The Exhibition in Banff

The exhibition that was developed and shown in the 10 days I was in Banff was a visual depiction of this blog. It uses imagery and quotes from my adventures to Saskatoon, New York and Banff that referenced gender and sexuality to create a visual collection of my experiences.

The mural piece on the left wall referenced Saskatoon, showing images of a Drag Queen from Divas, silos on the horizon looking like two tits, and the city skyline where a lady lounges in skimpy attire between the large blue sky with the bathroom graffiti “you are going to know me and you are going to FUCKING LOVE ME”, the outline of a knee in fishnet stockings and below, luggage tags mimicking the grain growing on the land. Each luggage tag provides the viewer with a sexualized quote I encountered or reference to an image included in the mural including its location from my trip.

The back wall consisted of one ink drawing of me in my Pride parade outfit, arm raised to grab the subway rail/security cameras with my armpit hair exposed. The accompanying projection repeated the drawing, rocking back and forth to mimic the movement in the subway. The first animation consisted of a lady sitting on the subway relaxed. A man enters and sits beside her, his legs spread wide, touching her knee. She tolerates for a few seconds before crossing her legs, leaning away from him. After he leaves, she continues to sit in discomfort until she leaves on her own stop. Animation two consisted of armpit hair growing out of the ink figures pit, reaching the floor before falling out while animation three showed two figures exiting the security cameras, and upon seeing the other gender, ditching their gendered clothing and donning the others.

Each animation has an accompanying quote; from my sketchbook, derived from my own experience on the subway, “Sitting on the subway beside a man, he spreads his legs wide, claiming his space, intruding on mine. My feminine training makes me cross my legs, shrinking smaller to not touch his, surrendering to his patriarchal dominance.” from Alix Olsen’s Armpit hair song, “There were no seats in the subway so I had to grab a strap as I lifted up my arm I heard a scream “what’s that?” I took a look around, I thought there must be something scary like a lion or a tiger or the Virgin Mary? But then I noticed they were looking at me I heard Oh My Gawd, They’re Hairy!”, this is a song I was introduced to in Saskatoon, but then realizing Olsen is from Brooklyn and worked alongside Berenice and Linda on the Crystal Quilt project. Finally to go with the figures that swap clothing, I include a quote from two transgender eight year olds on the Chicago radio show This American Life “I just think of my self sometimes as a regular kid. A boy or a girl? No. A lot of the time I think of myself as a regular person. Regular. Just a regular person… I’ll forget I’m even something. I’ll think I’m just a little tiny speck just laying there and I’m not even a boy or a girl, I’m just sitting there.”

The final wall mural consisted of breast like mountains from the Banff skyline to counterbalance the prairies on the opposing wall, a deer threesome, courtesy of the Museum of Sex, a fourth deer showing us his tail, looking like a flaccid penis and the outlines of two artworks from the Banff Institute campus, long erections of ceramic forms and a vinyl sign stating “Meet me in the woods” suggesting a sexual liaison in the woods.

Finally, another smaller installation painting used three more images from my trip – an old bathroom sign staying “a necessary room for gentlemen” from Eamons in Brooklyn, three male urinals, dripping in acrylic, and another sign “wash your hands before leaving this room” from the LGBT center meeting room/ex bathroom. These urinals commented on the only architectural difference in the gendered washrooms, the reason I felt uncomfortable entering the male toilets.

The artwork was placed alongside Niknaz Tavakolians’s work, an artist who lives in New York, only a few blocks from where we were staying in Brooklyn. She had four movies looking at liminality of gender, age, race and place that complimented my traveling gendered project. Our works were linked through subject and theory as well as our use of technology, Niknaz with her digitally altered videos and my use of hand drawn stop motion.

Gendered Presence

The only constant in this entire project is that I am present, whether others are wielding the camera or my image is made invisible due to the scope of the camera. While in this project I am often hidden behind the camera documenting the space in front of me, I am almost always present in my other creations, using the self as subject. My identity and presence influences my reading of the space, ultimately making this study a personal experience rather than a scientific study.

How am I changing the presence of the space with my white lesbian female identity? Existing in the back alleys behind Ellen Moffats studio, my presence made the space more dominating than if I was a strong masculine identity. While this could be argued that my gender makes me more vulnerable in the space, if I was a male of similar strength I may be just as vulnerable with the presence of someone else. My presence could make the space my own, except that the large empty areas hold the possibility other identities that may over power my own.

