Tag: interview | Page 6 | Femme Art Review

In Conversation with Monica Joy Peeff: On Technology and the Tactile

Monica_clay_communication — Monica Joy Peeff. Degradation of Communication. Digital print alongside film & raw clay. 2019.

Questions by Adi Berardini

London-based interdisciplinary artist Monica Joy Peeff combines tangible mediums like ceramics and drawing with the digital sentiment of the iCloud and internet messaging. Always observing their surroundings with a sketchbook in hand, Monica’s work is contemplative and explores queer identity. Peeff specifically focuses on the dependency on technology as an accessible platform to initiate and maintain love and connection. By using the symbolism of cell phones, message bubbles, and cigarette packs, they relate to the topic of addiction to represent these themes. Through their work, they evoke emotion and inspire the viewer to put down their mask and embrace vulnerability.

Additionally, Peeff is interested in deconstructing reliance on coping mechanisms, looking at the juxtaposition of guilt/shame culture, while simultaneously romanticizing/normalizing habits. Using an interdisciplinary approach, they work within the realms of ceramics, printed matter, drawing, painting, performance, and installation. The variety of objects and media provide a physical element to what would otherwise remain hypothetical, in memories, or visually online.

Your work merges more tactile ceramic work with technological references, seemingly commenting on technology and its influence on our relationships. Could you explain more about your inspiration behind this combination?

This combination derives from an appreciation for the technology we currently have access to. Clay and technology exist as juxtapositions to one another. Clay is this natural substance derived from the Earth, delicate, tactile, and malleable to touch, while our phones, laptops, etc. are a combination of complex hardware and software, manipulated with coding and programming beyond physical visualization. Now, more than ever, am I utilizing my technology to connect with my loved ones almost instantaneously. The ability to maintain our relationships is essentially always in our pockets. A few years ago, I was making ceramic cellphones, exploring my dependency on my technology. [Through this project, there was] a gratification in creating an ever-lasting object with a note of digital memories. Now experiencing the present state of the world, I am ever appreciative of the ability to stay in touch with others and establish new connections with people all over the world.

Monica_installation — Monica Joy Peeff. Send a Message, digital prints graphite, ink & tape. Travelling installation displayed at UPRLFT Design & Photo Studio, Good Sport Gallery & Bealart Year End Show, 2019.

One of your pieces uses more of a social practice approach where people could write hand-written messages on typing bubbles, facilitating communication where it can be difficult at times. Can you explain your process for this project? What was the outcome?

I began using the message bubble to symbolize communication. These cards were installed in three separate shows at Good Sport, UPRLFT and Bealart with a grey card on the wall, alongside stacks of blue cards, providing an opportunity for response. I kept it open so that people could take cards with them if they wished. During the installations, it was quite funny to see how people responded with anonymous freedom. Especially at the Bealart show, with more traffic of children and high schoolers, they took a very comedic approach to responding, which was amusing.

monica_install2 — Monica Joy Peeff. Send a Message, digital prints graphite, ink & tape. Travelling installation displayed at UPRLFT Design & Photo Studio, Good Sport Gallery & Bealart Year End Show, 2019.

It seems to evoke a space to be vulnerable in public but since it’s still anonymous there’s some allowance for that. How do you find incorporating text can convey queerness and aspects of identity in art? Do you find that text is part of your process? How does it function?

It allows me to be really literal and honest in a sense—that’s often really frightening. When outright expressing something, I instinctively seek ways to cover it up. However, especially in the past few years, I’ve had the urge to not be so subtle in implying when a subject is very personal. I hope to grow into a person that is comfortable speaking to my experiences. I am trying to limit the possibility of integral parts of my identity and artwork being brushed over.

val on zoom — Monica Joy Peeff. sketchbook page (Val on Zoom). 2020

Who are some other artists that inspire you?

Jeannine Marchand makes these really large-scale fabric-like works. [Monica brings up a slideshow on their laptop for an artist talk entitled WHAT UP I LIKE CLAY]. She has this amazing piece called Welcome that viewers hesitantly walked on [since it’s placed right in the doorway of the gallery], as a result of these interactions it gets completely destroyed. I think this might have been the same piece [Marchand’s work Bucket] although she doesn’t entirely explain it, but I think someone cleaned it up, placing the pieces in a bucket, with a note reading “I love you and I’m sorry.” I thought that’s so bittersweet. But her intention was fully to have people step on it—some people tried to jump over it since they didn’t know how to interact with it but obviously it just got totally crushed.

