Leigh and Amy invited me out to a haiku poetry slam at Lydia’s on Sunday night.I had never been to a poetry slam but I loved watching people go on stage to bare their writing for Lydia’s to see.It took them a while to get enough poets, 16 in total including Amy who had pulled together 12 haikus last minute to fill the spaces.Two poets would go up to read against each other and the audience voted for the white or red contestant using small coloured plastic plates.The winner of two out of three haikus killed the loser and moved on to the next round.
The space itself wasn’t more feminine or masculine, but lent to the pub crowd and had the familiarity of the generic pub – The Fox and the Hedgehog, O’Hanlons, with a good selection on tap and a decent order of nachos.The relaxed atmosphere allowed free movement of any gender and sexuality, though I am sure if on of Divas Drag Queens came walking through in full outfit she would draw a few stares.The space allows free movement of men and women within the societal standards of gender, but restricts full freedom of expression in comparison to a gay bar.
This was a fantastic opportunity for entertainment in a very inclusive way.While some people may not be interested in seeking out a Haiku Slam, the show could have entertained even people who have no clue what a haiku is and would be welcome entertainment for someone looking for a beer.It was a stereotypical literary crowd with open attitudes and everyone was looking for a good time.
A lot of the haikus consisted of humour or sexual content and played to the social body in the space.People won by popular opinion and humour always won over wit or seriousness.There was heterosexual and homosexual content and was greeting with similar cheers of interest from the crowd and a pretty even gendered mix of the contestants gave an even representation of feminine and masculine subjects, though most conformed to the masculine feminine binary.One beautifully androgynous contestant read a couple of good rounds before being ceremoniously skewered with the haiku sword.
At my request to see the gay bar in town, half of my class piped up in interest to visit Divas on Saturday night. Excited to go, Tessa even came down from Prince Albert to join us for the night. Unfortunately my class is all talk and no action as there were four of us and a significant other come out for some drinks.
We arrived early on the premise that we would get to know each other a bit before the bar became hopping. There was more to our night than drinking and dancing, I was there to study the space and I had great access to the bar without all of the bodies as filler. The interior of Divas is very nice with a slightly too small dance floor beside the bar, very reminiscent of the GLCR in Regina. Upstairs is nice bar seating area that overlooks the dance floor, creating a voyeuristic view of the drunken dancers that bordered on creepy, which I only realized on Sunday while watching a poor drunk girl being held up by a dancing man preying on her. The bathrooms were found at one end of the second floor and a nice quiet nook with good couches and a pool table at the other, the space being about equal to the area in Regina’s GLCR.
The whole space was an even mixture of both genders and the vibe did not feel intimidating masculine like some straight clubs do. Drag attire was prevalent and created a non judgmental queer environment that felt inclusive of all the identities. Tips were rampant for the Queens during the show and the fluid genders in the space eliminated the binary that exists in hetero bars. Sexuality was oozing as in any bar and surprisingly, from my watching perch on the second floor, there were more heterosexual pairings on the dance floor despite a more visually homosexual crowd though I suppose it is not uncommon for drag shows to attract hetero couples.
The exterior of the bar is an exclusive hidden entrance in the alley by Art Placement and does feel dominantly masculine and heterosexual. While beautifully urban, the space drew me to carry my keys woven through my fingers unless I was with a large group. My feminine instinct of self defence went into gear almost immediately from the possibilities in the dark alleyway. Not only was I consciously preparing myself against any encounters in the space, I was subconsciously bracing myself against the power shift that occurred when my feminine identity entered the space. While almost safe and comfortable while occupied by a community of smokers at the height of the night, the space insisted its power over me in my individuality.
I have heard mixed opinions of excitement over the secrecy of an alley entrance to tentative disappointment of having to use a secret entrance. Does this allow for secret entrance to the bar or does it restrict the gay lifestyle from public view? Is the back alley entrance dangerous because of dark closed in space or is it safer because it helps keep queer identity anonymous? Personally I am embarrassed to use a back alley as if homosexuals need to be hidden from view and they agree that secrecy is preferable.
