers: “I just want us to be remembered as one of the great love stories.” 25 And I want to tell them: “You are.” ◊ �Fig 3. Lady Jaye and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge in The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye (2011), dir. Marie Losier, prod. Steve Holmgren, Marie Losier & Martin Marquet, 75 min. Permissions granted by Marie Losier. 27 �Drag Me KRYSTEN KRULIK 2017 ANTHROPOLOGY & WORLD ISLAMIC MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES, MINOR IN ARABIC & GENDER, SEXUALITY, FEMINIST AND SOCIAL JUSTICE STUDIES MCGILL UNIVERSITY 28 Shot at the House of Laureen, a queer and political drag house, Drag Me poses complex and personal questions about the multiplicity of self. Images are doubled and tripled, rippling in and out of mirrors, placing drag at the halfway point between the reflected and the created self—the exploration of a different facet of identity, rather than the creation of a new one. The dimly-lit, warm ambiance of Krulik’s photos show the House of Laureen as a space for examination, confession, and revelation; the intermingling clarity and obscurity provide a place for self-discovery that exists outside of time. Drag Me’s film portion also uses mismatched sounds, distorted images and non-linearity to further disrupt any notion of fixed personhood, blurring the phases of drag pre-production, performance, and de-dragging. �29 �L’oeuvre déconcertante de Virginie Despentes: CHLOE LE GUEN TRANSLATION STUDIES 30 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY D ans La littérature française au présent, Dominique Viart distingue trois types de récits qui monopolisent la scène littéraire actuelle: la littérature « consentante », qui réitère les formes connues et s’en tient à l’imagination romanesque; la littérature « concertante », dont la visée est simplement de faire du bruit dans le contexte des tendances médiatiques actuelles; et, enfin, la littérature « déconcertante », dont le but est non de répondre aux attentes du lectorat, mais de les déplacer entièrement et de confronter celuici à des questions existentielles et métatextuelles qui surgissent face aux nouveaux enjeux que pose l'entrée dans le 21e siècle.1 En ce sens, peu d’autrices françaises ont une réputation aussi déconcertante et engagée que celle de Virginie Despentes. Ayant passé sa jeunesse dans un milieu prolétaire politisé, puis sur la scène punk et anarchiste, l’oeuvre de Despentes est à l’image de sa biographie. Son internement en hôpital psychiatrique, son viol par des inconnus à 17 ans, son expérience en tant que prostituée et son exploration sexuelle qui nourrissent ses écrits et ses films dont la tonalité est pour le moins trash. Mais c’est bien dans sa grossièreté que son oeuvre prend tout son sens, car elle vise à donner la parole à des Un commentaire comparé de Vernon Subutex et King Kong Théorie groupes marginalisés dont l’histoire et l’existence même sont reléguées aux oubliettes. Dans son roman Vernon Subutex (2014), Despentes explore une pléthore d'identités qui relèvent du tabou: punks, lesbiennes, personnes transgenres, vedettes de la porno et adolescentes voilées sont autant de personnages abordés ici. Cette diversité problématisée, caractéristique de notre monde contemporain, devient la scène d’une critique sociale aiguisée et le roman célèbre l’existence de ces individus marginaux. Dans son essai autobiographique King Kong Théorie (2006), qui se veut « manifeste du nouveau féminisme », Despentes dévie totalement de la fiction pour prendre son expérience personnelle comme source de réflexions sur la féminité, le viol et la violence, ainsi que lieu de débat sur la prostitution. Ainsi, après avoir mis en contexte l'époque contemporaine telle qu’examinée par Despentes, je tâcherai de montrer que ces deux ouvrages aux formules divergentes tiennent à affirmer et à rendre hommage à l’existence des minorités culturelles, qu’ils se préoccupent à dénoncer les systèmes mis en place, à briser les tabous, et enfin, que, chacun à leur manière, les deux récits emploient des procédés formels pour délivrer un message engagé. Le système économique néo-libéral est, selon Despentes, à la source d’une polarisation extrême entre victimes de la précarité et « bobos » héritiers de patrimoines. L’ouverture des flux du marché, le matérialisme généralisé, et le « néo-narcissisme » des réseaux sociaux ont élargi la fracture sociale.2 On assiste à l’embourgeoisement des vieux quartiers et à l’urbanisme anti-clochards. Au niveau politique, la polarisation droite-gauche se creuse davantage avec l’attaque du 11 septembre 2001 qui « a sonné la fin de la récré, » l’afflux de réfugiés, la montée de la criminalité, la généralisation du sexisme et du racisme de même que la percée de l'extrême droite.3 Le passage au numérique a causé le repositionnement des industries culturelles, notamment la musique, emportée dans un « tsunami Napster » et devenue aseptisée, et le cinéma, qui a vu ses loueurs de DVDs disparaître pour faire place aux autoproductions sur le net.4 L’industrie de la pornographie, dont l’historique est résumé comme « les années 70, la censure d’État, les années 80, le magnétoscope, les années 90, les petites caméras... jusqu’à Internet” profite de la démocratisation et les enfants “en mangent, sur Internet, avant de savoir lire. » 5 Cependant, la profession a connu ses dernières �À cet égard, l’oeuvre de Virginie Despentes a pour visée principale de donner la parole à des minorités et des subcultures qui ont été traditionnellement exclues du discours littéraire, afin de compléter le panorama historique dressé par la littérature contemporaine et d’ouvrir une fenêtre sur les groupes sociaux omis par les médias. Effectivement, si l’intériorité de personnages masculins blancs hétérosexuels est désormais largement parcouru dans la littérature depuis sa démocratisation, celle des personnages avec une identité déviant de l’hétéronormativité masculine l’est beaucoup moins. Dans Vernon Subutex, Despentes peint le portrait du monde contemporain vu par celles qui peuvent s’en sentir exclues, en particulier les victimes de la précarité économique, les membres du mouvement punk qui semble s’effacer, et les minorités sexuelles. L'artère narrative suit Vernon après l’expulsion de son appartement, errant à la recherche de l'hébergement de ses connaissances qu’il retrouve sur Facebook. Bien que le roman tourne autour de cet antihéros plus ou moins traditionnel, d’autres fils narratifs s'établissent et nous suivons l’existence d’autres personnages moins traditionnels. Notons La Hyène, lesbienne manipulatrice d’opinion, Marcia, une mannequin brésilienne transsexuelle, Pamela Kant, vedette du porno, et Aïcha, une adolescente voilée, fille de Vodka Santana, vedette du porno. Dès les premières lignes de King Kong Théorie, le ton est donné: J'écris de chez les moches, pour les moches, les vieilles, les camionneuses, les frigides, les mal baisées, les imbaisables, les hystériques, les tarées, toutes les exclues du grand marché à la bonne meuf. Et je commence par là pour que les choses soient claires : je ne m'excuse de rien, je ne viens pas me plaindre. Je n'échangerais ma place contre aucune autre, parce qu'être Virginie Despentes me semble être une affaire plus intéressante à mener que n'importe quelle autre affaire.7 C’est donc au nom des « looseuses de la féminité » que Despentes prend sa plume, car elles sont sousreprésentées dans le discours médiatique. L’oeuvre de Virginie Despentes participe à la dénonciation des systèmes en place et vise à briser les tabous qui continuent à opprimer les minorités qui en dérogent. Par exemple, Despentes conçoit le contemporain comme une ère de pertes aux niveaux culturel, intellectuel et institutionnel. Elle note de cette manière qu’“Aujourd’hui, tout le monde méprise les universitaires, les intellectuels.” 8 La critique du libéralisme est bien résumée par Olga, fille de communiste et SDF : 31 heures de gloire au début des années 2000, où est apparue la concurrence des sex-tapes. Cette mise en réseau devient encore plus malsaine lorsque les formes existantes de la culture telles que le rock et la littérature commencent à se décomposer et lorsque la « créativité » formelle et le « prestige socioculturel » à y être associé disparaissent pour se faire remplacer par « de la daube » et la téléréalité.6 De ce fait, le monde contemporain est saccagé par des tensions multiples et marqué par l’austérité économique et la rigidité politique, et sur ce monde si complexe Despentes applique sa perspective engagée de gauche. �32 Elle est géniale,leur invention, la dette ... comme des putes sans papier, ils passeront leur vie à trimer pour essayer de rembourser ce qu’ils doivent à la naissance. Ah pour taffer, ça taffe ... Tu sais pourquoi on nous tolère encore en ville? Ils ont arraché les bancs, ils ont aménagé les devantures de magasins pour être sûrs qu’on ne pouvait s'asseoir nulle part, mais on ne nous ramasse pas encore pour nous mettre dans des camps, et ce n’est pas parce que ca couterait trop cher, non ... C’est parce que nous, on est les repoussoirs. Il faut que les gens nous voient pour qu’ils se souviennent de toujours obéir.9 Du côté de King Kong Théorie, Despentes cherche à démystifier le viol, “acte fédérateur, qui connecte toutes les classes, sociales, d’âges, de beautés et même de caractères.” 10 Racontant l'expérience de son propre viol à 17 ans, Despentes revient sur son incapacité d’agir qu’elle a hérité de sa socialisation en tant que jeune femme: « Je suis furieuse contre une société qui m'a éduquée sans jamais m'apprendre à blesser un homme s'il m'écarte les cuisses de force, alors que cette même société m'a inculqué l'idée que c'était un crime dont je ne devais jamais me remettre. » Suite à ce traumatisme, Despentes a pris sa sexualité entre ses propres mains et est devenue prostituée d’occasion, « attirée par l’argent que je gagne moimême, attirée par le pouvoir, de faire et de refuser. » 11 En s’affirmant constituée de caractéristiques féminines et masculines, Despentes participe à la déconstruction des genres et des rôles sexuels, ce qui rejoint la mentalité punk. Tout comme Olga dans Vernon Subutex, Despentes a hérité son militantisme de la rue et n’a pas de formation universitaire « Je n’ai pas de formation universitaire, la théorie ne faisait pas partie de mes pratiques, mais on a été amenées, sur le tas, à formuler quelques concepts expliquant après coup ce qu’on avait cherché à faire en réalisant [Baise-moi]. » Ce faisant, aller à l’université n’est pas nécessaire pour développer son esprit critique et participer à la théorie féministe. Si les thèmes des deux ouvrages sont similaires, leurs formes sont quasiment opposées. Effectivement, il y a de nombreuses distinctions entre le roman et l’essai autobiographiques. Le roman, par principe fictif, est conçu comme une forme plus populaire par Despentes, inspirée par le roman-feuilleton du 19e siècle et le néo-polar, mais aussi comme forme totalisante qui se veut amalgame entre individuel et collectif, entre passé et présent, entre divers points de vue et divers niveaux de langue. Bien que ce soit une littérature dont le langage laisse croire que son public cible n’est pas la bourgeoisie universitaire, elle prend tout de même en compte des questions difficiles telles la complexité de l’existence. La polyphonie règne au sein de ce récit, la focalisation variée d’un chapitre à l’autre permet de rapprocher et de faire s’affronter les extrêmes. Un exemple significatif de ce phénomène est l’épisode lors duquel Vernon a une liaison sexuelle avec Sylvie afin d’être hébergé par elle. Pour elle, l’histoire est sérieuse et elle devient obsédée par leurs ébats. Le chapitre suivant, narré de la perspective de Vernon, commence avec Qu’elle le lâche, pitié, qu’elle le lâche!” 12 Avec le roman, Despentes a la possibilité d’explorer en détail plusieurs identités, et cette incarnation atteint son comble à la fin du �Cependant l’essai autobiographique, lui, que l’on pourrait également qualifier d’autofiction, a un objectif argumentatif. Despentes prend sa propre personne comme point de départ, la fiction disparaît pour laisser place à des expériences ancrées dans le réel qui viendront fonder diverses réflexions sur la féminité, le viol, la prostitution et la pornographie. Il ne s’agit plus d’inventer des histoires pour s’opposer aux systèmes dominants, mais d’assumer explicitement sa perspective engagée, et de convaincre les autres de son bien-fondé. L’expression “the personal is the political” prend tout son sens avec King Kong Théorie: se rendre visible dans sa singularité, c’est accéder à la représentation. De plus, l’essai autobiographique permet à Despentes de poser un regard critique sur ses oeuvres précédentes et leur réception, mais aussi de faire référence à d’autres essais de théorie féministe qui n’ont pas été traduits en français. Contrairement au roman qui n’a pas un public précis en tête, King Kong Théorie semble s’adresser à un lectorat bien précis, en l’occurrence, féminin, au regard de la fin de l’essai : “Sur ce, salut les filles, meilleure route...” 13 Ainsi, l’oeuvre de Virginie Despentes correspond bel et bien à la définition de littérature déconcertante proposée par Dominique Viart, et vient ainsi déplacer l’horizon d’attente du lecteur. En mettant en scène des personnages dont l’identité est marginale, Despentes leur crée une place au sein du discours littéraire actuel et affirme leur existence. Du phénomène collectif qu’est le néolibéralisme, elle en examine les retombées existentielles au niveau de l’individu afin d’illustrer le contemporain comme une perte de valeurs. Dans un contexte plus large, Despentes aspire à renouveler le féminisme, à déconstruire les systèmes d’exploitation et à briser les tabous autour des travailleuses du sexe. Que ce soit dans le roman ou dans l’autofiction théorique, Despentes prend en compte les enjeux du contemporain non seulement en proposant un aperçu détaillé du réel, mais aussi en prenant en compte les moyens de décrire ce réel. Il est toutefois nécessaire de prendre en compte le fait que Despentes adopte le point de vue masculin blanc et en fait la veine de sa narration dans son roman, même si Vernon a fait partie du mouvement punk dont le but était entre autres d’effacer les différences entre hommes et femmes. Quoiqu’il advienne, Virginie Despentes et ses misfits ont désormais toute notre attention. ◊ 33 roman, lorsque Vernon hallucine et devient simultanément tout le monde et lui-même. L’autrice présente cette diversité comme une cacophonie ingérable qui se rapproche de ce qu’on pourrait trouver sur les réseaux sociaux. Consciente de l’importance de l’existence virtuelle qui caractérise désormais notre monde, Despentes tient compte des médias actuels dans la mise en forme de son roman, qui est parsemé de références à Facebook, Instagram, et aux forums d’opinions. C’est donc un roman de la connectivité qui met l’accent sur les flux et l’instantanéité. Le roman est également pour Despentes le support idéal pour documenter l’existence du mouvement punk rock et anarchiste des années 80. Il s’agit de conserver les traces d’un passé disparu sous forme d’une résistance culturelle, qui réitère les noms d’anciens groupes, albums, et souvenirs d’un mode de vie qui n’a plus sa place dans le monde contemporain. �Just-So 34 ANONYMOUS STUDIO ARTS CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY �Just-So is a critical exploration of the artist’s personal experience with the sex work industry and the politics behind the negotiation of touch and intimacy. The work suggests human experience through the construction of bodily form; figures drawn and embodied within the masses of material can be strangers, acquaintances, lovers, clients. Their relationship remains unstated, as do their status and intentions. The roses pose a potential for tenderness that is lost in the materiality of the fabric; rather than protecting the roses, the material encases them. Where viewers expect satin or silk, they find a fleshy material that catches everything it—dust, hair, lint. Its synthetic and organic textures mimic the duality of the commodified exchange of intimacy. This piece is steeped in subtle ambiguities: in its faceless, formless embodiment; in the figures, relationships, and touches it suggests. Just-So leaves viewers to wrestle with their own experiences and find them within the folds of the work. ���› Primitive Archetypes « Summer Self ‹ �First Time Human, Long Time Being JULIA WOLDMO 2017 PAINTING & DRAWING, MINOR IN FILM STUDIES CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY 38 This group of works by Julia Woldmo tells the story of beings, the wisdom of creatures, and conveys a deep, personal communion with the natural world. Primitive Archetypes paints a dreamscape born from the overwhelming state of the world, negotiating a hesitant balance between a desire for information and a need for peace. Bubbling out of a primordial soup, the piece brings us what can be considered alternatives to humanity: monkeys as the primitive, early stages of humanity, connected to earth and nature in a way their descendants are not; aliens, as an evolved, higher form of being. Woldmo tackles Summer Self and First Time Human, Long Time Being with the same sense of visual transparency and fluidity. Flatly coloured bodies absorb the wisdom of nature and its creatures as they float and meld with all types of salmon, herring, kelp, and mushroom. Woldmo’s practice is also strongly informed by her use of colour; salmon pinks and oily yellows in hybrid shapes ooze and drip among washes of blue. These works envelop their hybrid bodies in a waterscape of constant movement, push and pull, birth and rebirth. �Dream: Flip the Mattress Dream: Only Two A woman straddles me. I’m not allowed to touch her. She slaps me. Lake with bush— overgrown. Lake that is dark, I swim to the centre I’m scared of the centre but I swim to the centre every night on the banks there are cabins with couples cutting big, gooey, pink and white cakes. You are lying on a beach chair choking on fish bones I gave you. I knew they would choke you, I knew they were plastic. I reach out to feel her. She says I’ve ruined it. Dissolve. A man sits beside me. Bed on the floor. He says he’s returned and he wants his job back. Run. PAMELA LISA ENGLISH LITERATURE CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY I can feel pressure tendrils-holding In my lake. I feel green around me dark green light green deep. 39 You tell me about a german girl who fed you fresh fish. It meant hand-job. Paddle, paddle into the covers with you two I can watch how she makes you feel good, your body bloating. I am not upset, when I do leave you, wide eyed on the banks of my lake with pink and white cake smeared on hairy belly. It meant baby. �40 Crown of Ar is the artist’s interpretation of the contemporary balance between self-curation and performance—the daily act of becoming that emphasizes outside perception over internal desires. With this piece, Malkhassian creates her own form of representation, emancipated from the imposing, frustrating roles and sexualization of this routine. Malkhassian emphasizes the importance of materiality in Armenian headdresses; semi-precious stones and bronze set them apart for the higherclass. The weight and rigidity of the rich metal ground the wearer, while the claws, sharp as knives, offset the crown’s dignified ideals. Equipped with these talons, the wearer is not docile, but a protector and warrior in battles unseen. But the piece is not an ode to these royal figures: honoring the slow and repetitive task of textile work, Crown of Ar is an homage to the Armenian craftswomen who are cultural transmitters of customs, art, history, and heritage. �Crown of Ar ALYAG MALKHASSIAN PHOTOS BY NICK SPECTOR 2017 STUDIO ARTS CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY 41 �Hybrid Interiors: A Critical Perspective on the Aesthetics of Cultural Convergence and the Santa Fe Style MAGGIE MILLS ART HISTORY AND FILM STUDIES CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY 42 E va Scott Fenyes, her daughter Leonora Scott Curtin, and Leonora’s daughter Leonora Curtin Paloheimo are together responsible for the construction of an adobe home at 614 Acequia Madre in Santa Fe, New Mexico, (USA). Completed in 1927, the house is an early example of what has since been termed the Santa Fe style. This designation applies both to the architectural elements of the home and its interior design and decoration. A focus on its interiors Central to this demonstrates the ways in which this project was a style aestheticized cultural convergence synthesis of in the region from an Anglo-American cultural markers perspective. Eva and the Leonoras were from the city’s Eastern transplants to New Mexico, who Hispanic and took advantage of socially permissive Indigenous attitudes and greater opportunities populations for women in the public sphere of the into an adapted new state. Their accomplishments format that have been celebrated by feminist reflected the scholars Caroline Brucken and Virginia concerns of the Scharff, who addressed the American city’s Anglo- West, particularly the significance of American elite. domesticity, and by extension the arts and crafts patronage, in this context. The more problematic aspects of their legacy have been obscured in such celebratory projects. Along with other Anglo elites in Santa Fe, Eva and the Leonoras were involved in practices that by turns fetishized and disenfranchised local populations. Centering women’s history in the West continues to come at the expense of critical perspectives on the racialized power dynamics that afforded these women—and by extension practices of homemaking and decoration—privileged status. A critical perspective on these kinds of dynamics must be incorporated into an analysis of Eva and the Leonoras’ legacy. Analyzing the interiors of the Acequia Madre home of the Scott-Muse-Fenyes family shows how they impacted the concept of New Mexican culture into present day. Situating their interiors within the larger socio-historical context of the region shows how specific cultural convergences contributed to the formal elements of their interiors, whilst attempting to account for the unbalanced power dynamics at play in the women’s engagement with the region and its people. The house at 614 Acequia Madre in Santa Fe is typical of the emerging Santa Fe Style at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is a sprawling, a one-story compound comprised of three distinct connected buildings, a garage, and a garden. All four structures were built from adobe bricks that were made onsite.1 The house was designed primarily by Eva Scott Fenyes with help from the two Leonoras. Together these three women were the sole authors of the site. Eva Scott had initially hired several architects to aid in the design and construction of the home, but none were receptive to the women’s vision for the space. After firing numerous architects, Eva and the Leonoras settled on a local construction worker to aid with the practical elements of bringing their vision to fruition.2 The emergence of the Santa Fe style in the twentieth century can be identified with a confluence of influences contributing to the aesthetic qualities of the style, as well as its rapid proliferation and subsequent implementation as the only acceptable style of building in the historic district in Santa Fe.3 The Santa Fe style typifies aesthetic tendencies in