This artist, Serena Hughes, [@wamwogs] inspires me whenever I’m in a rut with creating. Seeing their work reminds me of what I love about drawing. They’re so honest with their use of text in their work. It’s a humbling reminder that I can just say whatever I want in my sketchbook, with the freedom to share it or keep it private.

Lynn Park is one of my closest friends and favourite artists. I’ve had the privilege of witnessing them develop as a person and artist, from our time together in the Bealart program to them moving in Montreal. I remember the first time they told me that I am their favourite artist. I was flattered but felt slightly it was nonsensical. Thinking, there is a whole world of artists, creating much more complex, thought out, relevant and skillful work than I am, why me? As a beginner artist, at the time still in high school, barely figuring anything about myself out. After some time, I have grown to understand how powerful that sentiment is. To be someone’s favourite artist? Nothing can make me want to continue creating as much as support like that. I now pridefully share with others that my friends are in fact my favourite artists. Their practices hit home like no other. Recently Lynn began creating a project that is an interactive website as an exploration of their experience of space and friendship in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Monica_connected — Monica Joy Peeff. we are separate but connected, cone 6 porcelain & graphite, 2019.

I think it’s powerful to think of intentionality especially with ceramics, you often see it just displayed on a shelf or a plinth. I notice that your work has a unique sense of tactility since you use ceramics and often reference hands in your drawings. I was wondering if you could speak about this aspect of your work?

I’m really motivated by the tangibility of clay. I think it is so vital to ceramics because it’s a medium where the artist is directly working it with their hands. This is the main factor that always has me drawn to them as a subject matter, in drawing, sculpting, painting, etc. These objects I made with my hands, I spent time touching, interacting with, and manipulating them into entirely new forms. To just put said object on a shelf/plinth as if it’s a final resting place, where only eyes can see it is so heartbreaking. The texture of it is so important, every crack, bump, carving, drip of glaze, or rawness of a surface unglazed is vital to my own experience with it, and I want others to have the opportunity to understand an artwork in that way.

Do you have any projects planned in the near future?

Yes! As a culmination of ongoing research in the psychology of addiction, I will be creating an installation with found cigarette packs. I have been gathering littered packs for almost a year now, with approximately 200 collected so far. I’ve paused collecting due to the risk with COVID-19 of course. I hope to eventually continue when it is safe to do so. The project explores guilt/shame culture, while simultaneously romanticizing/normalizing habits. In 2020 plain packaging for tobacco products became mandatory in Canada (as well as in Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Turkey, Israel, and Singapore) which I found to be a really interesting and impactful shift.

monica_oralcancer_cigarette — Monica Joy Peeff. *Found Pack of Next Original.* Ink and Watercolour on paper. 2020.

186 cigarette packs — Monica Joy Peeff. *ongoing collection of cigarette packs.* 2020.

One of my friends (and favourite artists as well), Angie Quick in an interview with McIntosh Gallery, spoke to how, especially with her home studio, her life and her practice blends together. In this, she said, “Everything I do can be my art practice; so if I’m making muffins, I’m making art, and if I’m going for a bike ride, I’m making art, and so in this way, it’s like my whole life became the art-making”.

This ideology of every aspect of my existence contributing to my being as an artist has been very impactful to me. I’ve been spending a lot of time dancing, which is something I would like to incorporate into my practice publicly. Although I am still learning to be comfortable recording myself dancing or doing it in front of others. Recently I skyped someone I met online and they had referred to the act of dance as “an unspoken physical connection with another human being”. Self-isolation has made me crave this more than ever, I’m aware of how vital going out to dance was to my mental and physical health, so naturally my art practice [as well].

I am attempting to shift my practice into a more collaborative, cross-disciplinary and performative direction. I think there’s such an invisible barrier between artists and viewers because often when I talk to someone who isn’t an “artist” I hear, “I can’t even draw a stick figure!” In reality that’s not it, you don’t need to be able to draw a stick figure to be an artist. You can draw poorly, or you don’t even need to draw at all. Art goes beyond every medium.

