Lecture
Full Body: Cuts a Traditional Sculpture
With Cassils
Courtesy: the artist
→ Watch the livestream here
In this virtual lecture, transmasculine performance artist and bodybuilder Cassils will livestream and discuss their work Fast Twitch/Slow Twitch, the accompanying film to Time Lapse (2011), a photography series which is exhibited in Masculinities: Liberation through Photography.
Fast Twitch/Slow Twitch (2011) is a two channel video installation contrasting captivating yet revolting slow-motion images of Cassils’ workout regimes and diets on the first channel, with a time lapse video of the artist’s body transformation over the course of 23 weeks. At the end of the lecture, the audience will get a chance to participate in a live Q&A.
Cassils (b. 1975, Canada) uses their own body as a medium, undergoing intense physical challenges to show that the human body is always in a state of becoming. Cassils frames their physical form not as an inherited vessel but as a fleshy canvas constantly in flux. “I use my physical body as sculptural mass to rupture societal norms”, Cassils has explained. “It is with sweat, blood and sinew that I construct a visual critique and discourse around physical and gender ideologies and histories.” In Time Lapse (2011), Cassils documented their physical transformation during an intense bodybuilding regime. Along with taking portraits of their shifting image, Cassils archived workout regimes and diets, complete with raw eggs and raw meat. By documenting the acts necessary to acquire an exaggerated muscular physique, Cassils reveals both the artifice and hard work that masculinity requires.