design that are characteristic not only of Santa Fe, but also of New Mexico in general and the Southwestern United States more broadly. American Historians frequently acknowledge the arrival of Anglo-American elites beginning in the late nineteenth century as a shift in the history of the region, signaled by a desire to cement the status of the area as both unique for its cultural diversity and history, and fundamentally, American.4 Central to this project was a synthesis of cultural markers from the city’s Hispanic and Indigenous populations into an adapted format that reflected the concerns of the city’s Anglo-American elite. �› Fig 1. Living Room. 1929. FényesCurtin-Paloheimo Collection, Archives of Acequia Madre House, Santa Fe, NM. © 2017 WOMEN’S INTERNATIONAL STUDY CENTER The Santa Fe style is notable for its use of traditional building materials and aesthetic elements from the region’s Hispanic and Indigenous populations, but these influences were engaged with selectively. The relationship that early proponents of the Santa Fe style had to Hispanic and Indigenous cultures whose presence in the region predated that of Anglo-Americans was highly complex. Shepard states that Rapp’s buildings “resemble Native American and Spanish provincial architecture in some physical details but almost never in purpose.”7 For instance, adobe structures intended for communal living were replicated stylistically for the construction of private, single family homes.8 In addition to this dynamic of lifting aesthetic qualities from the precedents provided through this provincial architecture, Anglo-Americans mobilized the region’s Hispanic culture for specific political ends in the early twentieth century. In the contemporary context, the political motivations that informed the construction of the Santa Fe style are obscured. The racial, cultural, and class tensions inherent to the region, have become naturalized through the synthesis of disparate elements that emerge within Santa Fe interiors. Christine Mather, a writer and popular proponent of the Santa Fe style, argues for its continuity with the region’s historical past. This continuity is based primarily on the visual similarities between interiors spanning distinct cultural moments in the region. Mathers also acknowledges the presence of a group of people invested in the proliferation of a specific Santa Fe style, but she credits these people as “spot-on visionaries,” who, “envisioned…a city with romantic street names and architectural consistency based on venerable building materials, techniques, and designs unique to the region.”9 Her methodological approach exhibits a desire to flatten the distinct contexts from which these interiors emerged in favor of an argument that asserts that they all fall under the Santa Fe style, which is representative of the histories and concerns of all inhabitants of the region. This discursive flattening is indicative of the way that the Santa Fe style is imagined and taken up in the contemporary context. It reflects the initial desires of proponents of the style to absorb influences from Hispanic and Indigenous cultures in order to establish the region’s uniqueness, while assuming control over these traditions and influences from a position of political power and presumed cultural superiority as Anglo-Americans in the nascent state. The interiors of the Acequia Madre home of Eva and the Leonoras reflect these tendencies to the extent that the women constructed their identity as White elites in the 43 The architect Isaac Hamilton Rapp is credited as the inventor of the Santa Fe style of architecture. In addition to the adobe structures that typify the Santa Fe style, Rapp created buildings in the territorial style reflective of neo-classical influences that emerged in the region prior to the beginning of the twentieth century. In his book on Rapp’s work, Carl D. Shepard asserts that “the City of Santa Fe destroyed its past to establish its present image.”5 Shepard cites the way in which buildings created by Rapp and others did not fit within the framework of the emergent Santa Fe style were demolished. Rapp’s work and the adobe style he engaged with reveal much about the concerns of Anglo elites, and used this as the basis for the construction of a coherent Santa Fe style that involved the exclusion of other styles in the city.6 �› Fig 2. Bedroom. Present Day. Fényes-Curtin-Paloheimo Collection, Archives of Acequia Madre House, Santa Fe, NM. © 2017 WOMEN’S INTERNATIONAL STUDY CENTER 44 region in relation to the Hispanic and Indigenous traditions that already existed there. Their collection of craft objects in the home as well as their philanthropic pursuits in the Santa Fe community all indicate that their status as independent, educated, and politically active women in the region was constructed in dialogue with the oppressed cultures that pre-existed their presence there. The entry for “Santa Fe Style,” in the Encyclopedia of Interior Design, identifies stylistic tendencies of appropriation and hybridity as inherent to this aesthetic. It states, “the mingling of Native American, Hispanic and Anglo cultures has produced an extremely popular and influential design style.”10 Interior elements listed in the encyclopedia as characteristic of the style include ceiling beams, known as vigas and Hispanic craft objects, including saints, figurines, painted panels, tin candelabras and wall sconces.”11 The idea that craft objects reflective of Hispanic and Indigenous traditions native to the region would be commonly displayed alongside “ethnic objects,” from other contexts that reflect the imperial attitudes that informed this style. These typical elements are all found in images of various rooms of the Acequia Madre house of Eva Scott Fenyes and the Leonoras (figs. 1-4). A more contemporary photographic reproduction of one of the bedrooms in the Acequia Madre home (fig. 2) is a useful indication of how the space was decorated when the home was initially constructed. The anthropological priorities of Eva Scott—and the knowledge all three women had of the traditional Hispanic and Indigenous crafts they appropriated—are apparent in this space. The room showcases traditional wooden support beams that span the ceiling of the room, and the simple, beige adobe walls. Also present are several painted figurines, as well as paintings and drawings by Indigenous artists, likely collected by Eva Scott Fenyes, well known for her patronage of such works.12 The room also houses a pair of twin beds, each with a painted wooden chest at their feet. The chests reflect traditional elements of homes in the borderlands between the U.S. and Mexico. Of these kinds of homes, and the objects housed within them, scholars Amy Porter and Nancy Baker note, “most people had various types of wooden and/or leather chests that were used to store clothing, valuables, and food. Many of the chests also had a lock and key... Some of this furniture was carved or painted in ways that made it stand out from other people’s furniture.”13 �‹Fig 3. Living and Dining Room. Present Day. Fényes-CurtinPaloheimo Collection, Archives of Acequia Madre House, Santa Fe, NM. © 2017 WOMEN’S INTERNATIONAL STUDY CENTER Among the practices that were staples of the women’s involvement in Santa Fe was Leonora Frances Curtin’s work in establishing Santa Fe’s Native Market in the 1930s, during the great depression. The market featured vendors who sold works billed as typical of the region. In a 1936 Vogue article, it features the market and contributes to a myth surrounding New Mexican culture, positing the state as an exotic and appealing site for cultural tourism from the Easterly United States. In relation to the Mexican American war, in which New Mexico was ceded to the United states, the article states, “half a century after that, the creative vanguard moved in upon this dusty, tawny little place and took possession without firing a shot.”17 This is a typical interpretation of the way AngloAmericans moved into New Mexico and adapted local cultures on their terms. The market was a philanthropic endeavor to help those in economic need during the great depression which thrived under the direction and with the financial support of Leonora Frances Curtin.18 In her book, Culture in the Marketplace: Gender, Art and Value in the American Southwest, Molly H. Mullin argues that women moving west in the 1920s and 1930s found that the region “allowed them greater authority and influence than was available to them in more established institutions.”19 The patronage and promotion of Hispanic and Indigenous arts was one of the forms of involvement that many took upon themselves. Mullin refers to this as a discovery of “obligations,” which she astutely observes, “were also opportunities for the exercise of power, a power cloaked in the familiar rhetoric of social benevolence.”20 Mullin demonstrates that White women benefited from the factors that placed local populations at a disadvantage, stating, “Hispanic and Indian inhabitants of the region struggled to cope with a newly imposed foreign language and political and economic system,” 21 which led to land and labour being cheaper, affording White women greater control than they would have had in their Eastern homes. The involvement of Eva and the Leonoras in the Santa Fe Anglo arts community is often cast as benign or benevolent. It is crucial to resist these interpretations, at the same time as celebrating the legacy of these powerful, pioneering women. In his critique of the imperialist perspective in Western 45 The women were very interested in history, and Eva was on the boards of organizations including the New Mexico historical society, Archaeological Institute of America and the Southwest Society.14 Their interest in history and anthropology no doubt informed the decoration of their home. The chests are a notable element that contribute to the hybrid style of the space, generally. Eva Scott Fenyes had travelled to Egypt and across North Africa as a young woman in the late nineteenth century. Similarly, her daughter Leonora was enrolled in school in Switzerland, and in later years, the Leonoras would travel across Mexico and the United States, in addition to visiting Paris, China, India, Malaysia and Japan.15 Brucken and Scharff argue that the women’s collections were a status symbol Eva and the Leonoras deployed decoration to as well as an indication of their 16 construct a coherent and progressive political leanings. palatable narrative of cultural convergence in The living room features the Santa Fe [...] that enduringly same beige adobe walls that are caters to a white audience. found throughout the house. Tinsmithed candelabras, which the Encyclopedia of Interior Design cites as characteristic of the Santa Fe style, are displayed prominently on the mantelpiece and on intricately carved wooden furniture. The rooms in this area are wide and spacious, featuring wooden beams overhead, and hanging candelabras that recall the California mission revival style; so too does a pew, painted with faded figures and upholstered with white fabric (fig. 3). Large Persian rugs line the floors in the living areas. Many of the objects on display reflect the Hispanic craft objects one would expect to find in a home decorated in the Santa Fe style: figurines, painted panels, and saints. Wooden furniture with painted motifs line the area leading into the dining room (fig. 4), as well as another seating area in the home. �46 This discursive flattening is indicative of the way that the Santa Fe style is imagined and taken up in the contemporary context. It reflects the initial desires of proponents of the style to absorb influences cultural anthropology, from Hispanic and Indigenous Culture & Truth, cultures in order to establish Renato Rosaldo states, the region’s uniqueness, while “Imperialist nostalgia assuming control over these uses a pose of ‘innocent traditions and influences from a yearning’ both to capture position of political power and people’s imaginations presumed cultural superiority and to conceal its as Anglo-Americans in the complicity with often nascent state. brutal domination.” 22 The community of which the women were a part was responsible for the disenfranchisement of local Hispanic and Indigenous populations,23 at the same time that a privileged few took on what they viewed as the responsibility of documenting these communities and seeking to aid them through patronage, always on their own terms. Mullin’s work on Santa Fe further demonstrates that many White women were motivated to engage in philanthropy because it was a means to accessing influence in the public sphere, just as much as they may have desired to improve the quality of life of local villagers and craftspeople. Historical research on women in the West posits homemaking, and thus feminized labour, as holding a privileged status in the practice of occupying territory. In their article on Eva and the Leonoras, Brucken and Scharff emphasize the significance of the home as a feminized site that extends beyond its physical boundaries and takes on particular significance in the context of the American West. They state that, “looking at the multiple spaces inhabited by this extraordinary family expands our definition of home beyond domesticity to encompass the process of inhabiting places.”24 This argument elevates the status of the labour associated with homemaking. It accomplishes this by correctly pointing out that in a culturally contested site like that of New Mexico, the inhabitation and occupation of territory was an avenue through which White women could access a degree of power in public life that often had been previously unavailable to them. What is missing from Brucken and Scharff’s analysis is a critical perspective on the problematic practices that went hand in hand with this inhabitation of Santa Fe. In an article on elite Anglo-American women in Santa Fe, Flannery Burke further elucidates the way in which the home gained special significance in this context. She states: The women of the Anglo arts community recast the home as the wider space of northern New Mexico. Rather than being a limited sphere of influence, the home…encompassed a vast amount of space as well as what they saw as the highest of aesthetic and political expression… the Anglo women…seemed willing, to an extent, to embrace the notion of home as a woman’s place.25 According to Burke, many of these women were early feminists and were involved in the suffrage movement. They reclaimed the home in favour of denying women’s natural inclination towards domestic work that had led to her relegation to this space.26 Anglo women in the West embraced homemaking and exercised agency in the way they engaged with the domestic sphere, extending its purview outside of the home, through involvement in arts and crafts patronage and philanthropy. The eclectic interiors of the Acequia Madre house reflects a dedication to the domestic site that simultaneously gestures far beyond it, demonstrating the power and agency of the women who designed and decorated each room. Chris Wilson’s The Myth of Santa Fe analyzes depictions of New Mexico and Santa Fe as they have proliferated in the twentieth century. Wilson notes that the hybrid style of architecture and design obscures the power dynamics and tensions �› Fig 4. Interior Tri-View. Present Day. Fényes-Curtin-Paloheimo Collection, Archives of Acequia Madre House, Santa Fe, NM. © 2017 WOMEN’S INTERNATIONAL STUDY CENTER that have been present in the region since the increased involvement of Anglo-Americans at the end of the nineteenth century. Cultural difference is signified through interior aesthetics as a means of neutralizing tensions, in this dynamic. Wilson states: This comment is fitting in relation to the Acequia Madre home, where the dislocations mentioned are made literal in the eclectic style of the interior. At the same time, the women were deeply invested in notions of cultural purity when it came to their relationships with local and Indigenous populations, highlighting the racialized power dynamics at play in the construction of their interior spaces. 47 The notion of culture as something ordered and stable emerges from an era of profound change. The romantic and ethnic fixation on the survival of authentic cultural fragments diverts attention from the very modern dislocations that stimulated the desire for continuity and stability in the first place.27 Eva and the Leonoras deployed decoration to construct a coherent and palatable narrative of cultural convergence in Santa Fe, signaling the development of a nascent style associated with the region that remains popular and is heavily codified as having to do with a traditional American Southwest today, that enduringly caters to a White audience. These women were part of a group of Anglo-American elite women, many of whom were involved in the suffrage movement, who took advantage of greater opportunities for becoming involved in the public sphere in the Southwest, and greater freedoms for women more generally. While it is important to acknowledge the accomplishments and contributions of these women, it is essential to do so not at the expense of a critical perspective on their engagement with Hispanic and Indigenous cultures of the region. Aesthetic elements associated with these cultures were adopted for various ends, on the terms of White elites. ◊ �Stuffed Kitsch FLORENCE YEE 2017 PAINTING AND DRAWING CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY 48 Stuffed Kitsch contends with the unnerving proximity between “cuteness” and violence, desire and deformation. Though its identity as an “art object” prohibits touch, mass-produced, Stuffed Kitsch would encourage this kind of contact. The work is part of an ongoing series to reclaim the traditional kitsch objects for the North American Cantonese diaspora, giving them significance outside of the white European tradition of orientalist appropriation and fetishistic power dynamics. The taxidermic origins of stuffed toys and the nature of hunting trophies as displays of power and masculinity also recall the racialized, sexual violence committed against East-Asian women, portrayed as docile and submissive under the white male gaze. Though the sight of one vase toppled as the other looks on, smiling, may spark a twinge of unease in its viewers, Yee’s work ultimately creates new meaning in stereotypical imagery by transforming tropified crafts into contemporary symbols of comfort for families of the Cantonese diaspora. �49 �50 �51 Antibody ALISON MOULE 2017 STUDIO ARTS AND ART HISTORY CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY Through illustrated text messages, essays, and tender, personal discussions, Antibody examines underground comix’s history and role in LGBT and AIDS activism as a subversive medium for sharing without censorship. Parts of Antibody also tell the story of Emily, a cancer patient and close friend of Moule’s, coming out as non-binary and lesbian, and the loss of agency they experience dealing with dysphoria in an institution still focused on gender binaries. The artist’s quirky “forget-me-nevers” and softly-rendered anecdotes fold together in a discussion of the embodiment of body and illness alongside Emily’s struggle for and against their own body. Antibody negotiates a space for re- and self-definition, allowing its characters to live and breathe outside of limiting narratives classifying them solely as queer bodies and patients—to be seen living with disease, not sentenced to death. �“�Is it Art, and Does it Matter?” AN INTERVIEW WITH E JACKSON JULIE BROWN e jackson is a cartoonist and scholar from Providence, RI. Much of their practice deals with the interaction between art, art institutions, and the public, and their podcast, Drawing a Dialogue, explores comics in historical and educational contexts. Julie Brown got to chat with them about the place of comics as an accessible art form and just what does qualify as art? 52 Julie Brown: So, let’s jump right in! A lot of your comics work, like Flux, Liminality and Love Bite, talk about communication, identity, and intimacy.1 Is there any reason why these themes are important to you? e jackson: Well, a lot of what I do is like an “e autobiography” dressed up in fiction, because I don’t actually enjoy doing autobiography, but I do enjoy exploring things I’ve been through. I’m autistic and transgender: these two things are big parts of my life, so communicating and struggling to convey a sense of self to other people are topics that are interesting for me to explore. JB: Are these also the kinds of stories that you like reading and seeking out in media? ej: I have pretty varied tastes, so yes, to a degree. I really like romance: whether it’s full-blown, straight-up romance-romance or fanfiction romance or just Ghibli-style, two characters exploring their relationship. Stories that focus on a relationship between two or more characters are very appealing to me. JB: Do you think that, as a medium, comics make these stories easier to tell, in comparison to written stories, fanfiction or video games? I know you’ve made a couple of those. ej: Yes and no. I think that depending on what you’re trying to convey, there are different strengths. I spend a lot of time trying to recreate in comics form the sense you get from a Yasujiro Ozu movie because, in his work, everything is under the surface; what you’re shown isn’t the full story and you have to be paying attention and looking at the little moments that are hidden from the camera.2 A lot of my process in comics is about stripping away, in that sense. Just by nature of having gutters, comics have inherent time skips and obscured moments which you can manipulate. But sometimes when I’m just writing, I tend to feel more pressure to be very opaque and put it all down. There are writers who don’t do that, obviously, but that’s the case for me. JB: Yeah, I think comics give you the ability to be less linear than some other forms of storytelling, for sure. ej: There’s definitely a lot of potential for experimentation, depending on what you’re trying to achieve, because there’s also so many ways to format. With digital now, but in print too, there’s a lot of fluidity, especially when you open up your definition of what a comic is. JB: I like that a lot. Just open the doors; comics are anything. In fact, in a Drawing a Dialogue (DaD) live episode, you said this line I really liked: “You don’t need to be able to read words to read a comic.” 