To see more of Monica’s work, you can follow them at @mjpdraws and on their website.

In Discussion with Nathalie Quagliotto: Safety Yellow, Play, and Pilot Art List

NQuagliotto_new-carts_600 — *Twisted Reality*, fused damaged metal shopping carts colliding, 2014.
Presented in Sudbury for the FAAS4 May residency organized by the Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario.

Questions by Adi Berardini

Nathalie Quagliotto’s sculptures add a sense of playfulness to conceptual art. By using play and the uncanny, Nathalie challenges what a typical gallery experience can look like for viewers. She looks at architecture and questions how the materiality of everyday spaces can form our experiences. Quagliotto is well-known for using “safety yellow” in her work adapted from the industrial yellow found in caution signs or playgrounds, making subversive statements that often linger between innocence and adulthood or caution and action. Additionally, by using the language of consumer culture such as neon signs and shopping carts, she makes us consider our roles within larger societal structures. She has recently started PILOT: Art List featuring paid opportunities for artists.

Quagliotto is a Toronto and Montreal based conceptual and social practice artist. She received an MFA in sculpture from the University of Waterloo in 2009 and a BFA in studio art from Concordia University in 2007. In 2008, she was Martin Creed’s studio assistant in London, England. She has shown nationally and internationally, such as the Museum of Design in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and her work is in private and public collections, such as the Collection Majudia in Montreal, Quebec. She has shown at various artist-run centres and galleries across Canada, namely the Khyber Centre for the Arts, the AGO, Blackwood Gallery, UAS, Neutral Ground, Langage Plus, the Art Gallery of Mississauga, and the Estevan Art Gallery. Additionally, she has partaken in residencies, such as the Calumet artist residency in Indiana, the Accessibility CMD+R media art residency in Tennessee, USA, and more recently the Vancouver International Sculpture Biennale artist residency.

I was wondering if you could explain your interest in subverting everyday objects? Are you interested in their connection to the uncanny or how they can critique social structures?

I like to take everyday objects in my work, whether it’s a neon sign, a lollipop, playground objects, or tote bags (the list can go on and on) and reconfigure them ever so slightly that your interaction and relationship with them is disrupted. I like that an object can get really unsettling when you change its intended purpose or form.

It seems that you use interventions that encourage play, like tic tac toe in your piece ‘Maturity Turn’ Can you explain more about the sense of play, intimacy and social connection you explore in your practice?

Yes, this is particularly evident in the playground installations I’ve created, like in this piece you mention, “Maturity Turn”. Such installations are participatory and play on the notion of how a form or structure can be safe at the same time as it can be a challenge, and how the invitation to play with the work can act this out.

My interest in the playground sculptures and installations lie in play theory and incorporating the history of playgrounds as being objects of social reform. Playgrounds have a long history, from the early 1900s, of making a gradual change to society by improving the lives of the public through play. The more dangerous a structure was, the more challenging it was and thereby made a person more productive in other aspects of their life. These structures, built quite high at the time, have disappeared because of being labeled as dangerous. Lower playgrounds appeared in the second half of the 1900s, specifically around the time of the playground construction boom of the 1960s. Many of these metal and concrete playground pieces have also gradually disappeared in our time and are being replaced by safer plastic items: the kind of metal structures that playground architects Paul Friedberg and Richard Dattner would have agreed on in the 1960s and 1970s. I am attracted to such older objects because they were once solid, acceptable pieces to be placed in public. However, as time progressed, so did ideas surrounding public safety, and this affected social reform through time.

NQuagliotto_galleryarena — Nathalie Quagliotto. Gallery Intervention. 2013. Photo by Toni Hafkenscheid. Courtesy of the artist.

I notice that you use signifiers of capitalist ventures (like neon signs etc.) for public interventions, for example, in Gallery Intervention where you place a neon sign that says “Gallery” in the hockey arena. I was wondering if you could speak more about this piece? In what ways are you interested in these unconventional signifiers?

