Visually, the book presents a bleak outlook on diversity in identity. Given the theme of Kline’s project, a common interpretation of his photographs is that they harken back to the superficially optimistic era of the 1950s, with its televised, idealistic vision of the heteronormative, white nuclear family – ironic because of the book’s queer content. The photographs, digging beneath the superficial optimism, scream of dullness and conformity. They are oppressively grey and rigid, with minimal movement in their mostly straight horizontal stripes. The shirts act both as a metaphor for and an aspect of the standardization of male identity.

Readers who don’t recall the 1950s may not immediately catch this allusion. But even then, the shirts no doubt express uniformity. For those who don’t notice the reference, the shirts appear as the clothing of boys from a fictitious world where gender identity is straightforward, where it is obvious how a ‘he’ should express and relate to himself. Although not the predominant style today, this kind of uniform pattern, along with preconceived expectations of ‘what men wear,’ is all too familiar.

In contrast to the banal shirts, the textual portion of the book expresses diverse male identities that attempt to challenge standardized expectations, with mixed success. McFadden’s poetic narratives can be understood as having either multiple narrators or a single one at different points in his life – it is impossible to tell for sure. While the content expands the connotations of the pronoun ‘he,’ the uniform voice and consequent ambiguity of whether or not there is one narrator or more subverts the book’s own aim by lacking diversity. The seamless narrative voice unfortunately standardizes texts that oppose a uniform understanding of gender identity.

The poems themselves – glimpses of text in a sequence of numbered paragraphs – create an almost overwhelming sense of immediacy. The narrators – or the single narrator – muse about the need to be desired, to be given constant attention, and to return to a nostalgic place where “[he] once remembered feeling something.”

One scene in particular feels uncomfortably intimate. The episode shows his homophobic neighbours hurling trash at him –“the ever flamboyant target.” To withstand the abuse, “he imagines the trash as bouquets of rare translucent green flowers that always fall short of hitting him. they are gifts from adoring fans […] their verbal abuse just accolades in a foreign language on his world tour.” The reader feels ashamed for intruding on the narrator’s humiliating moment.

The author repeatedly achieves this voyeuristic feel by exposing the reader to scenes that would normally be kept secret or silenced, in lines like “he woke up one morning soaked in piss.” However, the text is written in the third person as opposed to the first, so the reader cannot assume the identity of the narrator and forget themselves. This deliberate distance between the narrator and the reader creates a constant awareness that the reader is an intrusive viewer, unable to turn away from his incredibly vulnerable moments.

To a certain degree, the interplay between the photographs and the text appears incoherent, even verging on arbitrary. Nonetheless, the stark contrast between what each medium states about masculinity further accentuates the book’s meesage. While the photographs demand simplistic rigidity in defining masculinity, the texts reveal non-conforming aspects of gender identity by capturing moments of vulnerability that are rarely associated with the pronoun ‘he.’

he is more than startling or innovative – it’s an underrepresented perspective. The book challenges most long-held, often subconscious concepts of masculinity that might make one uncomfortable viewing a man lying “on the sidewalk next to some frozen dog shit.” he involves more emotions and more vulnerabilities than many are comfortable with in a world laden with rigid caricatures of what ‘he’ should be, and begins to dismantle them.

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The vision
This fall, the festival intends to reach out to the diverse Asian communities in Montreal and “promote the relationship between Asia and Quebec.” Mi-Jeong Lee, the festival’s co-founder, spoke with The Daily about the need she originally saw for a platform for Asian art in Montreal.

“When I came here as a foreign student to do my Masters program, I thought it would be interesting for Montreal to have a much stronger Asian voice that comes from Asian descent,” she said. “Since my background has been always in cinema, I started to have a small size of film festivals and retrospectives. Slowly we built up the festival, AmérAsia, but Montreal wasn’t ready to welcome all aspects of Asian films back then. Although the festival started in 1999, this year is only the fourth edition.”

For Lee, the purpose of the festival is “to give a different voice to Asian people in various contexts” and “support and promote Asian-Canadian filmmakers.” Amanda Nguyen, the General Coordinator, describes the festival as “a celebration of being Asian in Quebec and Canada.”

The festival has since evolved from its original goal of promoting Asian films. Nguyen stated that “for the fourth edition of AmérAsia, there are more avant-garde and experimentally driven films,” pointing to the festival’s role in innovating film techniques and expanding film as an artform.

