June 1, 2019

Doors: 6:30 PM / Start: 7:00 PM

VIVO Media Arts Centre, Vancouver

2625 Kaslo Street V5M 3G9

VANCOUVER INDEPENDENT ARCHIVES WEEK

Trans Archival Futures

Talk: with Chase Joynt & Chris E. Vargas (MOTHA)
Screening: Framing Agnes Framing Agnes (dir. Chase Joynt & Kristen Schilt, 2018)
Co-Presentation with Sexuality Studies Association

This event is in conversation with Archivist-in-Residence Sophie Roberge's "Every Queer Thing" project at VIVO 2019.

Multi-media artists Chase Joynt and Chris E. Vargas are working at the epicenter of contemporary trans representational practice and visual culture. Trans Archival Futures is a presentation of their recent film and archival work: Vargas’ project MOTHA: Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art which was recently on display at the New Museum, and Joynt’s short film Framing Agnes.

The projects each interrogate the role of archives in this pivotal cultural moment wherein transgender issues are being foregrounded in the media yet competing narratives about community histories and struggles for social change are so often ignored or manipulated by the mainstream.

Vargas’ MOTHA asks gallery and screening publics to think critically about the construction and promotion of a consistent transgender visual history through the manipulation of familiar contemporary arts institutionalization and museum practices.

Joynt’s Framing Agnes utilizes the now-canonical case study of “Agnes” in sociology as a springboard to question the legacy and impact of exemplary cases and medical research on the lives of trans and gender non-conforming people.

As trans artists who mobilize hybrid methods of aesthetic inquiry that strategically cross artistic, activist, and academic lines, Joynt and Vargas together call attention to the impact of archives and archival practices in the production of both historical pasts and aesthetic futures.

The audience is invited to join us for conversation, snacks and cocktails following the event.

We acknowledge the generous support of Congress 2019 Humanities and Social Services.