Exploring the life and work of five queer female artists, Queer Genius aims to showcase ground-breaking content through different disciplines, from poetry to performance. Queer Genius peaks into the lives of Barbara Hammer, Jiz Cameron/Dynasty Handbag, Black Quantum Futurism, Moor Mother, and Eileen Myles. While setting out to highlight remarkable queer artists, filmmaker Chet Pancake learned more about themselves than they originally intended, discovering newfound comfort and freedom in their trans body.
Here, Picture This Post (PTP) talks with Chet Pancake (CP) about the importance of these artists, the documentary, and the impact on their life.
(PTP) Why did you choose these particular queer artists for your film and how do you feel each is breaking barriers for LGBTQA issues?
(CP) I chose the artists featured in the film to portray a range of age, creative discipline, backgrounds, race, and approach to gender. I feel each artist is combining identity, experimental fine art practices, and specific social justice strategies in a way that is singular and unique allowing the artists to break down complex intersectional boundaries within our community and then also in the world at large.
I feel it is always important to highlight queer artists!!! For me, these five each bring a unique visionary way of producing work. They have also been constantly evolving over time and constantly folding their specific life challenges as a queer person back into their practice. In other words, they create their artworks from their own lives, turning social and political oppression into generative and recuperative art. They all have been very, very successful in also reaching audiences and engaging in deep dialogues with feminist and queer sensibilities.
How did you decide on which LGBTQA+ and QPOC artists to feature?
The process of approaching different artists was challenging. I had previous experience working with Eileen Myles, Jibz Cameron, and Black Quantum Futurism as a member of various collectives in which I curated diverse feminist and queer artists in galleries or festivals. It took me longer to find a lesbian artist over the age of 75 who was still working, still exhibiting, and also willing to work with me on a documentary. Barbara Hammer loved the concept of being tagged as a Queer Genius and she resonated with the concept. I discussed the concepts queer and genius with the subjects to understand more deeply their relationship with the terms in our first exploratory interview. I, personally, feel that I have moments of epiphany when viewing art, reading poetry, watching film, music, or performance where I feel a deep sense of wonder about the originality of a work. This opens a sense of awe and time sort of stops for me and another world opens up inside my own sense of self and creativity. I think this is related to the idea of genius for me. Each of the artists I worked with made me feel this way almost immediately the very first time I encountered their work.
What is especially unique about each of the artists you decided to include in this film?
I would ask that readers view the piece as separate episodes of a series with Frameline or book a live screening to learn more about this! I think for me what is especially unique is the way they foreground their own identities with intense pride while also recognizing the pain and cost of being a queer person, a female or nonbinary person, and living as a QPOC artist in the world and particularly the United States right now. This tension between complete comfort with oneself while also being able really bare their souls about the difficulty and pain that is then transformed back into intense sensorial art experiences and also profound intellectual experiences that only those who live within this identity can really have and potentially understand.
I did explicitly want to have artists with contrasting disciplines. I’m most compelled by film, performance, social practice, experimental music, poetry, and literature. For me to take the time and personal energy to fund and complete a feature film, the disciplines had to be ones I personally am so passionate about.
While following the artists were there any moments/comments that made you view things in a different light?
When I was working with Barbara Hammer, she had a recurrence of ovarian cancer after ten years of being cancer free. I was struggling with my own autoimmune disorder and having a hard time with physicians, medication, and chronic pain. Through documenting and listening to Barbara, I came to understand that I needed to stop fighting with my doctors and battling with my body. Barbara had a great acceptance and gestures of love toward her cancer as a living part of her body that was her own. She also took her chemotherapy and every potential medical and alternative method to slow the cancer’s overall impact in her body. This inspired me to see a somatic therapist and begin to accept my chronic pain and completely accept my body as it is. Through this work of acceptance and self-love inclusive of my pain, various symptoms, and some limited mobility of some joints, I was able to find my trans body after years of ambivalence about my gender. By discovering and accepting my trans masculine journey, my chronic pain subsided a lot and I started to welcome specific medications into my body with a lot more harmony. I’ve never felt so healthy in my life although I still do have chronic pain frequently! I don’t feel the pain in the same way and impacts me very little emotionally.