Tessa and I went rockclimbing on Saturday before our trip to Divas. Being a rock climbing virgin I was a little nervous but I knew it would be a lot of fun. We were introduced to the equipment and the space by a high school girl who had been working there for about a year. The staff seemed to be mostly men but not exclusively so, while the clientele held an even balance of genders. In the space sexuality was moot and there were same sex pairings as much as hetero pairings among the climbers.
As I find with a lot of the spaces I have been visiting in Saskatoon, there is a dominant power in the space but that power is unrelated to gender and sexuality. In this case the space is dominated by the athletic, the regulars who are consistent rock climbers used to the space and move through it freely or the people who are regular rock climbers and have access to more of the climbs through body strength. Tessa and I both failed to climb the walls that had any upside down angles, which consisted of most of the area, though we had fun trying.
However the area catered well to beginners with smaller walls and because of the colour coding, the wall could have a variety of difficulty levels that made the place inclusive to a first timer of any gender, sexuality or athletic ability. If you are afraid of heights don’t try it.
Wandering through Victoria Park as well as Regina’s downtown on a hot summer day, I was observing the use of public space within gender and sexuality. I am looking at Victoria Park again during the day to see the movement of identities through the space during a neutral time of day after my evening encounter a couple of weeks ago. One of the dominant questions in my mind was whether public space has a gender, and how that gender is perceived.
My classifications of gender within space are relying on whether the space is aggressive rather than passive, industrial rather than natural and I am only furthering the gendered binary by pursuing a classification based on traditional views of gendered constructions.
The spaces of downtown consisted of a conglomeration of identities, and the genders were well represented and confident within the space. People were moving for all sorts of reasons and despite the architecture of space which may inhibit movement at night, all gender identities moved freely through the space. While people still formed into heteronormative couples and families, the space was not exclusive of homosexual identities and many people traveled alone or in groups without a noticed sexual identity. I am sure that the predominantly heteronormative crowd created conformed dress and attitude in so many identities.
Sexuality was prevalent around the sunny downtown of Saskatoon, men walking shirtless and women dressing in bikinis trying to tan. I am surprised at how the park is treated like a beach even if they are located closer to the roadway than the waterfront. The park becomes a frank display of heteronormative sexuality, which I didn’t consider to be abnormal, until I had a conversation with a new acquaintance about his recent trip to Columbia and the prevalent homosexual representation in the parks and on the beaches there. My ideas of what is a normal representation of homosexual culture are based in my impressions from other encounters in Canadian space, which also explains my slow exposure to queer culture. The social occupation of public space defines how the next generation forms their ideas of what public space is and if our downtowns have a large heterosexual dominance, homosexual representation will have trouble becoming seen as natural.
I find Saskatoon Campus to be large, confusing and not very well marked; I think they may have left signage out for aesthetics.A lot of places in Saskatoon are hidden just beyond view, requiring a little more ambition to get access to the knowledge of what is inside and seeming more exclusive than both University of Regina and LakeheadUniversity.I find the campus to be patriarchally dominant through the architecture of the space, I feel while I am walking between buildings that I am somewhere I do not belong. The architecture has been said by many to be beautiful and in a way it is with huge stone buildings with large wood trim, buildings like at Western in London, Ontario, only not as old.They carry the feel of traditional patriarchal male institutions yet were built more recently, since feminist revolution brought different thinking into educational institutions.So it makes me question whether the campus is this an attempt for architectural beauty or a reliance on the patriarchal tradition of the institution?
The public space on campus consists of people of all ages including families and doesn’t seem to favour homosexual over heterosexual in the areas I have experienced. My classes all consist of a large amount of feminists and queer theorists and the professors I have seen and heard about have been dominantly female probably because of my connection with Women and Gender Studies, rather than a more male dominated field such as physics.Universities are known for having a larger enrolment of women than men, especially within the arts and while I see that reflected in the participants of my class, I don’t see a dominant feminine nature but a genderless mix of intellectuals.