3 What does the “universality” of comics mean to you, and why does it appeal to you? ej: So, in the American canon, the earliest comics were mostly geared towards immigrant communities because, although they couldn’t speak English, they could still read the stories. I think that’s what makes comics such an accessible medium, and why they’re so handy for introducing people to visual literacy, which is separate from reading literacy. Cathy, my co-host on DaD, talks about this a lot especially in regards to art education: reading a comic is not just reading text, it’s reading the image and specifically the sequence of images. That requires a different type of processing, but once you learn it, it’s almost instantaneous. That’s part of what makes it so useful for me as a tool for exploring these more complex ideas and finding ways to address higherlevel art history concepts in a more accessible way. You don’t think about people who are really good at reading comics, because even though it’s a highlevel skill, it’s dismissed like, “Anyone can do it, so it’s fine.” �important. They don’t emphasize that distinction between high and low culture. It’s just like: “Yeah, we’re gonna talk about all of it.” And I feel like that’s something that in your research you’re very interested in as well. ej: I actually saw that; it was a tweet that was going around.4 The rule is, apparently, that you don’t want to make a cross or plus form with your panels, so I’ve been adopting that method in my layouts. ej: I love ZEAL. I always wish I was more of a video games person so that I had more excuses to do stuff for them. And I think that when you start approaching things from the question of “is this art or not,”—and I think I talk about this a little in the live episode that you mentioned before—you’re already trapping yourself in a useless ideological debate. Because it shouldn’t matter! I think it’s art, of course I think it’s art, but also that’s not why I’m defining it Seeing the as important. You know? JB: It makes it more legible, I find. ej: Yeah, it gives it a really good pace and rhythm. When I thought about it and tested it out, I was like, “Oh, okay, yeah, this is legit.” JB: It’s super cool. I find it’s neat to see how these different rules play into the way they’re read. ej: Manga is an interesting case, too, because it has more cultural weight than comics in American society. There are more studies done on visual literacy and comics reading done in Japan because of the prevalence of manga there. JB: Whereas, in America, I feel like mangas are treated as “lesser,” since when they’re available for free online as scanlations, they’re accessible in a way that American comics aren’t.5 And when they’re readily available in that way, we don’t always consider if the artist getting paid for their work, or if we’re just scanning them and putting them online… ej: A lot of it has to do with the exotification of the East and the way we treat art from non-Western countries; the fact that people are very dismissive of art made by non-white people is definitely a big part of it. Manga has that struggle worsened by being part of a medium that’s already dismissed in many art institutions. JB: The cool thing about comics, though, and especially comics you’ve made in collaboration with ZEAL and even that publication as a whole, is that they have this understanding of visual culture and pop culture that’s very “inclusive.” 6 It doesn’t matter if something is art or isn’t art, is important or isn’t reproduction instead of the JB: Right. actual thing is not ej: So instead of arguing about some moral failing. elevating works or mediums, I’d rather focus on making things more accessible to a broader public. And if that means losing the status of art or fine art, then sure. We don’t need the status. It’s sort of a holdover, I feel like, from… (sighs) Capitalism. JB: (laughs) Yeah, definitely. And I think Cathy mentioned it as well, that there’s the question of “Is it art?” and “Does it matter?” I thought that was such an interesting rhetoric to use. ej: Yeah, that whole idea is pretty important, because our focus is on connecting to people; I don’t care if they think it’s art or not. I want people to find value in it, whatever that looks like, without it having to be a high-status, institutionalized, special thing. JB: In the past, when pop art was the “big thing,” there was a lot of push against it, reflected in a focus on authenticity in modernism and in the writings of people like Clement Greenberg. But today, to a large extent, we see pop art observed, appraised and written about in the ways that would make it valuable 53 JB: Yeah, I read that someone was seeing how quickly her son could learn to read mangas from right to left, versus the American left to right, and analyzing the way that panels are laid out differently in both types. �[...] I also believe that the majority of art, or all art, should be completely publicly accessible. It should belong to the community that it was made in and made for. to and for the arts. Do you see that change as something that could happen for comics or that is happening now? ej: There’s definitely a bigger push for comics to be featured in museums and studied in an art historical context— there are comic museums in existence, actually. And there are definitely a lot of working artists that incorporate things from comics into their work. So while I like working with institutions, I’d rather it be not a consideration; I don’t want the status to come at the expense of the children or everyday people who would be barred from comics in the same way they’re barred from fine art. I don’t want comics to be the new accepted art form… Though, I mean, it would be nice to make more money. 54 JB: (laughs) Always a plus. Do you think there’s a way to observe comics that doesn’t undermine the opportunities that they present for art education or marginalized groups? Or should we just focus on appreciating comics as non-fine art? That last one feels more in line with the kinds of things you’ve been talking about. ej: Yeah, I think that what we should be doing is working on is not making fine art some specialized, higher strata, but making it accessible. Because then it doesn’t matter, right? Then, comics are art, but also, it’s not a big deal. The Rhode Island School of Art and Design (RISD) museum, which is the museum I was working at for a little bit, they have worked with me in that regard. Their artist fellow for the past year, also, was Walker Mettling, who was the Comics Consortium cofounder here in Providence.7 That’s the education department, of course—there’s always that funny divide in museums between the educational department and the curatorial department, who might not have as much experience with the educational side. But I think there are definitely educators who are aware and working from the mindset of using comics as art. And a lot of comic academics do also consider them art, or literature art—there’s a funny divide there too. So, there are definitely people and spaces that exist, but it’s also an ongoing conversation. JB: A good conversation to be having, for sure. ej: Definitely. And a lot of what I’m trying to do is bring comics to the other stuff, as opposed to bringing the other stuff to comics. I like working with museums; I’m applying to graduate school to get my PhD, and the programs I’m applying to have to do with public humanities, museums and libraries and all that. And from there, I bring the comics with me, as opposed to getting a comics degree and trying to work backwards from that. I’m more interested in deconstructing the institution that way, as opposed to focusing on comics and elevating them. JB: You’re the inside man. JB: Yeah, exactly! “It doesn’t matter if it’s art.” ej: Definitely. (laughs) ej: I absolutely believe that the majority of comics are art, but I also believe that the majority of art, or all art, should be completely publicly accessible. It should belong to the community that it was made in and made for. JB: I think this is also a good place to talk about gallery and museum spaces as being accessible and inaccessible. You’ve talked about this a bit on DaD, the raise of museum prices: I think the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for one, is raising their entrance fee in March. JB: Do you think there exists a space where comics could be both considered and respected as art but still be accessible in the way that fine art isn’t? ej: I think you see some of that with local, smaller groups. Cathy and I both operate under the premise that, “Yeah, it’s art, but we’re using it for a specific purpose.” And I think there are a lot of educators who are hip to comics who feel that way as well. ej: The suggested donation has always been twentyfive dollars, but now they’re making it a mandatory fee for non-New Yorkers. JB: The article I read said that the decision was made “to bring it in line with its local competitors.” 8 Which, ehhh. �ej: Yeah, sure. JB: You’ve also talked about the fact that raising entrance fees creates lower attendance but higher membership, and how everyone sees that as a success. What are your feelings about that? JB: Oh man, I really like that. ej: Yeah, somewhere where the art isn’t in service of a certain class that is able to spend millions of dollars on the pieces, but in service of the broader good of people. Art has that ability; it’s important for our understanding of society, our understanding of ourselves, it’s used in clinical contexts… So many people are just shut off from all of these important aspects of art, and there are all these different barriers you have to get past to even start to understand it. Those are some really important issues, and museums enforce them in a really unfortunate way. JB: A lot of my friends who aren’t in the arts often say, “Oh, I don’t get any of it.” And I always think that’s such a shame! There’s definitely this issue of making art accessible to not just people who are marginalized, but to people who just don’t have any contact with the industry. ej: And that’s the thing too: it’s very easy to be on the artist’s side, saying “Oh, you don’t understand the art, I’m superior to you because I understand it.” I see a lot of people, artists that I know and respect, fall into that trap of saying, “You make fun of modern art because you don’t get it; you’re an inferior human being because you don’t understand JB: You mentioned a community-owned museum, too: what were you suggesting that it would look like? ej: The dream would be that there would be workshops and the like where people could connect—like really connect—to the actual practice of artmaking, because that’s something a lot of people are denied from. It would let people identify more with what artists are trying to do, what things are being said in art, and how it can enrich your understanding of society and the people around you—beyond some famous dead white guy household names. JB: (laughs) ej: This is something that I’ve been stuck on with for a long time—one of the educators at the RISD museum brought this up casually in a conversation and it’s just never left my mind—it’s the idea of having art restoration be a community event. The whole process would be about giving people the tools to understand how you restore a piece of art, but also having a feeling of ownership of the art: “This is ours, this is our object that we’re taking care of, and it belongs to all of us. It isn’t just some endowment or institution that owns it and we’re all just looking at it.” It would be providing a real, tactile understanding. JB: That’s an absolutely incredible idea. ej: Isn’t it fantastic? I’ve been stuck on it for months, and I’m just so into it. JB: If you ever make any headway on that, please let me know. ej: (laughs) JB: So in light of this whole conversation around inaccessibility in galleries and the mentality of the 55 ej: I think that museums should be free. Museums, and art museums especially, already have such a fraught history because of colonialism: a lot of these objects aren’t ours, were acquired illegally, and are just kept, put in storage and never looked at. There’s a lot of things in museums that are just never seen. All of that is done to create this inflated economy as to what these art objects are worth, and none of it actually benefits the community. I want art to serve the community, because I think that people have a right to art and to visual culture in general. I had a really long conversation with a friend the other day about what a communityowned museum would look like, because for me, that’s the end goal. modern art.” But really, has modern art been taught to people at all? It hasn’t been shown to people. If you’re in a position where you’re focusing on your own survival, you’re not thinking about how you’re benefiting from this museum that you’d have to pay $20 to get into, to look at some paintings you don’t understand because no one has ever explained to you or made you feel like you have ownership of in any way. �56 arts, what are your thoughts on the idea that you can’t fully grasp the spirit or amplitude of a work unless you see it in person? I’ve heard this kind of rhetoric a lot: that we can google pictures of whatever painting or manga or comic we like, but it’s not the same as seeing it in person. Do you think this mentality comes from this type of high culture, anti-accessibility point of view? JB: I like how with artists like yourself and countless others, there’s this body of work that, for the most part, exists exclusively online. There’s no question of, “You haven’t really seen this comic,” because the world where it exists is readily accessible: it’s this every-person world. ej: Yeah, and unfortunately there’s still issues there; since not everyone has access to the internet, it’s not a flawless medium. But I do like comics that really use the digital environment to their advantage, in ways where a print version wouldn’t have the same effect as a digital version. A really good example of a comic like that is Gigi D.G.’s Lady of the Shard.9 It’s on itch.io which, for those who don’t know, is a site where most people sell video games, but you can also upload PDFs and encode things directly into the website. In this case, it’s a completely black page. ej: Yes, kind of. So, museums themselves are fairly modern, I I don’t care if they think believe the first museum started it’s art or not. I want in the seventeenth century. Part people to find value in of their conception was about it, whatever that looks decontextualizing art from its like, without it having old purpose: someone paid for it to be a high-status, and either put it in their bedroom institutionalized, or in a church or something. special thing. Museums were all about saying, “No, it hangs on a wall.” I feel like there is definitely an impact to seeing something in person that technology and reproduction can’t yet capture. But the idea that reproductions are inherently bad, or JB: Yes! Oh man, it’s so cool. That one hit me really that you’re somehow losing out on a quality of life hard when I read it. because you only have access to reproductions… That, to me, feels ableist and classist. Not everyone ej: Lady of the Shard is a fantastic example of a is going to be able to go to a museum, for whatever comic that exists in a digital environment. And reason: sometimes it’s money, sometimes it’s that itself is not even a modern thing; if you look accessibility issues, sometimes it’s locational. at hypertext poetry, for instance, people have been It’s not like we can all fly to the Louvre. using the medium to their advantage for a long time. It’s just cool to see art and comics growing in JB: (laughs) that kind of digital environment and using it to do really unique things. ej: I’m a big fan of getting rid of the idea that reproductions are inherently ‘lesser’. I don’t want JB: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to to say that it doesn’t matter if you never see the chat with me, e. This has been really fun, and really real thing, because that can be a very life-changing informative! experience, but I don’t want to stigmatize the idea of only having access to reproductions. Seeing the ej: Oh yeah, thank you! Thanks for reaching reproduction instead of the actual thing is not some out to me. ◊ moral failing. And something can impact you just as much, even if you only see it in reproduced: there are artists that I love whose work I’ve never seen in person, but you can’t tell me that I don’t feel it when I look at a Google Image of it. That’s not how people work. �Notes Edito Tarana Burke quoted by Courtney Connley, “#MeToo founder Tarana Burke has big plans for the movement in 2018,” CNBC, Jan. 19, 2018, accessed Mar. 14, 2018. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/19/metoofounder-tarana-burke-has-big-plans-forthe-movement-in-2018.html. 1 Tremblay-Moll Simon Armitage, trans., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in The Norton Anthology of English Literature (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), 1190-1191. 1 2 Ibid., 1210. Chaucer, “Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 674. 22 Benson, trans. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 668. 23 Chaucer, “Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 818-821. 24 Benson, trans. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 812-815. 25 Chaucer, “Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 889. 26 Benson, trans.“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 883. 27 Chaucer,“Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 1014. 28 Benson, trans. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 1008. 29 Chaucer, “Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 1067. 30 3 Ibid., 1225. Benson, trans.“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 1061. 4 Ibid., 1479-1480. 32 5 Ibid., 948-951. Chaucer,“Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 536. Ibid., 957. 33 7 Ibid., 2446. 34 8 Ibid., 2454-2455. 35 Chaucer, “Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 35-38. 11 Benson, trans. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”. 36-38. 12 Chaucer, “Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 46. 13 14 Benson, trans. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 44b. Chaucer, “Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”,161. 15 Benson, trans. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 155. 16 17 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 966-67. 18 Ibid., 2456. 19 Ibid., 2414-2421. Chaucer, “Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 691. 20 Benson, trans. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 685. 21 Sharon G. Dean, “‘There Ain’t Much of a Difference/Between a Bridge and a Wall’: Hedwig and the Angry Inch – a Bisexual Aesthetic for Film” Journal of Bisexuality 5, no. 4 (2005): 112. 6 Dominic Johnson, “Positive Surrender: An Interview with BREYER P-ORRIDGE.” The Art of Living, (2015): 142. 7 8 Megan Rundel, “The Fire of Eros: Sexuality and the Movement Toward Union.”Psychoanalytic Dialogues 25, no. 5 (2015): 617. 9 Ibid., 810 Ibid., 271-72, 277-78. Benson, trans.“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 265-66, 271-72. 36 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 957. Chaucer, “Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 1005. 37 Benson, trans. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 999. 38 Chaucer, “Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, (1075. 39 40 Benson, trans. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 1069. Chaucer, “Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 1088. 41 Benson, trans. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale”, 1082. 42 Salé.e Nicolette Gable, “Willful Sadness’: American Decadence, gender,and the pleasures and dangers of pessimism,” Journal of Gender Studies 26, no. 1 (2017): 103. 1 Stephen Trask, “The Origin of Love,” recorded 2001, track 2 on Hedwig and the Angry Inch: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Atlantic Records. CD. 2 Pamela Demory, « Hedwig Queers Hollywood Romance » The Journal of Popular Culture 49, no. 2 (2016): 286. 3 Ibid. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, directed by Marie Losier (2011; USA) DVD. 37:45. 10 11 The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, 30:00. 12 The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, 3:40. Viviane K Namaste, “‘Tragic Misreadings’ Queer Theory’s Erasure of Transgender Subjectivity” in Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People, The University of Chicago Press (2000): 22. 13 Donna J Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto.” in Manifestly Haraway, The University of Minnesota Press. (1984): 150. 14 15 Dominic Johnson, “Positive Surrender: An Interview with BREYER P-ORRIDGE.” The Art of Living. (2015): 139. Donna J. Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto.” in Manifestly Haraway, 3-90. The University of Minnesota Press. (1984): 154. 16 17 Krista Miranda, “DNA, AND: A Meditation on Pandrogeny.” Women & Performance: a Journal of Feminist Theory 20, no. 3 (2010): 348. Lissette Olivares, “Hacking the Body and Posthumanist Transbecoming: 10,000 Generations Later as the Mestizaje of Speculative Cyborg Feminism and Significant Otherness.” NanoEthics 8, no. 3 (2014): 295. 18 The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, 1:03:45. 19 20 The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, 28:50. 21 Susan Stryker, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village Of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay 57 Chaucer, Geoffrey, “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale.” The President and Fellows of Harvard College, trans. L.D. Benson (2008). 157-158. 10 Hedwig and the Angry Inch, directed by John Cameron Mitchell (2001; USA: New Line Cinema) DVD. 1:03:15. 5 31 6 9 Chaucer, Geoffrey, “Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), 158. Holly M. Sypniewski, “The Pursuit of Eros in Plato's Symposium and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 15, no. 4 (2008): 576. 4 �Studies (1994): 242. 22 Stryker, 240. 23 Stryker, 251. 24 The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, 30:30. 25 The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, 57:50. Le Guen Dominique Viart et Bruno Vercier, La littérature française au présent : Héritages, modernité,mutations (Paris : Editions Bordas, 2008). 1 Virginie Despentes, Vernon Subutex (Paris : Grasset, 2015), 119. 2 Scharff and Brucken. “The House of the Three Wise Women,” 48. 14 15 Ibid., 50. 16 Ibid., 47. S. Johnson, “Features: Santa Fe,” Vogue 88, no. 8 (1936): 136. 17 18 Ibid. Molly H Mullin, Culture in the Marketplace: Gender, Art and Value in the American Southwest (Duke University Press, 2008), 81. 19 3 Ibid., 147. 4 Ibid., 12. 20 Ibid., 8. 5 Ibid., 187. 21 Ibid., 74. 6 Ibid., 116. 22 7 Virginie Despentes, King Kong Théorie (Paris: Grasset, 2006), 8. 58 13 Nancy Baker and Amy Porter, Their Lives, Their Wills: Women in the Borderlands, 17501846 (Texas Tech University Press, 2015), 32. Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (Beacon Press, 1989), 74. 8 Despentes, Vernon Subutex, 261. Dauber, “Pueblo Pottery and the Politics of Regional Identity,” 579. 9 Ibid., 372. 24 10 Despentes, King Kong Théorie, 36. 11 Ibid., 11. 12 Despentes, Vernon Subutex, 154. 13 Despentes, King Kong Théorie, 159. 23 Brucken and Scharff, “The House of the Three Wise Women,” 59. Flannery Burke,”An Artist’s Home: Gender and the Santa Fe Culture Center Controversy,” Journal of the Southwest 46, no. 2 (2004): 360 25 26 Mills Virginia Scharff and Carolyn Brucken, “The House of the Three Wise Women: A Family Legacy in the American Southwest,” in California History 86, no. 4 (2009): 51. 1 2 Ibid., 52. Carl D. Shepard, Creator of the Santa Fe Style: Isaac Hamilton Rapp, Architect (University of New Mexico Press, 1988), 7. 3 Kenneth Dauber, “Pueblo Pottery and the Politics of Regional Identity,” in Journal of the Southwest 32, no. 4 (1990): 579; 4 5 Shepard, Creator of the Santa Fe Style, 73-74 6 Ibid., 7. 7 Ibid., 75. 8 Ibid., 76. 9 Ibid., 20. Paula A. Baxter, “Santa Fe Style,” in The Encyclopedia of Interior Design, ed. by Joanna Banham (Routledge, 1997), 1112. 10 11 Ibid., 1112-1113. Scharff and Brucken, “The House of the Three Wise Women,” 47. 12 Ibid., 363. Chris Wilson, The Myth of Santa Fe: Creating a Modern Regional Tradition (University of New Mexico Press, 1997), 7. 