The festival also goes beyond specifically Asian-American films to engage with broader questions of identities in Montreal and Canada. Nguyen explained that this year the film festival’s team has created a special program called Initiation where “films that deal with non-Asian content or a blend of Asian and non-Asian content” are also featured. The intention of this program is for “AmérAsia to reach out to communities other than just our Asian-Canadian communities in Montreal.” Nguyen cited director Kavich Neang’s Where I Go as an example of this part of the festival. The documentary “deals with someone from both Cambodian and Cameroonian descent,” she said. “It explores how a person of different ethnicities lives in an Asian context.”

The centrepiece

The main focus of this year’s festival is a phenomenon called the Philippine New Wave – a movement that began in the late 1970s, but is rapidly gaining momentum due to the accessibility of today’s technology. The Philippine New Wave is fascinating because of how it deconstructs typical Western understandings of what filmmaking is and should be; Lee calls the movement the “Asian style of avant-garde in the Philippines.” Instead of relying on costly professional equipment – something that is, by nature, exclusive – films that emerge from this movement are created using any equipment available to the artist, such as non-professional cameras and smartphones. This new wave is the opposite of commercial Hollywood, which produces films that fit neatly into narratives that audiences have learned to expect and are comfortable viewing. Philippine New Wave films focus more on social and political issues, especially those present in the Philippines. They are brave and daring in the sense that that they have no specific form.

The father of this movement, Kidlat Tahimik, is a Filipino director making “his first appearance on Canadian soil” at the AmérAsia film festival. Presently touring the Netherlands, Germany, and Vietnam, Tahimik is a forerunner in non-commercial, experimental films that provide an arena for accessible filmmaking. As an artist who actively supports the perspectives of “undiploma-ed” filmmakers (those without formal higher education), Tahimik represents much of what the producers of AmérAsia love about the possibilities of film.

Tahimik will be teaching a free masterclass at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts on his extensive project Memories of Overdevelopment, a film that began in the early 1980s and “will take more than 35 years for the director to complete.” The festival will also feature three Philippine New Wave films: Turumba, a “satirical takedown of the global economy,”; Perfumed Nightmare, a film that challenges the illusions of the American dream; and Philippine New Wave: This Is Not A Film Movement, a documentary exploring both the actual movement and “what the power of film means and what the future holds for cinema, locally and worldwide.”

The challenge

In the spirit of the Philippine New Wave movement, AmérAsia is launching a project this year titled the “One Piece Film Challenge,” a “distribution of independent films […] to promote new works by emerging and established Asian-Canadian and Asian media artists.” The challenge is to create a five-minute-or-less one-take film using any non-professional filming device, such as a smartphone, iPad, or camera, within a period of 72 hours. Nguyen described this project as a way “to relive traditional filmmaking” – because it is done in just one take – while integrating today’s technology. Pre-selected works will be presented at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts on the opening day of the festival.

The must-sees

Lee and Nguyen were excited to recommend the productions La Salada, Luk’Luk’I: Mother, and Where I Go – the three films that attempt to reach out to diverse ethnic communities and raise questions of Asian identities in non-Asian contexts. Tahimik’s documentary Philippine New Wave is also highly recommended for its in-depth exploration of the revolutionary movement that underlies the film festival. In terms of cultural self-investigation, Cabinet, a film dealing with “the very idea of Chineseness that individuals possess,” and Radicalizing Intimacy, a documentary that questions how “multiple identities (Canadian, youth, Asian, queer) intersect and shape the way we navigate our world,” are likely to be powerful and evocative pieces. For local content, An Minh Truong’s amnesia mystery Apres la peine (A New Mourning) and Masoud Raouf’s docu-animation There is a Garden are not to be missed. The fourth edition of AmérAsia offers a diverse array of films and perspectives, and invites Montrealers along to question, challenge, and explore the intersection of identity and art.

The AmérAsia Film Festival will take place from Thursday, October 30 to Sunday, November 2 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Phi Centre.

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This particular structure was designed by one of the raumlaborberlin’s founders, Markus Bader, who describes the Fountain House as a celebratory endpoint of water in the city. The installment itself is created out of natural pine, spanning 10.5 metres in diameter. It features a shower that flows through its centre into a small circular pond on the ground floor, where it is then reallocated as mist from the inner walls. The house’s external surface area is covered with grass, plants, and mushrooms. These natural embellishments are supposed to grow throughout the project’s two month installation, allowing The Fountain House to undergo a process of evolution. This evolution will also include a series of events and performances around the House, featuring sound and light installations from seven Montreal artists.

