dialogue.
‘dialogue.’ is a 2-channel video piece that takes on the form of a character exploration skit, written and performed by myself. This project was loosely inspired by the talk “Thinking Critically About Social Determinants of Health”. I resonated greatly with an audience question that came out of this discussion. The presenter was asked, “how do you feel pressured to perform masculinity from within the queer community?” This designation of ‘within’ that the question pointed towards opened up a lot of space for a nuanced discussion about social pressures that are created within queer communities to happen, while also acknowledging that these pressures to relate to larger societal constructs that effectively subjugate queer peoples. We talk a lot about how the outside pressures of heteronormativity make effeminate men feel the need to ‘pass’ or ‘hide’ in order to ensure safety, but it is rarely a discussion when these questions are pointed back towards the self.
The story proposed within ‘dialogue.’ adopts the form of a stereotypical Grindr text conversation and plays with certain tropes from the online cruising simulation app. The skit explores how difficult emotions like internalized homophobia and femmephobia live within us and uncovers how these fears may inform the way we interact with other queer men seeking men and ultimately reflect back onto the ways we view ourselves. The character on the left is wearing make-up to nod towards a more effeminate representation, the right-hand character represents a more masculine trope. They performed simultaneously by myself to express a maximalist understanding of gender-fluidity. Here, the method of the 2-channel video is useful to explore how it is we situate ourselves within, apart, and outside of binary structures in order to understand that there may be more than one singular truth to our very multifaceted, queer, identities. Recently, I’ve been thinking about understanding the ‘they’ pronoun, not as one that is gender-neutral, but one that is gender plural.
James Albers
James Albers (they/he) is an emerging artist, curator, writer, organizer, and performer based on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) territories. They are a recent graduate from the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Their practice often takes a collaborative and community-oriented approach as they see this as a productive way to create new meaning from their lived experiences. James is concerned with exploring the queer potentials of revisionist histories and chooses to believe in the magic of fiction. Recently, James has been thinking through the truth that a perfect lie may hold.