Through the Looking Glass

This was my ode to Alice, as a biracial girl negotiating a colonized landscape. With good costumes, again. I made Lori Blondeau stay up for two days with me making these outfits. The video is mostly being interrogated about race from two extremes. Lori Blondeau, my auntie, is the Red Queen. Shawna Dempsey plays the White Queen. No Shawna, I don’t think anyone really believes you’re racist. When we were shooting I made Lori say “Us Indian women, we love our men!” and she cracked up right after saying it. This was a fun video to make, and I got to live in Winnipeg for six weeks and hog time at Video Pool, I even got the building code. You know you’re a somebody when you get the building code.

This is what I was basing it on from my youth in the 80’s, along with the original by Lewis Carroll. Honestly, I was projecting a lot when I was six. I didn’t even know this sequence was originally about mathematics.

Mars the Red Planet

Performance at Grunt 2000. I was a neo colonialist captain taking a doomed mission of youth group volunteers to colonize our new land claims settlement on Mars. I was mostly into wearing the costume.

You can find a clip here at the Grunt Archives

My performances make me shy, I was kind of a reluctant performance artist. Doing it alone seemed easier, as with many things in life.

More youtube

Margaret Cho makes me happy. Here she is talking about tokenization.

Mame Project #001
I don’t know what it is about the film Auntie Mame. It’s my Christmas time film. Anyway, this is some one’s interpretation of it. Her sales book is a shambles!

Oberhausen 1999 “Untouchable”

This is me in Oberhausen with the infamous Untouchable. Photo by Nelson Henricks. Yep, I’m standing in front of an Indian Trading Post just around the corner from the Filmpalast. It’s true, they really do have an Indian fetish! I got crabby somewhere along this festival, I think it was the movies all afternoon – evening drinking until 2 at after parties getting up and doing it again for a week that got to me. Man, that’s so intense! I miss festivals.

Love & Numbers

This is a still from the only video I made during the four years on antipsychotics. I translated the names of 12 different pharmaceuticals I had been prescribed into binary code, layered the audio with numbers stations, and talked about global paranoia, love, hospitalization, colonization, and codes.

My Optic Nerve’s The BIGGEST

A typical line drawing of mine. I must have needed to compensate for something the day I drew this.

Lithium

Lithium nearly killed me. This is a lomo photograph taken while driving over the Granville Street Bridge on a typical Vancouver night. It represents the internal feeling I had being on psychiatric drugs.

Anhedonia

This is a still from my grad film Anhedonia. I was still a good consumer then, but I was trying to show how deep depression goes so it got pretty dark. I started sampling more in this film and using audio landscapes instead of just me talking. I also layered the video. My sweet friend Margaret Flood plays the beautiful yet distant girlfriend who shows up and ignores me (just after this frame). She’s a great sport, but every time the cameras roll she gets shy. She and I met in first year and passed notes through art history. She and I laughed at Goya. No really, he did some funny commercial art.

True Love

I was asked to create something for Blackflash’s Love On The Prairies postcard series. My sweet cousin Christopher died on the job just before I made this. I scanned in flower petals, put a filter on it, and drew this angelic creature which seemed to represent either him or my feelings for him. He’s holding a ball of pure light because that’s how I saw him the eve of his burial, just a transcendent ball of loving light. I miss him, we all do.

Christopher Ian Cuthand
February 18 1986 – June 2 2006

Inspirations

It’s funny, I could talk about where I am now but I doubt anyone would believe me. Anyway, these were some of my inspirations when I was eighteen and nineteen.

Bjork – Hunter

David Bowie (feat. Trent Reznor) I’m Afraid of Americans

Garbage – When I Grow Up

Public Image Ltd – Rise

Nowhere by Greg Araki
I watched this movie over and over, James Duvall plays an earnest video artist trying to survive the shallowness of LA. This is the Valley Girl scene. James Duvall is a sweet guy BTW.

Basquiat painting downtown circa 1981
This is when I started thinking more seriously about street art. Later on I also discovered Banksy and have been a fan since.

Jenny Holzer
“Abuse of power comes as no surprise”
A televised text. I was really interested in Jenny Holzer’s use of text as art.

Barbara Kruger
“You are not yourself”

The Smiths – How Soon Is Now
The funny thing about this song is it’s the opening for Charmed, which I watched over and over when I had nothing but a t.v. in Montreal. The dialogue always goes something like “I thought we vanquished the demon.” “No, we forgot our special book, and I don’t think your boyfriend is mortal, I think he’s a dark lord.” “Well do we have to vanquish him too?” “I don’t know I’ll go ask Piper.” Seriously!

The Heads – No Talking Just Head

Peggy Lee – Is That all there is?

Cindy Sherman
This is a fan’s tribute video to her.

Sarah Mclachlan – Sweet Surrender

Gran Fury

Barbara Kruger’s work today: