0:06

hello everyone hi harley hi um

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so i’m lindsay sharman i am the curator of the art gallery of alberta i’m very

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happy to be uh joined with harley mormon here as we’re about to go on a tour of

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his new exhibition let’s do the time warp again uh and then we’ll have a bit of a little conversation with him

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afterwards um harley’s exhibition is up right now at the art gallery of alberta and will be up until the end of

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january um the aga and i are situated on 2d6

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territory we are also in edmonton the traditional land of diverse

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indigenous peoples including cree blackfoot metis nicotisou iroquois dene

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inuit and ochipway solto anishinabe i’d also like to acknowledge all of the

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indigenous inuit and metis people who make their homes on territories that intersect the current borders of alberta

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treaty six is also where i first met harley where we were both studying at the university

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of saskatchewan harley is now um on treaty 7. um harley

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is trans and has lived with multiple sclerosis for over a decade while earning a ba in sociology from the

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university of saskatchewan he worked in communications with various queer and cultural

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nonprofits in 2016 he received an mfa from the university of lethbridge where

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he is currently working towards a phd in cultural social and political thought

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and as of monday he is officially a phd candidate so huge congratulations on

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that harley mormon’s visual work takes a playful approach to examining the social

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relations between art artists and institutions and that’s exactly what we’ll do today

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so we have a tour for you um this evening so you’ll see harley and i uh in

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the exhibition talking about uh the work then harley and i will we’ll talk together uh a bit more about the show

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and the themes in the exhibition um so before we get into it um i’d like to

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thank uh epcor and the canada council for their support our online programming is brought to you

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because of the generous support of the epcor hort heart and soul fund and thank

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you also to canada council harley’s exhibition is also in the rbc

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gallery at the aga and was sponsored by rbc thank you to them for their ongoing

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support of artists um so your way of interacting with

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harley and i this evening is through the chat um

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we will take your questions at the end but you don’t need to wait that long to ask them if you have any questions at

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all at any time uh you can pop them in the chat at any time so um yeah without further ado here is our

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tour and then harley and i will be back for questions

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right i’m very excited to be in harley mormon’s exhibition let’s do the time

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warp again with harley to be able to kind of show you around

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and allow everybody to to see the really wonderful works that are in this exhibition and how they

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really all come together in this wonderful space

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so the exhibition takes on a lot of pretty big themes

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the exhibition is about time it’s about queerness it’s about being

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trans it’s about binaries it’s about breaking down

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binaries um it’s about nostalgia

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so there’s really a lot of kind of big ideas sort of swirling around this

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exhibition so just to start us out um harley’s going to talk to us about the first case

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that you see in the exhibition so this case is called mirage

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and mirage is actually the name of the the kind of optical illusion toy in the

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center that looks like a big black ufo um and it’s something that i remember from

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my parents house as being something that i was never allowed to touch because it uh i think was very expensive

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but what it does it’s a a pair of concave mirrors uh and inside

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if you place an object it looks like it’s floating on top of the surface

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so i don’t depending on what angle you’re shooting it from it might look like there’s a

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rainbow floating on there so in this case there are also a whole bunch of erasers

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and mirrors and all the erasers are from my childhood eraser collection

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i i started amassing erasers when i was in probably grade one um

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and most of the erasers that are in this show were actually given to me by my mom

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as bribes basically to to to do school work uh and not complain

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about it and to and to like do well on schoolwork essentially um so

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we made a deal that whenever i got a 100 on an assignment she would give me like

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a little sticker or a tiny sticker or for every number i would like

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she gamified it basically um and so all of these uh these erasers

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were are from like the the mid to late 1980s um and i kept them

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i’m a keeper right so from mirage i’d like to bring

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us to this scoreboard um that’s behind me here one of the things um

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that harley a couple of times has mentioned in our conversations in

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putting together this exhibition is the sense of competitiveness

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and so i think there’s something interesting that um maybe uh harley’s

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mom was sort of trying to capitalize on in in um you know the eraser bribes um

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and you know he’s described several times that you know he has this kind of like internal competitive miss uh and

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you know not really for anything in particular but perhaps with one’s own um achievement or success or things like

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that um and so i think that the scoreboard um is super interesting it’s a very

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bizarre scoreboard we’re not quite sure what it’s tracking and so harley maybe

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you could just share with us a little bit about this work so um this work is called scorekeeper and

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really it was it was meant to uh on purpose be extremely ambiguous

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so you notice um in the reflection that’s being shot right now um you can