This was a rather quirky intervention! I was invited by the Blackwood Gallery of the University of Toronto Mississauga campus to create an installation for “Door to Door 6” back in 2013 and the point of the exhibition series was to place art completely outside of an art context. I decided to place three yellow neon signs that read the word “GALLERY” in the Streetsville hockey arena in the Vic Johnston Community Centre in Mississauga. By placing commercial gallery signage in a completely different environment where it would normally be found, the project created a type of pop-up art space. The gallery context was transformed into a site-specific intervention that pushed the public who possibly had little experience with art to think about what an artwork, an exhibition, and a gallery could potentially be.

I’ve used neon various times for different installations and interventions. I think neon as an object has an incredible potential to attract attention because it can get kind of strange and unsettling if you take it out of its commercial context of store and restaurant windows in society.

D.D_N.Quagliotto.TH-14_600 — Nathalie Quagliotto. Gallery Intervention (2013) Photo by Toni Hafkenscheid courtesy of the artist.

Your work seems to bring a sense of critique to the gallery itself. I was wondering you could speak more to the critique of the gallery space and your approach through your work?

I like to disrupt conventional notions of behavior in the gallery context and allow people to hang out and interact with the work. I like to encourage participation. This I’d say is more evident in my installations and sculptures involving playground equipment or general objects of play in the gallery context where I invite the audience to touch the objects.

Who are some artists that you admire or look to for inspiration?

Lately, I’ve really been into Alicia Eggert’s and Alejandro Diaz’s neon work.

Do you find that there are challenges working as a conceptual artist in a male-dominated art world? If so, what are some challenges?

I’d like to see more women land museum shows. Also, I definitely think there are challenges that women artists face on a commercial level in terms of selling artwork.

Nathalie Quagliotto. Carry Yourself. 2019. As part of Vancouver Biennale.

Can you speak more about Pilot: Art List? What was the inspiration behind starting this new project?

The project started in November 2018 as a way to encourage a multitude of professional artists out there to only apply to opportunities from institutions and galleries that pay them. I look at calls all the time and I have for years, and I have to say that in the 10 years I’ve been out of my MFA degree, I’ve never found a list on any platform on only funded calls, so I finally decided to make one. This is probably the most beneficial list that an artist can sign up to and it comes out every two weeks. I got the word out through social media over the past year and there are currently hundreds of artists signed up to the list across Canada and in the USA. The calls on each list are researched and hand-picked for funded exhibitions, residencies, fellowships, and public art primarily from Canada and the USA. Right now, artists can sign up at https://nathaliequagliotto.com/PILOT-ART-LIST . I honestly think this is one of the best social projects I’ve created because of the number of artists it’s actively helping.

You can view more of Nathalie’s work at https://nathaliequagliotto.com/.

Profiles on Practice: Christina Battle

Christina Battle. BAD STARS, Installation documentation, Trinity Square Video, 2018, Photo by Jocelyn Reynolds. Courtesy of the artist.

By Nadia Kurd

“The weather,” writes scholar Christina Sharpe, “necessitates changeability and improvisation; it is the atmospheric condition of time and place; it produces new ecologies.” For Sharpe, ‘the weather’ represents the social and political climate that shapes and produces anti-Blackness. The weather is contextual and ongoing. It is both the condition and the resulting effect on Black life in the aftermath of slavery.^[i]

It is within the complexity of ‘the weather’ that Edmonton-based, media artist Christina Battle wants to articulate her interests in disasters and imagine how we cope and respond to change. The concept of disasters —be they social, political, ecological fallouts or otherwise —are the focus of Battle’s art practice. The interconnected nature of past events, history and ideas can manifest in contemporary disasters and as a result, continually create new circumstances and a need to address survival. In her work, Battle also looks at how these ideas and actions are circulated and communicated through social media.

Christina Battle. Portrait courtesy of the artist.

Her process begins broadly by reading and gathering information and images online. As Battle moves through her research, she also quickly makes gifs and other digital images “as a way to reflect on our larger visual sphere.”^[ii] Her work brings together digital images and text to animate them in a variety of ways. Sometimes spontaneous, many of these pieces are either reworked or further developed into larger projects. For Battle, “different strategies are taken up depending on the issue at hand. If I’m thinking about satellite mapping and issues related to how we engage with tools that are continually tracking us…the work pulls from aesthetics reminiscent of those technologies.”^[iii]

What drives Battle’s practice is her interest in how people use varying modes of communication with one another. “We don’t seem to be doing a very good job,” reflects Battle, “of even recognizing, let alone admitting the problems we face and that drives a certain sense of urgency for me.”^[iv]

Christina Battle. Notes to Self, video still (2014-ongoing). Courtesy of the artist.