27 Brown e jackson, “e jackson,” https://www.ehetja. com/comics/. 1 Oliver Lyttleton, “5 Essential Films by Yasujiro Ozu,” Indiewire, last modified March 7, 2016. http://www.indiewire. com/2016/03/5-essential-films-byyasujiro-ozu-263749/. 2 e Jackson and Cathy G. Johnson, “Episode 8: History of Low Culture + the Benefits of Cartooning in Education,” Drawing a Dialogue, podcast, MP3 audio, 45:28. https://comicarted.com/blog/2018/1/5/ drawing-a-dialogue-episode-8. 3 Rachel Matt Thorn, Twitter thread. Jan 19 2018. https://twitter.com/rachel_thorn_ en/status/954370209380368384. 4 “Scanlation is the fan-made scanning, translation, and editing of comics from a language into another language […] nearly always done without the express permission of the copyright holder.” “Scanlation,” Wikipedia, last modified Oct. 5 28, 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Scanlation. e jackson, “Don’t Like Don’t Read,” https:// medium.com/mammon-machine-zeal/ dont-like-don-t-read-b4d4c9f3c0b; “knowing mii self,” https://medium.com/ mammon-machine-zeal/knowing-miiself-64a7141e5a82, published by ZEAL. 6 7 “Providence Comics Consortium,” Tumblr, http://providencecomicsconsortium. tumblr.com/. Jackie Wattles, “NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to start charging out-ofstaters $25,” CNN Money, January 4, 2018. http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/04/news/ met-museum-of-art-price-change/index. html. 8 Gigi D.G., “Lady of the Shard,” last updated December 12, 2017. https://gigidigi.itch.io/lady. 9 �59 yiaramagazine.com �60 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Other publications Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Issue 6 Page Number(s) 1-58 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data PDF Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-04-01 Title A name given to the resource Yiara Magazine Issue 6 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Yiara Magazine Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Yiara Magazine Description An account of the resource The sixth issue of Yiara Magazine, an undergraduate feminist art &amp; art history publication. Concordia McGill non-McGill UQAM https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62030/archive/files/eea98ca35c4a969436a6da731eab95a3.pdf?Expires=1787788800&Signature=VnNb8sa7FMBTL3J5euMCnBy0RweU55istwKCbsgCKmvZOwA%7ESKxUNT5oXLOfgnnzJkWlvzDFiLc1VaYhDIKDF5zs2SGGXuRcUFjtCrcKgRZZudglFoxGIrrw78lJFYhwjkrc8FdYNEfVZ56dh94NUEBKPh7K0uqn-1ngUYWSrvL10Erg8lnJtWtBeKoDFPvRHb18pnAVUuYM5LW2QnGbx9y0dh0G6JBvkbMYBez2wzexBooghKk48vjigKN6ryifWY1FswvJPfE-OhHJ0-Q3OThn5eHJAwoLywmDUhhMJLsmGAyDcIU1HlDylR3XB-awMfJLXSnLXYW1qePwo1091w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 08ef30ca853382cf18df237f778bb5dc PDF Text Text Yiara Magazine Issue Volume 07 April Avril 2019 An undergraduate feminist art and art history publication Une revue d’art étudiante féministe et d’histoire de l’art �Team members and Contributors Editor-in-Chief: Julie Brown Assistant Editor-in-Chief: Lorenza Mezzapelle Head Writer: Celine Cardineau English Editor: Sara Hashemi French Editor: Simone Bertrand Copy Editors: Adèle Dumont-Bergeron Eugénie Adloch-Mathe Alison Moule Event Coordinators: Miles Norton Justine McKenna Leighetta Kim Finance Coordinator: Kari Valmestad Graphic Designer: Meagan Shelest Publication Designers: Emily Tooker Hagar Moussali Jasmine Sarzo Alfaro Anissa Miceli Online Editor: Sarah Velk Online Lead Contributor: Eva Morrison Contributors: Alison Moule Mycoze Jane Reväe McWhirter Jacqueline Beaumont Jennifer Lee Julie Leblanc Simone Sinclair-Veillette Alejandra Zamudio Dias Caitlin Stever Emily Levine Oona Ostrowski Jad Orphée Chami Mandate Yiara Magazine is an undergraduate feminist art and art history publication. Based in Montreal and run by students from across the city, Yiara publishes an annual print issue of curated student writing and artwork, organizes a variety of workshops, discussions and lectures, and hosts an end-of-year vernissage and magazine launch. By encouraging feminist dialogue within the field of art, we hope to raise critical questions on the art historical canon, study feminist representation, pay tribute to women and figures of the past, explore ideas of gender and the self and give voice to students concerned with these themes in their work and practice. �Acknowledgements Thank you to the Fine Arts Student Alliance and Jordan and Marianna, for their rapid response to our scrambled emails and questions. Thank you to the Concordia Council for Student Life, the Concordia University Alumni Association, and the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Canadian Art for continuing to finance our publication. Thank you to the Art History Department, Anna Waclawek, Joanne Sloan and Nicola Pezolet, for continuing to believe in and support Yiara’s initiatives. Thank you to Sabrina Oliveri for the wonderful illustrations featured in the background of “Dance Reflections” on pages 17 and 19. And a special thank you to Yiara’s team members for their time, participation, and hard work! Contact Us yiaramagazine.com // info@yiaramagazine.com Yiara Magazine is based out of Concordia University, which is located on unceded Indigenous lands belonging to the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation. ISSN 2291-2339 �05 Letter from the Editor 06 Photography is the New Painting Mycoze 12 Ducking and Dodging Simone Sinclair-Veillette 14 Dance Reflections: A Conversation About Mimesis and Agency Caitlin Stever 20 Despeinada, Desmechuzada, y erizada hasta la raiz Alejandra Zamudo Dias 22 La question de l’auteur et le rapport de pouvoir entre le compositeur et l’interprète musicale : Du Bel Canto à Om Kalthoum Jad Orphée Chami 4 A Rambunctious Ode to My Plague Jennifer Lee 24 �30 Ceramic Witch & Altar Jane Reväe McWhirter 34 Womanity; in Vitro Jacqueline Beaumont Black Bodies in the Water: After the Deluge of Hurricane Katrina and the Middle Passage Emily Levine 46 40 The Drill Julie Leblanc Smoke and Mirrors: the Photographic Practices of Claude Cahun and Tamara de Lempicka 48 Still-Life, Nineteen 54 Oona Ostrowski Alison Moule Bouffon and Other Antidotes for Guarded Hearts Joy Ross-Jones Celine Cardineau Notes 56 64 5 �6 �LETTER FROM THE EDITOR How do we learn how to “be”? That needlessly esoteric question fell into place as our team worked on volume 7 of Yiara. As the issue developed and our graphic designers took a look at this year’s crop, we noticed a recurring reference or emphasis on “the body” in our contributors’ pieces. Womanity;in vitro (34) speaks to the experience of being a trans woman; Photography is the New Painting (06), to the politicization of fatness; and the essay on Kara Walker’s exhibit After the Deluge (40), to that of Black bodies. Many others address the question of agency and the self. To accidentally curate an entire issue around this topic is telling. What space does the body, the self, occupy in our histories and feminisms? Can the body be apolitical? Can our bodies just be? As this year’s run of Yiara came together, so did a lot of fears: fear of being wrong and “be”-ing wrong, of doing wrong, of letting something or someone down. There are entire anthologies dedicated to feminist perspectives on the body and the self, and we won’t pretend that this is a comprehensive and conclusive discussion of those theories. But in conversation with these works, we can start to see the body as a story, body as a history—body as a beautiful mess where our fears and anxiety of “be”-ing wrong and doing “self” wrong can be mediated by community, empathy and art. We hope that this volume allows contributors, editors and readers alike to reckon with this complex relationship on their own time, in their own way. With all my heart, thank you for picking up this issue of Yiara. We welcome you to pass it on once you’re done and make its contents—its body— your own. Julie Brown Editor-in-Chief, vol. 07 7 �8 �PHOTOGRAPHY IS THE NEW PAINTING Mycoze Concordia University Photography; Interdisciplinary in Sexuality As the title suggests, Photography is the New Painting possesses as painterly quality, as layers of drapery lay like gestural brush strokes in space, captured through a grainy, canvas-like filter. Flooded in a soft, matte, wintery light, the model lays draped among a mise-enscène of objects which recalls Renaissance paintings or vanitas still lives about mortality. Indeed, the harvested winter fruits, the cut flowers, the human body, and the medium of film photography all share an ephemeral quality. The chosen objects hint at a decidedly anti-phallic eroticism, particularly the flaccid wilted flowers and fingers resting delicately on the open-lipped vase. The model’s nail polish and artificially -coloured water create a harmonious contrast between natural and synthetic, as well as traditional and contemporary elements. The photographs aestheticize the body as material object, while the model’s written reflection on her body and her experience of Fat Shaming breathes life and power back into the vessel. Presenting the photographs and text as one piece, Mycoze deconstructs the traditional objectification of model-painting by assuming authority as an artist, while also stepping aside and creating space for the model to voice her marginalized experience. 9 �The Beauty That You’ll Never Touch Since very young, I’ve bundled up your disgust very deep in the furrow of my beads. Bury. Beautiful face, you say. A crappy body, but a beautiful face. Beautiful for a big one. My brain stores your words and then regurgitates them. Always something to say about my body. Circus freak. Fuck. I put on this little bikini to let the sun caress my body. Your viper’s eyes indifferent me. I apply a thin layer of sunscreen. My tiny hands on the immensity of the whiteness of my thighs. Everything moves. My body terrifies and fascinates you at the same time. You’re listening to TVA News, sensationalism, you quite like that. My body is sensational. My hand gets lost and vogue in the bead of my back and belly. The white of the cream on my red stretch marks. Show. There is all this body that I should hide under gray jogging and a beige t-shirt. All this body that I should never show lying on a swimming pool towel. I am the queen of camping. I’m free. Your eyes are still piercing, but they don’t hurt my skin anymore. I enter the water. The warm liquid tenderly envelops my flesh. I go far into the small artificial lake. Far from everything, far from you. Words of M 10 �La beauté que tu ne toucheras jamais Depuis toute petite, j’ai emmitouflé votre dégout bien profond dans le sillon de mes bourrelets. Enfouir. Beau visage, vous dites. Un corps de marde, mais un beau visage. Belle pour une grosse. Mon cerveau emmagasine vos paroles pour les régurgiter ensuite. Toujours quelque chose à dire sur mon corps. Bête de foire. Fuck. J’enfile ce tout petit mini bikini pour laisser le soleil caresser mon corps. Vos regards vipères m’indiffèrent. J’applique une fine couche de crème solaire. Mes mains minuscules sur l’immensité de la blancheur de mes cuisses. Tout bouge. Mon corps vous terrifie et vous fascine à la fois. Vous écoutez TVA Nouvelles, le sensationnalisme, vous aimez pas pire ça. Mon corps est sensationnel. Ma main se perd et vogue dans les bourrelets de mon dos et mon ventre. Le blanc de la crème sur le rouge des vergetures. Spectacle. Il y a tout ce corps que je devrais cacher sous des joggings gris et un t-shirt beige. Tout ce corps que je ne devrais jamais montrer étendu sur une serviette club piscine. Je suis la reine du camping. Je suis libre. Vos regards percent encore, mais ils ne font plus mal à ma peau. J’entre dans l’eau. Le liquide tiède enveloppe tendrement ma chair. J’avance loin dans le petit lac artificiel. Loin de tout, loin de vous. Mots de M 11 �12 �13 �DUCKING AND DODGING Simone Sinclair-Veillette Concordia University Studio Arts Ducking and Dodging illustrates an all-too-familiar scenario, a fun night out interrupted by a sudden invasion of personal space, through the playful metaphor of male ducks’ violent mating habits and female ducks’ evasive strategies. The expressive patterns and colours paint a psycho-sensory landscape of the moment when heightened senses and primal instincts of fight, flight, or freeze take over. Pink and blue filters on the two characters highlight the perceived and performed gender split in nightlife environments — environments that seem almost designed to allow predatory behaviour to be unseen in the immersive sensory stimulation. The red-eyed mallard becomes a symbol of someone possessed by toxic masculinity or entitlement, operating under the excuse of intoxication or reproductive instincts. While the surreal characters might seem funny at first, this piece provokes a conversation around the opportunistic ways in which people use biology to back their ideologies. Cherry-picked examples of other species’ mating practices are frequently used to justify what one considers “natural” sexuality or what human sex is “supposed” to be— from whether humans are meant to mate for life, to the evolutionary arguments for sexist gender stereotypes and sexual predation. Ducking and Dodging addresses this discomforting manipulation of biological facts, through the hybridization of species, as the characters’ minds momentarily turn animalistic, while their bodies still occupy a complex, human realm. 14 ��Dance Reflections A conversation about mimesis and agency Caitlin Stever Concordia University Theatre and Development My name is Caitlin Stever and I am first and foremost a theatre maker. All of my creations and practices engage in togetherness and connection. Through my work and studies I have encountered a lot of tension surrounding ideas of ownership, as I’m sure many other artists do. This has lead me to explore ideas of mimesis and agency through the examination of the works of Francoise Sullivan and Luis Jacob. This will be done by connecting a variety of sources to their work and my analysis of it as an interdisciplinary performance artist. One can never truly know or understand the process or intentions behind creations like these, therefore it’s worth noting that I wield a heavy lens of superimposed assumptions about the work and can only try to debunk those ideas through this research. My first-hand experience is through Francoise Sullivan’s exhibit at the Musee d’Art Contemporain (MAC). Sullivan is an artist who is known as a pioneer of her time, not only as a French Canadian woman but as a revolutionary of transdisciplinary practices. Part One: Pioneer Woman on to explore plexiglass and steel sculpture and then later dove back into more performative and immaterial approaches. In the 1980s, her painting career began and she moved into the realm of abstract painting in the 90s while she was also teaching in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University. The MAC exhibit highlights Sullivan’s canonical works beginning with her earliest dance creations. It celebrates the anniversary of Le Refus global, which details an enlightening social and cultural history of Quebec and its people. Le Refus global talks about how the rise of rebellious academic publications created a more tangible culture of hope, solidarity and generally higher expectations of life. It seems to me to be subtly suggesting that the emergence of freedom arose out of the ashes of religion and catholicism. It describes fear as a chain that has been binding and oppressing us for centuries. One can observe the relationship between the emergence of interdisciplinary artists such as Sullivan and the publication of Refus global, which served as a momentous call for action, identity and liberation in French-Canadian society. Born in 1923, Sullivan attended the École des beaux-arts de Montréal in the 40s and soon after moved to New York to study modern dance. Most notably, she has worked with Paul-Emile Borduas and Jean-Paul Riopelle, having co-signed Le Refus global in the 1948. In the 1960s, she moved The exhibit begins with two of Sullivan’s dance works ­— Encore! Encore! Reconstruction Project and Danse dans la neige. The first is a collection of videos that shows the evolution of the same choreography through altered contexts. Danse dans la neige is part of a collection of 16 �Fig 1. — Prints and Plans performance by Caitlin Stever. Video still by Shauna Janssen. dances Francoise Sullivan created with Jean Paul Riopelle celebrating all four seasons in Quebec — specifically seven still photographs of the winter episode created in 1948. Sullivan is seen dancing in a skirt, hat and boots, beginning at the top of a small snow-covered hill and travels downward. One of the most fascinating things about Sullivan’s Danse dans la neige is that there was at one point the existence of a video recording. For reasons unbeknownst to me, the video no longer exists. Thus, the only remnants of this live performance are in hard copy — ­ photographs and corresponding drawings on score paper (fig 2). I can assume as well that remnants remain for Sullivan, Riopelle and other artists that participated/collaborated. their relevance. Rebecca Schneider, performance studies and feminist theorist wonders about how collective memories can be altered by questioning and collecting how and what repeated gestures “document.”1 In this sense, Schneider is speaking broadly when using the word gesture. The passing of time is intrinsically pivotal in her work Reenactment and relative pain, as it is similarly in Michael Taussig’s work; “My way of traversing this two-way street takes me into and eccentric history which begins with the curious and striking recharging of the mimetic faculty caused by the invention of mimetically capacious machines such as the camera, in the second half of the 19th century.”2 Taussig prefaces his thinking about new constructions with this note. Similarly the development of technology has clearly progressed between the time frames of Sullivan’s video dance installation and Luis Jacob’s reactionary installation. The significance of pieces like Danse Dans La Neige and the traces of it that remain, are either entirely fleeting and ephemeral or timeless and monumental One can wonder how this process of generat- based on our collective ing and losing important documentation shifts the meaning and lens of the artwork itself. For recollection of instance, countless ancient Greek and Roman works are lost entirely while others are perfectly their relevance. preserved. This leads me to wonder how the significance of pieces like Danse dans la neige and the traces of it that remain, are either entirely fleeting and ephemeral or timeless and monumental based on our collective recollection of 17 �Fig. 2 — Drawing of Sullivan and Riopelle’s choreography sketches Part Two: Parody versus homage Many years later in 2007, Luis Jacob, an interdisciplinary artist from Peru, creates A dance for those of us whose hearts have turned to ice based on the choreography of Francoise Sullivan and sculptures of Barbara Hepworth (fig 3). This piece is a video installation that first premiered in Germany in 2007, as part of the Documenta festival. His work is intrinsically accessible, simply due to its relation to pop culture. The piece consists of a video of a mostly naked man dancing in the winter forest and interacting with various clothes like props, sometimes accompanied by adjacent screens with corresponding sign language (fig 4). The first consideration that arose for me in studying the connected work of both these artists is the straddling of parody and homage — the latter being what Jacob’s work claims to be, despite what one can only assume is the intentionally comedic effect of male nudity. Aside from the lengthy and relevant discussion of gendered nude bodies in contemporary art, I concluded that intentionality plays a huge part in the creation of many reactionary or mimetic works such as these 18 Fig 3. — Drawing of Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture at Tate Modern �Just as two words in different languages can have the same meaning but sound and be spelled entirely differently begs the question of whether or “Rather, we must suppose that the gift of producing similarities - in dances, whose oldest not they must function this was - and therefore also the gift of recognizing them, have changed with historical intrinsically development.” have the same meaning. — though Jacob’s thinking cannot be known. To further articulate my qualm—the difference between parody and homage in this case is positionality and research. It’s clear to me as the viewer that Jacob doesn’t dispute the integrity of Sullivan’s work, as is evidenced by Jacob’s established reputation and elaboration of the initially proposed ideas. In Schneider’s work, she cites Vanessa Agnew’s argument that reenactment is “eclipsing the past with its own theatricality.”3 There is clearly an added layer of theatricality to Jacob’s video. There is also another unknown layer; Jacob’s work does not claim to be a strict recreation of Sullivan’s, but rather what I can assume is a conversational approach between hers and the sculptures of Barbara Hepworth (fig 3). 