[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":193},["ShallowReactive",2],{"article:against-pomposity-and-phantasmagoria-cornelia-wyngaarden-at-libby-leshgold-gallery":3,"page:48":120,"page:321":156},{"id":4,"slug":5,"title":6,"excerpt":7,"date":8,"year":9,"formattedDate":10,"typeIds":11,"typeNames":14,"wordCount":17,"isBlack":18,"image":19,"contributors":26,"contentHtml":31,"finalContentHtml":32,"creditsHtml":24,"pdfUrl":33,"vimeo":33,"contributorBios":34,"seo":39},1058,"against-pomposity-and-phantasmagoria-cornelia-wyngaarden-at-libby-leshgold-gallery","Against Pomposity and Phantasmagoria \u002F\u002F Cornelia Wyngaarden at Libby Leshgold Gallery","\u003Cp>Steffanie Ling reviews Cornelia Wyngaarden’s \u003Ci>At Face Value\u003C\u002Fi> at Libby Leshgold Gallery.\u003C\u002Fp>\n","2022-02-07T11:16:23",2022,"Feb 2022",[12,13],7,9,[15,16],"Essay","Review",2907,false,{"src":20,"srcset":21,"width":22,"height":23,"alt":24,"lqip":25},"https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory-splash-50.jpg","https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory-splash-50-768x305.jpg 768w, https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory-splash-50-1536x610.jpg 1536w, https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory-splash-50.jpg 1920w",1920,763,"","data:image\u002Fwebp;base64,UklGRoIAAABXRUJQVlA4IHYAAAAQBACdASogAA0APu1kq04ppaQiMAgBMB2JYwABJH3zcZaYyO7b+NqnzAD++uujfsK9CvVKvqBQamu0r5sKxiaVHvCuJIMKjdXuIISaBeUWDeu48SJ3876Y89GlyxYkO1lgChiBR2NSY6t6LEjUjbBriFMgtAAA",[27],{"id":28,"name":29,"slug":30},1057,"Steff Hui Ci Ling","steffanie-ling","\n\u003Cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003Cspan class=\"lqip-wrap\" style=\"background-image:url("data:image\u002Fsvg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\u002F\u002Fwww.w3.org\u002F2000\u002Fsvg' viewBox='0 0 320 180'%3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'\u002F%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'\u002F%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'\u002F%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'\u002F%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'\u002F%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'\u002F%3E%3C\u002Ffilter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image\u002Fwebp;base64,UklGRrYAAABXRUJQVlA4IKoAAACQBACdASogABIAPu1oq08ppiOiMBgIATAdiWoAtOgR5VE1mnRPcLf9YgICIAAA\u002FjuFYxgQayeKF2OTTlzmB4j8gsUOvHF2Bk+krG4oZlMMgamnCxG2bMtM8jlErTsOTT8Y5ZqgqtUAblKr7zrtc5I9cLTon2OCNpnuJ7HRfsE4UdFGm1efGWHzPETWOX\u002FXD\u002FKbqlLJ6wn2Kj7yvAEH0mU8e2ekYjcQFqdAAA=='\u002F%3E%3C\u002Fsvg%3E")\">\u003Cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" src=\"https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory01.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"lqip wp-image-1059\" srcset=\"https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory01.jpg 1920w, https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory01-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory01-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory01-100x56.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \u002F>\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Cfigcaption>Installation view of \u003Cem>At Face Value\u003C\u002Fem>, at Libby Leshgold Gallery.\u003C\u002Ffigcaption>\u003C\u002Ffigure>\n\n\n\n\u003Cp class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">“\u003Cem>Everywhere Cassandra ran Cassandra found she could float. How did she float? With her float can. Does that sound like a tautology? But the arts of prophecy are often tautological. They reason in a circle. The prophet must prove to you that she is a prophet by telling you unbelievable news, which you will only believe if you already regard her as a prophet. If the news is not unbelievable, then she is just a news source. If the news subsequently becomes true then she was a prophet but it doesn’t matter now that the news is widely available…\u003C\u002Fem>”  \u003C\u002Fp>\n\n\n\n\u003Cp class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">— Anne Carson, \u003Cem>Cassandra Float Can Original Cut \u003C\u002Fem>(2016)\u003C\u002Fp>\n\n\n\n\u003Cdiv style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\">\u003C\u002Fdiv>\n\n\n\n\u003Cp class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Convention dictates that I refer to the artist by their surname, but I don’t think I’ve ever called her Cornelia. I had heard that someone referred to Cornelia as ‘Corry’ in a public and professional delivery and was unceremoniously corrected by her on the spot. What follows is not that kind of text though — not a review, but blatant appreciation on the occasion of her exhibition at the Libby.  