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Becoming an Image

source: heathercassils

Becoming an Image is a piece that works at the interstices of performance, photography, and sculpture. This piece was originally conceived as a site-specific work for the ONE Archives in Los Angeles, the oldest active LGBTQ archive in the United States. Cassils unleashes an attack on a 2000 pound clay block. Delivering a series of kicks and blows in total darkness, the spectacle is illuminated only by the flash of a photographer, burning the image into the viewer’s retina. At Cassils’s solo show at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, 12 photographs were displayed. They were taken by blinded photographers who captured performances from prior exhibitions in London, Montreal, and Los Angeles. These images depict Cassils sweating, grimacing, and flying through the air, a primal force, scarred flesh pummeling blocks of earth.

Accompanying the photographs are two sculptures from 2013. After, a mound of clay from the Becoming An Image performance that took place on the show’s opening night, is a sculpture accompanied by a multichannel sound piece of sharp breaths and wet punches recorded at the event, while The Resillience of the 20% is a violently elegant funerary sculpture made from torqued black concrete. The title of the latter piece underscores a sickening statistic: in 2012, murders of trans men and women around the world increased by 20 percent.

“Becoming an Image smashes the weight of accountability directly on everyone involved — the audience for agreeing to partake in, and by proxy silently approve of, an act they are not completely aware of; the photographer for distancing himself from responsibility by hiding behind the officiality of the lens; and finally even the performer — an exhibitionist punching machine taking refuge in the dark.”

-Bojana Jankovic
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source: heathercassils

Heather Cassils is an artist who uses the physical body as sculptural mass with which to rupture societal norms. Implementing a rigorous physical training practice and queering knowledge of kinesiology and sports science, Cassils formally manipulates the body into a shape that defies gendered expectations.

Bashing through the binaries and the notion that in order to be officially transgendered you have to have surgery or take hormones, Cassils performs trans not as something about a crossing from one sex to another, but rather as a continual becoming, a process-oriented way of being that works in a space of indeterminacy, spasm, and slipperiness. Forging a series of powerfully trained bodies for different performative and formal purposes, it is with sweat, blood, and sinew that Cassils constructs a visual critique and discourse around physical and gendered ideologies and histories.

Drawing on conceptualism, feminism, body art, gay male aesthetics, and Hollywood cinema, Cassils creates a visual language that is at once emotionally striking and conceptually incisive. In this cohesive body of work, a fierce passion is performed through meticulous precision and principled determination.
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source: ihcucsbedu

Heather Cassils is an artist who uses the physical body as sculptural mass with which to rupture societal norms. Drawing on conceptualism, feminism, body art, gay male aesthetics, and Hollywood cinema, Cassils creates a visual language that is at once emotionally striking and conceptually incisive. Bashing through binaries, Cassils performs trans not as something about crossing from one sex to another, but rather as a continual becoming, a process oriented way of being that works in a space of indeterminacy, spasm and slipperiness. Forging a series of powerfully trained bodies for different performantive and formal purposes, it is with sweat, blood and sinew that Cassils constructs a visual critique and discourse around physical and gender ideologies and histories.
Sponsored by the IHC, the Dept. of Theater and Dance, the Resource Center for Gender and Sexual Diversity, and the Dept. of Feminist Studies.
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source: cfileonlineorg

Heather Cassils “performs trans not as something about crossing from one sex to another, but rather as a continual becoming, a process oriented way of being that works in a space of indeterminacy, spasm and slipperiness.” This is according to the artist, whose language is as thoughtful, incisive, and powerful as her performances. With blood and sweat, Cassils sculpts a body that constructs a visual critique of gender norms and gives the viewer little choice but to face their own assumptions.

Body of Work at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts emcompassed Cassils’ engagement with conceptual art, body art, feminism, gay male aesthetics, and Hollywood cinema. It notably included Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture, a montage photograph that documented a 23-week period in which the artist gained 23-pounds of muscle through diet and training, as well as photographs and clay that documented performances of Becoming An Image.

As you take in the photographs and video of Becoming an Image below, keep in mind this description of the performance from Cassils:

Becoming An Image took place in a completely light free environment. The only elements in the space were the audience, a photographer, the performer (myself) and a block of clay weighing 1500 pounds (around the same height as me). Throughout the performance, in the darkness, I used my skills as a boxer/fighter to unleash a full-blown attack where I literally beat the form. (I have been training in MMA and self-defense for the past three weeks in preparation for this piece). A ‘sculpting’ process resulted on account of my blows. For the duration of this performance I was blind, as was the audience, as was the photographer. The only light source emitted came from the flash mounted on the photographer’s camera. This burst of temporary light allowed the live audience to see only suspended moments of the performance, much like a “live” photograph, burning this image into their retina. The performance lasted 24 min. The act of photographing is the only way in which the performance is made visible. The resulting images sometimes captured my movement and sometimes not. The lens filled with the fog of my breath and was speckled with droplets of sweat and dirt as it captured the flying debris.

