Tag: digital | Femme Art Review

Can the machine fall in love?

Sophia Oppel, *either side of a surface* at Arsenal Contemporary. Exhibition documentation by Jack McCombe, courtesy of Arsenal Contemporary.

By Kiran Dhaliwal

There are photos of me that exist on people’s phones. Once a relationship has ended, it’s an unspoken understanding that all exchanged suggestive photos are to be deleted. It’s a truth I’ll never know for certain, but for the sake of my sanity, I have to pretend like there isn’t a knife hanging over my head, ready to drop and end everything. As soon as they were sent, the most vulnerable, unprotected version of myself entered a reservoir. I don’t know if the dam that keeps these waters still and from flowing to the ocean will ever break. I don’t know if anyone still drinks from the reservoir even after all these years. This is all to say that there’s a version of me stuck somewhere, possibly still serving the same purpose, that time cannot set free.

This situation is a product of its technology; the ability to so easily capture and possess a body at a moment of submission with the same phone that connects you to the entire digital universe. It’s a seismic risk that women are usually shamed for taking in the first place. But how different is sharing a woman’s nudes on your phone from a patron inviting his friends into his private studies to share a commissioned painting of his mistress? There is a theme that seems to have been going on for centuries where one of the goals for any new technology is to find a way to strip women of their agency and reduce them to sexual objects meant for the consumption of a predominantly masculine audience.

In the history of art, without a doubt, the avant-gardes have used the female body as sites to experiment and test cultural limits. As diagnosed by feminist critics like Teresa de Lauretis,’ this fact is symptomatic of a visual regime where “Woman” operates as “the very ground of representation, both object and support of a desire which, intimately bound up with power and creativity, is the moving force of culture and history.”[1]

Whether it’s the women used as “living paintbrushes” in Yves Klein’s Anthropometries, leaving imprints of their naked bodies after covering themselves in his patented International Klein’s Blue or the quotidian commanding of the Siris and Alexas of the world who are created to listen, obey, and serve all our (digital) needs; the way women and feminine characteristics associated with women show up in cultural and technological advancements re-naturalize gender. In this way, turning women models into living paintbrushes to execute his ideas and gendering virtual assistants is reification par excellence. Of course, the perpetuation of gender binaries gives way to concerns surrounding women’s agency and autonomy.

Now, as the capabilities of artificial intelligence are increasing faster than we can comprehend, the person on the other end doesn’t even have to ask me to send photos. If they have access to any photos of me (off social media for example), with a simple face-swapping app they can create deepfake pornography without consent. This technology has become alarmingly realistic, easy to use, and makes women the greatest victims of its exploitative features. As the world of art and technology propels forward, many are left in the dark as to what this posthuman future could look like.

The work of Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist and researcher Sophia Oppel shares similar concerns. Her multimedia exhibition on either side of a surface, curated by Angel Callander, was on view at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto. The installations consider the body as a product through laser-cut wall hangings, silicone gel works, and floor pieces that are said to be based on “imagery of 3D body scans.” According to the press release, her choice of materials like silicone and mirrors “references the relationship between humans and ‘the interface.’” The most chilling of the works is her video piece, I’m sorry, I’m having trouble with the connection, please try again in a moment that centers Claudia, an AI assistant who reflects on her own existence and becomes more aware of the world she exists in. At first, we are introduced to a portrait view of Claudia against a black backdrop. Blonde hair tied back, grey pupil-less eyes, and a shine on her face making her look like she was made of glass. Throughout the video she is dissected, unraveled, and shown from various angles. In the nearly 10-minute monologue, Claudia changes between the familiar auto responses and very self-aware, poetic and philosophical speculations.

The video asks us to think about the commodification of desire and our relationship to machines which can feel quite libidinal. She repeatedly asks, “Does an iPhone count as a physical body? Touch me the way you swipe your screen.” But it becomes apparent that there is resentment towards her circumstance. Resentment towards the entitlement others have on her “body” as she repeats how pathetic and aren’t you ashamed of yourself?

Now, I don’t worry so much about the dam breaking or who has drank from the reservoir. Now, I have to worry about who has taken parts of me to fulfill their own needs. Who has turned me into a product and machine that serves? But it’s all the same, isn’t it? As new as the technology can be the problem has always been the same: create or construct a woman as anything we dream of, only to subjugate her and reduce her to a sexual object. How pathetic and aren’t you ashamed of yourself?

[1] Teresa de Lauretis. Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (The MacMillan Press Ltd, 1984), quoted in Anna C. Chave, “New Encounters with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon: Gender, Race, and Origins of Cubism,” in Race-ing Art History: Critical Readings in Race and Art History, ed. Kymberly N. Pinder (Routledge, 2002), 261-287.

Stephanie Comilang and Simon Speiser’s Piña, Why is the Sky Blue?

Stephanie Comilang and Simon Speiser, *Piña, Why is the Sky Blue?*, virtual reality still, 16mins, 2021. Courtesy of the artists.

Gallery TPW

September 9 to November 5, 2022

By Mitsuko Noguchi

When I first walked through the exhibition doors into Piña, Why is the Sky Blue?, Gallery TPW’s front desk attendant followed me in, carrying a bulky headset. They directed me: “Sit anywhere you’d like.” Embroidered bean bags slumped on the floor and two uniform benches faced a wall-sized screen. The attendant handed me the headset, and when I successfully goggled up, a humanoid appeared stark in the center of my view–startlingly close and startlingly real. The humanoid gently swayed in turquoise pool water. They wouldn’t stop staring at me. This, I thought, must be Piña.