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see me and the text on the scoreboard is right side is

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is facing the right side you can read it and the clock looks relatively normal um

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looking at it from the the right direction you’ll notice that everything on the scoreboard including the clock is

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backwards so the clock runs backwards uh and the numbers on the scoreboard are

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lenticular and switch as you direct your uh vision

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toward one year or another they kind of gradually shift between zero and one

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and i liked the idea that it would be extremely ambiguous

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and kind of overtly decorative um so

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um scoreboards usually um keep track of sports but there aren’t very many sports

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or sporty things in this exhibition in fact i am really uh the world’s almost the world’s most unsporty person

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as i was in junior high but i loved the idea of something very visible kind of

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looming over uh you as you moved through the gallery um and looked at things um

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and as for what it’s tracking um it could be tracking

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you um competing against yourself or against

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some sort of imaginary other or anything at all

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or nothing

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so one of the things that i think is particularly interesting or clever in harley’s work

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and in this entire exhibition is that he’s offering us several

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binaries literal like computer binary zeros and ones

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to completely absurd um and so he he sets up these binaries just to kind of

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dissolve them and break them down or kind of highlight their ridiculousness

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and so there’s a lot um in this show

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stickers and erasers are set up as a as a binary young and old

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and so one of the sort of main features and kind of the main works in

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this exhibition are this series of grade school portraits that harley has

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made of more institutional school portraits that he had taken from

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grade 5 to grade 12 with some deviation and then they are paired in lenticulars

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with um contemporary portraits of himself and so when you’re walking

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around them they are kind of blurring and blending back and forth between

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harley now and his younger self and so harley did you want to maybe talk

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press through this work what it means for you and and what you’re trying to convey here

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so like lindsay said in all these works contemporary portraits of me

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taken taken last january but by a photographer in lethbridge angeline simon

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are just opposed against uh institutional portraits that were taken

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in school um in in all but two important cases so

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going from grade five to grade 12 uh you can well you number one you can gradually

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see um what i looked like uh getting older and you can see me like

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through my my awkward like acne-filled teen years and into

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a slightly more confident but still really awkward uh like older teenager um

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and what i was thinking of because all of the contemporary photos were taken at

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the same time uh and they’re layered in different ways uh on the photo like with their their

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paired photos um some of the in some of them uh i’m

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i’m obviously or in some of the photos it it looks as though i’m interacting in some way with

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my younger self um maybe standing side by side or looking at

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in other in other photos um uh our faces are almost exactly paired so

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it’s almost it’s difficult to tell which feature is coming from which portrait uh and for example in the grade five

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portrait it really looks like there’s there’s a young young girl with some sort of amazing

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beard um and i i love it and that like they change and different features

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become visible but it’s quite difficult in the ones where my face is overlaid

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to pick out exactly what is coming from which portrait

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when i was doing this work i was really thinking of um

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okay well it’s kind of a thing um for people when they

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like when they’re thinking about formally transitioning to think a lot about uh like former incarnations or

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versions of themselves even if they don’t think about it in that terms like thinking about um

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their childhood it’s almost a cultural demand that we make of trans people to think about um and like reconcile

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themselves with um anything that might have been signs or trends

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um like or that somehow like proves that they’re

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they really are trans um that’s clearly ridiculous but i did it anyway it’s a

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bit of a stereotype and i’m happy to fall into it um but as i as i went

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through my enormous archive uh of not only erasers and stickers but paperwork

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um from my childhood um and i looked at all these photos and i

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thought like these photos all very much still look like me um and they

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feel kind of like me although i look very different and i noticed that um

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a lot of a lot of the the clothing that i was wearing would still be very much what i

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would pick now my cell really hasn’t changed that much since grade eight i’m unfortunately i don’t know if that’s

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terrible anyway um so when i was pairing them uh i tried to kind of match

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uh the younger institutional portraits um in terms of uh

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in terms of color uh and j uh and general affect

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um like the kind of expression i was making or the kind of

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the kind of thing that i remember feeling um so one of the one of the works that i

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love to tell the story of because it was kind of important in my thinking about this um is actually the story uh about

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grade 11. um because grade 11 was one of the two years that i did not have a

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school portrait taken uh but i do have a portrait that was taken on the day um

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so uh in grade 11 i was kind of a surly kid

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and i wore to school on purpose i dressed up for portrait day

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a blue t-shirt that said this is what a feminist looks like and i put a rainbow button on my pants

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uh and a few other pieces of drainable jewelry and i dyed my hair purple with kool-aid

