In association with the Inside Out Film Festival, Marcin Wisniewski is curating a film screening at Videofag based on an unusual concept. “The idea was to explore the theme What’s Your Sex? through videos made with smartphone technology,” he says.
In addition to soliciting submissions from the general public, he commissioned three local artists to produce responses to this question. Their contributions will be informed by their varied backgrounds and interests. Wisniewski explains: “Julian Calleros is a Mexican-born artist who’s very much concerned with the immigrant homosexual experience; Kiley May is a First Nations genderqueer person concerned with gender and two-spiritedness and the place of First Nations within the Canadian historical narrative; and Mark Pariselli is more narrative-driven and has worked with John Greyson.”
The question “What’s your sex?” is deliberately vague “so that the artist submitting the work has to interpret it on their own. What is it? Is it gender? Is it how you have sex? Who you have sex with?” Wisniewski says.
Independent production house Trinity Square Video will do post-production on the three commissioned works, and Inside Out will post the videos online following the screening. “Videofag has this curatorial freedom to do what you want, so long as it fits their parameters of queer performance. You wouldn’t get that at a lot of Inside Out venues,” Wisniewski says.
He has high hopes for submissions: “We’ve gotten some really fun ones. Some are more conceptual about it, but some take it pretty literally – but I’m still looking for some hardcore.”
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