Her ongoing video-based work Notes to Self (2014-present), addresses this sense of urgency. In the videos, Battle records the burning of paper, which features short phrases and words. Often lasting a few seconds, the notes mimic the visual and sound bites of social media. However, as Battle writes, this work is also unlike social media as “the fate of these updates is controlled and finite, existing only for a few seconds before being completely destroyed.”^[v]

Christina Battle. BAD STARS, Installation documentation, Trinity Square Video, 2018, Photo by Jocelyn Reynolds. Courtesy of the artist.

In the multi-video installation work, Bad Stars (2018) Battle examines the theme of disaster from an astronomical perspective. Primarily a multi-screen and image installation, the exhibition of this work also brought together a collaborative group of individuals who “to help forward the discussion, beginning with the invitation to contribute to a wall of photographic imagery included in the exhibition.”^[vi] The parallel multidisciplinary discussions and presentations that occurred at Trinity Square Video in 2018, allowed for,

… room for those from various disciplines to come together for shared conversation and experience, programming invites those actively researching and working to tackle issues of disaster into the space of the gallery.^[vii]

The participatory aspect of this installation allows for the images and videos in the installation to be grounded in tangible realities. Though not similarly interactive, the billboard project the view from here (2019) immerses images into the built environment. Mirroring the impact of advertising, the large-scale collage billboard merges satellite images (from where the works are located) and the texts to evoke self-reflection on situational environmental themes such as “How to Sense What You Cannot See” and “Locate Yourself”. In presenting these large-scale digital images, curator Jayne Wilkinson notes that the work, “asks viewers and passers-by to consider how the digital infrastructure and global networks are obscured by the surfaces of the sea.”^[viii]

Christina Battle. the view from here, Capture Photography Festival, 2019. Documentation by roaming-the-planet.

A large part of her creative work has included curating exhibitions. In 2020, Battle will be organizing a group exhibition titled Grasping at the Roots at the Mitchell Art Gallery (Grant MacEwan University, Edmonton). While still in development, this upcoming exhibition will feature both regional and national Canadian artists who work closely with communities through critical sustained engagement.

With a background in Environmental Biology, film studies and fine arts, Battle is currently completing a Ph.D. in Art & Visual Culture at the University of Western Ontario. As she researches and explores the changing nature of online communications, her work will no doubt shift in order to respond to the complexity of our world. “I am trying to make images as a way of starting conversations with people I don’t know,” writes Battle, “I consider how others might engage with the images and how through images we might come together and form some kind of collective understanding.”^[ix]

To see more of Christina Battle’s art, visit her website or to see her work with seeds and plants visit @c_I_battle on Instagram.

Nadia Kurd (she/her) is an art historian and curator based in Amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta). She tweets @nadia_kurd and more of her work can be found on nadiakurd.com.

^[i] Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 104.

^[ii] Christina Battle, interview by author, Edmonton, AB, August 4, 2019.

^[iii] Ibid.

^[iv] Ibid.

^[v] Christina Battle, Artist Website: http://cbattle.com/, (accessed August 4, 2019).

^[vi] Ibid.

^[vii] Ibid.

^[viii] Capture Photofest. “Signals in the Sea”, https://capturephotofest.com/public-installations/signals-in-the-sea/ (accessed August 4, 2019).

^[ix] Artist interview with Author.

The Art of Fugue: In Conversation with Emilie Crewe

Questions by Adi Berardini

Emilie Crewe’s The Art of Fugue is a multi-channel video installation featuring five women working in trade industries. The Art of Fugue is edited using the traditional musical structure of a fugue, which is a compositional technique using multiple voices built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning. Each screen acts as a singular voice, interweaving together and contributing to the artwork as a whole. Highlighting women in trades is both an aesthetic decision and a symbolic choice. The piece captures the strength and resilience found in a performer whose work is in a typically male-dominated field.