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it was diet kool-aid that was not a good idea um and i thought okay i’m ready to have my

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picture taken but when i got to school the photographer did not think i looked

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looked presentable enough to have my picture taken and so they declined and told me to come

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back later but i wasn’t able to uh

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and so when i got home uh i drove home and it totally incensed uh

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and in in a fit of like huffiness uh made my mom take my

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portrait uh on this on the day on picture day uh sort of standing in front of my car

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looking upset um and i’ve

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i kept it because it is in fact a record of what i looked like and felt like a

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lot in grade 11. um and so i when i recreated uh or

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i sort of recreated the shot i’m standing on a track beside my tricycle which is

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the equivalent the modern equivalent of my car um

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so in grade 12 the portrait is also a little bit different um in grade 12 where i’m from

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in minnesota it’s um traditional for all high school seniors to have their portrait taken not at school

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but to seek out an independent photographer and go for a photo shoot um

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and these are the photos that are used in the yearbook um so instead of like

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wearing a gown with the rose or the any other local convention um everyone

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has these these portraits that are meant intended to ideally um reflect the personality of

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the person somehow and i was really owly about having to do this photo shoot because i

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i hated the way i looked and i didn’t like the idea of being shot in weird soft focus the way so many portraits of

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other girls in my class were being were being done but eventually i kind of negotiated

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something with my parents uh and the photographer um that i felt reasonably good at uh so here um

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you see me twice um kind of reclining uh on my arm

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uh and in in grade 12 uh it was fall and

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i’m wearing a green sweater uh and you can see i’m wearing a little rainbow necklace kind of similarly to grade 11.

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um yeah it was it was my tiny basically

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invisible uh way of trying to assert myself

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so one of the things that i think is really interesting with the school portraits and this entire exhibition

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is that it’s kind of this practice of knowing oneself

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and there is a certain element of um care for oneself

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at all ages um throughout your life sort of you know looking back to high school and kind of

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giving giving care to those younger versions of yourself but this idea of um

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[Music] do we change how we change uh and kind of those sort of larger

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questions that i think are really interesting to think about when looking at this exhibition um and sort of how we

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change over time um and so time is definitely showing up

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a lot and on this entire wall um there are all of these different um

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clocks and mirrors and so maybe you could just share with us a

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little bit about the clocks your interest in time and kind of what

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this wall is all about okay well

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uh in contrast to uh the school portraits which are on the

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the wall across from us that are very much about simultaneously

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holding the past and present at the same time and trying to reconcile

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those two um the clocks on this wall um they’re quite playful uh and

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some of them don’t really know what they’re doing um so the tops on this wall uh are all

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based more or less on stickers that i received um uh

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like from school so in elementary school the stickers um are mostly based on uh

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stickers that that um are were either given as kind of reward stickers or

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stickers that were that were somehow institutional um so super student right

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here uh is from a set of stickers that came was given out as part of the scholastic

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book fair so at the center of this wall um there

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is this large four and a half foot in diameter clock with

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lenticulars um at uh the the points the the 12 the three the six

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and the nine uh and all this all the the lenticulars

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on this wall uh they are based on stickers um but also their eyes um

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so that the eyes of someone and something is is watching

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you um so all this work was made during a pandemic

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and it was incredibly influential on everything in the show um so

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when i was thinking about time uh and thinking about how it felt like

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not only was i going through um kind of in a time where of emotional kind of

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repeating and continually revisiting that you can kind of see

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in the portrait series that’s on the opposite wall but at the same time it felt like

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i was really kind of stuck um uh for me it definitely felt like

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because there weren’t the holidays or the the different days that one can use to mark

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time uh they just weren’t happening and i live by myself so

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it was like the passing of a day or an hour um

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got muddled and my sense of time uh started to become

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just just influenced and different than it normally would be um

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and so um in the show um

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clocks um are doing a lot of kind of uh both conceptual and

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physical work um everything on this wall um is the the

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end result of kind of a playful experimentation with uh

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with the material material i was working with so with with stickers and erasers but also with the clock motors and i

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loved the idea of um using what was what is an actually actually a quite simple

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motor um to and like on a domestic scale uh

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kind of as a craft material um because as you can see um all these works are

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clearly handmade um they are not um they’re not uh

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they weren’t uh professionally made um they’re not institutional um they’re

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very provisional they’re kind of um like glue gun together and made out of the stuff that you would that one

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would or might have in their house already um

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and in that it’s fair to mention that lenticulars aren’t generally a

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material that people that individuals work with