So, Corry it is, respectfully, going to be. \u003C\u002Fp>\n\n\n\n\u003Cp class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many of us in Vancouver have been crossing paths with Corry for years in her capacities as an artist, administrator, organizer, hypewoman and flaneuse on the artist-run tracks. I have a solid collection of memories of Corry speaking her mind and getting her goddamn respect but one that affectionately stands out was when I worked as a student monitor at READ Books\u002FCharles H. Scott Gallery, or the “Scott” (now the Libby Leshgold Gallery, or the “Libby”). \u003C\u002Fp>\n\n\n\n\u003Cp class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corry was at almost every event I worked at and often among the first guests to arrive. There was usually a point in the evening when she would post herself up at the reception desk\u002Fbar and chat with whoever was there. When you’re a student worker in that kind of low-paid, background-actor-at-a-gallery kind of job, you just end up being a fly on the wall even as you’re positioned right between two people having a full blown conversation about people and things you have no idea about. Corry talked in a declarative way and carried an educational tone in the sense that everything she said was so unambiguous, or I guess you could say, \u003Cem>sorted\u003C\u002Fem>. I was working a slow afternoon book launch, listening to the conversation around the desk without contributing much. I had one part of my attention in the conversation and the other part on what was going on through the bookstore’s window display where I could see some of my classmates having a smoke break. I don’t remember the real subject matter of the conversation, but Corry said something that wrangled the rest of my attention, “You know what happens to mean little girls when they grow up? They become mean old ladies!” Corry was looking at me so I remember asking in a sort of accused way, “Corry, why are you looking at me?” She replied, “Well, I’m looking at you, but I’m talking to everyone!” There weren’t that many people there, but I’m sure she meant everyone in all of existence. I really liked the unforgiving paradigm she expressed in that remark — the idea that meanness is an irrevocable curse you put on yourself through committing the act, one and done — cutting through the fat of standard chit chat I came to expect around the desk. \u003C\u002Fp>\n\n\n\n\u003Cp class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That was one of the rare things she said that resonated ambiguously; was she speaking from experience as a mean one? Unlikely. Was she issuing me a warning? Well, possibly. Was she talking about \u002F “to” someone in the room, through the medium of “everyone”? I feel that because of encounters like this — encounters that many have had with Corry — we can agree that her exhibition is called \u003Cem>At Face Value\u003C\u002Fem> for good reasons. Although, I don’t really believe that “face value” is a form that expresses what is most true or sincere about something. Face value is more like the front door of value, or as the phrase implies, not of Value, but of Meaning. I don’t always intend to put what I really mean directly at the front door, and sometimes, it’s not possible, perhaps too easily misunderstood or unwelcome, to say what I mean, at first — but what we “mean” usually has an entryway that cracks open whenever we talk to someone and when we make or write something. \u003C\u002Fp>\n\n\n\n\u003Cp class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corry’s work occupies a distinct moment of possibility for the rectification of gaping absences of queer subjects in media. It was the ‘80s when recording equipment and editing software transitioned into consumer commodities, and local artist run centres like Western Front, Video Inn, and grunt gallery made it possible to use these technologies to explore queer identities outside of mainstream idioms. Alternative imagery was a priority for media art at the time, however, the politics of representation demands more than the proliferation of mere appearances. In her artist talk for the exhibition, Corry emphasizes that dialogue is a process that unfixes the historically affirmed from the seat of singular, hegemonic convention.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\n\n\n\u003Cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003Cspan class=\"lqip-wrap\" style=\"background-image:url("data:image\u002Fsvg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\u002F\u002Fwww.w3.org\u002F2000\u002Fsvg' viewBox='0 0 320 180'%3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'\u002F%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'\u002F%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'\u002F%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'\u002F%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'\u002F%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'\u002F%3E%3C\u002Ffilter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image\u002Fwebp;base64,UklGRnwAAABXRUJQVlA4IHAAAACQBACdASogABIAPuVgpE2pJaOiMAwBIByJZwAAH6Q1fEdKjr3H5r\u002F44S1GIDgA+ax+SVAcOyo0pEU9ZuGfHefj+1nmXPpl393IickGfE1v6tpqr2PGSLpW8VcrkStCjtUkmvI+D4YlUrbaUFEBAAAA'\u002F%3E%3C\u002Fsvg%3E")\">\u003Cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" src=\"https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory03.