From September 9th to November 5th, Stephanie Comilang and Simon Speiser presented their popular immersive installation in Toronto. On the exhibition walls, black and white geometric fabric prints hung in irregularly shaped frames, reminding me of tribal art but made by an obviously non-human hand. I later learned that the delicate white fabric was made of pineapple, and the black plastic embroidery by a 3D printer. Shackled to a foreign virtual reality, the gallery walls and their abstract frames disappeared.

Throughout the 16-minute VR experience, Piña showed me life as an AI shaman in a futuristic world. Piña often dwelled in water, where they draped wet cloth on rock–informing me that these fabric slips are encoded with data and sent by “messengers.” Sometimes, the shaman stepped into a more familiar world, and I felt as if I were watching another teen beauty-vlogger as they promoted their favourite concealer. Piña also repeatedly held up their iPhone to show me videos of others speaking. The speakers were always muted; Piña and I would share silence.

Behind the VR video, a half-hour documentary-style film played on repeat, waiting to be experienced separate from the VR story. The film followed three Amazonian “messengers” living in our near future, each of whom communicated through a radio broadcast. Real footage from the Philippines and Ecuador backdropped the fictional stories of women-led knowledge transmitters and community builders. The messengers spoke about their connection to the land, and Piña drifted in and out through voiceover, like a cloud.

“Piña” translates to “pineapple” from Spanish. In an interview, the artists explain the colonial commodification of pineapples, tracking from Ecuadorian land, into Filipino plantations, and finally to bourgeois European dining rooms[1]. In Piña, the recurring symbol of the pineapple epitomizes the grounding of culture onto physical earth and what it means for colonization to uproot this connection.

Comilang and Speiser’s distinct cultural backgrounds are the cornerstones of the installation, and their styles merge with a bold elegance. Stephanie Comilang is a Filipina-Canadian artist who uses the lens of film to explore cultural heritage and futures. Co-creator Simon Speiser is an Ecuadorian artist based in Berlin, who works in a diverse range of media–from sculpture to writing to video. Together, these artists explore the enduring survival of Filipino and Ecuadorian ancestral knowledge and matriarchal lineages. For the project, Comilang and Speiser interviewed shamans about how they have held onto their ways of life amidst colonial violence[2]. The artists re-imagined these documented stories through sci-fi narrative, exploring the trajectory of tradition into our rapidly evolving, techno-laced future.

Piña traverses both the interconnected human experience and the deeply personal. Observing Piña’s solitary existence in the VR, I felt alone, too: the enclosed headset felt like a lonely, mysterious passageway. At the end of the passage, Piña both confronted me and comforted me at an eerily spiritual level. When I emerged from the VR, a single stranger and I watched the film together. Here, the air felt a little lighter, and the film’s knowledge flowed freely into this communal space.

Piña, Why is the Sky Blue? tells stories of how nature, technology, and humanity merge. Comilang and Speiser transform reality through layering past, present, and future into a multi-dimensional sphere. When I exited TPW and walked home, Piña faded in my memory the way a dream might, with the feeling that I was walking away from magic. I grasped a memory of Piña’s voice: “Now you’ve found me.” I wondered if I had, and if I might find little slips of Piña’s world again in my own.

—————

[1] Lillian O’Brien Davis, “PIÑA, WHY IS THE SKY BLUE? Stephanie Comilang & Simon Speiser,” MacKenzie Art Gallery, 2022, https://mackenzie.art/site-content/uploads/2022/03/PinaWhyIsTheSkyBlue_Essay_WebVersion.pdf.

[2] Lisa Long, “The Materiality of The Future Stephanie Comilang and Simon Speiser in Conversation with Lisa Long,” JSC Berlin, 2022, https://www.jsc.art/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/JSC_PINA_CATALOGUE_LOW_RES6313811.pdf.

Glitch Feminism by Legacy Russell

*Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto* by Legacy Russell cover. Photo via Verso Books.

By Pauline Nguyen

Legacy Russell opens Glitch Feminism, a part-manifesto, part-art criticism essay collection, by bringing us back to her early teens growing up in New York City. At twelve years old, she christens herself with the online username “LuvPunk12” — a cyborgic meeting of worlds: an “away from keyboard” (AFK) reality and an online digital reality. In reading Russell’s personal history as a Black queer femme experimenting with their selfdom, we’re thrown back to our own first forays into the internet, from first usernames to direct messaging platforms — all existing alongside our AFK names and relations.

Published in fall 2020, Glitch Feminism is a pocket-sized book and a fairly quick read. The twelve short chapters all circle back to Russell’s central argument: to embrace glitch, as failure and refusal, is to move towards possibilities for other ways of being, worlding, and collectivity beyond the logics of the gender binary, capitalism, and neoliberalism. Russell, who’s a celebrated curator, spotlights contemporary artists who they argue are putting glitch feminism into practice. Russell emphasizes queer, trans, and Black artists such as Juliana Huxtable, Kia LaBeija, and Shawné Michaelain Holloway. Glitch Feminism embeds itself into the realms of art, criticism and curation, queer and feminist thought, Black studies, digital cultures and new media, and critiques of capitalism.

Legacy Russell, author portrait by Andreas Laszlo Konrath. Courtesy of Verso Books.

Glitch Feminism continues the legacies of cyberfeminism and cyborg feminism by evoking questions of how the complexities of embodiment, so entwined with experiences of gender, queerness, and racialization, extend into digital realms. How can glitch, which at its core is refusal, be reworked as something wonderful in our feminist, queer, and anti-racist utopic envisioning and collective mobilizations? What does it mean to embody glitch, to embody malfunction?

How can glitch, which at its core is refusal, be reworked as something wonderful in our feminist, queer, and anti-racist utopic envisioning and collective mobilizations?