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lenticulars uh get used a lot for all kinds of things but generally for uh

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by institutions uh for things like um

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for things like children’s toys and a lot of novelties are produced with lenticular film

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but they’re not generally something that um that individuals would produce because

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the tolerances are so small and that

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in making them um yeah it’s just really difficult to get

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correct so hence the the working the working with those mistakes is part of

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working working with the the mistakes in alignment um

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is a big part of uh the portrait series and also um

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the the series and on this wall so i was i was playing around

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with uh what what i could do with lenticulars uh and what

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what i could come up with um these works are um have been very process based um and

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that’s a different way of working for me uh a lot of things about the show are um

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both playful and just silly um and i think never change is one

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of them um i like the the phrase never change because um

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it reminds me of something well that people actually did right in my yearbook um

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when i was in grade 1 grade 11 and 12. uh and it seems like the kind of um

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extremely surfacy um

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surface level thing to say that seems supportive but it’s actually like kind of a curse um

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because who wouldn’t want to change throughout their life um

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and i think i kind of get the sentiment behind it but at the same time it’s

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both very good and very bad um so um two things in the show

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are called never change um uh the

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i i use the the phrase never change to refer it to the portraits um series as a

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group and clearly they change they change all over they can’t stop um

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and also um this phrase um looks like a lenticular but doesn’t

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actually change at all um it doesn’t move it there’s no um

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there’s no dual image behind it and it does not have the capacity to change

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so there are a lot of playful um sort of elements uh and and

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jokes and and some things that are quite uh kind of whimsical in the show that harley’s put in um one of the things

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that i wanted to draw um attention to was this little interventions that that

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harley has done throughout the show there are these kind of little cut out mirrored bits throughout the show um

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but this one that kind of draws attention to the labels and sort of like points of

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finger to the kind of like infrastructure of exhibitions i think is uh particularly uh

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clever and and funny for for me and it’s also mirrored

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there are lots of mirrored elements and so maybe harley just to kind of finish us off

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we’ll share a little bit about his use of mirrors

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so around the space they’re all uh all sorts of uh small um plexiglas

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mirrors um and i love mirrors for lots of reasons um they add sparkliness

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and i love the way they kind of erratically can reflect light um uh but also

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i like the the idea that they’re inviting you to look into them um and when you look at a mirror

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um you’re seeing yourself um and the things that are behind you um

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like with scorekeeper um you can see what’s behind you um and

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i’m really using mirrors as a metaphor for the retrospective glance

29:01

hi harley hello not again

29:07

um yeah it was so nice to be

29:13

back in the show with you that was really great i loved that review filmed that

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i’ve been looking at the chat and i feel really excited about some of the things that are coming up in the chat

29:25

too so i really hope people ask questions and that we can get around to talking to talking about some of them

29:31

yeah we need to talk about how you’re dorian gray possibly

29:38

i hope that like like pops in on that one as well

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um yeah so i wanted to to kind of start us off by maybe going back to

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the scoreboard piece um called scorekeeper

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um and yeah maybe you could uh maybe expand a little bit on maybe

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what you think it’s tracking or or recording or maybe you’ve decided in the meantime that it’s it’s not doing

30:11

anything right i would rather not oh yeah i did consider i thought at the time like i didn’t know how much i

30:17

wanted to say about it but i want to say a lot yeah for this audience i think i think seeing more is exactly what i

30:24

should do um so in the exhibition i think the scoreboard is really um serving a bunch of purposes um

30:32

well number one it’s the first thing yeah there it is um it’s the first thing that people see when they come into the

30:37

gallery because it’s right across um across from the main doors so they enter and immediately you can see everything

30:44

from the front doors but um the scoreboard and the mirrors are right in front of you um

30:50

and it’s it’s general shape and the layout of it um with the clock in the center and the the dark numbers on the

30:57

bottom sides um all right or make it instantly recognizable as uh the type of object that it is like

31:04

even though the the top um is like what is happening um

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like because it has a clock in the middle i think it reads as a scoreboard and it’s high um and in that

31:20

um it’s recognizableness as a category of object um it’s kind of like a giant

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moving metaphor for the the threat of and promise of social judgment and the

31:32

need to compete um that kind of um when we think or when i think about

31:39

um my younger self like certainly um one is subject to that like

31:47

hypers that like hyper surveillance um from not only institutions but also

31:54

um by each other and ourselves it’s just like the the looking and the being

31:59

looked at is coming from all directions and like when you’re 13 you can just feel it so intensely