This installment is a true conjunction of the ephemeral natural world and the city life in which Montrealers are so immersed. The Fountain House is one of millions of structures in the city, but, unlike most other pieces of architecture, it is regenerative – growing, transient, and almost entirely organic. Bader explains that the pine used to build the structure could “go back to rot in the forest without causing damage.” It is a beautiful expression of the relationships between water, nature, and cities, and how these relationships can be intimate and harmonious, as opposed to dissonant and decaying. The Fountain House will be hosting various conferences on water within the city, such as one on the quality of Montreal’s local water and the implications of water over-consumption.

Although the Fountain House is conceptually beautiful and initially draws one’s attention, the overall experience of walking within it is disappointing. There is very little to see within the house besides the very small and uneventful pond and a staircase leading up to a section that is even more bare than the one below. Externally the pavilion-like shape of the structure is intriguing, and will probably become more so as the vegetation grows, but overall the experience leaves much to be desired. That said, the concepts behind the architecture are fascinating and will, undoubtedly, promote a dialogue in Montreal on these pressing topics. Hopefully, with the addition of the instalments from local artists and the water conferences, The Fountain House will grow into its concept.

This is part one of a two-part series on The Fountain House. Check back at the end of October for an assessment of the House after its two months of growth.

The Fountain House is open everyday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. until October 26, at Esplanade Clark.

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Awashish is from the Atikamekw community of Opitciwan and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Université du Québec à Chicoutimi’s interdisciplinary program. This collection is a compelling commentary on two of the most pressing ongoing dialogues confronted by Indigenous cultures: their complex relationship with the dominant Western colonial culture, and shifting relationship with themselves. The pieces exhibit many natural objects found in Indigenous culture, such as divination bones, bird wings, and dream catchers, set against rich red and gold backgrounds. In every piece depicting a human face, emotive blues are found alongside the gold. Awashish pairs these traditional items with strikingly contemporary objects, as well as red ribbons and stitching, throughout the exhibit.

Diana Perera, a specialist in Inuit art at the Guild, describes the pieces in “Reliques” as the combination of “traditional knowledge and history paired with organic material, presented through a contemporary mindset.” This combination is extremely visible in Corbeau Médecine (Medicine Crow), a piece that sets a feather against an inorganic gold, covered in red stitches. Other notable representations include a red telephone resting on a gilded moose skull, and an animal bone traditionally used for divination that now has a sharp and unnatural black strip of paint running through it. The salience of Awashish’s work lies in her striking juxtaposition of two worlds: first, the organic world from which the Indigenous culture first emerged; second, the Western world that has imposed itself upon and crafted its own version of Indigenous identities. Within this context, these works ask the perplexing question of what happens when a culture so originally steeped in the natural world is confronted with, and must survive within, a highly industrialized and fundamentally settler context such as the city of Montreal.

Awashish makes use of a striking amount of red, bloodlike paint, both morbid and rich, and opulent gold in her pieces. This red color is often painted in splatters, usually in combination with various kinds of animal imagery, such as skulls, antlers, feathers, and wings. What is fascinating about these works is that, despite their suggestion of the deaths of animals, they do not come across as gruesome images of slaughter. Instead, the imagery creates an almost entirely conceptual environment of rupture and wound.

Traditional Indigenous artifacts are depicted in beautiful but bloody environments alongside foreign industrial artifacts in a jarring way. In the artist’s statement, Awashish explains that “a culture that has survived for centuries is one that can adapt and evolve. The First Nations culture is a strong one, because it never allowed itself to be absorbed by a more dominant one. Despite all assimilation attempts, our culture remains and keeps on evolving. It is metamorphosing.” Awashish uses harsh imagery to represent the difficulty of this process of resisting assimilation, but despite all of the red paint, the artifacts retain their distinct shapes and identities.

Awashish does not interpret the goal of preservation as remaining unaffected. Instead, her pieces express how her culture has continued to survive by allowing incorporation without complete assimilation. Each of her works is not only a memory drawn from Indigenous history, but a memory in dialogue with contemporary foreign culture. This is reflected in the title of the exhibition — her culture and its relics are in process, always in passage, and her art is not only strikingly beautiful, but also an integral part of this identity metamorphosis and cultural preservation.

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