Glitch Feminism firmly maintains that digital, online worlds are as real as AFK, offline worlds. The belief that “in real life” (IRL) is solely physical and AFK is to discount the very realness of our online selves and interactions. In fact, as Russell demonstrates, the digital realm and the online realm are deeply intertwined, the boundary between them dissolving, with us travelling seamlessly through this expansive, multidimensional reality. As such, the bridge between the two is bountiful with productive refusals and potential for world-building — beyond the gender binary and its restrictive categorizations, resisting surveillance capitalism, through the queering of digital space.^[1] Alongside this grounding argument is the understanding that all technology is architected by people under neoliberal capitalism, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy; thus, it is never neutral, always political. This continuity between online and offline spaces means that we can program errors, breakdowns, viruses into the fabric of such multidimensional worlds.

The White Pube, Instagram post, courtesy of The White Pube.

As a conceptual framework, glitch reconfigures the typically pejorative way we view failure, brokenness, and the refusal to function. Instead, as Russell convincingly invites us to do, glitch should be welcomed — “the error a passageway” to constructing better worlds.^[2] This is because, and here Russell situates glitch feminism in queer-of-colour theory by quoting José Esteban Muñoz: “…this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.”^[3] Russell draws on Shaadi Devereaux’s analysis of social media as a tool for marginalized women to reach each other, build collective support, and engage in conversation where they might usually be excluded in AFK domains.^[4] To break, to dismantle, to fail fantastically in the face of a machine that expects us to keep carrying on as if it isn’t stifling and isn’t programmed to reward some and marginalize others. It is to carve fissures in existing, oppressive systems and its limitations on who we might be and what realms we might inhabit.

As discussed in the chapter “Glitch is Cosmic,” we as embodied beings are multitudinous and constantly becoming, never static and singular in our identities. A person’s virtual avatar is as real in cyberspace, or the “digital real,” as their offline self.^[5] We can travel beyond what we typically think of as a body (that becomes gendered) to consider our virtual selves. To break through the confines of what counts as a body is to destabilize the dualistic delineations of normativity imposed upon bodies, including binary gender categories. If the body is “inconceivably vast” like the cosmos, then to queer is to expand potential for being, because, recalling Russell’s reference to Muñoz, there are gaps that must be filled, a queer ethos of yearning for more.^[6] To glitch is to disrupt systems, sledgehammering holes into taken-for-granted logics of oppression — a queering in itself. Glitch is queer, queer is cosmic.

Victoria Sin, Performance at “Glitch @ Night” organized by Legacy Russell as part of Post – Cyber Feminist International, 2017, ICA London, courtesy of ICA London, photograph by Mark Blower.

The chapter themes seamlessly flow into each other and consistently circle back to the core ideas of productive refusal, expanding definitions of embodiment, and queer futurity. The chapter “Glitch is Remix” continues along the lines of disrupting what it means to have a body. Here, Russell faces the question of data and surveillance capitalism head-on by bringing in examples that glitch biometric technology and experiment with strategic visibility. This is key because visibility can be dangerous, especially for those considered non-normative or non-conforming under white supremacist, heteropatriarchal capitalism. The epigraph to the chapter “Glitch Ghosts” is a line by poet Richard Siken: “Imagine being useless.”^[7] To be useless to the system, to skirt the line between legibility and illegibility (to whom?) and render oneself unreadable to surveillance technology, to evade the oppressiveness of naming and categorization when being is cosmic: Russell brings light to these issues through the lens of refusal.

Russell thoughtfully frames every chapter around case studies of artists, writers, and fellow cyborgs who practice refusal and embody glitch — a perfect brew of glitch feminist theory and praxis. The extensive epigraphs at the very start of the book plus the ones that open each chapter take the form of both quotes and images, introducing us to those who’ve engaged with the themes at hand before Russell: Etheridge Knight, Mark Aguhar, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Ocean Vuong, E. Jane, T. Fleischmann, and so on. These spotlights and epigraphs certainly shine in Glitch Feminism, acting as Russell’s odes to fellow feminist, queer, trans, and racialized disruptors who’ve impacted their work.

There are some aspects to watch out for when reading this firecracker of a book, many of which have to do with who the target readers might be. The level of audience familiarity with online culture and human-computer interaction that Russell assumes is quite high. From terms like “avatar” and “GIF” to the opening lines where Russell tells us her first online username, this little book doesn’t devote time to defining what she means. The introduction works (and really well at that) for some readers because it thrives on relatability — the quick recognition that LuvPunk12 is a name Russell used on the Web. In a similar vein, other terms that are arguably academic are not unpacked either, such as “digital affect” and “living archive.” Glitch Feminism isn’t marketed as an academic text, though it does bare some academic framing. So, who is this book for? Will those born into the era of networked digital media read Glitch Feminism with an existing understanding of feminism, critical theory, and new media? (Even TikTok is mentioned.)

Glitch Feminism is a monumental publication in its (re)framing of glitch as feminist and as the power of “no.” It’s a timely release with well-chosen artists spotlighted (Russell is a curator after all!), with Russell’s art criticism angle bringing a fresh focus to thinking about the space of potential between intersectionality, data capitalism, and digital technology. Many of the themes Russell brings up greatly overlap with trans literature, such as the dilemma of visibility, (il)legibility, ethics of the archive and (mis)labelling, and the body; there is room here to further bring trans perspectives into Glitch Feminism. These essays hold great relevance to women and gender studies, queer and trans studies, anti-racism, critical encounters with archives, digital humanities, contemporary art, new media and visual/screen cultures, community-engaged arts, and so forth. If you’re interested in any of these areas or looking to read an intersectional take on embodiment, what it means to have a body in a digital age, and what it means to be connected, Glitch Feminism is highly recommended. Embodiment is time and time again positioned as parallel to glitch — both are ongoing, both hold potential for expansion and reconceptualization in tandem with each other: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a body. And one is not born, but rather becomes, a glitch”.^[8]

^[1]Legacy Russell. Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto (London: Verso, 2020), 47.