32:08

um so um yeah i think i think the idea i was just

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thinking now um because the the title of the work is score keeper um and so it kind of like

32:21

anthropomorphizes this object a little bit and so yeah when you’re talking about this kind of

32:27

like hyper surveillance yeah i think it’s really interesting that you kind of have this thing sort of

32:33

looming over you yes i know but like also it is it’s kind

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of um institutional like digital scoreboard typically um

32:44

really big and very expensive um like fixtures in in high schools at least

32:50

where i was from i don’t know if it’s still the case that you would have to like raise money for ages and like their purchase

32:58

would be tied to usually i don’t know some sort of major drink corporation um but yes um this one is

33:06

plainly homemade um uh there’s a there’s kind of uh it has some of the same plastic

33:13

objects um sort of remnants um gendered remnants of uh plastic tools and curlers

33:20

and beads and uh electrical components uh and all sorts of little

33:26

little junky crap like this rainbow

33:31

objects above that’s what yeah so um so it’s clearly been homemade by

33:38

someone um but like why who what kind of a person would make something like this um

33:45

yeah and because it’s a reverse and meant to be viewed essentially in a mirror um

33:50

while your back is turned i like the idea that it looks over your shoulders so i feel

33:56

like it’s in a way both like charismatic and it’s the surface

34:02

level of being very colorful and very friendly um but also it’s a little bit paranoid and

34:08

threatening at the same time and that’s i think that is kind of one of the dualisms that i may be playing with i i

34:14

don’t know how because the exhibition is very colorful and friendly and i want it

34:21

to be that way i want people um to to like the exhibition but i want people

34:28

who are looking a little bit deeper to um really notice that something seems kind

34:34

of off about it um like for example what sorry i didn’t mean to interrupt go

34:40

ahead i was just gonna say um even from the front because of the symmetry of it

34:46

um like in the words home and the way and the typography that they use it doesn’t

34:51

doesn’t necessarily immediately read as being backwards but when you look a little bit closer um you can you can

34:58

tell that the clock is actually running backwards yeah there’s yeah because it when we were installing

35:04

we were talking a lot about yahweh yeah exactly

35:10

like what team is that again um so stacy’s saying um

35:16

and i think it’s kind of interesting related to um the scoreboard that you’re describing as

35:23

kind of like hyper surveillance um and something that’s like constantly watching you and then thinking also

35:29

about um your school portraits where you’re kind of like you know you mentioned that you always had these kind

35:34

of like little maybe hidden but maybe not so hidden like rainbows in what you’re wearing and so so stacy is saying

35:41

you know when you are terrified of being discovered uh and want nothing else but to be

35:46

discovered yeah that that is that is really good um and that’s

35:55

okay i okay i was actually technically when um

36:01

i was wearing the little rainbows in grade 11 in grade 12. i was technically out um and if or if there are any

36:08

younger people watching this video they’re gonna say like you only came out in like grade 10 and i would be like

36:14

yeah but we’re talking 2000 like okay i guess that was 1994. um and i was

36:22

the only gay person that i knew um at the time so

36:27

um there weren’t a lot of options for um

36:32

like role models or ways to think about it that were

36:37

actually out um like extreme extreme um

36:43

like covert signaling was my option yeah

36:48

so amanda is asking do you suppose most people assume home is their team

36:58

that is that is really good i think when i was making it i

37:05

did assume that home was the team of the viewer

37:10

but there’s no reason that it necessarily should be oh that’s a really interesting question

37:18

i would love to hear what what other people like would think about that

37:24

that isn’t something i’ve i have thought about at all

37:30

something something more to consider yeah that is really exciting to me when people bring up things that like see

37:36

things that i haven’t noticed but see oh yeah why didn’t i actually notice that

37:43

yeah thank you thanks amanda um

37:49

right so i i wanted to ask a little bit more about um binaries

37:54

um so i did point out um some of them but there are you know lots of them that

38:00

run through the exhibition like sporty and bookish stickers and erasers older young male

38:08

female earl man accessible academic

38:14

fun serious and so maybe maybe you can talk a little

38:19

bit about um your maybe playfulness of of binaries because

38:28

you know you’re you’re kind of constantly like creating them i think in your work just

38:33

to kind of make them absurd and knock them down yeah exactly

38:39

that that is really true i i think i i often invoke binaries it just to kind

38:46

of stand there as something that i can push over um

38:52

but also that the more we name like when you read that the list like um i think gosh they’re just really

38:58

silly um but what’s what seems silly about binaries is the idea that something could only be either or

