Becoming an Image, Perth Festival, at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, 2019. Photo: Cassils with Manuel Vason. Image courtesy of Cassils and Ronald Feldman Gallery
I have to admit, I was a little nervous going into a one-on-one interview with Canadian-born transgender artist Cassils, being conscious of getting the nomenclature correct and avoiding the eddies of hype and preconception.
But beneath the rippling physique of this internationally celebrated performance artist, who engages their body as highly-charged social sculpture, Cassils was softly spoken, warm and generous; more than willing to share their thoughts and insights with the Australian arts community.
The artist was in Perth to deliver Becoming an Image, a work first performed in 2012 in Los Angeles at ONE Archives. The Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) presented this work on 8 February 2019 as part of their exhibition Alchemic, for the Perth Festival. It continues through to 14 April.
Read: Alchemic by Cassils, PICA, Perth
Q &A with Cassils
ArtsHub: Given the noise and visibility for trans artists and art making at the moment, what is the message that you want to ensure gets through all that hype?
Cassils: It can be frustrating as an artist to have your work looked at from only one vantage point – a trans artist, a black artist, a woman artist. It is something that has happened in history over and over again. The only person that gets a neutral read is a white male artist: “it’s so interesting; it’s about structuralism, it’s about representation,” as opposed to a trans artist where it is: ”tell me about your genitals”.
While trans identity is part of my work, it is certainly not the sole condition … the merit of one’s work is not only related to one’s subjectivity, so I am not purely interested in making art that speaks to trans-subjectivity.
I believe you can use art as an imaginative Trojan horse to bypass a lot of the protocols we take for granted.
ArtsHub: This is the first time your work has been presented in Australia. Why place that first show in a festival environment, and did that make sense in terms of amplifying your message to a broader audience?
Cassils: I am not in a position where I get to say, “I’d like a show at this museum!” Often it is an organic experience of people finding you, and you finding them – a resonance of sorts. I was approached by Wendy Martin [Perth Festival’s Artistic Director].
I was trained in visual arts. In North America, I think it is a slightly different trajectory for “live art” where performance art is more in line with visual arts. But in the UK, and perhaps here, theatre and performance art tend to have more of an interlocking history. [The attention on my work here] then, I guess is that it is such a visual approach to performance.
Artshub: You presented workshops for emerging trans artists both in Sydney and Perth as part of your visit. Why was that important for you?
Cassils: There is a tremendous hyping of trans artists – right now it’s ‘trendy’ – and the people from my generation were never given that platform. There are many of those artists in Australia, and I wonder why it takes me, an international coming in, to have this experience?
So I go to thinking, while it is great that I am here, but why am I here? Why isn’t a local [involved]? Upon reflection, I wish I had partnered with a local artist of my generation and that we did a more inter-generational thing, and if I am to be a springboard of sorts, then to create a more embedded linkage.
As a trans artist, I don’t have a lot of people to look to who look like me – especially coming from California where a whole generation of artist was wiped out by AIDS. I find it incredibly fruitful [looking at art history] – as someone who doesn’t have that mentorship – as a way of looking to artists who have come before me and to pick up on those strategies.
Cassils, Becoming an Image, 2012-2019; Clay bash (remnant of the performance), wallpaper and photos (documentation of the performance, photos by Manuel Vason and Cassils). Photo by Susie Blatchford. Courtesy of the artist and Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts.
ArtsHub: The performance Becoming an Image on 8 February at PICA which saw you box a 900kg obelisk of clay in complete darkness for over 30 minutes, was clearly physically challenging. How emotionally challenging is it to perform that work, and how has that altered across venues and time?
Cassils: I train for this work six to eight weeks beforehand, six days a week for at least 1.5 hours. While it is physically demanding, it is something I am very prepared for. Simply, “I woke up this morning and I worked out”.
All my work has a corporeal demand and I seek guidance to prepare for that. That is I meet with a good stunt coordinator or medical doctor to find out about hypothermia or alignment and the impact on tendons from striking clay, and how to condition your body to receive that force.
This is the 15th performance of this piece – it will be my life’s work. Since I made it in 2012, looking at the photos you can see an ageing process in my body. I want to do this til I am 85, and the master work will be a huge time-lapse video.