I am not familiar with the participants of Women’s Studies at other universities other than a rare few friends, so I compare my class with the people I have found within fine arts and there is an impressive amount of accepting and alternative identities, more than I expected for sure.I was immediately comfortable with the people in my class and didn’t feel any issues of power influencing my interaction with them.The intellectual social body of the university doesn’t seem to match the dominant architecture they exist in on a daily basis.
During our class with Ellen Moffat I explored the fifth floor of the Charter House Furniture building as well as its parking areas, alleys and shops surrounding the building.
Outside of the building I looked at the layout of the spaces, the in between the buildings, overgrown parking lots and an unused railway. The space seemed vacant, occupied only for fleeting moments of travel by the few stopping in the area so my loitering presence in the space attracting looks from others. Lacking participants, the space did not have opportunity for the social body to reflect their gender upon it. So does the space have a gender? Do spaces require occupants to hold a gender?
The unkempt nature that overwhelmed the neglected human made railway shows an urban overgrowth that is refreshing from the strong architectural lines of the groomed areas of the city, reflecting the lack of presence in the space. What does this tell us of the gender of the space, and how is the gender determined by the man made structures and the natural elements present in the space?
In terms of my presence as a female in the space I felt intimidated, on guard for others who may refute my existence there. While there was no masculine dominance in the space itself, it held potential for a masculine presence to overwhelm my feminine presence in the space. I would not call the space masculine, but I may label it antifeminine because of the lack of safety in the space, erasing the desire and acceptance to linger.
The architecture surrounding the area was dominantly designed for automobiles and felt impersonal, hard and cold. I felt this space to not only be genderless but to be completely neuter, void of both femininity and masculinity. With a few old warehouses still in use, most of the surrounding blocks are concrete foundations and walls greeting the passing pedestrian. From the flaneurs point of view the area is little more than topless tunnels directing traffic from building to building, windows and displays set too high for the pedestrian to engage. The space reflects the automobiles use of the space rather than pedestrian movement and like the unused back alleys directly surrounding the studio building, seems genderless because of the lack of occupants.
The interior of the building was very feminine due to the commercialization of the second floor into a furniture shop, but the fifth floor that held Moffat’s studio had a genderless space, the architecture from bare brick, concrete and plywood walls. As studios tend to do, it offered walls as blank canvas for creating work, but that blankness carried into the gender of the space. The space was tidy, white and like most warehouse studios I have encountered. This was reflected in Moffat’s Studio as well, her tidy piles of technology somehow remaining gender neutral in contrast to Tomas Begin’s technology at PAVED, which immediately struck me as masculine. check out Ellens work at www.ellenmoffat.ca
Last Friday night I attended the opening in the PAVED gallery. The room consisted of two guitars on a stand in the center of the space laid down like a table with a bass above, attached to the ceiling with the playing surface parallel to both guitars. Each guitar had a couple of elastic bands that were tied to the strings, and using a maze of brightly coloured yarn stretched across the room it became in interactive abstract sound piece by the audiences interaction with the yarn pulling out notes from the playing surface of the instruments.
The work itself created this reverberating constant sound that changed tone as it bounced off the elastic bands, creating a chain reaction that resulted in an abstract reverberating sound. The work predominantly engaged the male audience; the only female bodies I observed had a comfort level with the equipment that I do not possess, yet the men seemed uninhibited in their interaction.
Seeing this work coincided with my reading of Bradon LaBelle’s Seeing Ursound: Heldegarde Westerkamp, Steve Peters and the Soundscape, which discusses the existence of background noise and the sounds of the environment as artistic performance. Westerkamp looks at the existence of sound as a fleeting experience, one that gets lost with the changing environment and a meeting with Ellen Moffat during class to see her work, discuss sound artists and the do a sound walk in the city.