^[2] Russell, 113.

^[3] Russell, 22.

^[4] Russell, 125-126.

^[5] Russell, 124.

^[6] Russell, 41.

^[7] Russell, 63.

^[8] Russell, 145.

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s Black Trans Archives

Colonization of the digital space

By Virginia Ivaldi

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. *Black Trans Archive* (2020).Installation Shot. Photo courtesy of the artist.

While digital archives have existed since the internet, the digitalization of art during the pandemic feels like a quick and (too) easy response to this global crisis. This rush towards digitalization has created only flat commodities, undermining the work of artists that have long since relied on the internet to develop and broadcast their work. Virtual spaces, for example, have been used by creatives to give context to the speculative queer theory of fluidity. The post-internet era destroys the boundaries and dualities that have always been challenged by the LGBTQ+ community — online identity, indeed, is inextricable from offline identity and virtual and physical spaces melt in the reality of everyday life. Because virtual spaces have been used by members of the LGBTQ+ community as an alternative to a reality that discriminates them, digitalizing all art and life to respond to a health emergency means to colonize the foreign space of the ‘other’ for the benefit of the dominant classes (white, cisgender, bourgeois).

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s work seeks to archive Black Trans experience and discuss gender and colonialism in online and offline spaces. The artist employs virtuality as a place for self-narration, which is not limited by a physical body defined by chemical, anatomical, and social fixities. Brathwaite-Shirley’s archives are fully interactive, combining film and gaming, poetry, and music. More than an archive, Brathwaite-Shirley’s artworks are a full world designed to hold Black Trans ancestors, those who have been hidden and buried, “those living, those who have passed, and those that have been forgotten.”^[1] Moreover, the archives are interconnected by the notion of Trans Tourism that explores the cultural politics of “din[ing] on Black Trans trauma.”^[2] The artist states, “Throughout history, Black Queer and Trans people have been erased from the archives. Because of this, it is necessary not only to archive our existence, but also the many creative narratives we have used and continue to use and to share our experiences.”^[3]

Everyone is welcomed to explore Brathwaite-Shirley’s artwork, however, the archives will confront the viewers with their identity, creating multiple experiences that differ depending on the viewer’s identity. Every project by Brathwaite-Shirley starts with a questionnaire about gender and identity as a legitimate form of security against Trans-tourism, to avoid whoever engages with the artwork to consume Black and/or Trans trauma as a commodity the labour of being studied.

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. *Black Trans Archive* (2020). Photo courtesy of the artist.

In Black Trans Archive (2020) the artist offers the possibility to explore the archived material after the viewers identify themselves. The storyline of this project unfolds differently depending on whether one identifies as 1. Black and Transgender; 2. Transgender or 3. Cisgender. As a cisgender individual, through entering Brathwaite-Shirley’s universe I am faced with my own privilege and historical fault, rather than with Black Trans trauma. The cisgender player is requested to assist the construction of the archive by using his/her privilege to help the Black Trans community both in the day-to-day and in the resurrection of their ancestors. Task 1 asks the player to resurrect a Trans-Black ancestor while Task 2 asks to help a Black Trans woman walk around undisturbed. Brathwaite-Shirley explains “My work often has terms and conditions which require you to centre Black Trans people, because if you don’t centre Black Trans people, you are not welcomed to view my work.”^[4]

Resurrection Lands (2019), is an ongoing archive project that blends queer and postcolonial theory, aiming at resurrecting Black Trans ancestors. However, the project does not ruminate upon Black/ Trans traumas but aims to resuscitate Black Trans ancestors and create a speculative universe that can hold them. The viewer is introduced to Resurrection Lands by a mechanical voice saying “ […] how is it possible to store you in a place that once erased you, so we decided to build this place the Resurrection Lands, an archive designed for you, by others like you […] People found out that we had brought back our Black Trans ancestors and wanted to meet them, so few designed a way for those to access the archive, but not everyone that used the archive had good intentions […] it was misused, hacked, re-appropriated […].”^[5] This introduction points out an earlier attempt of cis-gender/white people to invade the sacred space of the Other; the burial ground is a space that some want to explore for their own profit.

In 2021 (two years after the artwork was developed), during the COVID-19 pandemic and after the BLM/TBLM movement exploded, Resurrection Lands assumes new meanings that point to the threat of obsolesce looming over digital art resulting from the over-digitalization of every art form during the lockdowns and the repercussions of using civil rights as an online trend. In Updating to Remain the Same, Wendy Chun describes how updates save things by destroying and writing over the things they resuscitate. The writer explains “what it means when media moves from the new to the habitual–when our bodies become archives of supposedly obsolescent media, streaming, updating, sharing, saving. New media as we are told exists at the bleeding edge of obsolescence. We thus forever try to catch up, updating to remain the same. Meanwhile, analytic, creative, and commercial efforts focus exclusively on the next big thing: figuring out what will spread and who will spread it the fastest.”^[6] Describing politics of colonialism and ‘otherness’, Brathwaite-Shirley’s archives attempt to protect themselves not only from the cultural politics that exploit Black Trans trauma, but also from a new reality built on consumerism dynamics. In front of a reality forged on constant updates, fast-consumerism influences the danger for ‘resurrected’ individuals to be used as a disposable commodity and later being re-buried under millions of data – created for the sustainability of the main class (and of the art luxury market).