4 Walter Benjamin delves into the ideas of nonsensuous mimicry, specifically examining language and onomatopoeic similarities, though I question how this concept can be translated into visual representations in dance. I’ve begun to wonder what sort of translations and processes of mimesis exist between live dance and video recording 19 �as well most literally between dance choreography and photographs of such or sketches of such. One can assume there is hierarchy of this mimesis since, as Benjamin states, it inevitably develops and changes overtime. Consequently, Sullivan’s process would have begun with symbolic mark-making sketches as seen in figure 2, progressing to rehearsal and performance and then to video and photography. Just as two words in different languages can have the same meaning but sound and be spelled differently begs the question of whether or not they must intrinsically have the same meaning. This is how Benjamin’s theory of nonsensuous mimicry can apply to works on dance, both in the case of Jacob and Sullivan. As many divine ideas about the mimetic faculty derived from the cosmos, I can suppose that there are ancient origins to language and dance as well. With different origins, different manifestations of objects and meanings occur though they can still be objectively the same things. While empirically Jacob can be said to still Fig 4. — Drawing from video of Jacob’s a Dance for Those of us Whose Hearts have Turned to Ice 20 be doing a dance about winter out in the snow, just like Sullivan did, what changes the works’ essence most notably is the superimposed agency of the new creator. Part Three: Prints and Plans As a follow up to this revelation, I’m wondering about how changing the form or manifestations of something, the same word in a different language, the same dance but in video, changes its core meaning. In an effort for transparency and the undeniable truth that one cannot remove their own positionality from such personal inquiries, I will divulge some personal revelations as they relate to the subject. As I am interested in Sullivan’s work and process as a whole being, I explored her work through an entirely different method and setting—my background as a theatre maker and actor. Wondering about dramaturgical processes in solo performance creation, mark-making and embodiments of mimesis I created a performance experiment entitled Prints and Plans. I curated four central movements of Sullivan from Encore! Encore! Reconstruction Project and Danse dans la neige which I drew on the chalkboard. Then, dressed all in black, I attempted to emulate those movements, referencing the chalkboard drawings and a mirror, dipping my feet in and interacting with scattered piles of chalk dust to generate marks on the black mats I had fixed to the floor. Having little skill and no prior training as a classical dancer, but some experience in drawing and body art, my positionality and perspective was very different than Sullivan’s at the time of conception. I use this an example or personal connection to just how vast and layered approaches can be to reactionary work. Andre Lipecki philosophizes about notions of errancy in the practices of creative creation as well as notions of ownership in the arts, specifically dance.5 Lipecki theorizes that there is an interesting hierarchy of knowledge and agency in creation—the director, or central artist controls everything and all other components such as mu- �sic, technology, design and other artists always come second to the central figure. Based on this idea, Sullivan would hold the largest share of agency in her work. In contrast, what Lipecki advocates for is actually expansion of shared agency and different ways of knowing. “What is the relationship between the physical presence of the dramaturg in the studio and the tensions this presence may create in relation to those who are supposed to hold knowledge over the work being created (i.e., the author, the choreographer, the dancers)? Who actually knows what the work-to-come truly is, what the work to-come wants, and therefore what the work-tocome needs? It seems to me that to solve these questions is to dissolve the usually unproblematized equivalence between knowing what the work is/wants/ needs, and owning (the authorship of) the work.”6 By extension, this idea can be applied to shared agency in Sullivan’s dance and Hepworth’s sculptures alike, extending their autonomy to be used in later works like Jacob’s. The moves Sullivan conceived and their sequencing become an independent creation that wields its own power and meaning, outside of her. Based on this, Sullivan may not ‘own’ her work, but rather can be thought to have deposited her creations in a collective artistic sphere, to be shared by and inspire others. Ultimately, I think the conversations that occur between the practices of older artists and present artists are more interesting than alienating sensitivity about agency. Those hesitancies about copying and stealing are valid, though meaningful academic and artistic conversations can be forfeited in choosing to disengage entirely. Through studying a canon of performance studies theorists and interdisciplinary artists alike, I have gleaned that the conversations and critiques we have of one another bring about fruitful realisation and ultimately more profound and provocative work. The conversations we have with an open and giving attitude, whether face to face, through performance or writing, are invaluable and enriching. As Jeanette Winterson writes, “love is reciprocity and so is art.”7 Special Thanks to Professors Shauna Janssen and Mark Sussman. Fig 5. — Documentation photograph from Caitlin Stever’s Plans and Prints performance 21 �22 �DESPEINADA, DESMECHUZADA, Y ERIZADA HASTA LA RAIZ Alejandra Zamudo Dias Concordia University Studio Arts The two sculptures that comprise Despeinada, desmechuzada, y erizada hasta la raíz act as multiple windows onto the same character, or memorials to different times of life. Like a shape-shifting “exquisite -corpse,” this character embodies the assemblage and hybridity that is integral to the ongoing process of becoming. Zamudo Diaz weaves a narrative using found textiles and “haunted” objects that have been used, worn, or lived in. The different textiles’ imagery and materiality provide meaning and glimpses of the personal narrative behind each piece. Patterns of Dora the Explorer and bedtime symbols depict a naive safety in the comfort of home, while Minnie Mouse acts as the cat’s skin of cat, embodying a hybridization of perceived opposites. Drawing on infantilized and feminized material culture, these sculptures mimic a quilt and a doudou. The artist seeks to create a toy that comforts, not through its passivity, but through our identification with its incompleteness and hybridity. This active state is highlighted by the title, which translates to “disheveled, dismembered, and bristling to the root.” The soft sculptures innocently invite viewers to take comfort in their own hybridity and mutability, never to reach stasis or completion. 23 �24 �A RAMBUNCTIOUS ODE TO MY PLAGUE Jennifer Lee Concordia University Studio Arts An intimate psychological self-portrait, A Rambunctious Ode to My Plague sheds light on the private struggles of anxiety, depression, and anorexia, allowing people with similar experiences to feel heard. In an enclosed, isolated, institutionalized space, the presence of a closed door leaves viewers to question whether it is locked from the inside or outside. Constructing a scene using mixed-media collage, Lee illustrates the consumption and internalization of information, from cultural standards around gender and body image, to books and articles on mental illness. A shadow box in the figure’s stomach—gaping, empty, and sterile—represents anorexia’s relationship between this consumption of information and consumption of food. Images of ideal housewives creep up around the open refrigerator, while the repetition of “Be Better” acts as both an overwhelming pressure to conform and an encouraging reminder of one’s potential. Lee’s surreal scene recalls past female Surrealists, including Leonora Carrington’s powerful but constricted female characters, informed by her own experience of institutionalization, or Frida Kahlo’s use of her body as a site of pain and struggle. In contrast, the disembodied black and white figure poses as an antagonizing personification of mental illness, extension of self, or filtered self-image. The more one investigates the rich details of this visually articulate piece, the more individuals might feel heard and less isolated by similar psychological experiences. 25 �La question de l’auteur et le rapport de pouvoir entre le compositeur et l’interprète musicale : Du Bel Canto à Om Kalthoum Jad Orphée Chami Concordia University Music 26 �Dans la définition de l’auteur, on retrouve le plus souvent cette idée d’exercer une autorité sur quelque chose, souvent un objet d’art. L’autorité comme étant la mainmise sur une création et encore plus loin l’autorité comme une marque que l’on garde sur l’œuvre et sur la façon dont elle dégage certains sentiments. Or, il n’est pas tout à fait cohérent de parler d’autorité dans le rapport entre l’artiste et l’œuvre car cette dernière n’implique pas nécessairement le rapport intime à la création. Parler de créateur, c’est parler d’un individu qui par sa création devient l’auteur de son œuvre. La création s’empreint donc de l’auteur puisqu’elle émane d’une part de lui. Elle est donc à son image. Néanmoins, l’autorité est bien présente, toutefois elle n’est non pas exercée sur l’œuvre mais sur le messager de la création : l’interprète. De la suprématie du son et de sa perfection sur l’expression personnelle de la soprano dans cadre de la tradition du Bel Canto, à Om Kalthoum qui d’une levée de main détient le contrôle de l’orchestre masculin tout le long du spectacle. L’interprète et précisément l’interprète féminine et son rapport au compositeur nous apprennent beaucoup de choses sur le rapport de pouvoir entre l’auteur et l’interprète à l’image d’une société où le rapport de pouvoir entre l’homme et la femme reste bien d’actualité. AUTORITÉ, AUTEUR ET ÉMOTION DANS LA CONDITION DE L’INTERPRÈTE L’interprète est celle ou celui qui transmet ce grand lyrisme mentionné précédemment au public. Or l’interprète et plus précisément l’interprète musicale ne peut se passer de l’expression subjective de l’émotion et de l’acte de s’approprier l’œuvre jouée ou chantée afin qu’elle puisse émaner une vérité intérieure. Si Beethoven et le romantisme nous apprennent quelque chose c’est précisément la grande part d’auteur entre un musicien et l’œuvre interprétée. Or, l’histoire de la musique est incompatible avec l’idée de l’interprète comme étant également un auteur au même titre que le compositeur. Cette part de liberté qu’on trouvait chez l’interprète avant l’apparition de la partition vers la fin du IXe siècle était présente dans les variations faites sur les mélodies transmises par voie orale. Lorsque l’église prend le contrôle de la pratique de transcription, elle tente donc d’imposer une seule et unique façon d’interpréter les chants. En effet, l’invention de la partition a un réel impact sur le rapport entre l’homme et la pratique du chant. Il était donc demandé aux individus de sacrifier la flexibilité et la fluidité de la voix afin d’arriver à des notes de musiques précises et exactes. Il était donc question de sacrifier en quelque sorte la fantaisie derrière l’interprétation pour une histoire universelle de la musique occidentale. D’ailleurs, nous remarquons que c’est par le rapport stricte aux notes de musiques (distinction entre le do, le ré, le mi) et puis plus tard dans la restriction des intervalles (l’unisson et la quinte comme étant les plus licites) que la richesse des subtilités au niveau des notes disparait dans la occidentale mais sont maintenus dans la musique orientale qui jusqu’à nos jours implique toujours l’utilisation du quart de ton par exemple (qui demeure une forte caractéristique dans la musique de l’orient). Bien que le romantisme rende plus tard cette part d’auteur à l’interprète, il est évident que le rapport de force entre le compositeur et l’interprète fut toujours d’une grande complexité avec le compositeur comme maître de sa musique, de ses notes précises qu’il compose et l’interprète, musicien et chanteur soumis au créateur. Peut-on faire un parallèle entre l'interprète et condition de la femme? Onfray définit le peuple comme ceux sur qui s’exerce le pouvoir. La musique connaît également ce rapport de force. Bien qu’il soit facile de faire l’amalgame entre le peuple et le publique du spectacle musical, le rapport de force commence bien avant le lever des rideaux, il débute par la rencontre du compositeur et de l’interprète. 27 �Depuis l’éloge des muses en Grèce antique, la femme est celle dont émane l’inspiration. La fascination des muses, c’est la fascination du sublime. Il est donc impossible de ne pas penser, lorsqu’on parle d’interprètes en musique, aux femmes. La musique commence à perdre son caractère bourgeois que très tard. Même au sein de la haute société, il n’est pas très commun de s’attendre à un réel encouragement envers les femmes dans le milieu de la musique. D’ailleurs, des exemples comme Fanny Mendelssohn nous montre précisément la réticence à ce qu’une musicienne puisse exercer son art professionnellement en dehors du cadre du loisir. Il est certain que de cet aspect, il y’a un véritable questionnement à avoir au niveau de l’accessibilité de la musique et la condition de la femme. Ce qui nous intéresse ici est un peu plus complexe. Au-delà de la question de l’accessibilité, il y’a aussi la question de la condition. Or, comme il fut argumenté dans la première partie, un musicien est auteur non seulement par sa création concrète sous forme de partition musicale mais aussi par son rapport subjectif et émotionnel à l’art. Si la question du rapport de pouvoir nous intéresse c’est précisément car l’interprète a une part d’auteur par son rapport personnel à l’œuvre. Depuis l’éloge des muses en Grèce antique, la femme est celle dont émane l’inspiration. La fascination des muses, c’est la fascination du sublime. Il est impossible de ne pas penser lorsqu’on parle d’interprètes en musique aux femmes. L’obsession avec la perfection héritée de la philosophie d’esthétique de l’antiquité fait qu’il est difficile de ne pas reconnaître la place centrale des grandes sopranos dans l’histoire de la musique. Ces sopranos 28 sont néanmoins au service d’une œuvre. S’il y’a certainement un rapport de pouvoir entre le compositeur et l’interprète, derrière les titres de musiciens il y’a le plus souvent un homme et une femme. Un homme de son temps, compositeur qui tente d’atteindre la perfection et l’immortalité en écrivant son nom dans l’histoire. Et une femme de son temps, interprète, soprano mais aussi auteur dotée de grande sensibilité mais qui devient dans cette quête du sublime une soldate musicale du compositeur. La question de l’auteur et le rapport de pouvoir entre le compositeur et l’interprète musicale féminin, c’est la question de la musique et du rapport de pouvoir entre l’homme et la femme. BEL CANTO ET MOZART: LA SOPRANO COMME SOLDATE MUSICALE Le Bel Canto (“Beau Chant”) est une tradition musicale reflétant une technique de chant qui d’une part cherche la projection de la voix dans le cadre opératique, mais surtout la primordialité de la rondeur et de la perfection du son plutôt que l’expression de l’interprète. Le Bel Canto domine le 18e et le début du 19e siècle. La Renaissance a laissé derrière elle l’intérêt profond de la recherche du beau et de l’attirance esthétique et c’est à travers elle, la femme, ou �Une femme de son temps, interprète, soprano mais aussi auteur dotée d’une grande sensibilité qui devient néanmoins dans cette quête du sublime une soldate musicale du compositeur. plutôt la soprano que la quête s’entame. Il est également important de noter que du 17e au 18e siècle, les principales figures du Bel Canto étaient les castras et c’est avec leur disparition graduelle que les sopranos interviennent dans le mouvement. L’interprète féminine devient donc la toile blanche de l’auteur, or cette toile bien qu’elle soit vierge est accompagnée de pinceaux et de la peinture des plus raffinés qui soient. C’est à dire que l’interprète féminine est dotée d’un don physique et émotif à transmettre la création de l’auteur. L’obsession du compositeur vers la perfection se traduit par la transgression des limites de la voix afin d’atteindre le sublime. Cependant, le Bel Canto pose un réel problème au concept de l’interprète féminine comme auteur car dans la volonté de s’attarder sur la perfection du son, le Bel Canto renonce à l’expression de l’émotion dans laquelle la chanteuse puisait sa liberté artistique. Le Bel Canto, en quelque sorte, demande à la soprano de renoncer à une certaine sensibilité artistique et personnelle et de consacrer son attention au perfectionnement du chant. Comment rester indifférent à la soprano colorature Josépha Hofer à qui Mozart confie des prouesses vocales phénoménales dans la flûte enchantée ? Le Bel Canto voulait dire que la femme devenait la soldate musicale de l’homme. Dans une des arias les plus réputées et complexes de la musique, nous retrouvons un Mozart ivre de perfection et de renouvellement. Le concept même de la soprano colorature est surprenant car il indique une supériorité dans l’interprétation à travers une agilité vocale, un registre vocal plus étendu et surtout une possibilité de chanter des œuvres qui auparavant étaient beaucoup trop compliquées. L’air de la reine de la nuit est un parfait exemple de l’idée de la soldate musicale. Telle une armée qui se livre à l’attaque, la pièce ouvre sur un grand fortissimo suivit par un tempo rapide et engagé. La soprano reste dans son registre aigu presque tout au long de la pièce et se livre à l’exercice des staccatos qui demande une grande souplesse et justesse vocale, sans oublier la longue phrase en triolet de croches qui est un véritable exercice d’endurance physique. Le Bel Canto, c’est la primordialité du son et de la perfection vocale plutôt qu’à l’expression musicale. Le Bel Canto est donc un renoncement à la liberté de l’interprète féminine et donc à la possibilité qu’elle soit éventuellement auteur. Mise en scène et Offenbach : Soldate musicale ou poupée de cire poupée de son Le rôle d’Olympia dans les contes d’Hoffmann d’Offenbach pousse encore plus loin l’idée de la soprano comme soldate musicale. Si le Bel Canto montre bien le rapport de pouvoir entre le 29 �compositeur et l’interprète féminine d’un aspect musical, il ne faut pas oublier que la mise en scène est également un milieu où ce rapport se concrétise dans le visuel. Le fameux aria Les oiseaux dans la Charmille est un très bon exemple de la dualité de ce rapport de force ou les restrictions du Bel Canto sont également présent dans la manière dont la soprano est présentée sur scène. La recherche de l’esthétique c’est aussi la recherche du sublime, de la perfection et de la beauté humaine. L’idée même d’Olympia, c’est de dire que la recherche du sublime doit se faire au rang supérieur de la beauté surhumaine. Olympia représente cette obsession de la perfection musicale imposée par le Bel Canto. L’interprétation de l'aria par Patricia Janečková est surprenante car malgré le fait que l’interprétation se fait dans le cadre d’un concert et donc non d’une représentation d’opéra, la mise en scène d’Olympia habillé en poupée qui fait son entrée portée par un grand homme musclé et mise en marche par lui est déjà fortement symbolique en soi. Dans une chorégraphie saccadée qui tente d’imiter les mouvements mécaniques d’une poupée, elle se livre à une performance vocale d’une grande complexité et nous “parle d’amour” dans une parfaite dualité entre ses mouvements et les prouesses vocales qu’elle entame. L’aria est si bien construit que le moment où il faut redémarrer la poupée est ancrée dans la composition musicale par le grand glissando que la soprano entame pour donner l’effet d’une machine qui arrête de fonctionner. Bien qu’il soit évidemment important de noter que cet exemple ne cherche pas à criminaliser Offenbach car cela se situe au sein d’une création artistique, il est intéressant de voir comment cette idée de poupée de cire poupée de son, faisant bien évidemment écho à la chanson que chantera France Gall à l’eurovision en 1965, montre que la question de la condition de la femme est bien présente dans le cadre de la création. Et si tout cela demeure bien une analyse symbolique, le Bel Canto fait certainement écho à une attente envers la femme à maintenir son rôle de muse plutôt que d’exprimer sa part d’auteur, la part qui lui donne une liberté musicale et surtout une identité artistique propre à elle. 30 Le fait d’immortaliser le corps de l’interprète, c’est lui rendre le pouvoir de devenir l’auteur de son œuvre. LE XXE SIÈCLE ET LA NAISSANCE DE L’IMAGE Arrive le 20e siècle, et plus précisément la photographie qui donna à l'interprète un visage, le cinéma qui lui donna un mouvement et la télévision et plus tard l’internet qui la présentent au grand public. Le fait d’immortaliser le corps de l’interprète, c’est lui rendre le pouvoir de devenir l’auteur de son art. Comment rester indifférent aux concerts d’Oum Kalthoum qui passent chaque matin à la télévision et dans lesquels elle se tient à l’avant-scène et lève le bras pour dire aux musiciens de commencer à jouer la musique ? Ou encore la soprano et chef d’orchestre Barbara Hannigan qui avec une grande fureur interprète Ligeti vêtue de cuir tout en dirigeant les musiciens de l’orchestre. Le 20e siècle à travers la visibilité qu’il donne à l’interprète musicale féminine lui permets de trouver de nouvelles façons d’exprimer sa part d’auteur et d’éventuellement renverser le pouvoir entre elle et le compositeur. La musique et l’occident à travers le renversement de pouvoir : Barbara Hannigan et Lulu Accompagnée de l’orchestre symphonique de la Monnaie, la soprano Canadienne Barbara Hannigan se livre dans une performance d’une �grande intensité qui a tout pour nous ramener à l’idée de la soldate musicale ou celle de la poupée de cire poupée de son argumentées dans la deuxième partie de l’essai. Le rôle de Lulu demande non seulement une virtuosité presque inatteignable, un changement de registre brusque de lyrisme, au colorature aigu et même au registre de la parole. Tout cela est accompagné d’un rôle énigmatique et complexe qui fait beaucoup réagir notamment dans les analyses féministes de l’histoire de la musique. Malgré cela, dans un échange portant sur le rôle de Lulu, elle explique pourquoi ce rôle lui tient tant à cœur. À la grande surprise de l’opinion populaire, elle exprime son désir à défendre l’idée que Lulu n’est pas une femme oppressée mais plutôt une véritable architecte de son futur. Par sa forte volonté, Barbara Hannigan s’approprie ce rôle qui dans le passé ne pouvait qu’être synonyme d’oppression et d’autorité vis-à-vis de l’interprète et l’utilise en puisant dans sa complexité pour s’élever en tant qu’interprète mais surtout en tant qu’auteur. Hannigan va même jusqu’à interpréter la suite Lulu tout en dirigeant les musiciens de l’orchestre. Aujourd’hui avec les avancements de la technologie et l’internet, toute personne ayant accès à un ordinateur peut assister à cette prise de pouvoir de l’interprète féminine qui reprend sa liberté et redevient l’auteur de son art. La musique et l’orient à travers le renversement de pouvoir : Om Kalthoum et Alf Leil wa Leila Dans une société Égyptienne où la femme souffre du manque de droits et de protection vis-à-vis de la personne. Le paradoxe du rôle que Om Kalthoum joua dans le patrimoine culturel nationale est surprenant. Se tenant devant l’orchestre face à un public immense, elle levait son bras pour annoncer à l’orchestre que la pièce débutait et après une longue introduction musicale elle se livre à une performance expressive, lyrique et poétique dans laquelle l’improvisation en est le centre. Alors que la musique occidentale par l’apparition de la partition laisse tomber l’improvisation et les quarts de ton pour la justesse et la rigueur, Om Kalthoum se livre à une performance libre dans laquelle la flexibilité du ton et la façon dont les mots sont chantés sont entièrement en sa maitrise. Elle s’approprie les contes arabes des Milles et une nuit et comme le fait plus tard Barbara Hannigan, s’approprie le récit de Schéhérazade dans une volonté de présenter une véritable femme fatale qui au-delà de son statut de muse, est également une auteure (avec un “e”) de son œuvre. Le futur de l’interprète féminine dans la musique, c’est donc la destruction des barrières entre le créateur et le transmetteur de l’œuvre. L’interprète musicale féminine est aussi maître de son destin en s’appropriant ce qui l’empêchait d’exprimer sa part d’auteure et de liberté artistique dans le passé. Que ce soit dans la musique classique avec la reprise du pouvoir de l’héritage du Bel Canto ou avec la grande place qu’offre le 21e siècle pour la médiatisation visuelle et sonore de la performance artistique, l’interprète féminine est une auteure à part entière. Accompagnement audiovisuel de l'essai (en libre accès en ligne) L'air de la reine de la nuit, La flûte enchantée, MOZART, Ana DURLOVSKI (soprano), Bregenz, Autriche, 2014 Les oiseaux dans la charmille, Les contes d'Hoffmann, OFFENBACH, Patricia JANEČKOVÁ (soprano), Ostrava, République Tchèque, 2016 Mysteries of the Macabre, LIGETI, Barbara HANNIGAN (soprano et chef d'orchestre), Gothenburg, Suède, 2013 Hob Eih, HAMDI, OM KALTHOUM (interprète), Le Caire, Egypte, 1963 31 �32 �CERAMIC WITCH & ALTAR Jane Reväe McWhirter Concordia University Studio Arts Emerging from the shadows, the ceramic witch captivates and confronts viewers with her commanding presence and fierce expression. Her intense gaze refuses her torso to be objectified as a classical bust, or a fragmented object of feminine beauty. Throughout history, the term “witch” has been used to demonize and suppress childless, husbandless, elderly, or educated women. McWhirter, however, defines “witch” as a woman in touch with herself and the universe. Indeed, the materiality of these ceramic objects evokes an intimate manipulation of earth, water, and fire to create a strong and long-lasting object. A skull protrudes from the witch’s chest, the antithesis to the gentle, fertile image of femininity. The aging female body is seen as grotesque, monstrous, and obsolete. This embracing of mortality interrupts the viewer’s gaze as it travels over her body. The skull acts as a form of armour for navigating social power dynamics, similar to some women’s use of makeup or other performances of femininity. An archaeological display of ceramic teeth speaks to a repetitive hand-making process, resulting in peculiar objects with unique, expressive characters. Teeth not only symbolize mortality, but also markers of wealth and class, referencing the economic history of witch hunts as a method of suppressing women as a social class. McWhirter reclaims occult imagery and its associations with the body, death, darkness, sensual pleasure, powerful women, and the grotesque. Her altar creates a serene, isolating space of focus and intimate confrontation with the material and symbolic weight of these powerful objects. 