Moffat offered us one tangible work to show us the interactive nature her soundwork takes. Using a board that you walk on to activate four speakers set into a mirroring board facing upwards and containing various organic materials, the frequency of the speakers vibrating the contents, creating an organic yet technological sound. (Shown Below) Our discussions of capturing the environment and inserting it into a different environment such as a gallery space created a new environment, one transmitted through man made means. The interaction of the piece seemed a lot friendlier towards non technological people, allowing a less elite interaction with the sound creation. The design lent itself to bodies and was less intimidating that Begin’s design, though that was probably more because of my naïve fear of musical equipment. I was interested in the technology that created the interactive platform for the audience. It reminded me of a genderless play; I felt a child like glee, of a time where I was unaware of gender differences but just a body, in this case merely a mass to activate the pressure sensitive equipment.
I also enjoyed her play with the mixture of technology and natural materials. The speakers activated them in a way impossible to nature, yet acting in very natural ways as if falling or blowing in the wind, only contained in their tiny speaker bowl. The sounds gave a feeling of human interfered nature, of bringing the outdoor environment indoors creating a different ambiance with the inclusion of technologically produced sounds.
I didn’t feel a particular gender in either Begin’s or Moffats work because of their dependence on an ungendered interaction, but because of their similar nature of interactivity, sound and technology they gain a gender construction in comparison to each other. I can feel the masculinity in Begin’s piece, perhaps because of the presentation of the piece and the attention to detail in creating an installation of artwork rather than an environment. Begin’s work was constructed as a means to activate sound through equipment, whereas Moffats work paid more attention to the detail of design and connection to natural materials. Does that define the gendering of the work? Does the attention to detail indicate femininity? Does her connection to nature evoke femininity? Do the works themselves gender the space they are located in?
What a perfect way to spend a night during my class in Saskatoon on gendered spaces than the go see comedian Eddie Izzard, an executive Transvestite from Wales.Yemen.Doesn’t matter.
If you don’t know Eddie Izzard, you are missing out a great gender bending experience.Even when Eddie is not dressed in heels, he has a great sense of style that is matched by his strong opinions of religion, gender and language and excellent mimetic skills.
I was very interested in the variety of people that were attending the Eddie Izzard concert.I saw dreadlocks and Mohawks, a strong homosexual representation and some wonderful gender inappropriate dress mixed in with a strong heterosexual crowd.It is hard to find people who enjoy Eddie Izzard so it was nice to see a mixed crowd within the boundaries of one space.
The ConexusCenter and the mix of gendered identities within the space seemed to clash, mostly because of the architecture of the space.While the theatre itself is built to mutate identities from production to production, the space holds stuffy bourgeoisie architecture, designed for upper class events and convenient customer flow.The lobby space reeked more of whiskey on the rocks and martinis than beer and held a certain patriarichal dominance that always makes me awkward in community auditoriums.
I don’t want to say much more, I think in this case the comedian’s opinion of gender speaks for itself.
Today I was walking along the paths of the South Saskatchewan River, seeing the picturesque areas that I have heard of from people who enjoy Saskatoon. As I was looking at the nice river with its strangely perfect banks and groomed parks, I wondered, what gender is this space? How do we categorize a space as masculine or feminine, and how does a well kept city park flanking a Prairie river justify a gender categorization in any way? The park itself was extremely man made, with groomed paths, hand planted park trees, pavilions and boat ramps leading to the water. Sandwiched between Broadway Bridge and University Bridge, I question how natural the banks of the river are, I am sure they were built up and altered for support and structure of the roadways and the parks topography seemed altered to support pedestrian movement rather than the hillier roads and riverside. But this man made alteration to nature does not speak of a gender. While constructed within a patriarchal development, I wouldn’t say that masculinizes the space itself in how it used in everyday life. The space becomes an urban greenspace, but the gender it carried did not lean towards masculine, but perhaps towards feminine due to the romantical nature of the paths at dusk.
Due to the romantic time of day, I noticed almost immediately that the space was heterosexual. The park was full of heterosexual couples going for walks down the green spring spaces. Walking for a similar reason with my girlfriend, I felt as a minority within the public space. While the space seemed to be accepting of all kinds of people from couples to families, male and female identities, the homosexual demographic seemed to be missing. Another option Lisa and I had considered for the night was to go to the gay bar, where we would have found a dominant homosexual crowd, but instead chose the park and encountered a very heteronormative demographic.