The performance produces the rare experience of seamlessly intermingling the visceral with the conceptual; neither is given short shrift. It works on many different levels; some of the metaphors almost seem at odds with one another, but they co-exist without friction. The work is what the title says (and a lot more): a physical exercise that aids in maintaining the artist’s image, at the same time that it beats an image into the clay. The “fight” also references Cassils’ struggle to maintain a body image that requires an intense amount of work. The bulk and tone fades quickly if training goes by the wayside. It also alludes to the shocking amount of violence that is directed against transgender people. Cassils points out that queer and transgender people are 28 percent more likely to experience violence and that transgender people of color are twice as likely to experience violence as people of color who aren’t LGBTQ. Cassils would like to see the post-performance hunks of clay installed publicly as monuments to the perseverance of the LGBTQ community.

Again, Cassils’ own articulation of the deeper implications of Becoming An Image is eloquent:

Originally commissioned by the ONE Archives (the oldest active Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning (LGBTQ) organization in the United States.) Becoming an Image addressed LGBTQ archives and the “Ts” and “Qs” often missing from historical records, which exist outside of the lens. BAI brings forth the idea of accountability by directly addressing the role between artist and photographer. Additionally it calls into question the roles of the witness, the aggressor and documenter by building these challenges into the very act of the performance itself.

Heather Cassils, a Canadian artist based in Los Angeles, received a MFA in 2002 for Art and Integrated Media from the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles and is one of the founding members of the performance group the Toxic Titties (2000-2010). Cassils was recognized by the Huffington Post as one of 50 Transgendered Icons as well as LGBT History Month: 30 GLBT Artists And Performers To Follow (2012). A few of Cassils’ many awards include the Long Term Support for Visual Artist Grant from the Canada Council of the Arts (2012-2014); the Visual Arts Fellowship from the California Community Foundation (2012); an Artist Research Grant from Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) (2010); and the Franklin Furnace Performance Art Grant (2009). Cassils’ work has been featured in many museums and galleries around the world, including The National Theater Studio as a part of the SPILL International Festival of Performance; J. Paul Getty Museum’s Pacific Standard Time at LACE and the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives (2012); Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (2012); the ANTI-Contemporary Art Festival in Finland (2012); Kapelica Gallery in Slovenia (2011); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco (2008); and the Museum Moderner Kunst Stifung Ludwig in Austria (2005).
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source: queerpussyblogspot

Heather Cassils, que chegou primeiramente ao olhar do grande público como a figura musculada que beijava Lady Gaga na prisão em “Telephone”, ganhou recentemente o prémio Live Art do ANTI Festival, o primeiro prémio artístico atribuído a performers corporais. Para se ter uma ideia da credibilidade de que este prémio se tentou rodear considere-se que estavam também nomeados Franko B e Frog King, por exemplo. O prémio teve o valor de 30 mil euros, 15 mil euros em dinheiro e 15 mil para financiar uma obra a apresentar no Festival em 2015 (espertinhos, não?).

As suas performances incluem por exemplo o desfigurar dum enorme bloco de barro aos murros, a prática de bodybuilding durante 23 semanas, o encostar a um torso grego em gelo até que ele se derreta e ainda prolongadas contrações musculares que causam tremores involuntários.

Apesar dos seus trabalhos utilizarem como meio uma muscularização masculina dum corpo nascido mulher, dando a impressão de empoderamento, o artista não deixa de frisar que vê o seu corpo como uma escultura conceptual que vai servindo para criticar a pressão social que sentimos para conformarmos os nossos corpos com ideais culturais e estéticos, entre os quais os de género.

Como em muitos performers corporais os rituais e processos de empoderamento correspondem a tentativas de exorcizar sofrimentos físicos e sociais (Cassils esteve bastante doente em adolescente e sabe o que é a transfobia), nem que seja repetindo-os em contexto artificial e de forma controlada. Nesta necessidade de controlo note-se a resistência do artista ao uso de testosterona e/ou cirurgias, e o seu desconforto com o uso de esteróides num dos trabalhos. Não deixa de ser um naturalismo anti-biotecnológico ingénuo num artista que, além de bodybuilder, se apoia em dietas férreas para construir um corpo.

A consciência desta precariedade leva a que Cassils refira várias vezes a insustentabilidade deste corpo pressionado ao consumo e batido em nome de ideiais corporais inatingíveis. Essa (im)possibilidade e pressão está bem patente no título do seu último trabalho, Becoming An Image. É como se todos os corpos precisassem de duplos de cinema para realizarem o trabalho impossível que lhes é pedido nesta guerra.

No entanto, não é apenas pela originalidade trans do seu trabalho que Cassils ganha o prémio. Cassils tem tido o cuidado de dialogar com diversas tradições estéticas, não só da performance como da história da arte em geral (os cânones gregos). Além disso é um artista com plena consciência do poder da imagem fotográfica nos nossos dias e, apesar de se dedicar a performances duracionais efémeras, não descura nunca um trabalho visual sobre as mesmas, que não é nunca um mero registo.