33 �34 �35 �36 �WOMANITY; IN VITRO Jacqueline Beaumont Concordia University Fibers & Material Practices In this series of photographs, a specimen containment bag represents the artificial barrier between the trans body and nature, questioning the differences between what we call “natural,” “biological,” and “medical.” Beaumont illustrates the liminal position of trans women undergoing medical intervention, growing in contained isolation, forever separated from conceptions of “real” or “natural” (cis) womanhood. womanity; in vitro engages with the longstanding history of “hygienic” control of queer bodies and of corrective “therapies” meant to eradicate queerness. The manifesto-like label satirizes language used to frame the trans body as a social contaminant or danger to public health and safety, while owning the power of trans-ness to infect, mutate, or corrode dominant ideals. With the handling instructions, “Be gentle and avoid contact,” Beaumont reveals how even those with good intentions keep their distance. Like the surrounding plants, the encased body is cared for, but controlled and isolated. Protected yet vulnerable, Beaumont returns the viewer’s gaze through the synthetic barrier. The surrounding greenhouse, like the definition of womanhood, is perceived to be natural but is actually artificial and continuously constructed. The motif of constant growth gives the piece hope that, through our growth and evolution as a society, these barriers might not always exist. 37 �38 �39 �40 �41 �Black Bodies in the Water After the Deluge of Hurricane Katrina and the Middle Passage Emily Levine McGill University Gender, Sexuality, Feminist and Social Justice Studies; International Development and Art History In the year following Hurricane Katrina, contemporary African American artist Kara Walker curated an exhibition titled After the Deluge for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Walker was struck by the controversial media coverage of the disaster and the circulation of images reducing hurricane victims to bodies and nothing more.¹ The exhibition, in addition to the accompanying print book, is a self-described “rumination” on Hurricane Katrina, structured in the form of a “visual essay.”² Walker juxtaposes her own work with selected historical pieces from the nineteenth century to create a “narrative of fluid symbols,” comprised of images and objects connected to water, storms, trauma, and Blackness.³ Among the works included in After the Deluge are J.M.W. Turner’s Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On, 1840)) (fig 1), Walker’s own Middle Passages series (2004) (fig 2 and 3), and a photograph taken in New Orleans during the flood. With these three representations of Black bodies in water, Walker puts the Black experience of Hurricane Katrina 42 in conversation with the Middle Passage of the transatlantic slave trade. In this essay, I will trace the way artists represent trauma through images of Black bodies in water. The enslaved Africans who crossed the Middle Passage and the victims of Katrina are connected not only through racial identity, but also through their shared experience of waterborne suffering and death. While water often symbolizes rebirth, renewal, purity and cleanliness, in the contexts of the flooding in New Orleans and the Middle Passage, water is a cause of death and destruction. I will analyze three works in After the Deluge that specifically show Black bodies in the water, namely Turner’s Slave Ship, Walker’s Middle Passages, and Bill Haber’s photograph of the flooding in New Orleans. I will read each image in context of the Middle Passage or Hurricane Katrina and explore the interconnectedness of Deluge, race, and trauma. I will conclude with a discussion of Walker’s idea of “muck” as the central image in After the Deluge and connect the Middle Passage and Hurricane Katrina as historical events. News media coverage of Katrina and its aftermath focused on images of suffering and abandoned Black bodies in the city’s floodwaters.⁴ A 2006 study of post-Katrina news coverage detected a �Walker looks unflinchingly at the racial inequality in the United States and graphically portrays scenes from the antebellum South to explore politics of slavery, race, gender, and trauma. Fig. 1 — Joseph Mallord William Turner, Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On) (1840). Oil on canvas, 90.8 x 122.6 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. “clear racial bias,” which tended to favor stereotypical, negative depictions of the survivors over positive or generous ones.5 “It was black people in a state of life-or-death desperation, and everything corporeal was coming to the surface—water, excrement, sewage,” recalls Walker. “It was a re-inscription of all the stereotypes about the black body.”6 However, Walker insists that After the Deluge is “not simply about New Orleans or Katrina or waterborne disaster,” rather, “it is an attempt to understand the subconscious narratives at work when we talk about such an event.” 7 Walker looks unflinchingly at the racial inequality in the United States and graphically portrays scenes from the antebellum South to explore politics of slavery, race, gender, and trauma. 8 Walker installed her own life-size, cut-paper silhouettes directly on the Met’s gallery walls, mounted in the round to suggest a diorama. 9 The arrangement of the pieces within the gallery space, and their order in the accompanying book, elicit an irreverence and humor often at the core of Walker’s work. 10 The ambitious size of the silhouettes not only asserts the exhibition’s authority within the space of the museum, but their human scale causes spectators to feel engulfed by the scene, and physically positions them within the historical narrative. Art historian and curator Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw writes that “each spectator Fig. 2 — Kara Walker, Middle Passages, (2004), Gouache, cut paper, and collage on board. One from a series of 5. 38.1 x 38.1 cm. Collection of Marc and Lisa Mills. is prompted to face his or her own potentially traumatic relationship to history and acknowledge whatever repressed guilt and sadomasochistic feelings one might have about one’s personal relationship to slavery.”¹¹ In assembling the works for After the Deluge, Walker sought out James Mallord William Turner’s Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On) from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Placed directly after 43 �Fig. 3 — Kara Walker, Middle Passages, (2004), Gouache, cut paper, and collage on board. One from a series of 5. 38.1 x 38.1 cm. Collection of Marc and Lisa Mills. the prologue of the exhibition book and under the section titled “Deep-Rooted Traditions,” Slave Ship contextualizes the narrative of After the Deluge as historically connected to slavery. Walker locates the transatlantic slave trade “as the beginning point for a bad relationship with water, a bad relationship with inundation.”¹² Slave Ship is set in the Atlantic Ocean along the Middle Passage— the part of the transatlantic slave trade whereby enslaved Africans were expropriated by the millions and brought on tightly packed slave ships from the west coast of Africa to the Americas. On board the ship, the white captain and crew members turned enslaved people into commodities. Thus, the violent process of creolization began, and the racial condition of Blackness was constructed.¹³ Conditions on the ship were hellish: Africans were held below deck without sufficient oxygen or sunlight, disease spread rapidly, and the dead and dying human cargo were tossed overboard. Professor of Art History Charmaine Nelson identifies the Atlantic Ocean as a “siteless and sightless” mass unmarked grave¹⁴ for the estimated 1.8 million people who died along the Middle Passage.15 Painted in 1840,16 Turner’s Slave Ship offers one attempt at representing the atrocities of the 44 Middle passage through careful depictions of the water, the storm, and the bodies in between (Figure 1). In his essay “The Irrecoverable: Representing the ‘Middle Passage’” (2000), Marcus Wood, a leading scholar of the visual culture of slavery, analyzes representations of the Middle Passage and raises questions relating to the depiction of trauma and cultural guilt. Turner’s formalist oil painting shows enslaved human cargo thrown overboard and drowning among the turbulent ocean waves. Turner uses forces of nature, such as a fiery sky, looming storm clouds, ocean spray and tempestuous waves, to represent the suffering of the enslaved. Only flailing, shackled and bloody limbs are visible above the water. “In concentrating upon the physical processes of drowning and dismemberment,” Wood writes, “Turner shows that the slaves are to be dissolved in the waters of the ocean, forever inextricably mixed with the element of their destruction.”17 However, the threat of death comes not only from the water but also from the danger that lurks below: fish crowd at the bottom right corner of the canvas, ready to devour a woman’s disembodied leg. In Wood’s interpretation, the fish recast the narrative of death by drowning, instead becoming a metaphor for the destructive energy of the slave power.18 Ultimately, it is the stormy sky and turbulent waters �The sea is not only the agent of death, but it ‘suffers with those who it makes suffer’ as witness, executioner, victim, and tomb. that constitute the core of the picture and metaphorically commemorate the drowning bodies. In Wood’s analysis of Turner’s painting, the ocean water is multiple and contradictory in its representation of trauma in relation to the drowning Black bodies. The sea is not only the agent of death, but also “suffers with those who it makes suffer” as witness, executioner, victim, and tomb.19 Placed chronologically in the middle of the After the Deluge book, Walker’s Middle Passages series comprises five gouache and cut paper collages of the enslaved on their treacherous journey across the Atlantic. Among the pieces are two images filling a two-page spread: a slave ship sails away to the left, tipping heavily to one side (fig 2), and a woman sits atop the trunk of an unexplained palm tree, watching the slave ship recede into the horizon (fig 3). None of the figures in Walker’s Middle Passages series are submerged or drowning in the water. Though their condition is helpless, and there is no possibility of rescue or survival, the figures are alive and free from the gruesome conditions of the slave ship. Their black silhouetted profiles exaggerate stereotypically Black features, such as full lips and natural hair, but their chins are raised and their gazes reach forward. Compared to Walker’s other black and white silhouettes, which embrace a certain “familiar faux-nostalgic whimsy” of the antebellum South,20 these images are somber, muddled, and stripped of the racially coded mayhem typical of her other works. The Middle Passages series again establishes an explicit connection to the history of the Middle Passage and uses water as a site of trauma. The only direct reference to Hurricane Katrina in After the Deluge, beyond what Walker writes in the preface, arrives on page eight of the book. Taken by photographer Bill Haber during the flooding of New Orleans, a picture of a Black woman wading through the water fills the page. Her shoulders and head are the only parts of her body visible above the murky water, which is covered in an incandescent sheen of oil. She clutches a duffle bag in one hand, clearly too small to hold the possessions she had to leave behind, and in the other, a twelve pack of bottled drinking water. Her movements disrupt the eerie stillness on the surface of the water and ripples the rainbow in her wake. The oil-slicked floodwaters stretch to every corner of the page, giving no evidence of refuge or safety and concealing what dangers lie underneath. The water is a polluted, poisonous “toxic soup” which inundates the subject and 45 �soaks her body and belongings.21 Instead of choosing one of the abundant images of bloated corpses floating in the floodwaters which were circulated so liberally in the disaster’s news media coverage, Walker chose this image to stand as reference to Hurricane Katrina in After the Deluge. The picture, like Turner’s Slave Ship and Walker’s Middle Passages, emphasizes the horrendous, indecent and racially-charged suffering of Black people in water, but does not do so at the expense of the dignity of the subject. The woman is stranded, alone, and submerged in toxic water; however, she is alive and clothed, and her face is hidden from the camera. Walker represents the flooding of Katrina and its traumatic effects on New Orleans’ poor and Black population without compromising the subject’s dignity. Moreover, the image leaves room for a productive interpretation. In an essay about Walker’s rumination on Katrina, Michael Bibler posits that the woman moves slowly through the polluted waters as she no doubt did through the racist pathologies of everyday American life. “And yet,” writes Bibler, “splayed across the entire surface of the water is [a] beautiful rainbow.”22 Disaster and promise collapse into a single frame as the toxic rainbow relocates from the sky to the water itself. Bibler sees the rainbow as a symbol of the “potentially new and difficult birth” that this woman, now representative of the “Black subject,” might experience while mired in those racist pathologies.23 The Black subjects in Turner’s painting and Walker’s silhouettes are fated to drown, but the woman may emerge from the deluge. This photograph of a Black woman navigating the murky floodwaters embodies the central image of Walker’s exhibition: “muck.” When After the Deluge was published in 2007, the narrative of Hurricane Katrina had shifted from a hyperreal horror show presented through live coverage to a diplomatic tale of “security failures” and “the questions of race 46 Disaster and promise are collapsed into a single frame as the toxic rainbow is relocated from the sky to the water itself. and poverty.”24 In the prologue, titled “Murky,” Walker explains that she is particularly interested in the “puddle” that is always left at the end of these narratives, “a murky, unnavigable space that is overcrowded with intangibles: shame, remorse, vanity, morbidity, silence.” In the flood photograph, the toxic water is the “muck,” which symbolizes the racist pathologies that the woman must wade through. The rainbow captured on the surface of the flood waters brings in notions of survival and endurance. Bibler writes that “if the promise of new life is a component of the flood itself, rather than something far away in the sky, then the woman’s salvation lies in her ability to negotiate the muck, to keep swimming.”25 Walker ends the prologue with an assertion that the murky, toxic waters “become the amniotic fluid of a potentially new and difficult birth.”26 Walker’s discussion �of the muck’s fertile possibilities repaints this colorful sludge as a potential source of transformation, maybe even salvation.27 Katrina stirred the racial “muck” that is a problem in America, even 140 years after emancipation and 40 years after the Civil Rights movement. Black Americans are still fatally subject to the racist pathologies of the nation, drowned in it as their ancestors drowned in the Atlantic ocean.28 However, instead of “sitting very still, ‘staying Black,’ and waiting to die” amongst the toxic, murky waters, Walker asks the figures in After the Deluge “to take a step beyond [their] borders to connect a series of thoughts together related to fluidity and the failure of containment.”29 There are clear parallels between images of the enslaved Africans thrown from slave ships to die along the Middle Passage and the images of the bodies left to sink or swim in the mostly poor and Black neighborhoods of New Orleans. However, to argue that Walker’s inclusion of Turner’s Slave Ship in After the Deluge presents the horrors that occurred during and after Katrina as just like the horrors of the Middle Passage and slavery would be a clumsy comparison. The juxtaposition of the Middle Passage and Hurricane Katrina highlights Walker’s observation that “despite all the advances in civil rights in the United States, the same pathologies of racism and violence that are most clearly encapsulated in the Middle Passage continue to shape twenty-first-century life.”30 As stated by Michael P. Bibler: “As we recognize how the dead bodies in New Orleans resemble and are historically linked to the bodies thrown overboard during the Middle Passage, we should also quickly recognize that such a comparison diminishes the unspeakable atrocities of African slavery and ignores the specificity of twenty-first-century racism and poverty.”31 Walker’s inclusion of Turner’s Slave Ship and her own Middle Passages series, alongside an image from Katrina and in the political context of After the Deluge, prompts viewers to ponder what is familiar and what is new about Katrina. Walker situates Katrina within a longer lineage of representation of Black life and death extending back to slavery, and prompts a wider debate about the ways in which Black trauma is represented and mediated through the “muck.” 47 �THE DRILL Julie Leblanc Concordia University Painting & Drawing Through the political medium of collage, Leblanc reclaims the domestic, feminine craft of scrapbooking. Rather than drawing from personal memorabilia, however, she draws from Canada’s collective memory, reconstructing existing visual material into new narratives. Through this parallel between scrapbooking and collage, the national becomes synonymous with the domestic, and a site for negotiating gender dynamics. In The Drill, Leblanc pulls her material from Canadian photographer Roloff Beny’s collection as source material. The post pointing to different cities responds to the #MeToo movement, as a way of saying “it happens everywhere.” Leblanc represents two opposing types of masculinity: one lifting women up, the other threatening to violate women’s bodies and rights. The invasive drill also recalls pipelines’ violent penetration and contamination of the land. The raised female figure alludes to the erotic idealization of the nation’s beauty in the public imagination, especially in the wake of Canada 150. She similarly evokes the gendered eroticization of “Mother Nature” as the fertile, submissive, virginal counterpart to the strong, destructive, dominating “masculinity” of industrialism. However, Leblanc’s harmonious blending of femininity and industrialism in the breast-like architecture challenges these binaries and asserts feminine strength and stability. Even though the female figure is faceless, her subjectivity is activated by dynamic abstraction. A burst of starfish creates a whimsical aura about her, while spots of red perhaps hint at something more violent. In this conceptually layered collage, Leblanc frames the nation as domestic, as eroticized, and as the stage on which everyone must choose their position in the collective narrative. 48 �49 �SMOKE MIRRORS The Photographic Practices of Claude Cahun and Tamara de Lempicka Oona Ostrowski Concordia University Art History Claude Cahun (1894–1954) and Tamara de Lempicka (1898–1980) are two artists who, besides working in Paris during the interwar period, seem to have little in common. However, they are more similar than history would make them out to be. Both resurfacing into public popularity in the 1990s, they were artists whose representations of the queer body are often analyzed today as unique for their milieu and ahead of their time. While de Lempicka was a portrait painter and Cahun a writer, both harnessed the growing power of modern photography in their representations of the self by producing photographic portraits that were supplementary to their respective public artistic practices. Collaborating with her partner Marcel Moore, Cahun took many personal photographs, some of which appear as fragments in photomontages that were published in her books. In de Lempicka’s case, she commissioned well-known photographers to take her portraits: glamour shots in which the painter exudes a stylish feminine persona. Put in parallel, these two artists’ engagement with photography reveals how they navigated between the possibilities and limitations for women in the tumultuous landscape of 1920s Paris. Their shared staging of the body and sense of theatricality lends their portraits power as spaces where gender can be performed and questioned. 