the month
My Heart the Rock Star
Comprised of works hand-picked by members of the Vidéographe team, video of the month explores Vidéographe's vast collection and offers insight into the team behind the centre. New month, new video.
Grounded in performance and experimental cinema, Sonya Stefan is a multidisciplinary artist. She is recognized for her award-winning dance documentary The Truss Arch, which received an IRIS nomination and won Best National Medium-Length Film at both the Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal (RIDM, 2021) and Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma. Her most recent collaboration is with Mandoline Hybride and Julie Dalbec on the video-mapping project Reflets Dansants, developed in Marsoui, Gaspésie.
Synopsis
Part of the My Heart series initiated by Annie Martin, Nik Forrest and Nelson Henricks. In his reflection on gender and identification, the artist delves into childhood memories to explores their early fascination with gender mutability. Recalling their love for late-70s rock stars, Forrest compares the performativity implicit in rock’n’roll with the possibility of creating and re-creating one’s own gender and persona as an ongoing, iterative process. The sounds and images of 70’s rock provided an imaginative, experimental space where normative binary restrictions were loosened, and transformation became possible.
A word from the team
My Heart the Rock Star by Nik Forrest,
brought me back to 1979,
so much so,
that I could feel the burgundy shag carpet beneath my feet.
As a 1970s kid, the ‘choosing’ of which side of the gender binary
was baked into every interaction with the adults,
as I favored wearing running shoes, tall Adidas socks, corduroy pants with my Brazil t-shirt to accommodate my tree climbing, bike riding ways.
I remember opening the stereo system cabinet (click click);
in my childhood basement and discovering my brother’s record collection,
memorizing everything I could from the inside leaflet of the record sleeve.
Alternative information about the world only existed through this channel, an imagined place where rules did not exist.
Most of the time, I couldn't tell what gender the musicians were and didn’t care. They were in some other dimension, somewhere within the distress of my ‘MA’ and the lines of flight. They gave me permission to add a newsboy cap to my-every-8 year-old's outfits. My Heart the Rock Star is part of a series of short videos that approaches the theme of love from different angles. Within that realm, I chose the theme of ‘wanting to give a little nod to me in my young human be’ as a young human.
Sonya Stefan
Workshops and Mediation Program Coordinator