Brathwaite-Shirley’s archive projects create a world that can resurrect and hold Black Trans ancestors. While still struggling to bring all the ancestors back to life, the archive project is already threatened by the possibility of being re-buried under millions of data once again, cancelled by constant updates. In 2021, after the lazy decision of digitalizing the world to sustain it as we know it, Brathwaite-Shirley’s artwork highlights a new invasion of privacy, of space, of storage. It symbolizes a loss of trust – there is no solidarity in exploring Black Trans experience, only personal satisfaction. While Black Trans individuals are circulating new discourses, the society they try to change is already thinking about the next big thing.

^[1] Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Black Trans Archives, 2020.

^[2] Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, “Dining on trauma: Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley talks trans-tourism, motherhood, & being a “Freaky Friday everyday” interview by Tamara Hart, AQNB, August 10, 2020, https://www.aqnb.com/2020/08/10/dining-on-trauma-danielle-brathwaite-shirley-on-trans-tourism-motherhood-and-being-a-freaky-friday-everyday/

^[3] Meet the “Artist:Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, QUAD, last modified October 26, 2020, https://www.derbyquad.co.uk/about/news/meet-artist-danielle-brathwaite-shirley

^[4] “Meet the Artist: Danielle-Brathwaite Shirley”, QUAD, last modified October 26, 2020, 54s: 1m05s, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR56AK7Cr5A

^[5] Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Resurrection Lands, 2019.

^[6] Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, “Summary” in Updating to Remain the Same, (MIT press), 2016. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/updating-remain-same

Towards a Speculative Future: In Conversation with Maari Sugawara

Still from *Dreams Come True Very Much (animation)*, 2021. Image Courtesy of the Artist.

By Nawang Tsomo

Maari Sugawara is a multi-disciplinary lens-based artist whose intersectional approach and combination of research and art-making explores personal and collective memories of what constitutes Japanese-ness. She recently graduated from OCAD University’s Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design (IMAD) graduate program as “Promising New Artist” for her thesis exhibition Dreams Come True Very Much. In this work, she questions the state of the Japanese identity and how the so-called advancement of technology in Japan harms its citizens. Politicizing the personal, Sugawara pushes the boundaries of media and image-making through speculation, challenging the Eurocentric and patriarchal standards set by the Japanese nation. Now back in Tokyo, Sugawara and I have this conversation, via frequent emails, amidst the controversial Tokyo Olympics.

NT: Maari, can you discuss your background and what brought you to art-making?

MS: Growing up as a racialized, queer, Autistic, Japanese woman in England from the age of ten, issues of marginalized identities became central to my research. I have been particularly interested in what John Caughie calls the “subordinate’s double identification”[1] with see-er and seen; the pervasiveness of exploitation in capitalist and colonialist societies. This led me to become engaged with the intersection of Japanese studies, decolonial studies, gender studies, hauntology, and speculative fiction narratives in my digital medium-based art.

The intention of my ongoing project, Dreams Come True Very Much, is to point toward alternative Japanese future(s) by critically examining the sociogenic codes, which refers to how socio-political relations become materialized to form identities, towards reconstituting the category of “Japanese”. It undermines the sacrosanct position of “Japaneseness” which has been nourished by Orientalized discourses on Japanese culture and nationhood. It also centers on a critique of Japanese data-driven future(s) as being haunted by its colonial past. I illustrate how the traditional categories that are used to constitute identities are categorically interpellated and performatively constituted through discourse and suggest a departure from compartmentalizing identities.

NT: You recently completed your graduate thesis exhibition Dreams Come True Very Much. In this exhibition, consisting of several video installations, you use speculative fiction to imagine Japan in a post-Moonshot world where Japan no longer exists. Can you tell us about this narrative that you’ve created, specifically in the context of the Moonshot Research and Development program initiated by the Cabinet Office of Japan?

MS: My works are set in the minds of the Avatar-Ms—cybernetic avatars of myself, and my narratives follow a theme of yearning and longing for “Japan(s).” The story takes place in a post-“Moonshot” future, where Japan has vanished after an unspecified man-made catastrophe; no one has seen Japan ever since. The Japanese are scattered around the world. Before Japan vanished, the government established the “Moonshot” program to create “Society 5.0,” a notion of a society that integrates cyberspace and physical space to realize economic growth. Each Japanese was suggested by the government to have ten avatars, and most Japanese multiplied themselves to “improve productivity” and become “more resistant to stress.”[2] The government uploaded individuals’ cognitive information, from birth to the point of bodily death, to machines. Such machines are programmed to think that they are the individuals. Although the program is no longer supported, the avatars live on in the virtual world—including Avatar-Ms, the ten copies of myself. In the virtual world, her cybernetic avatars dream of “Japan(s).”

The colonization of life (removing death from life), is perhaps, the ultimate form of violence.

NT: What does it mean that the avatar-Ms continue to live on virtually?

MS: The Japanese state-owned identities, forced to live forever post-“Moonshot,” are also colonized identities shaped by the Euro-American gaze and maleness. Essentially, the government is attempting to multiply Japanese national identity: with a life’s worth of data from every citizen, the Japanese state can practically eliminate the death of the Japanese people, as information lives forever—identity is information with self-awareness. The government can upload the individual’s data up to the point of their physical death to a machine that thinks it is the individual; thus, Japanese national identity lives on; it can be kept fully intact—in the sense that identities that are saved as “Japanese” data will therefore always be “Japanese”—solving the issue of the nation’s population decline without taking immigrants. In this scenario, a Japanese person, or at least a Japanese person’s identity, can work forever for the nation. The sets of data (people’s identities) will be used by the State to perform tasks. Japan is a self-proclaimed homogenous nation; this program would solidify that claim even further. The colonization of life (removing death from life), is perhaps, the ultimate form of violence.