When I was working with Rasheedah Phillips and Camae Ayewa, I was able to discipline myself to be quiet, listen, and get out of the way as a white/caucasion person – to de-center my whiteness and cultural privilege and be a student of their teaching – personally and culturally. I learned much, much more about how to create a discipline of unlearning racism daily. This occurs through utter respect and connection with listening and fully absorbing the words and witnessing of QPOC friends and loved ones. This must be a daily discipline to dispel internalized racism which is hard for everyone and we have to work on it consciously as a practice.
Why did you want to include the personal lives of the artists, especially Eileen and Jibz Cameron?
I included material from the personal lives of the artists as their creative work is feminist in the sense the personal is political and the creative work is deeply confessional and intertwined with their art. The personal issues and interiority of the artist is writ large in the performance and writing practice. I was also just lucky in that they trusted me enough to discuss personal issues with vulnerability on camera. I believe this is also in their spirit of helping other women, queer people, and nonbinary people feel relatability and relief in seeing their own struggles be grappled with in a daring and brilliant public way through the art.
Why did you decide to showcase the generational difference between Eileen/Barbara, to Moor Mother and Black Quantum Futurism?
Many queer artists, including myself, have been bereft of role models and mentors. For those of us who have never really been fully accepted by our parents because of our identity, this search can become more intense. Even though a lot of strides have been made, many queer people remain queer orphans as due to cultural or religious reasons, our parents can’t really fully see us or accept us. Even if they do seem to love us, it can be fragmentary, or they can only see or accept parts of us. Therefore the seeking of elders, of mentorship, and the kind of love, friendship, or acceptance that can only come from an elder who shares your identity proudly is very important to us. With Moor Mother and Black Quantum Futurism, I am pointing to the future of queerness. A world more diverse, more international, more frankly open about the deep harms of the past that exist intersectionally with diverse queerness, but also deeply passionate about bending time, playing with time and space toward regenerative and recuperative art forms and new potential relationalities.
How do you want the late Barbara Hammer’s legacy to be remembered?
I want Barbara Hammer to be remembered as completely fearless, loving, and a genius. You will have to watch her portrait to understand what she says in the film about what she thinks genius is. In terms of the legacy of her creative practice, I believe she will be remembered by art historians and LGBTQIA historians as the first lesbian artist to share moving image making with her lesbian lovers and friends collaboratively enacting an entirely radical new way for queer women to create a taxonomy of visual desire. Women viewing and capturing images of their desire for each other (completely without men present) remains a rare and precious empowering insight for lesbian culture and everyone who is looking for new ways to think about visualizing and experiencing mutual desire.
Any other comments to help our readers understand why you made this work and how you hope it impacts LGBTQA+ issues?
I hope that readers receive this film as a contribution in a cultural conversation in which they should want to create work in response. There are so, so many lesbian, queer, non-binary and trans stories of our own particular genius to express. I hope that it makes someone pick up a camera and get busy with their own genius creating some more great work for me to see as an audience member at a festival, a gallery, the cinema, and or streaming online. Go for it!
Photos courtesy of Queer Genius.
To find out how to watch the film, visit the Queer Genius website.
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About the Author: Jessica Purdy
When Jess asked her friends to describe her, they unanimously said three words: outgoing, funny, and spontaneous. She has a passionate voice for the things she cares about, including politics, animals, lgbtqa+ and women’s rights. Growing up in the suburbs of Manchester, England, Jess has a special place in her heart for British sport. Her ideal Sunday would be spent on the couch watching Manchester United, while eating homemade vegetarian lasagna. Besides that, you’ll find her on a tennis court, whether it be cheering on her teammates during rigorous collegiate competitions or playing herself.