39:06

because clearly that is false um and i i keep using the word clearly when

39:11

i’m speaking um so that’s uh yeah that here

39:16

okay anyway um

39:22

what i mean is uh mine i think feel like binaries are just

39:29

one of the ways that humans human thought tends to work um i don’t

39:35

think they’re necessarily negative um i think that some kinds of um

39:40

dichotomies can be really useful for opening up thought um but that that

39:46

they’re not useful and become really bad when they they trap your thought like in

39:52

in a pattern of either or but i think when we’re thinking about like related pairs of concepts um it can it could be

39:59

really useful to think of things that are a thing that is as far away as you can

40:04

imagine from the other thing um that does seem like it’s quote unquote opposite um

40:13

because in thinking that far um it kind of stretches um

40:19

the and creates a bit like conceptual space in the middle um where

40:24

like yeah it just it seems to open things up um and so i like

40:30

i like playing in that weird middle space and invoking both when i need to

40:38

defense yeah tyler also says in the chat winning and

40:44

losing as another binary which i think is interesting maybe i’m just like i’m

40:49

just tabulating i’m just scoring binaries here by adding them all up

40:55

well that that’s a really interesting impulse i love it

41:01

and i need to know here um i i you mentioned accessible and academic as one binary i did

41:08

that is a really cheeky binary um but i

41:15

i don’t know whether that necessarily is a binary but it i mean in effect it it can be um

41:22

in some ways um because i do talk about i mean when i talk about the exhibition i talk about it being

41:28

fun and overtly fun and using it’s like fun and playfulness as a tool to like

41:37

sneak in to trojan horse in like other kind of harder concepts

41:46

but yeah that’s it that’s an unfinite that’s a binary that it would take a long time to unpack um

41:53

but i did this is one that i would love to think more about

41:59

um

42:05

yeah well i just noticed in the chat uh someone said that amanda said a weird middle space is the charm of lenticulars

42:12

and yes i that is exactly how i feel as well yeah it’s that blending

42:18

definitely um yes i wanted to ask you about

42:24

nostalgia um so i mean i guess my kind of

42:30

understanding of nostalgia and my kind of definition of it is this

42:35

sort of fluid kind of nuanced emotion i suppose that is

42:41

both positive and and negative and you know there’s it’s kind of like a complex sort of thing

42:47

um and so one of the things that i i thought of recently about your work is

42:53

if you kind of think nostalgia is possibly like the anti-binary or you

42:59

know maybe you’re kind of using this as a concept just because of its kind of fluidity um or maybe you could just

43:07

expand on what your interest in nostalgia is and how you came to this as your methodology

43:15

that’s a great question um okay well when i think about nostalgia i think

43:22

okay well one of the uh like original uses of nostalgia um and i’m sorry if

43:28

there are any historians in the crowd and i’m getting this wrong but um i think the word um first emerged um like

43:35

around around world war one and um thinking about the the very very young

43:40

like teenage soldiers who were going off um to war and

43:46

the doctors needed some sort of word to describe the intense yearning that was

43:51

causing like like resulting in like actual physical maladies and trauma aside from

43:58

aside from the war that was happening um that too but um the intense like

44:03

yearning for home um and it was was framed originally as a

44:08

as an illness as like a psychological problem um and it wasn’t until

44:14

more recently that it took on kind of any positive resonance um

44:21

and i i do i feel like it it isn’t inherently bad but i think

44:27

nostalgia is very much not about the past but it’s about um the

44:32

present i think it’s about needing to remember something because

44:39

something is happening in the present that that needs that needs that needs help

44:45

with thinking about it well i’m reading it okay i’m gonna check

44:51

i’m not gonna pay attention to chat right now yeah um

44:56

yeah i don’t i don’t necessarily think of nostalgia as being

45:02

anti-binary but i do think um

45:07

that finis tells you that this show um attempts to to use as its kind of

45:14

raw material and archive is very specific um it’s really it’s it’s really

45:20

um dependent on essentially the nostalgia that one would have if you grew up um

45:27

in like the 80s and early 90s um like in the

45:32

midwestern united states um in like a middle-class family um as a white person

45:38

so that nostalgia and like the nostalgia that i have is not necessarily

45:44

like universal and i don’t imagine it to be universal um but i imagine it

45:49

um as being very specific to um the conditions i was living in

45:56

um but i hope i hope that it’s in its specificity that

46:03

it becomes it kind of opens up and people can imagine themselves into it because it’s so specific