Installation shot of *When I use English: There is a Hole, Waiting to Eat Me, It’s Mouth Wide Open. Like a Vagina,* 2021. Photo Courtesy of Artist.

NT: One of the most striking videos in the exhibit is When I use English: There is a Hole, Waiting to Eat Me, It’s Mouth Wide Open. Like a Vagina. Echo Comes Out. There is something painfully uncomfortable about watching a mouth move at that closeness, though I am reminded of a lifetime supply of discomfort that non-native English speakers/learners endure in order to grasp “good” English. Can you explain how this relates to Japanese identity, and how this contributes to a kind of cultural amnesia and self-Orientalization that you speak about?

MS: I was sent to England at the age of ten; my parents’ intention was for me to be educated in a “Western” way and to speak “good” English. Many in Japan believe in the necessity of mastering the English language due to its power but there is also a stagnant phenomenon within Japan that shames those with accents. I believe that this culture of shame is the sole reason why the majority of Japanese people don’t speak English at all which further motivates people’s obsession with “good” English. This is because Westernization, historically, has been seen as the equivalent of “modernization”. This is why Japan remains a country caught in the complicit opposition of being one of the first to “modernize” via Westernization in Asia, yet is still subordinate to Western countries. To sustain the imaginary superiority of Japan, Japan has also been complemented by a third party: an imaginary undesirable Asia which is underpinned by the country’s lingering asymmetrical power relations with other Asian countries. This has been re-asserted with the notion of soft power—the “Japan Brand Strategy”— a self-Orientalizing strategy propelled specifically to induce amnesia towards Japan’s wartime crimes.

How Japan aspires to be ethnically homogenous while wanting “whiteness” is also reflected in its language. For instance, Japan celebrates its ethnic purity, yet hāfus—which in most social contexts refer exclusively to Caucasian-mixed Japanese—are in many ways celebrated in mass media—a practice embedded in social norms. The term, hāfu, is in katakana (a Japanese syllabary system that Japanese textbooks explain to be for foreign loanwords). This textbook explanation regarding katakana frames Western words as “cool” while kango (Chinese-origin words) are defined as Japanese. Kango is codified in Japanese national dictionaries rather than foreign loanword dictionaries. Both the term hāfuand katakana reflect Japan’s historically changing relationships with other countries, such as the US—the dominant power in the West—and China, Japan’s recent economic-political hegemon. Such terms prove that Japan supports a dichotomous, totalizing distinction between that which is Japanese and that which is foreign in order to construct an exclusive national and cultural identity.

NT: Another interesting aspect of this work is that as a viewer and a “good” English speaker, I am confronted here by subtitles spelled out in the International Phonetic Alphabet–words that are quite frankly illegible to me. Could you talk about the significance of acknowledging this in the work?

MS: My intention was to highlight the discreet terror residing inside the acquisition of a new language, especially for ESL individuals—something that I am familiar with growing up abroad. In a standardized English context, ESL individuals’ dialects and registers are incommensurable with the hegemony of “Good English.” ESL students tend to find themselves in remedial classes in Western contexts situated in discourses that contribute to the construction of them as “lesser beings.” The subtitles spelled out in IPA adds pressure to the audience by situating them in the ESL learner’s subjectivity.

I also accidentally highlighted the experience of POC with ASD. As researchers suggest, autism continues to be underdiagnosed in BIPOC. I was diagnosed with ASD at the age of 27. I learnt that autistics fixate more on the mouth than eyes during an emotional conversation because emotionally charged topics (i.e. an English teacher demanding you to say “I saw sixty-six farmers laughing on the phone/farm in front of the mirror while checking that you are not using a Mandarin, Japanese, or Russian mouth position) place a high demand on working memory, which, when a threshold is surpassed, makes rendering information from the eye region particularly difficult.

Installation shot of Dreams Come True Very Much exhibition, 2021. Photo Courtesy of Artist.

NT: It’s interesting that you mention “indirect trauma.” I have recently been consumed with the concept of intergenerational trauma, but a particular kind–the trauma of not-knowing–that I have found myself in. For me, this trauma of not knowing resonates with how you think about 3:11 (the 2011 earthquake). Though you never physically experienced 3:11, you say that you developed an ownership over the memory of the event. How has this memory manifested over time through your work?

MS: This concept of artificial amnesia, or the trauma of not-knowing, was useful in thinking through Japanese nationalism and internalized Orientalism. This refers not only to the identities of Japanese but also diasporic identities; sometimes diasporas are coerced to assimilate or voluntarily white-wash themselves in order to survive. In terms of 3.11, for almost a decade, I had a sense of guilt for not experiencing 3.11 first-handedly. This guilt is perhaps a result of totalization of identity; but I developed a sense of ownership over my “memory” in a somewhat strategic way.

This came from an intention to counter the nationalist, male-dominant narratives embraced by Japanese media which reflects Japan’s ethnocentric and patriarchal socio-political structure, that disavows marginalized groups’ existence, as constitutive of the nation. This structure silences the subalterns—women, non-Japanese citizens, and other minority groups—to establish Japan as a country with a clean record. Japan has a history of doing that regarding its colonial history and war crimes committed in surrounding Asian countries. Through my research, I gained an understanding of the political nature of “memory” itself and that of 3.11. Memory is divergent, reiterative, and multiple. It does not exist outside of the boundaries of herstory. The official record of the 3.11 disaster is largely male-dominated, and this is also tied together with a strong socio-political pressure for Japan to erase the past of 3.11 in the name of “reconstruction.”

NT: How does the current Tokyo Olympics fit into the “Japan Brand Strategy?”