Emilie Crewe is an interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her artwork often takes the form of video installation, single-channel video, multi-channel video, and sketch-work (drawings, collections & archives). She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. Her work is exhibited internationally in galleries, museums, artist-run centres, experimental film/video festivals, and as public art.

In the Art of Fugue, you combine the actions of women working in trades that are viewed as male-dominated and masculine to the musical composition of a fugue. How did you first arrive at the idea of featuring women in trades and paralleling the film to ideas of music and composition?

The concept began with research that I was doing at the time, which was centered on the neuroscience of music. I wanted to make an artwork that embodied musical properties and structure but did not incorporate literal music. My intentions were for viewers to sense rhythm, cadence, and tone within their bodies.

The subject matter [focusing on] women in trades came after the decision to create a video using fugue structure (For reference, The Oxford Dictionary’s definition of a fugue is, a polyphonic composition in which a short melodic theme, the subject, is introduced by one part or voice, and successively taken up by the others and developed by their interweaving).

Trade industries and labour jobs have always been of interest to me as an artist since I relate to the act of using your hands to create something. There is a direct connection between the brain and the hands that has always fascinated me. I appreciate the process, investigative aspects and problem-solving within these specific jobs, and find that there is a distinct creative component to trade-work that I admire. There is beauty in functionality and repetition. I chose to work with women working in trade industries because of an [inclination] I have to feature characters that are somewhat “unseen”.

EmilieCrewe_MegIredale_3 — Emilie Crewe. *The Art of Fugue: A Polyphonic Instrumental Video Featuring Five Women in Trades still. 2019. Courtesy of the artist.*

Can you explain more about your process organizing the sounds, footage, and editing?

I went into this project knowing that the editing would be a challenge. I had never worked with five channels of video before, and I don’t think I really understood how complicated it would be until I began to sort through the footage. After the shoots, I had over forty hours of footage to catalogue. I narrowed the content down to about twenty hours of usable footage and then spent several days sitting at my desk feeling confused as to where to start.

At this point, I knew that I had to step away from the computer, and begin editing “by hand.” Using a system of colour-coded sticky notes, I began making connections between the different trades and the physical movements of the five performers. For example, I would write down a note that would say, “Meg looks up,” and would pair this with another note that said, “Kate looks up,” After arranging these notes on the wall, I transferred the components that I liked into a notebook to work with at my desk.

The artwork was edited in Adobe Premiere Pro in one timeline that was divided into five channels, each colour-coded to represent a different performer in the video. All of the editing was done using a metronome set to four beats per measure and eighty beats per minute. This is a very typical time signature used in musical compositions, and it helped me to keep time and work using a structured rhythm. The sound was the last component that I worked on, utilizing a mixture of live audio from the shoots, as well as my own Foley sounds that I recorded at home using audio equipment from VIVO Media Arts Centre in Vancouver.

Editing Notebook — Emilie Crewe. Artist’s process book. 2019. Courtesy of the artist.

In researching this project and filming in the women’s workspaces, what were some of the things you discovered about women working in trades? Did they share their struggles and/or successes in their careers?

I think a lot of people are fairly open-minded these days, especially here on the West Coast, but I do have an understanding that entering into a typically male-dominated job force as a woman comes with some stigma and possible [hesitation] from prospective employers.

With the nature of the work that I was creating, I talked with each performer about barriers that they had come across, from customers making inappropriate comments to contending for jobs amongst male competitors. It was interesting hearing about the experiences of the performers that I was working with, and I learned a great deal about what it’s like to work in their respective industries.

The machinist, for example, was working in a large factory in Delta, of which she was the only female employee. There was great sociability between her coworkers that she was very much a part of, so that was nice to see.

Three of the five of the women that I worked with are small business owners. The plumber, Mary-Anne, employs an all-women crew, which is great for women seeking apprenticeships in the industry. The most notable takeaway I think has been the realization of having to prove your worth simply because of your gender. These things come up in a lot of different industries, including the art world, but within the trades, it seems important to show physical assertiveness.

If there are any readers that are interested in these types of barriers within trade work, I highly recommend the book, Journeywoman: Swinging a Hammer in a Man’s World, by Kate Braid. It’s a fascinating look at the experience of a Canadian woman working as a carpenter. She mentions several situations where contractors would look her up and down, and then basically say, “no way,” all based on the simple fact that she was a woman.