50 �These actress-style glamour shots, which she commissioned herself and autographed for her admirers, show her interest in presenting an idealized, recognizable, film star femininity. Cahun and de Lempicka were both born at the turn of the century, grew up through the First World War, and came of age in the 1920s. Born Maria Górska in Moscow, Tamara de Lempicka would maintain throughout her life that she was born in Warsaw to highlight her Polish identity. Along with the negation of her Jewish heritage on her father’s side, this was one of many modifications she would make to her life story.1 On the other hand, Claude Cahun, born Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob, was part of a prominent Jewish family on her father’s side and highlighted this identity by taking on the last name of her great-uncle Léon Cahun. Both artists were wealthy and pursued educations in what most interested them: de Lempicka studied at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, and Cahun developed extensive knowledge of classical literature both at Parsons Mead School in Surrey and in the library of her father’s newspaper, Le Phare de la Loire.2 Political unrest, war and mental illness troubled both artists’ lives. Relocation due to the war and Bolshevik revolution impacted de Lempicka’s family’s wealth and status, which motivated her to become one of the premier portrait painters of Paris’s haute bourgeoisie.3 In Cahun’s youth, the institutionalization of her mentally ill mother resulted in her being bounced between relatives, and after coming out of her own depressive period, Cahun would also find herself in Paris in the 20s, living in Montparnasse with her life-long partner and collaborator Marcel Moore. Cahun and de Lempicka’s practices flourished in a modern literary and artistic hub where gender dynamics were in flux: 1920s Paris. A post-war rappel à l’ordre encouraged women to move back into their pre-war, domestic, maternal roles to counter the figure of the modern new woman. Old and new, modern and traditional “sat side by side on the streets of Paris,” offering “a world of possibility, but also showcas[ing] traditional mores and the cultural retrenchment of conservative values.”4 This exciting time set the stage for de Lempicka and Cahun’s artistic practices, and it is in their own context that they can begin to be fully understood. In 1922, Victor Margueritte’s controversial novel La Garçonne presented sexual liberation, short hair, creativity, experimentation with drugs, and bisexuality as key components of the new woman. In 1929, Joan Riviere’s psychological essay Womanliness as a Masquerade explored a woman who outwardly presents femininity as a mask to hide rivalry with men and protect her from retribution. Significantly, she is also not heterosexual. The increasing visibility of a lesbian subculture that was fashionable, intellectual, professional and artistic linked the gender-blurring style of the new woman to homosexuality, which added homophobic paranoia to the pro-reproduction message of the rappel à l’ordre. Women questioned sexual destiny and showed a desire to participate in culture as equals to men by donning masculine dress; in lesbian subculture, clothing was also used to signify same-sex desire, as 51 �women wore full tailored suits with dandy accessories (walking sticks and monocles), childlike androgynous garb, or opted for (hyper-)feminine elegance.5 These influences are legible in the work of de Lempicka and Cahun, who were both active in the Paris art scene. Garçonnes with cropped hair and fashionable women with masculine features are prominent in de Lempicka’s paintings, many of which depict or are inspired by same-sex desire. But in terms of her own appearance, Tag Gronberg observes that “[s]he promoted… a highly feminised image” by cultivating “a chic appearance and pos[ing] for many glamorous portrait photographs, encouraging comparisons between herself and film stars, such as Greta Garbo.”6 She spent hours posing for these photographs, emulating models and film stars.7 A series taken by prominent fashion and portrait photographer Madame d’Ora shows de Lempicka with cropped but coiffed hair, wearing luxurious furs, gowns and jewels. Her lips darkly painted, she poses with dramatic elegance. In one, she looks directly into the camera from under the brim of a hat in three-quarter profile. The left side of her face struck with bright light, one long-lashed eye becomes the image’s powerful focal point in a display of alluring femininity. These actress-style glamour shots, which she commissioned herself and autographed for her admirers,8 show her interest in presenting an idealized, recognizable, film star femininity. This arguably extended to every aspect of her life. Laura Claridge notes that de Lempicka was “determined above all to narrate her own story… [by] fabricat[ing] almost everything, even her country of birth.”9 Crafting the persona of a celebrity, she worked on her ultra-feminine appearance in these images. She is as fashionable and carefully posed as the garçonnes on her canvases, but with a conspicuously elevated air of femininity. The interplay between her public image and the subjects of her portraits reveals her navigation between the gender-blurring possibilities of the Parisian new woman and the pressure to maintain conventional femininity. She wished to portray a professional female artist’s space that was fashionable, theatrical, and modern, into which she fit as its centerpiece. De Lempicka also used photographs of her home interiors to stage a professional femininity that 52 �navigated between traditional and modern gender roles. Her Paris apartments were stylishly decorated and she used them to display and promote her art to invited guests. Gronberg argues that de Lempicka knew photography’s “promotional potential,” that photos of her and her home are “undoubtedly as much the product of her careful stagings as they are of the photographers’ compositions.”10 Coupled with her autobiographical fabrications and her crafted public persona, the fact that she used her home as an exhibition space and invited photographers into her interiors points to this staging. She wished to portray a professional female artist’s space that was fashionable, theatrical and modern, into which she fit as its centerpiece. In a photograph of her bedroom in her first apartment, paintings in progress are hung on the walls and a headboard designed by the artist depicts two nude women embracing. Here, her queer sexuality and professional artistic practice intermingle in a balanced display. Her second apartment in Paris, designed by well-known modern architect Robert Mallet-Stevens, was also photographed to carefully stage de Lempicka’s persona. As Mallet-Stevens’ buildings were known for their photogenic quality,11 often used in fashion photoshoots and as locations for films, the space suited de Lempicka perfectly. In these photographs, the apartment’s personal and specifically feminine qualities are highlighted, and de Lempicka herself is featured in her bedroom, wearing a long gown with glittering bracelets, next to a vase of flowers. Again, the private is put on display, staged to be nonchalantly glamorous. To pull together modern female queerness and professionalism with conventional femininity, de Lempicka shows off her modern apartment as the home of a working artist while maintaining her alluring feminine persona. De Lempicka’s artistic practice was exceptional in her depictions of the female nude. At this time, a woman painting other women was read as understandably narcissistic, or perverse because of a presumed sexual desire for the model.12 Interestingly, de Lempicka did have relationships or at least infatuations with many of the women featured on her canvases, such as Ira Perrot in Portrait of a Young Lady in a Blue Dress (1922) and Portrait of Ira P. (1930), Rafaela (various paintings, 1927), and lesbian nightclub owner Suzy Solidor (1933). Her portraits, as well as her own self-portrait (1929), use tight framing and an attention to clothing and cosmetics that borrows from photography and advertising. The paintings themselves have a glossy, high finish that is the result of varnishing, a traditional method used on Old Master paintings. With a style reminiscent of Florentine Mannerists and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, de Lempicka spun these high-art references into compositions that resemble fashion photography, a style that is echoed in her own glamour shot portraits. While a liberated sexuality led to new possibilities for women at the time, her performance of luxurious femininity undoubtedly was an effort to distance herself from bohemian connotations, opting for alignment with a fashionable, queer female elite, which bolstered the acceptability of her professional practice. Unlike de Lempicka, photographs of Claude Cahun were unmotivated by the creation of a highly visual public persona. Spending the summer in Jersey and the rest of the year in Paris, Cahun’s most iconic photographs were produced in the 1920s in her and Moore’s Montparnasse apartment. These were unaltered, developed by photography labs, and seemed to be for entirely personal use. Some were seen by a selected public, as fragments in photomontages introduce the chapters of Cahun’s book Aveux non avenus (1930). Cahun wrote prolifically from the 1910s onwards, publishing Vues et Visions (1914), Les Jeux Uraniens (1917), Heroines (1925), as well as translating the work of Havelock Ellis (who theorized the “third sex”) and reporting on the 1918 Billing trial. The remarkable photographic practice she is known for today was “an adjunct”13 to her primary creative output: writing. These photographs, labelled as self-portraits, were likely taken by Moore. However, Cahun’s posing, styling, and expressive gaze stem from her artistic intent, making her the author of the image regardless of who operated the camera.14 Her variety of compositions, in which she 53 �colours her shaved hair, dresses up, dons masks and paints her face, show her engagement with photography as “an arena in which to act,” refiguring portraiture and photography as a theatrical activity, a stage where “the notion of ‘self’ that the portrait genre has historically upheld” can be destabilized.15 Taking representation of the deviant female body into her own hands, Cahun uses the medium of photographic portraiture to tackle and question categorization of gender and sexuality. Cahun moved in Surrealist circles, but unlike the surrealist photographic work of her contemporaries, she did not use solarization or other manipulations in her most evocative images. Abigail Solomon-Godeau remarks, “their electrifying, unsettling effects are largely a consequence of Cahun’s particular staging of herself―that, and the Medusa-like ferocity of her face and gaze.”16 Solomon-Godeau refers to an early portrait of Cahun, taken from above, where she stares into the camera with her wavy hair arranged like a halo. Considering Cahun’s interest in subverting female cultural icons in Heroines, and the alterations to the image in Aveux non avenus which further define the tendril-like locks of hair, likening She presents the self, and its designated gender, as malleable, wholly staged. 54 �her to this archetype is appropriate; Cahun offers an alternative to male imaginings of the femme fatale Medusa. As opposed to being ultra-feminine and dangerously seductive, she “entice[s], fascinate[s] and interest[s] a potential female other” in Moore, who takes the photo, thereby reworking an image “of women for women.”17 In her portraits from the 1920s, Cahun ventures further from rigid codes of femininity or masculinity to deal more broadly with the concept of gender. She does so by presenting a blend of strange visual elements, putting the central focus on her face and shaved head, which cannot comfortably fit into either gender. In her most iconic portrait (1928), she wears a long checkered coat and stares sideways into the camera, the other side of her face reflected in a mirror. Her hair is cropped extremely close to her head, much shorter than a garçonne or even a man would cut it, and has a silvery, metallic sheen. In a 1927 portrait, her painted lips and coquettish pout are paired with short hair, a painted barbell weight, and stuck on, out-of-place nipples to render a gender-ambiguous body. A similar strategy is used in a high-contrast portrait from the same year, where dark nipples against a white chest make it unclear whether she is wearing a shirt, and a scarf separates her cocked head from her body in an unnatural, mask-like pose. In a 1928 portrait, Cahun poses nude on a quilt with a design that sensually puffs and swirls around her. With her arms pressed against her chest and her legs drawn together, she hides any biological indicators of assigned gender. Again, she sports extremely short hair and wears a mask that obscures her face and eyes. In these unisex, gender-ambiguous and completely inventive physical attributes, Cahun uses the medium of an unaltered snapshot to play with its supposed truth and authenticity. She presents the self, and its designated gender, as malleable and wholly staged. tographic subject. Both artists carefully pose their bodies, styling their clothing and appearance to achieve different gendered effects: ultra-femininity for de Lempicka and gender ambiguity for Cahun. De Lempicka’s commissioned glamour shots as well as the altered photographs of Cahun in Aveux non avenus mediate and navigate social mores. The photographic portraits studied in this paper were produced around the same time, and the influences of their shared context can be read in both. The gender-blurring possibilities of the new woman gave new visibility to female queerness, allowing Cahun and Moore to live and work together to produce these portraits, which echo the feminist and queer content of Cahun’s writing. The pressures on women to return to order explain why this more subversive visual material was kept hidden from the public. In de Lempicka’s case, these competing discourses allowed the same-sex relationships that inspire her paintings to coexist with her chic, feminine appearance. The two artists’ choice of the photographic portrait as a medium show their desire to take self-representation into their own hands18 and to shape their own story in the face of pressures on women and queer women especially. While in their time, photographic portraiture was supplementary to their public artistic practices, both artists harnessed the powerful medium of modern photography and used it as a stage for theatrical displays of gender, playing with photography’s association with truth and authenticity to meet their respective artistic ends. Cahun and de Lempicka’s portraits were shot by other artists, but they can nonetheless be read as self-portraits. Their artistic intent prompted the images and continues to emanate from the pho55 �STILL LIFE, NINETEEN Alison Moule Concordia University Art History and Studio Art; Classical Archaeology In a domestic interior, an avalanche of drapery spills onto a careful composition of household objects, each carrying a personal history. An amalgam of childhood memorabilia, present-day material culture, and seasonal ephemera construct a geographically and temporally specific self portrait. By painting disposable objects as precious, Moule blurs the lines between the historically gendered practices of consumption, collection, and curation.1 Sitting among ripe clementines, the nineteen birthday candles, sitting among ripe clementines, place time, age, and girlhood at the centre of this still life. Given the tradition of still life painting as a means for women to critique gender roles, a feminist reading of the visual culture assembled in Still-Life, Nineteen suggests a tongue-in-cheek narrative about women’s bodies and coming of age. The grinning flower and smiling character seem to gesture towards the dismembered figure’s exposed buttocks, saying “Welcome.” Moule associates the commonly fetishized image of a partial, penetrable, female body with the young age of nineteen, a time when one’s relationship to home and domesticity is renegotiated, and a woman’s body is exposed to a public arena of objectifying, fetishizing gazes. 56 �57 �BOUFFON & OTHER ANTIDOTES FOR GUARDED HEARTS Interview with Joy Ross-Jones by Celine Cardineau Joy Ross-Jones is a Venezuelan-Canadian playwright, actor, improvisor, and theatre educator. She studied Theatre, Theatre for Social Change, and Art Education. She worked as Artistic and Administrative Associate for the feminist company Imago Theatre (2013-2016), where she co-created ARTISTA, a free theatre mentorship program for young women. Ross-Jones is also the playwright and performer for Elsewhere, a one-woman show using mask, movement, and monologue to address the current economic and political crisis in Venezuela. The play is told through the eyes of six characters: a Venezuelan-Canadian woman, a Protestor fighting in riots, a Beauty Queen, a Homeless Man, a Grandmother, and a Cop. Elsewhere is an Odd Stumble production, recently presented in association with Imago Theatre and directed by Cristina Cugliandro. 58 CC: Let’s talk about Elsewhere. How do you feel it went? JRJ: It was great. Performing Elsewhere is always a really wild experience because it opens up a space for conversation that’s really important. There were certain nights of the show where people who came and had a really hard time [in Venezuela] shared a lot [in the talkback], and that’s not the type of conversation you can just have. Even with a friend who understands where you’re coming from, you won’t necessarily be able to open up about it. I think the storytelling that happens in the play creates a space for conversation that is honest and vulnerable. So that went phenomenally well. [Working on the show] is intense and hard and scary. I don’t really like talking about what’s happening in the country because it’s really hard, but then I put myself on this journey of forcing myself �to talk about it. So in terms of my own personal growth, of acknowledging really difficult things that are happening to my family members and my country, I’m ultimately really grateful for the experience. CC: I wanted to thank you for all of the work that you did in creating this piece. I’m sure it was emotionally arduous and has elicited some emotional responses. What was your approach in making your personal experience and the impersonal facts and statistics accessible to an audience? JRJ: It started with just a conversation about identity. When I had the idea of “I’m gonna do a play about Venezuela,” it was stemming from a need to understand who I was in the context of this new cultural, national identity. What is the identity of Venezuela right now, and how do I fit into it? How Venezuelan am I, if I’ve been here for a long time? Even when I was living there, it felt like I was a little on the outside of the dominant culture, and it caused some insecurity. [I was] always wanting to be even more latin, but [it was] just not who I was, and it’s not my linguistic upbringing. So that’s weird. How can I be Venezuelan but have my mother tongue be English? So those were the questions that brought me into it, and then my collaborator Cristina (the dramaturg, director and co-creator on the project) and I knew that my identity would be a part of it. We started building around it. It was really abstract in the beginning. We thought maybe it could be an abstract movement piece, where I was physically improvising on different themes that 59 �were hitting the country right now, like dictatorship, hunger, as well as the beauty of the culture, the beauty of the place, and the strengths of the country. So that physical exploration was part of our research process. We brought in stories from my family, stories that were coming out of the news and videos that we were watching, and then these six characters emerged. I kind of knew from the beginning that I wanted it to be a multi-character mask show, but we had to go through this journey of departing from the idea and then coming back to it. We asked a mask designer to make the faces, and we built the masks off clay models. We started improvising in the characters, and then we had to search for the question again. It’s not “Who am I in the context of this crisis?” That’s one small part of it, but what question are all the other characters asking? We figured it out maybe seven months into the process: it was “How do I survive my changing world?” So once we found that question, we were able to hone in on aspects of it [all of the improvisation that I was doing] that answered that question. CC: Yeah, starting with physical improvisation is an interesting way of exploring politics. Makes me think of clown as activism— JRJ: Yesss! CC: How do you see physical theatre as a form of political activism? JRJ: I love it. I’m so into it. I easily, in terms of my performance style, fall into physical, heightened worlds, so I love clown, I love mask. I am part of a project called Don’t Read the Comments. It’s a bouffon clown show. It was a Fringe show that Sarah Segal-Lazar conceptualized. She wanted to create a conversation around the #MeToo Movement and consent. She did a whole bunch of research, read hundreds of articles, compiled them into folders, and gave them to the cast. We all have a bit of bouffon background, and bouffon is grotesque clown. Clown generally is welcoming the audience to laugh at the clown; bouffon switches the gaze and is laughing at the audience, 60 and highlighting “ugly” things so that we can talk about them. It’s a super political kind of form. So we internalized all this research and then improvised it out of the characters that we had chosen for ourselves. I play a right-wing Republican wanna-be senator, and there’s a young, feminist, hot trot—he just takes up way too much space and is espousing feminist values—we all know that guy. And then there’s a super left-wing feminist, who is advocating for all the right things but is coming at it really aggressively. So throughout the piece, we all say things that many people can get behind, in terms of inclusion and values that empower many, but we also contradict ourselves, and as an audience member, you have to be super active and tracking, “I agree with that, and I don’t agree with that.” In that piece, it’s about putting the values out there, talking about politics, but bringing in humour, and then making it ugly. That whole experience, the journey that it [having to be active and engaged] takes you on is super useful for this conversation. I don’t think this is true for all physical theatre. Like when the mask comes off in Elsewhere. When it breaks the character illusion and you are reminded that there is a narrator, it’s that Brechtian thing where you are alienated or distanced from the piece and reminded, “This is a piece of theatre, I can’t just be swept into the storytelling, because I have a role to play in it.” So there are so many wonderful conventions in heightened physical theatre forms that can collaborate with theatre forms to engage the intellect of the audience while massaging their viscera. CC: Because it’s a live theatre piece, there’s always the opportunity to update and adapt the show. What would you hope to add or change in the next iteration? JRJ: Well, on a me side, I’m hoping that the country is gonna be turning around, and there is really some movement there, I don’t know what’s gonna happen. It’s possible that we won’t have a dictator soon. I don’t wanna get too hopeful, but it’s possible. So that would have to be reflected in the piece insofar as the characters. If the characters’ lived experiences would be different, then some pret- �ty drastic things would have to change. If the lived experience stays the same, and food shortage and everything is just as bad, then actually we don’t have to do that much work, but I think we still need to acknowledge the fact that there’s a different pattern being born in the government. “ I think the storytelling that happens in the play creates a space for conversation that is honest and vulnerable. This production and the talkbacks made it clear to me that what’s missing from this piece is the perspective of someone who’s working in health care. I think that the play and the situation are asking for it. It’s super subtle, but we have seven lights and six characters, so I feel like there’s sort of a spiritual calling for that seventh character. Francisco Toro is a journalist who writes for the Caracas Chronicles, and that question was asked of him, “Who would you add to this piece?” He said someone in health care, and went on to say that health practitioners used to be working in clinics and hospitals of over 600 people. Now, they’re reduced to 60. At a different talkback, there was a South Korean man who