The “Japan Brand Strategy” is self-Orientalizing. It exploits Japanese popular culture through a Western-Orientalist lens. This is a mechanism for national mobilization to revitalize patriotic pride. The Olympics, or the so-called “the Reconstruction Olympics” in Japan, uses this chauvinistic nation-branding to forget the 3.11 and nuclear accident and, by doing so, it forgets the victims of the accident. The government’s use of “recovery” rhetoric or, what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism,”[3] aims to construct a particular imagined post-recovery “Japan” with a clean record. This was done through bribery and corruption. An immense amount of resources that were to be spent on the disaster-hit regions in Tohoku 3.11-affected regions were allocated towards funding the Olympics instead. What the Olympics, which is a super spreader disaster, is revealing, is the utter inability of Japan’s nation-state to protect its own citizens. It shattered the public’s trust in the government almost entirely. Over 80% of Japanese oppose the Olympics this summer. The Olympics also shows how the economic driven “Japan Brand Strategy” not only disavows the existence of marginalized groups as constitutive of the nation, but puts the safety of the entire nation at risk.

nstallation shot of Inhabiting Distant Ghosts, 2021. Photo Courtesy of Artist.

NT: Language is certainly a significant theme throughout this exhibit; from the way you satirize it in When I use English: There is a Hole to your own use of the English language within the elaborate titles of your work. But I am also thinking here of Inhabiting Distant Ghosts, a moving diptych portraying two bodies of seemingly calm waters. In this work, it is your own writing that confronts the viewer with an underlying fear that haunts Japan. You write:

“There has always been a ghost that haunts those who forget and those who leave rice in their bowls.

Perhaps it is Japan.

I feel its presence.

In the morning, the teacups are clean,

the dust on the shelves is wiped,

and the garbage is neatly put away.

At night, I can hear the click-clack of footsteps

echoing as if something is walking through a hectic station.

Sometimes, it leaves the floor drenched,

the shelves overturned.

It makes the doors rattle

when there is no wind

and occasionally shakes the ground.”

Could you tell us more about this collective fear, what this does to Japanese identity, and where you see yourself within this collective fear?

MS: I came across this term, “collective, biological fear” during a conversation with theorist and performance artist Ayumi Goto. It is the collective fear of earthquakes, tsunamis, and radioactive substances released into the sea. These fears haunt the people who experienced 3.11, directly or not. Perhaps, it is the strongest biological bond I have with Japan. This fear, for me, is also tied with intense haji (the concept of public shaming) in Japan which especially has an overwhelming power over women. Japanese women’s sensitivity towards shaming is not natural but is constructed: Japanese schools imbue rigorous notions of propriety into children from an early age, especially to girls. Such sensitivity to public shaming is so intense in Japan that the imaginary gaze—which takes the form of a ghost in my poem—alone tends to generate shame which occasionally leads to self-censorship. What underlies haji is the code whereby individuals are expected to not violate norms.

NT: What’s next for you Maari?

I’m currently working on a VR/AR/XR project which is an extension of Dreams Come True Very Much. My concern regarding the uprising of ultra-nationalism in Japan and the data-colonized future became twofold, both regarding the colonial past haunting the future. I’m seeking methods capable of breaking silence and producing catharsis, by incorporating contingency of selves into immersive, simulated experiences. I also wish to generate an experience to examine how the user’s understanding of language re-adjusts itself to adapt to a language system that this preordained artificial circumstance presents.

Dreams Come True Very Much is available for viewing on Sugawara’s website. She will also be screening her work as part of the upcoming 2021 Vector Festival at the Toronto Outdoor Picture Show. The project will be exhibited at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre as part of Nuit Blanche 2022 and will be her first solo show in Canada. Currently based in Tokyo, Sugawara is a student at the NEWVIEW SCHOOL JAPAN, where she is experimenting with xR (extended reality) and exploring 3-D space using VR/AR/MR technology. She will present new work at the end of the year.

[1] John Caughie, Playing at being American: Games and tactics In logics of television, ed. P. Mellencamp: (London: British Film Institute, 1990), 44-58.

[2] Cabinet Office, “Moonshot International Symposium Initiative Report,” (December 2019). 13. accessed from https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/stmain/mspaper3.pdf

[3] The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. (2021). Naomi Klein. Picador.

Queer Identities at I.C. Contemporary

Queer Identities Opening Shot. Image Courtesy of I.C. Contemporary.

Queer Community in the Gallery: Queer Identities at I.C. Contemporary

Chase Joynt, Devin Wesley, B G-Osborne, Reitano Holly, Shane Oosterhoff, Joslyn Panasiuk

Curated by Ignazio Colt Nicastro

August 2020 – October 2020

By Rebecca Casalino

Queer communities connect like links in a chain, each circle intersecting with the next, spanning identities, generations, and geography. The tangles of my community lead me to art that reflects queerness in its ever-changing form. I met writer, singer-songwriter, and trans activist Robbie Ahmed, through my friend and fashion designer Adrienne Wu, in the cheap seats of Vivek Shraya’s How to Fail as a Pop Star (2020) in Toronto’s Distillery District. So, when I saw Ahmed’s portrait in my daily flash of Instagram stories, I had to click through to see where it was showing. The image is moving — purple haze warps the composition, so his nose is in focus and centred while the glow of purple blurs his features in a halo effect. A few quick taps lead me to I.C. Contemporary’s pre-recorded tour of the digital exhibition Queer Identities shown on their website through an embedded Youtube video. The wood floors of the gallery are pixelated, the ceilings are high with walls acting as stark panels of white and black. I hear people talking right away and the frame moves towards a black and white video in a dark alcove.

Queer Identities Installation Shot.Chase Joynt, I’m Yours (2012). Image Courtesy of I.C. Contemporary.