Essentially, my identity creates a certain atmosphere in the spaces I inhabit, which is reflected in this travel blog. The spaces were influenced by the identities within it, most noticeably in Banff’s tourist identity and the gendering of nature at camp. In turn these spaces influenced me, my life and who I am and each environment produced a different gendered and sexual performance from me, so in my experience, Doreen Massey was correct in saying that place influences identity and identity influences place.

My blogs are biased by my identity and restricted by the gender lines, as I could clearly see while attending the women in the kitchen at camp rather than the men on the porch by the barbeque. I was less of an influence in New York’s size, but the entire social body as a while influences the large space.

Comparisons

Though my amount of time in each city was not equal, 3 weeks in Saskatoon and New York and then ten days in Banff and thirteen days in Thunder Bay, I managed to get a good idea of the construction of gender and sexuality in (and outside of) each city. On average there seemed to be an equal amount of daily gender performance such as dresses vs slacks, bikinis vs shorts which is uniform of western gendered display, but each city had slight difference of gendered performance because of the environments influence.

Saskatoon seemed to be the city with the most obvious construction of both gender and sexuality. Not only was there various instances of gender performance forming the social sphere, many people of both genders found it necessary to create a display of sexuality, from wearing bikinis in the waterfront park (far from the water, with no opportunity to swim) to following traditional gender roles. The city of Saskatoon is also very constructed with manicured parks, imported trees and human influenced nature. The isolated small town carries a more traditional view of gender while the lack of summer activities like swimming draw a more advanced display of sexuality within the city limits as outlets to the heat.

New York had the most opportunities to experience gender in a different way than the expected norm. The condensed space allowed for the exposure to a lot of ‘other’ identities and a lot of public events that included or encouraged a multitude of sexual and gender identities. I found a lot of gender oriented events were held in popular public spaces rather than hid away like DIVAS in Saskatoon but it helped that our itinerary was focussed towards these issues, allowing me to be exposed to a unique gender and sexuality exploration in the city.

Banff was unassuming in its gender and sexuality. The lack of culture within the wooded mountains resisted masculine and feminine signifiers, and invited sexuality only with the human intervention. Even the people in nature, often dressed in preparation for hiking in boots, bug resistant gear and sun protection lost their strong gendered difference in attire. The nature itself seemed to deny a social construction that defines identities and instead becomes about human and nature rather than male and female. The town of Banff seemed to invite a strong contrast to the woods surrounding it, the transient tourist population creating an environment for sexual conquest. The identity of the city as an international hub creates a highly sexualized and gender normalized center in a gender neutral surrounding.

Thunder Bay’s landscape allowed for a lot of swimming, many isolated outdoor areas surrounding the city allowed for a certain amount of freedom, which changed the presence of public sexuality within the city limits. Accessibility of the water attracts a display of gendered swimwear but in more solitary excursions outside of town, leaving the town itself free of unnecessary bathing attire as I saw in Saskatoon. Thunder Bay had a small town gendered presence like Saskatoon did with a more traditional view of gender and the surrounding nature has a neutralizing effect of sexual and gendered expression within the city.

Final Thoughts

Is it always true that small pockets of culture within nature are highly sexualized areas that encourage gendered behaviour? Do big cities present gender and sexuality in a more authoritarian manner or does it allow more freedom for expression? Does the presence of water in the landscape change how people interact within the city? My search has uncovered many differences of Saskatoon, New York, Banff and Thunder Bay that seem to show an influence of environment to the presence of gender and sexuality of the identities.

As I state earlier, I believe this study is biased in it’s explorations but I also believe it represents a true relationship between place and identity that I was seeking when I began this project. The landscape and weather will influence how people exist, comparing Thunder Bay’s accessible waterways to Saskatoon’s guarded waterfront, the construction of the architecture changes things as well, whether the architecture is escapable like Thunder Bays forays or confining like New York’s invisible wall at the shore, preventing interaction with nature.

All of the differences in the cities, whether natural or human made, influence how the social body interacts in a gendered and sexual manner. The subtle influences such as access to swimming areas changes how most people display their body in the public space. There must be a much larger trend within the cities that I did not access that causes further differences in gender performance and expression of sexuality.

The commonalities between the cities presents to me another big question. Why the Western gendered uniform? Why does gender present itself differently in clothes so consistently, even to those who don’t believe in the binary? How does culture influence what I experienced?

These differences and influences both get over looked by most identities traveling through, despite being participants in the gender and sexual construction of the cities. How does the transient nature of a city add influence to the existing structure? My search of the gender and sexual construction in these cities has only opened up questions about the influences I have seen; I look forward to continuing my search of influence wherever I go and will definitely be on the search while in Halifax delivering my presentation of this project.