‘Berta Boys

‘Berta Boys is an exhibition that contemplates Alberta’s unstable hyper masculine identity. For me, this exaggerated posturing has fused Alberta’s aesthetic and economic identities into a petrol-philic culture that is put on display via hyper-masculine regionalisms: roof-racks, lift-kits, oil-slogans and truck nuts; these are the accessories of the twenty-first century petrol cowboy.

My relationship to Alberta’s hyper masculinity consistently wavers between hostility, empathy, longing and disgust. Reflecting on this, I became aware of the deep social legacy of which I am a product, and in which individual agency becomes suspect. In a climate where the intense desire for homosocial bonding is regulated by the fear of punishment, violence becomes a tool for male intimacy. As a result, the behaviours of men are often corralled into a dangerous self-reinforcing cycle.

Alberta is a region whose history and economy is rooted in cowboy mythos, colonialism, and resource extraction. Because of this, its landscape is not simply a neutral background for events to unfurl, but rather, a primary character in a narrative of regional identity- an entity cyclically exploited by masculine desire. In ‘Berta Boys, the landscape has been personified as a sentient truck: a powerful organism fleeing the constant pursuit of trophy hunters.

Driven forward with self-assured camp, 'Berta Boys looks to open up this imagery by pulling at the tensions which arise when boundaries are challenged. Fellow Albertan artists Aaron Brown and Gabriel Esteban Molina join me in the film as co-writers and co-performers. In exploration of the masculine archetypes found within ourselves, we meditate on the unrestricted behaviours that blend absurdity with tragedy, in hopes of allowing tender moments to slip through.

Pilgrimage: being in the End Times

“The gap between phenomenon and thing yawns open, disturbing my sense of presence of being in the world” –Timothy Morton

In 1784 a fine layer of carbon was deposited onto the Earth’s crust as a result of human coal-fired industries. Timothy Morton attributes this moment as the beginning of the Anthropocene: the moment when human history intersects with geological time. What we hear about climate change is that the best efforts we can now imagine may delay its catastrophic effects but will not prevent them.

As a person living in the beginning of the 21st century, I exist at the apex of this eschatological narrative, sandwiched tightly between the exposition of species-guilt, and the denouement of species-extinction. Despite the potentially crushing burden of living in a geological era generated by human activity, as well as standing under the teetering shadow of the impending ecological collapse, I find it impossible to panic. At times I even find it impossible to care.

Not only am I presented every day with images of the social and ecological clockwork running efficiently, but also running against the familiar background of banality.

In an attempt to overcome my phenomenological distance from the looming threat of the ecological crisis, I set out on a secular pilgrimage to create points of contact with my material world. Armed with a multitude of cameras, a vehicle, and a furry mammalian costume, I documented this Pilgrimage, contemplating both the kitsch banality and the temporal incomprehensibility of living in ecological end-times.