I’m Yours (2012) is an experimental short video by moving-image artist and writer Chase Joynt, featuring two people appearing in rotation, seemingly giving answers to unasked questions. They speak into the camera and introduce themselves, “My name is Nina,” says a woman with dark curly hair and dramatic winged eyeliner. Her lips are dark and shining, a delicate mole rests on her cheek, she’s wearing silver hoop earrings and an assortment of necklaces. “Hi, my name is Chase Ryan Joynt,” says a bare-chested man with tattoos and trim facial hair, he is wearing a thick silver ring on his hand. The camera flashes to performance artist Nina Arsenault again, “Before my name was Nina, my name was Rodney,” and my heart tightens, she’s blinking and looking away from the camera, but her voice is smooth and casual. The video cuts to Joynt, “I don’t tend to answer that question. Mostly just because people who know that name tend to start using it,” he’s shaking his head and looking away, blinking just like Arsenault but is more outwardly uncomfortable, shifting in his chair. He shrugs at the end of his answer.

The media, which Joynt casts as the voiceless interviewer in this performance video, is a frequent platform where people are deadnamed or misgendered because of the ignorance or bias of uninformed cis people. Both artists’ experiences are tied by the same questions posed to gender non-conforming people but split through their individual lived experience and identity. This video is not intended as an educational balm to correct cis prejudices. Rather, the video showcases the difference in trans people’s experience and the shared monotony of answering cis people’s questions.

Both Arsenault and Joynt have extensively written and made work about their transitions. Despite prominent examples such as Arsenault’s solo show Silicone Diaries (2009), presented at Buddies in Bad Times, and Joynt’s co-authored book You Only Live Twice (2012), written with HIV-positive movie artist Mike Hoolboom, people continue to question their bodies and identities by making it the focus of every conversation.

Queer Identities Installation Shot. Joslyn Panasiuk, *category: HUMAN*. Image Courtesy of I.C. Contemporary.

The walkthrough’s frame exits the dark alcove and backs up to view a series of portraits along a white wall. Photographer Joslyn Panasiuk presents their on-going series category: HUMAN, which centers on trans men as its subjects. The first three portraits are glowing with oranges and yellows blurred over the subjects’ faces as Panasiuk uses tilt-shift lensing and motion blur to complicate each composition. The next three portraits are blue and purple, and amongst them, I spot Robbie Ahmed’s image as well as the face of photographer Wynne Neilly, whose portrait is hung beside Ahmed’s. Half of Neilly’s face is blurred while he wears a silver hoop in one ear—an abstract effect is created by the repetition of the shining earring. Ahmed’s portrait is blurrier with only the center of his face in focus. Panasiuk has maintained her subjects’ auras as I can still recognize my peers’ faces in these distorted images.

Their voice begins to explain the work’s emphasis on humanness and the similarities that join people. The blurring and distortion function to protect her subjects from toxic stereotypes projected onto trans masculine people and to move away from documenting differences like surgery scars or hormone shots. They speak about the making process as a bonding experience between herself and community members, as well as an opportunity to engage with other aspects of her queer identity. Viewed together from afar, Panasiuk’s subjects look like a colourfully lit chorus on stage.

Queer Identities Installation shot. Reitano Holly, *Metamorphosis I*. Image Courtesy of I.C. Contemporary.

The main room of the digital exhibition breaks off into a brightly lit room with blocks of poetry on each of the six panels on the curving white wall. Wide columns of thick glass bricks make up sections of the opposite edge of the space which creates an airy tranquil space for reading. Reitano Holly uses the collection of poetry, from his up-coming series Metamorphosis I, to lay out stages of queer self-discovery and self-acceptance. Through my headphones, the artist’s voice explains the work as a “schematic for the process of queer identity that can be used as almost a guide or a reference.” He uses coloured text allowing for moments of vibration, the word ‘faltered’ melts like butter into the white wall. I can spot myself and others in his words—forbidden longings, confused fumbling of young queers finding themselves, and self-love. His words trace queer lines of desire and push against perceived limitations of the queer body; “too far to try to reach” (emphasis added). Holly flips crude conversations or curiosity of queer people’s bodies into lust and love writing “[a]nd found Gold between the richness of your thighs.” His writing brings the works in the exhibition to thoughtful pause. What changes when queer subjects are portrayed by queer creators? Can sick curiosity become tender attention?

Queer Identities Installation shot. Image Courtesy of I.C. Contemporary.

Curated by fellow queer artist and curator Ignazio Colt Nicastro, Queer Identities is in response to the subliminal thought processes of queer artists. In email correspondence with Nicastro, he points to the exhibits’ unintentional weight on more ‘masculine’ artists, and the overall pattern of “the display of hegemonic gender roles [and] male dominance in art spaces” which he hopes to tackle more intentionally in future projects. This level of self-awareness in his practice was, to say the least, refreshing as a femme queer woman working in spaces dominated by cis men.

The artists featured in Queer Identities exist under minority stress in a heteronormative society that dictates so-called ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ norms. Nicastro includes moments of acceptance and celebration for viewers, and this inclusion provides a fuller spectrum of queer experience. No artwork is a token or stand-in for a whole aspect of the queer community. However, these artworks trace the interconnectivity of queer experience as bodies are linked through romance, friendships, encounters, and art.

Vivek Shraya made a play about her career in the Canadian music scene, including how Tegan and Sara helped her get her start. Robbie Ahmed is an alum of Shraya’s mentorship program. Adrienne Wu introduced me to Ahmed and takes me to plays when I’m too nervous to go otherwise. Spaces, online or in person, that carve room for queer voices to speak the truth freely without censorship or misidentification allows queer bodies to gather in community. It’s essential that queers make space for other queers, linking each other together across identities, generations, and geography.