46:09

i don’t know if that makes sense yeah but i think i also i think that the

46:16

just like the material um someone like someone in the chat who said this um the material of lenticulars

46:23

lends itself um to to um

46:29

to exploring binaries but also to um nostalgia

46:36

because of how as a material it kind of has been its use is really cyclical and i think

46:43

that it is like a nostalgic material um because it had a haiti like in the 1980s

46:50

uh and then like it’ll come come back um like every 15 or 20 years um and there’s a dip and

46:58

you won’t see it as often and then oh like people will remember and usually it’s positive memories of it um and so

47:06

i feel like every every decade or so it has a as a day

47:18

oh i just was gonna say and then it it references like the material itself references not only um

47:24

like not only the content but the materially um

47:30

all of its previous iterations um like froggy

47:35

so that’s all i wanted to say about that um yeah i think maybe to talk a little bit more about

47:42

materiality of the work um most of your work a lot of your work is

47:49

made out of um and plastic materials and i know this

47:54

is something that you have considered quite a lot um i wonder if you wanted to just talk a

48:01

little bit about maybe that kind of aspect of of the work

48:07

it is um i feel like um a few years ago

48:13

i i made kind of a conceptual commitment or a a rule if you

48:20

want to call it that of um a helpful boundary for my practice um that um the

48:26

work that i was going to make um going forward was going to primarily use plastic as a material um and that’s

48:36

and i i know plastic is okay it’s so many things um and i

48:43

absolutely love plastic um not only for um its like

48:49

color uh and its malleability and um the trashy stuff that it gets used for um

48:56

but also like for conceptual reasons um i actually think my attitude towards

49:03

plastic is that it is too beautiful and precious to be used for stuff that you don’t take seriously uh

49:10

i think it it definitely should be used as an art material because it essentially in some some types of it

49:19

like essentially lasts forever because it doesn’t go away and it doesn’t break down um

49:25

and it is if you want to get really theoretical about it what is that what is plastic

49:30

actually made of like things from the past liquid liquid

49:37

dinosaurs um kind of um like if you think about what petroleum

49:44

actually is um yeah plastic is it’s around for forever and it in that

49:50

way it is kind of like a fluid history and lots of people have theorized plastic um

49:57

and like plasticity in general um and transness together um

50:08

but i do what it comes down to is i just

50:13

love colorful little things i just love it

50:19

i just find it extremely compelling um the things that i can do with plastic well i really appreciate um

50:29

your kind of reframing of plastic and its preciousness um and really kind of

50:35

thinking of it as you know of course we’ve all been sold

50:41

this idea that it’s you know disposable and one-time use only uh and i think

50:46

there’s something really lovely about you kind of turning that and saying no actually it’s not

50:53

and that there is like a preciousness to it um and your kind of consideration of its

51:01

lasting let’s say forever uh i think is really

51:06

really interesting yeah no it was uh it was actually i was

51:12

making portraits um a few years ago i was making portraits out of pervert beads um which are made of plastic um

51:19

they are a children another children’s toy um and i was just beginning to think about

51:25

using plastic as a material and what it meant to make portraits out of plastic specifically um and it was something

51:33

that got brought up by uh by a student in a workshop that i did um like this

51:40

who was saying like she was saying she was really moved by the fact that the portrait of the person that she was making um was probably going to last

51:48

for ages for like forever essentially um and i really loved the

51:54

that with the statement that it was making that whatever portrait that i was making or whatever idea that i was

51:59

embodying in inside this plastic object um it was as if i was making a statement

52:06

that this this like deserves to be around for a long time

52:13

yeah it is not going to go away yeah it’s not going to decompose

52:19

but yeah anyway um

52:25

yeah i have i guess i i i’m interested about

52:31

the kind of influence of photography on memory

52:37

um and i was wondering if maybe you could you know talk a little bit about

52:43

photography’s influence on knowing the self and maybe a little bit of the kind of

52:50

your experience of looking at those photos and maybe

52:55

you know projecting sometimes onto them of what was going on and and kind of the

53:01

there may be blending between what you remember

53:06

from that time and what was kind of influenced by maybe your like projection onto the photos that is a that’s a

53:13

fantastic question also um okay holy cow okay

53:20

well i’m embarrassed to say this but i’ll

53:25

just tell the truth um um it was when i was um

53:30

kind of compulsively uh okay i have in my basement a whole bunch of boxes of uh

53:36

of stuff i already said in the video that i was a keeper well that is really true and um i keep all sorts of things