was talking about being a manager in this car plant, and people actually weren’t showing up because they didn’t get their meds and had passed away. So being any kind of health care practitioner in that, not only having to work in the conditions of being so short-staffed and so short on all medical supplies and medicine, and then having to tell people on top of that, “I can’t help you.” What is that? Who is that person? And it always comes up, “Why is there no pro-government perspective in the mix?” I’m not into it. I think it might end up forcing me to share a perspective that is an exception to the rule. I would want to create a human being that is very nuanced and complex, as all of us are, even those who are doing really nasty things. But I would feel pressed towards stories of someone who’s doing the government’s work because their family is under duress, someone’s being held hostage in the family— that’s where my mind would go to immediately—and that might be a common enough story, but I think there’s still a lot of people who are doing it because of how it benefits them. So ultimately, I’m just not interested in giving that side of it a platform. ” 61 �CC: In the talkback, you mentioned that the punky Venezuelan-Canadian character was a grittier, grungier version of yourself. I’m sure that this allowed you to explore certain thoughts or emotions that you don’t normally allow yourself to. Were there also parts of your experience that didn’t fit with the character that you would have liked to include? JRJ: She really took it all. In the development of that character, half the time we were on the wrong track because we had her very close in identity and behaviour to me. But a lot of that improv happened there; a lot of the storytelling came out, regardless of whether the character was dropped in, in that phase. So I got me in there. She’s angry, but she also reflects my sadness. She definitely allows me to go places that I don’t go, because I don’t let myself get mad. It’s a funny thing. I think part of it is—maybe Cristina won’t like me saying this, but I mean it as a compliment—Cristina can get really mad. I used to get a lot of angry dreams, like Hulk-anger dreams, where the madder I got, the angrier I wanted to become, and it became delicious. I had a lot of dreams like that until I met Cristina, and she started helping me get my anger out on a daily basis. I also think that getting to perform this character and channel my anger has helped me. I don’t have those dreams anymore because it’s coming out in a healthy way. So yeah, she [the character] gives me that conduit that I really need, but I mean, that’s also been part of her growth. When we did the Fringe production two years ago, she started out just being angry, without the vulnerability and darkness and sadness, and then found those moments and musicality of her piece where she comes down. So I feel like I could add anything into her and she’d be able to handle it. She could take it. CC: There’s one line that stood out in the play for me: “Power is the ability to remove all obstacles.” Do you think that your show has power, and what obstacles would you hope to remove with it? JRJ: My first thought goes back to something I talked about earlier, about the power of art spaces to create conversation. I’ll talk to my uncle back 62 �“ It’s kind of scary and reassuring to be constantly reminded of the fact that we’re all still working on it, that you don’t just get there. ” home, and he won’t tell me how he feels. He’ll tell me what’s going on, and then he’ll make a joke. And that’s honest. That’s what he has to do; that’s how he’s feeling. So good, but it doesn’t hit you in the gut, and I think that sometimes we need to be hit in the gut. On the Friday night talkback, this young woman said that she had walked across the border with her mom to Columbia so she could fly out to go with her foster family here in Cornwall. Hearing her talk about it, in tears, and demonstrating a profound sadness, everybody felt that. I think everybody was changed by that. So that’s an obstacle, these boundaries that we put up around our heart to protect ourselves. They have to be there on a day-to-day, because we can’t go through the world as squishy, open conduits, but we need to be able to have moments where we do break them down, so that we can feel the pain that is circulating the world, and [we need to] be able to engage with those topics if we want to do something. To be active agents on any social movement, we can’t always have guarded hearts. We have to have felt the impact of the poison. (I say poison because in Artista this session, our theme is “antidote,” so we’ve been talking about poisons and antidotes.) That’s not just the power of Elsewhere, but the power of art in general— to create that unguarded space for conversation. CC: On the subject of Artista, do you want to talk a little bit about the kind of workshops or mentoring that you provide? JRJ: Artista takes the shape of a fifteen-week program. We meet Monday nights from mid-January to mid-May. During that time, we see shows and bring the conversations about what we saw back into the room, so that we can develop an artistic vocabulary and just practice talking because talking can be really scary. Gaining confidence in bringing your voice into a room is a good skill for the outside world—for all of us—just because that’s the game that this world plays. This world is very verbal. If you’re loud, if you can express yourself, if you can articulate yourself rationally, then you’re gonna be listened to. It’s a challenging thing because so many people are able to express themselves in so many different ways, but those aren’t necessarily the ones that get you the same amount of points. So we create the space for that kind of practice, but we also acknowledge the body and impulse and poetry and different kinds of communication as well, all through different theatre practices. The two goals of Artista are empowerment and community-building, and we achieve both through a theatre practice. We bring in invited 63 �guests who are women professionals in various fields, so that they can talk about their journeys and who they are, and just be human beings with these young folks, most of whom are wondering, “What is my next step? How do I do it?” and the older folks are there to say, “I don’t know. [Laughs.] Just keep at it. It’s hard, but just keep at it.” It’s kind of scary and reassuring to be constantly reminded of the fact that we’re all still working on it, that you don’t just get there. This session, we’ve been working with the theme of “antidote,” and we’ve been talking about it on a personal level. We asked participants to consider, “What poisons do I face on a daily basis?” Sometimes it’s huge stuff that affects you on a daily basis, but what is that really close-to-the-skin impact? So looking at poisons, and then asking “What are some potential antidotes?” Which is the harder question to answer, but we’re just gonna try. We might not find the right answer, or the perfect answer, but we’re gonna try. So we’ve been writing, we’ve been moving in those themes, and we’ve been creating a visual manifestation of them. My collaborator Lorena Trigos has worked a lot with refugees, building masks to provide a safe layer between their stories and the outside world, but to ultimately tell those stories with a protective boundary. She has this exercise, where she asks them to draw their body’s silhouette, and then represent different things on the inside and on the outside of the body. So on the outside, we’re drawing the poisons, and on the inside, we’re talking about the antidotes. So we have these body maps, and they keep on coming back in different ways. Last time, we did a gesture exercise where you embody three different aspects of what you’re encountering. I hope that we’ll be able to do a mask workshop. I have Dayane Ntibarikure, who was my collaborator last year, and she’s an amazing many things, as well as an amazing vocalist. She’s gonna work with the group to create an original melodic soundscape, also around the theme of antidote. The idea is that all of this stuff is building works towards an outcome, which is a public presenta64 tion. But it’s still part of the process, it’s not just like “We’re here! We did it!” This is part of our process, and we’re gonna keep on working in the future, but we have opened the doors to the public to let them in on the learning that’s happening. That’s basically what we do with the program. CC: Has anything surprised you about the kind of work that comes out of it? JRJ: Totally, because everyone wants to work in different ways. It’s a space that we try to make safe and brave. Because just safe on its own can get protective and self-censoring. We try to create a space that acknowledges the room, an inclusive space for people to not feel like they’re being tread upon, invisibilized, but at the same time, encouraging. We say “If you are gonna make a mistake, make it here. Do speak your mind, and if anyone needs to talk to you about it, we’ll create a context for that.” So it’s a pretty self-revelatory space, but I’m always really impressed when people choose to speak those very personal self-revelations at the outcome. I think it’s incredibly brave. Because it’s scary to talk about something that you’ve never shared with anybody else, and then you choose to do it there because clearly there’s a need. So I love that aspect of the journey, and in terms of the media that people choose to use, it really varies. We’ve had people work with shadow and projection, we’ve had people work with building a body as an installation piece and covering it in poetry. So yeah the creativity of various minds in the room is always really beautiful. I’m always surprised. CC: In your experience as a teacher to children, university students, medical actors… what do you find most important in the act of teaching, or what do you try to instill, while still giving that space to explore their own processes? JRJ: I think maybe two things. Pleasure and fun is one that spans all ages. I think that’s always been part of my thing—getting in touch with how much fun I can have in my own body. I started dancing in my apartment in the mornings. I start off my �day on the right foot, and it has changed everything. It’s given me a lot of body-positivity. Like, if I hear music, I’m just gonna start jigging to it because that’s what feels good. So trying to break down that boundary of social norms that are really lame, by using body-pleasure, fun, and body-love, as one mushy category. The other thing: when I work with little ones, I try to remind them that they can do anything. If they’re working with particular stories, I’m always reminding them that the gender doesn’t matter. Just because the protagonist is a guy, it doesn’t mean that we’re gonna use that, and that’s not to say that is the only kind of person or identification that will be able to achieve that story. So working with that concept of “You can do anything. Let’s strive for our dreams here,” I think is the through-line across the ages of folks that I work with. For Artista, I’ve worked on a definition of what it means to be brave, and it includes, “Have the courage to say ‘I don’t know’,” “Make space for quieter voices,” and “Have the courage to take the lead.” The last one is “Follow our dreams.” Micheline Chevrier, the Artistic Director of Imago, always talks about Habitat for Humanity’s mandate to end homelessness, which is enormous, impossible, but it doesn’t mean that shouldn’t be the mandate. I feel like we should be striving for something that’s always bigger, instead of placing limitations that are really realistic on ourselves. That comes back to—you know when you see an amazing work of art, or sat through an amazing film, and you end that experience and you’re like, “My god! I can do anything!” What’s that movie, Billy Elliot? About the dancer? And then you’re leaping in your living room, and you are aware of the fact that you do not look anything like him, but you think you could one day. I think that’s the feeling. That’s a little jewel that I wish I could just make into a pill that we could all swallow and we could all walk around feeling like that all the time. It’d be a crazy world to live in. You can, you know, believe in yourself to do anything. CC: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk. JRJ: Oh my pleasure, thanks for asking. 65 �Notes Stever 1 Rebecca Schneider, “Performance Remains,” Performance Research, vol. 6, no. 2, 2001, pp. 100–108., doi:10.1080/13528165.2001.10871792. 2 Michael Taussig, “Alterity,” in Mimesis and Alterity (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 96–106. 3 See note 1 above. 4 Elizabeth Stewart, “Walter Benjamin's ‘Mimesis’” in Catastrophe and Survival: Walter Benjamin and Psychoanalysis (New York: Continuum International Publishing, 2010). 5 Andre Lipecki, Dance Dramaturgy, p. 52. 6 Ibid. 7 Winterson, Jeanette. “Art Objects” Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery. New York: Vintage Books, 1995 pp.3-21. “Françoise Sullivan.” MAC Montréal, macm.org/en/ exhibitions/francoise-sullivan/. “Les Automatistes.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/ les-automatistes. “Luis Jacob: A Dance for Those of Us Whose Hearts Have Turned to Ice and Other Works” Musee des Arts Contemporains https://macm.org/en/exhibitions/scores/. “Luis Jacob: A Dance for Those of Us Whose Hearts Have Turned to Ice and Other Works.” Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery | Reconciliation Pole Event, belkin.ubc.ca/exhibitions/luis-jacob-a-dance-forthose-of-us-whose-hearts-have-turned-to-ice-andother-works/. “Luis Jacob.” Gallery TPW, gallerytpw.ca/exhibitions/luis-jacob/. Mike Figgis, Jeremy Deller and Jonny Jones, “The Battle of Orgreave (2001)” Youtube, 19 Aug. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ncrWxnxLjg. Phelan, Peggy. “Unmarked: The Politics of Performance,” Tdr, vol. 38, no. 3, 1994, p. 185., doi:10.2307/1146386. “Refus Global Manifesto.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/refus-global-manifesto. Vanessa Agnew, “Introduction: What Is Reenact- 66 ment?” Criticism, vol. 46, no. 3, 2004, pp. 327–339., doi:10.1353/crt.2005.0001. Chami A. Berg. Lulu. 1937. A. Camus. L’Homme révolté. Paris: Gallimard. 1985. BelAirClassiques. “Lulu | Barbara Hannigan & Dietrich Henschel | La Monnaie 2012 (DVD trailer)“ [Video file]. Youtube Video, 03:01 [2014, September 16]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xalf_HMB2U. D. Grout, J. P. Burkholder, & C. Palisca, history of western music. USA: W. W. Norton & Company. 2014. F. Chopin. Ballade no.1 en sol mineur, op. 23. 1836. J. Nattiez. Musiques : Une encyclopédie pour le XXIe siècle ; Histoires des musiques européennes (Vol. 4). France: Actes Sud / Cité De La Musique. 2006. Karol Dombi. “Patricia JANEČKOVÁ: Les oiseaux dans la charmille, Jacques Offenbach, Les contes d' Hoffmann“ [Video file]. Youtube Video, 07:57 [2018, December 07]. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=yG8qyW9a-H0 MohCoolMan. “Umm Kulthum - Alfi Leila W-Leila (Egyptian Arabic)“ [Video file]. Youtube Video, 10:46 [2016, December 27]. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=nbWAyxPyyJw. Mozart, W. A. Die Zauberflöte, K.620. 1791. NPO Radio 4. “LUDWIG en Barbara Hannigan: Berg - Lulu Suite“ [Video file]. Youtube Video, 33:50 [2017, December 06]. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=XatVOukxxtE. J. Offenbach. Les Contes d’Hoffmann. 1881. Southbank Center. “Opera singer Barbara Hannigan on why she loves 'Lulu'“ [Video file]. Youtube Video, 13:24 [2013, March 14], https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=6AhnOFwfBnM. T. Begin. Beethoven’s Broadwood, Stein’s Hearing Machine, and a Trilogy of Sonatas. 2016. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5995b0d2f43b55750c83a2b9/t/59c8b988d55b414bf d5e27d2/1506326922835/TB-Broadwood.pdf. W. Apel. Harvard Dictionary of Music. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950. Arabian Greastest. “‫†سنوت‬١٩٦٨†‫†ويام‬٣١†‫ك†ينوركف‬ ‫=†ما†موثل‬/†Oum Kalthoum [Video file]”. YouTube vid- �eo, 1:31:18 [2014, January 26]. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=b1cVqN9ZoCo. Levine 1 David D’Arcy, “The Eyes of the Storm,” Modern Painters (April 2006). 2 Kara Elizabeth Walker, Kara Walker: After the Deluge, (New York: Rizzoli, 2007): p. 7 3 Ibid., p. 9 4 Henry A. Giroux, “Reading Hurricane Katrina: Race, Class, and the Biopolitics of Disposability.” College Literature, vol. 33, no. 3 (2006): pp. 171196. Also evident in coverage from The Guardian article by Jamie Doward, Simon English and Mark Townsend titled “America’s Ordeal,” first published on 4 September 2005. 5 Samuel R. Sommers, Evan P. Apfelbaum, Kristin N. Dukes, Negin Toosi, and Elsie J. Wang, “Race and Media Coverage of Hurricane Katrina: Analysis, Implications, and Future Research Questions,” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, vol. 6, no. 1, (2006): pp. 39-55. 6 Walker quoted in D’Arcy, “The Eyes of the Storm,” p. 56. 7 See note 3 above. 8 D’Arcy, “The Eyes of the Storm”; Paige McGinley, “Floods of Memory (a Post-Katrina Soundtrack),” Performance Research, vol. 12, no. 2 (2007), pp.5765; Emma Rutherford, Silhouette. (New York: Rizzoli, 2009); Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, “Tracing Race and Representation,” Seeing the Unspeakable: The Art of Kara Walker, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004) 9 Emma Rutherford, Silhouette, (New York: Rizzoli, 2009). 10 See note 1 above. 11 Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, “Tracing Race and Representation,” Seeing the Unspeakable: The Art of Kara Walker, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), p. 182. 12 Walker quoted in D’Arcy, “The Eyes of the Storm,” p. 58. 13 Marcus Rediker, “Introduction,” The Slave Ship: A Human History (New York: Penguin Books, 2008) 14 Charmaine A. Nelson, “The Middle Passage: Of Trauma and Commemoration” McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Lecture given Friday, 28 September 2018. 15 Rediker, “Introduction.” This number does not include those who died on their way to the slave ships, or who died of disease after they reached their destination. 16 The slave trade was abolished in the British empire and America in 1807 and 1808, respectively. Slavery was not completely abolished in the British empire until 1834, and for America in 1865. 17 Marcus Wood, “The Irrecoverable: Representing the ‘Middle Passage’,” Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America, 17801865, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000): p. 45. 18 Ibid., 53. 19 Ibid., 63. 20 See note 1 above. 21 Nicole R. Fleetwood, “Failing Narratives, Initiating Technologies: Hurricane Katrina and the Production of a Weather Media Event,”American Quarterly, vol. 58, no. 3 (2006): p. 777. 22 Michael P. Bibler, , “The Flood Last Time: ‘Muck’ and the Uses of History in Kara Walker's ‘Rumination’ on Katrina, ” Journal of American Studies, vol. 44, no. 3 (2010): p. 507. 23 Ibid. 24 See note 2 above. 25 Bibler, “The Flood Last Time,” p. 511. 26 See note 3 above. 27 Bibler, “The Flood Last Time.” 28 Ibid. 29 See note 3 above. 30 Bibler, “The Flood Last Time,” p. 504. 31 Ibid., 509. Ostrowski 1 Laura Claridge, Tamara de Lempicka: A Life of Deco and Decadence (New York: Clarkson Potter/ Publishers, 1999). 2 Jennifer L. Shaw, Exist Otherwise: The Life and Works of Claude Cahun (London: Reaktion, 2017), 21. 3 Ingried Brugger, “Sang-froid and Frenzy,” in Tamara de Lempicka: Art Deco Icon, (London: Royal 67 �Academy of Arts, 2004), 31–2. 4 Shaw, Exist Otherwise, 51–2. 5 Senem Yazan, “The Black Princess of Elegance: The Emergence of the Female Dandy,” Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty 3, no. 1-2 (2012); Jasmine Rault, “Designing Sapphic Modernity: Fashioning Spaces and Subjects,” in Fashion, Interior Design and the Contours of Modern Identity, eds. Alla Myzelev and John Potvin (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 188. 6 Tag Gronberg, “ ‘Le Peintre installé par la femme’: Femininity and the Woman Painter,” in Tamara de Lempicka: Art Deco Icon, 47. 7 Alain Blondel, “Tamara de Lempicka: An Introduction,” in Tamara de Lempicka: Art Deco Icon, 24; Gronberg, “Le Peintre installé par la femme,” 52. 8 Laurence Mouillefarine, “Tamara de Lempicka, Icon of Elegance,” in Lempicka, ed. Suzanne TiseIsore, (Paris: Flammarion, 2006), 101. 9 Claridge, Tamara de Lempicka, 3–4. 10 Gronberg, “Le Peintre installé,” 49. 11 Ibid., 50. 12 Gronberg, “Le Peintre installé,” 46-56; Paula Birnbaum, “Painting the Perverse,” in Women Artists in Interwar France: Framing Femininities (Surrey, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011). 13 James Stevenson, “Claude Cahun: an analysis of her photographic technique,” in Don’t Kiss Me: The Art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, ed. Louise Downie (London: Tate Publishing, 2006), 46. 14 Ibid., 55. 15 Tirza True Latimer, “Acting Out: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore,” in Don’t Kiss Me, 57. 16 Abigail Solomon-Godeau, “The Equivocal ‘I’: Claude Cahun as Lesbian Subject,” in Inverted Odysseys, ed. S. Rice (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999), 114. 17 Gen Doy, Claude Cahun: a sensual politics of photography (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007), 19–20. 18 Viviana Gravano, “Explorations, Simulations: Claude Cahun and Self-Identity,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 16, no. 4 (2009). Alan Axelrod, ed. Passion By Design: The art and 68 Times of Tamara De Lempicka, by Baroness Kizette de Lempicka-Foxhall as told to Charles Phillips (New York: Abbeville Press, 1987). Elizabeth Ashburn, “Lempicka, Tamara de (1898?1980),” GLBTQ Arts (Jan. 2011), http://www.glbtqarchive.com/arts/lempicka_t_A.pdf. Maurizio Calvesi and Alessandra Borghese, eds. Tamara de Lempicka: Elegant Transgressions (Montreal: The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1994). Michele Lefrancois, “Every One of My Portraits is a Self-Portrait,” in Lempicka, ed. Suzanne Tise-Isore (Paris: Flammarion, 2006), 86–96. Cardineau, Artist Texts 1 John Potvin, Bachelors of a Different Sort, (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2014), 56. 2 Alejandra Zamudio Diaz, in discussion with the author, Montreal, January 2018. 3 Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, (Brooklyn, Autonomedia, 2014), 7-15. Cardineau, Bouffon and Other Antidotes for Guarded Hearts 1 “Joy Ross-Jones,” Imago Theatre, accessed February 22, 2019, https://www.imagotheatre.ca/joyross-jones/; “Joy Ross-Jones, Performer & Creator,” Odd Stumble, accessed February 22, 2019, https:// oddstumble.com/artists/joy-ross-jones/. 2 Elsewhere (Montreal: Imago Theatre, 2019). �yiaramagazine.com @yiaramag YiaraMagazine 69 �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Other publications Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Issue 7 Page Number(s) 1-69 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data PDF Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019-04-01 Title A name given to the resource Yiara Magazine Issue 7 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Yiara Magazine Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Yiara Magazine Description An account of the resource The seventh issue of Yiara Magazine, an undergraduate feminist art &amp; art history publication. Concordia McGill non-McGill UQAM