Presented at the MIX NYC Queer Video and Performance Art Festival, NYC, 2014, and the PHENOMANA Performance Art Festival, Montreal, 2016.
Dramaturgy and scenography developed in collaboration with Montreal-based artist performerJordan Arseneault, SEROCENE is an interdisciplinary performance using song, costume, monologues and elements of cabaret‐style drag to evoke the personal/mythical/social facts – and the as‐yet unspoken connections – between the performer’s experience with body dysmorphia and contracting HIV, and the relation that this figure, the sero-converted ‘other’, may have to our shifting geological age. The quest for a new self‐image requires a transformation of the world, a creation myth of a borderless hybrid identity and utopic landscape. Variously engaging with the audience along the spectrums of gender expression, SEROCENE employes direct address, looped cello and voice, and interactions with projected visuals to trouble the notion of beauty, explore the paradox of masculinity and its failings vs. the instant gratification of being a drag queen, and empower the play between the beautiful and the grotesque. Serocene asked: How does the Poz body constitute itself within a shifting geological epoch?
PHENOMENA 2016
Costumes by Sunny Doyle
Photography Caroline Hayeur
PHENOMENA 2016
Costumes by Sunny Doyle
Photography Caroline Hayeur
PHENOMENA 2016
Costumes by Sunny Doyle
Photography Caroline Hayeur
This is a video preview of the multimedia performance SEROCENE, created by Jordan Arseneault and Matthew-Robin Nye. The text presented is the opening monologue. Serocene debuted at the MIX NYC Queer Festival in 2014, and was remounted and expanded at the PHENOMENA Festival, Montreal in 2016 with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, curated by D.Kimm.
PHENOMENA 2016
Costumes by Sunny Doyle
Photography Caroline Hayeur
PHENOMENA 2016
Costumes by Sunny Doyle
Photography Caroline Hayeur