EmilieCrewe_BrandieDoucette2 — Emilie Crewe. *The Art of Fugue: A Polyphonic Instrumental Video Featuring Five Women in Trades still. 2019. Courtesy of the artist.*

Has your view transformed as to how gender comes into play for women and the workplace after creating this film?

I’m not sure if my view has transformed or changed, rather it has been expanded. With many scenarios, the more information that we take in, the better our understanding is. Being a woman myself, I have always had an awareness of how gender comes into play in the workplace. Creating The Art of Fugue has certainly broadened my perspective. Documenting these women at work served as a great inspiration as well, and I often came away from shoots feeling a sense of encouragement, optimism, and admiration.

Who are some artists/filmmakers that influence you as an artist?

Two meaningful influences for me have been Pipilotti Rist and Eija-Liisa Ahtila, both video installation artists [who are women]. [I have also been influenced] by the sound and video work of Janet Cardiff and Georges Bures Miller. Artists that work in ways that envelop viewers, especially in terms of creating an immersive installation, always spark that creative drive in me.

When it comes to filmmakers, I love the work of Jesper Just,  György Pálfi  and Roy Andersson; all people working with moving images in strange, visceral ways. Really, I’m drawn to work that makes my senses stir, literally and metaphorically.

Editing Timeline — Emilie Crewe. Artist’s editing process. 2019. Courtesy of the artist.

Do you have any other projects planned in the future that you would like to share?

Currently, I’m working out the logistics for a new multi-channel video featuring a female musician. I’ve secured some grant funding from the Canada Council to head to Winnipeg and shoot with Julia McIntyre, a prominent Canadian bass trombonist. I will be working with the theme of a musical toccata, which is a quick, virtuosic musical interlude that shows off a performer’s “touch.”

This will be the first time that I have experimented with using a musician as a performer in my work, so I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of this project. A lot of my creative process happens in post-production. I go into a video shoot quite intuitively, usually ending up with a wealth of footage to sort through, as I did with The Art of Fugue. So, I can’t really say how this will turn out, although I have some images in my head that I’m playing with.

I’ve always wondered how a classical composer can write a symphony with so many components and instruments and know how it is going to sound. I guess the answer is that you really can’t know until you have an orchestra in front of you to play the music. You can test the melodies and harmonies out all you want on a piano, but it will only exist as an imaginary sound in your mind until you have people to play it for you. Video is in some ways like this. I can imagine an artwork, but until I am actually shooting with a subject and then “composing” the timeline in the editing phase, I really have no idea what I’m going to come away with.

You can find out more about Emilie Crewe’s The Art of Fugue on the project website and on her Instagram @emiliecrewe.

In Conversation with Rae Spoon: Mental Health

Rae Spoon1 — Rae Spoon portrait by Dave Todon. Courtesy of the artist.

Questions by Adi Berardini

Rae Spoon is an award-winning, non-binary musician and author whose music bridges indie pop, rock, folk-punk and electronic. Spoon owns and runs an indie record label called Coax Records that has released fifteen albums by Canadian and international artists. They have also been nominated for two Polaris Prizes, a Lambda Literary Award and a Western Canadian Music Award. A strong songwriter and performer who has toured for over 20 years, Spoon’s music is often connected to social activism/change, especially within the LGBTQ2+ community.

Rae Spoon’s latest album Mental Health addresses their own experience with mental health and the issues that arise in LGBTQ2+ communities while navigating the stigma around both mental health and queerness. Spoon describes that “I often think of albums in themes and that will often guide my writing. I try to tie in the songs in terms of that so there’s some continuity between them.” Spoon is well known for their insightful and introspective lyrics, and their new album is initiating the conversation that we need to be having about mental health.

I noticed that water is a particular theme in your music. I was wondering if you could talk about this inspiration and what water symbolizes to you?

I moved to Lekwungen speaking people’s territories in Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ territory, otherwise known as Victoria, BC. I have lived on the west coast before, but it has been a while since I lived in Victoria. I live where the pipeline would be, intersecting with the ocean. We all know it’s a big deal in terms of politics right now. There’s a great deal of activism with Indigenous people not wanting the pipeline to be built and the government pushing back, the federal government especially. I feel even more tied to this issue especially being from Alberta originally. [As a result,] I feel especially connected to the water around. That’s how the water theme started and why there’s often landscapes and waterscapes in my songs.