53:43

including um well i’m not a hoarder but like i have boxes of childhood paperwork um i’ve got

53:49

like probably six or eight of them that i’ve been carrying around with me um since i was 17 or 18 and moved out of

53:56

my parents house um uh it’s notebooks and journals and general ephemera and

54:01

old assignments that i did and that kind of thing and i was pretty sure that eventually it would come in handy

54:10

this this show it’s really kind of validating for that be kind of behavior but that’s an aside

54:16

anyway i need to think about whether or not i still want to carry that around but

54:23

talking about memory um i i found the photos again um because i had

54:29

like i am asked them and i put them all in one place because they were in and amongst all of this other stuff um

54:35

and i also found other photographs um that i considered using but

54:42

when i i had the idea really for quite a long

54:49

time that i should actually use lenticulars to make um portraits of like

54:56

before and after um whether or not i believed that i was at a state where i could be

55:03

considered after uh or if i even like that as an idea that there will be an after um i’m kind

55:10

of skeptical of that in general right i would hope that i continue to change um

55:15

as i grow older and become someone new and different amazing and amazing

55:21

constantly but going back to it um

55:29

yeah i know they do really

55:36

even though in like school portraits they’re they’re kind of the same like

55:42

they’re all relatively uniform and they’re made produced in a way to enable uniformity and

55:50

certainly like they’re in my school year books there would be like a grid of tiny little thumbnails and you would

55:57

see everyone but there was a lot visible in that tiny little grid um

56:05

yeah you can get a lot from not very much information or the

56:11

information that still remains even when everything else um

56:17

becomes becomes uniform

56:22

i don’t know

56:30

i think that’s all okay i want to say about memory

56:37

um yeah does does anybody

56:43

have any more questions that they want to put in the chat for us

56:49

uh kim is talking about nostalgia they’re saying i was thinking about this

56:55

as its older association with homesickness homesickness has always been where this fascinated me because

57:00

well it usually is taken to refer to a longing for a distant past home i feel

57:05

like it can also refer to being sick of home however one might want

57:12

that’s that is really interesting oh yeah being sick of home

57:18

that seems like a potentially that seems like something that one could definitely think

57:24

alongside transness

57:31

was i sick of home this is getting psychoanalytic i always do

57:38

i think i have it of the way i talk about my work um yeah

57:45

i’m looking through chat and i’m trying to find exactly where

57:50

where the com oh there it is i see the comment oh

57:56

yeah homesickness was actually i think what i think i’m kind of thing that i was referring to

58:05

can one feel homesick for a gender that is a really good question yeah what does it mean to have yeah and what does it

58:11

mean to be nostalgic for something that you never experienced um that is

58:16

that question of nostalgia for something that you don’t actually have first-hand

58:22

knowledge of is i think a a larger and a larger question that my

58:29

work my whole practice um kind of engages with in a way um

58:35

certain certainly in the history of it um i have done i have used nostalgia in

58:40

in quite a few ways over the years um and uh i am certainly guilty of

58:50

second-hand nostalgia i don’t know if that is the word for it

58:56

or i have been yeah i think i think that’s where kind of projection comes in so uh kind of like

59:03

imagination of ourselves into someone else in another time

59:12

um yeah i guess as we’re kind of wrapping up was there anything else you wanted to

59:20

add about the show or your practice in general or if you have upcoming projects that you

59:26

want us to check out i don’t think

59:32

oh i don’t i don’t think so

59:38

i don’t think i need to say anything else um i love i love the conversation that has

59:44

been happening and i can i’m keeping up with it with half an eye um

59:49

but only half an eye i hope it’s welcome to read it afterwards

59:54

yeah we will definitely uh we do share we will share the chat with you afterwards you can take your time that’s

1:00:00

wonderful because there’s stuff happening in chat like i see people making comments that i really wish

1:00:07

i honestly i took a few screenshots because it’s important that i i get all the ideas

1:00:17

um yeah so thanks for yeah spending this time with me and

1:00:23

thanks everybody else for spending this time with us uh and be sure to come see the show

1:00:29

yeah it’s it’s it’s always so nice to to talk to you lindsay um

1:00:35

and and chat with you um i feel like our conversations are always

1:00:40

interesting and generative yeah thank you so much i i always i’ve

1:00:46

i’ve really honestly like loved putting this exhibition together and it makes me sad that it’s already up

1:00:54

we’ll have to do more yeah it was good absolutely it was such a good experience

1:01:01

yeah so uh well thank you all so much um and good night

1:01:07

thank you bye

1:01:35

you

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