I will return to this park at another time of day to evaluate its gender in different context. Without the setting sun and the emerging streetlights, this space would lend itself to a very different crowd. The use of the space influences the perceived gender of the space, so I will return to get photographs of the space, but also to observe the use of the space at a different time of day.
The last couple of days have felt more like a vacation than anything else between the packing, the visiting and the exploring.I was just left at Laura’s house by Lisa, who drove me up and distracted me sufficiently in the last couple of days. We went to the Zoo, which was an exploration of spaces through the designation of space to the animals, some of which appeared to pace back and forth in a manic search for something, others actively seeking out visitors of the cage to emit a plea for freedom, love, food.The Zoo has an interesting persepective on animal freedom, one which emphasized breeding to preserve a species rather than proper care.While I am sure the mangled fur of the coats of the animals were mid spring shedding, the closely cropped cages provided no more than a bedroom for these animals.The ‘habitats’ only mimicked the natural world in their basic construction, The prairie dogs were given PVC piping as burrows and the mountain goats were able to climb a 10 foot boulder and dirt mountain, the animals demonstrated a containment that is mimicked within our city limits, attempting to constrict a beings movements and actions.Recently a Korean Zoo has suspected an elephant’s sexual preference, as he shows no interest in females as he hits puberty.If in fact the elephant shows no interest in mating with the opposite sex to continue the mandate of the zoo, they will put him down.While Korea is known for its strict punishments for homosexual activity and we can hardly ask them to give exception to an elephant, I wonder if it is possible for a more progressive country to take in an example of homosexuality within the animal kingdom.
Once Lisa left, I began to concentrate on exploring the city so as to access and familiarize myself with the spaces in the city.Getting to opportunity to bike through downtown everyday, I get a lot of exposure to the highly populated areas of the city.I have begun to map out places that I would like to include in my project of the city.
I am unsure of where to start with this project, I am not used to being aware of the spaces of the city at all, preferring to avoid them altogether rather than exploring their spaces.I am not yet sure how to even recognize the gender of some spaces, spaces that are gendered through interactions rather than visual components.My project requires my own intervention into the space, taking the gender of the space and contradicting it; refuting the classification that has been set upon it by the patriarichal construction that created it or inhabits it.
I will also be exploring the existence of alternate identities within spaces, looking at spaces that have been claimed by homosexual culture, looking for the expression of gender even in queer spaces, which are usually more accepting of gender construction.
Judith Butler discusses gender performativity within her book Gender Trouble (1990) introducing gender as a performance, an act that is often determined by genitals rather than identity. Even when expressing your true gender, you are performing it through your clothes and interactions, and these performances come together into small scenes played over and over within the public realm.Certain expectations determine the gender performance, a man in a dress is not exactly an accepted sight within a lot of areas within the city.
I suppose I am interested in how the spaces of the city encourage a certain kind of interaction.How do people express their gender and sexuality within public gathering spaces that encourages a certain kind of gender expectation?How is identity formed by the spaces of the city?How do the spaces of the city constrict people to certain areas of the city or restrict their behaviour within the city?Would a man wear the same clothing if he were going out to the drag bar as he would in other public spaces within the city?
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
I drive to Saskatoon on May 6th to begin a project on gendered spaces that will extend to New York before culminating in Thunder Bay.
I will be creating an art project that will enter the spaces of the city, recording these works in their environment and posting them here along with other visual representations of gender I discover within a small Canadian city, a large American metropolis and a small Northern Ontario to explore how gendered construction of space in social settings influence our understanding of gendered roles.
I have begun to prepare for my trip, but there is much left to do including finding a roof to live under. There will be more blogging on a consistent basis once the details have been worked out.
P.S. anyone in Saskatoon with an empty room and need some extra cash, send me a note.