Read: Review Alchemic by Cassils, PICA
ArtsHub: Tell us more about your philosophy of training as a metaphor for transformation?
Cassils: I don’t believe any of us are fixed. My approach to trans is not about being trapped in the wrong body and that you have to go from Body A to Body B. I believe we are always in this constant state of becoming, and all my work problematises the concept of identity.
All these different ways of speaking to a concept – the way the body is mutated to visually enforce that concept – is not stable, it is responding to an environment. We are all reflections of the feedback we are receiving and that is true whether sitting at a desk eating Cheetos or as a victim of racism. All of these things have an affect on our minds, but also the physiology of our bodies. The training and endurance is so I can push beyond what is expected of what the body can do.
Becoming an Image, Perth Festival, at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, 2019. Photo: Cassils with Manuel Vason. Image courtesy of Cassils and Ronald Feldman Gallery
ArtsHub: Essentially, audiences enter a kind of verbal contract with you to view this work, which is an interesting role of active consideration that it asks of the audience. Tell us more about this?
Cassils: It is not about making it horrible – there are all these elements of consent and it is well spelled out. It is not just a case of purchase a ticket and buy some popcorn – the audience is very much part of the work.
There is so much inundation in our world, that sometimes doing something outside our comfort zone is about being in the present. I think if the audience is afraid to experience this work it speaks of how low our tolerance is.
ArtsHub: I was in the front row of the performance and one of the anonymous audience that you touched, an incredibly intimate gesture in the midst of something quite violent and introspective. Tell me about that action to reach out to the audience?
Cassils: The original impetus of this performance was a response to ONE Archives in LA, which was filled with the work of all dead gay men. I decided to make a piece about whose history gets recorded and who is left outside in the dark.
There is this interest in the problems of trans representation, but as we are having an increase in representation, we are also getting an increase in violence against trans people. This idea of trying to destabilise the idea of consuming and voyeurism is very much a part of it.
Touching the audience is a way of breaking that divide between passively looking and witnessing and what it is to be in these moments of heightened violence and to do nothing. It is about being hyper present.
The installation in the gallery space reflects that by taking the audience – images of them watching – and blowing them up.
I am really taking that idea of being captured, and playing it out, choosing to use a white male photographer [who is shooting in pitch darkness].
He is blind; he can’t frame me. I am taking away his ability and I am blind as well and so is the audience, so all of us are being forced into this present moment.
ArtsHub: Becoming an Image wasn’t just the performance. That period of digestion was highly compressed. You performed, you filtered the images taken, and then you created a wallpaper overnight as a document, a backdrop for the installation. Was this new for Perth?
Cassils: I haven’t pulled an all-nighter for an artwork since art school! And yes, it was Eugenio [Viola, PICA Senior Curator] who suggested it. We talked a long time on Skype moving into this show.
L-R: Alchemic curators Anne Loxley, Eugenio Viola and Cassils; image courtesy PICA
ArtsHub: Memory is an interesting player in this project. All day after the event I had flash-back moments. How much of that retinal burn – that afterimage of the flash with dilated pupils – is intentional in terms of constructing thought that lingers in our consideration? It is an incredible imprint to leave someone.
Cassils: It is hyper intentional! Especially if you think of the impetus of the work was created in response to an archive – it is about hijacking the body of the audience and physiologically making them living archivists. And the fact that it is such a jarring experience means that it is something that ruptures.
We researched pushing the retinal burn further, and we developed this technique with a ring flash, but they wouldn’t let us bring that piece of equipment into Australia – there are so many rules here! This burn we developed was so crazy I couldn’t tell whether my own arms were in the clay or by my side.
Artshub: Any concluding comments?
Cassils: When you walk around in my body, because I don’t shoot testosterone and don’t have a deep voice, and haven’t had a double mastectomy, I am perceived as an angry lesbian. I do not identify as a lesbian. Just being in this body I am constantly being misread, misperceived on a daily basis.
Being in a body is an interaction with society and you have the opportunity to change the form of that interaction. I don’t see that as something that stops with art.
Gina Fairley’s travel to Western Australia was supported by Perth Festival.