Your book Gender Failure is a collection of autobiographical essays, lyrics, and images documenting co-author Ivan E. Coyote’s and your personal journey from “gender failure to gender enlightenment,” based on your live tour. I was wondering if you could talk more about this tour and the inspiration behind the book?

We started the stage show for Gender failure in about 2013, and it premiered in an off-Broadway theatre in New York. It was the first multi-media narrative show I was doing so I was very nervous.

It was interesting since we were connecting with local audiences in New York about all of these Canadian stories of growing up. It was pretty cool, we could see it was something that was really connecting people despite that since we were talking about the strict gender binary and the rules of the patriarchy or sexism. You would always end up at some point in your life when you’re like “I don’t wanna do that.” Even the people who are benefitting from it [are affected by] how toxic the masculinity is.

We were going to make a show about being transgender and/or non-binary and we realized we made the show about how the gender binary is failing everybody, connecting a lot of people when I look back. We made it into a big show, we did two sets and toured with it for a couple years and we did some in London I think and across North America and Canada. In that process, we figured out some of the book and we added more pieces to create it. Our friend Clyde Petersen who is in Seattle did the live visuals for the show and made the illustrations and visuals for the book.

I saw you in London at the brewery on top of the Root Cellar. I remember that it was really creative and intimate, it was really special. I was wondering what your favourite part of touring smaller communities and maybe difficulties with that as well?

It’s really nice to go to small communities often since the LGBTQ2+ scene is really supportive. Although I’ve also had the same things happen to me in downtown Toronto as I’ve had in small communities. I’ve had issues getting yelled at—it can happen anywhere that the people can be oppressive or violent. However, I don’t usually stick to large cities, I like how supportive it is being there in small communities.

Before I learned to drive it was a challenge to tour on the Greyhound and tour in Western Canada, but now that I can drive it’s a lot easier. It’s great, I can also make my own hours. Often a lot of different people have to hang out since it’s not big enough to separate people into groups. The [different] scenes and the sort of queer scenes will often be connected which I like, with different ages and different backgrounds.

I see that you have started an indie label, Coax, which supports LGBTQ2+ and under-represented artists through community building. Do you have any advice for gender non-conforming/non-binary musicians who are just starting out in the music industry?

I am really all about community building. I think one of the best ways to meet other musicians is to support the music community, so when you’re starting out going to other shows and you then meet the musicians who are playing or supporting college radio, volunteering at festivals, you can meet a lot of people there who like music. The easiest way to try and build a following is to meet a lot of people who like music.

To be able to tour as a new act helps that, you can meet people from other towns, and you trade having people at the shows so that they know who you are. The best way to start out, in the beginning, is to help out other people and it can help you as well. It’s great to build more live scenes and music opportunities.

Print — Rae Spoon, *Mental Health*. The album will be out on August 16, 2019.

You have an album coming out in August called Mental Health. I was wondering if you could talk about the inspiration behind the album?

The beginning of the inspiration behind [the album] is the communities I am in, and also my own mental health stuff that I face. I think music can sometimes make space for that. I wrote songs about my own journey with mental health and the different perspectives [I’ve had] during my life.

I think there’s still a lot of stigma about mental health and stigma around queerness and [being] LGBTQ+. It’s important to make space for marginalized communities. Often, we lack services, or you can’t go to the hospital since they’re not going to get your pronoun right. Trauma issues aren’t going to go away but there are ways to find different tools. I was thinking a lot about that and also that it’s not something that needs to be cured. Like getting out of ‘caring’ culture [which doesn’t address mental health as an ongoing struggle], and instead, talking about the everyday journeys of survival.

Check out Rae Spoon’s latest album Mental Health which comes out on August 16th, 2019.

The album launch for Rae Spoon’s Mental Health and celebration of the long-list Polaris nominations for Kimmortal’s X Marks the Swirl and LAL’s Dark Beings is happening on August 14 at Fox Cabaret in Vancouver, BC.