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"lqip wp-image-1061\" srcset=\"https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory03.jpg 1920w, https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory03-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory03-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory03-100x56.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \u002F>\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Cfigcaption>\u003Cmeta charset=\"utf-8\">Installation view of \u003Cem>At Face Value\u003C\u002Fem>.\u003C\u002Ffigcaption>\u003C\u002Ffigure>\n\n\n\n\u003Cp class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u003Cstrong>\u003Cem>As a wife has a cow\u003C\u002Fem>\u003C\u002Fstrong> (1985) is a 45-minute documentary that depicts a queer woman rancher talking about her rural life and community 30-miles east of Osoyoos. The title refers to Gertrude Stein’s poem, \u003Ca rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.poetrynook.com\u002Fpoem\u002Fbook-concluding-wife-has-cow-love-story#:~:text=a%20love%20story.-,All%20of%20it%20to%20be%20as%20a%20wife%20has%20a,a%20cow%20a%20love%20story.\" target=\"_blank\">As a Wife Has a Cow: A Love Story\u003C\u002Fa> (1926). In Lorna Smedman’s 1991 \u003Ca rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\u002F\u002Farchives.naropa.edu\u002Fdigital\u002Fcollection\u002Fp16621coll1\u002Fid\u002F2807\" target=\"_blank\">lecture\u003C\u002Fa> on Stein’s poem, she quips on the poem’s title, “We all love stories.” What is a love story with barely any nouns (Smedman counts seven nouns in the poem), what is a cowboy without the boy? \u003C\u002Fp>\n\n\n\n\u003Cp class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Against a serene and twanging country score, the video portrait\u002Flandscape intercuts a woman rancher’s gentle storytelling and lucid observations about life, heterosexual relationships, hairs in soups and Stein’s take on danger. She shares, “…actual danger I can deal with, it’s the anxiety of the waiting [for] danger occurring that I find difficult to deal with… That’s what Gertrude said, considering how frightening everything in the world is, nothing is really that dangerous.” Watching this in 2022, I’d really like to say that the cowboy without the boy is something we really wouldn’t blink at, and in many contexts, that is now true. However, as debilitating as the mere anxiety of danger is, actual danger is central to other works like \u003Cstrong>\u003Cem>Apollo’s Kiss\u002FMatricide: an allegorical landscape\u003C\u002Fem>\u003C\u002Fstrong> (1992) and \u003Cstrong>\u003Cem>The Deadman was a Woman\u003C\u002Fem>\u003C\u002Fstrong> (1992\u002F2021). This working class lesbian murder mystery revolves around the shooting of a butch woman, Chris O’Steele, after she quit her job as a medial assistant to make more money as a male passing truck driver. In the exhibition, the video is presented as an enigmatic grid of selected black and white video stills, which compelled me to seek out the original video work. In Corry’s talk, she singles out a frame depicting a handsome butch woman with a bandage around her neck. In the video, she enters a bar with her femme date. Corry tells us that this figure, whose brief appearance serves as an erotic interlude in the crime drama, was based on an actual woman whom she met at the historically rowdy dyke bar, The Vanport.\u003Cspan id='easy-footnote-1-1058'>\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Cspan class='easy-footnote'>\u003Csup id='easy-footnote-1-1058' content='Robert Rothon, “The Vanport’s tough dyke crowd”, \u003Cem>Xtra Magazine\u003C\u002Fem>, April 8, 2009, \u003Ca rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fxtramagazine.com\u002Fculture\u002Fthe-vanports-tough-dyke-crowd-24974\u002F\" target=\"_blank\">https:\u002F\u002Fxtramagazine.com\u002Fculture\u002Fthe-vanports-tough-dyke-crowd-24974\u002F\u003C\u002Fa>.' v-tippy='{ allowHTML: true }'>1\u003C\u002Fsup>\u003C\u002Fspan> This woman was from Seattle and had survived a break-in and throat slashing. The intruder had also carved the letter “Q” on her chest. The Vanport was also where Corry met the rancher protagonist of \u003Cstrong>\u003Cem>As a wife has a cow\u003C\u002Fem>\u003C\u002Fstrong>. \u003C\u002Fp>\n\n\n\n\u003Cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003Cspan class=\"lqip-wrap\" style=\"background-image:url("data:image\u002Fsvg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\u002F\u002Fwww.w3.org\u002F2000\u002Fsvg' viewBox='0 0 320 180'%3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'\u002F%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'\u002F%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'\u002F%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'\u002F%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'\u002F%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'\u002F%3E%3C\u002Ffilter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image\u002Fwebp;base64,UklGRqQAAABXRUJQVlA4IJgAAABQBACdASogABIAPu1iqE2ppaOiMAgBMB2JaQAIEAPZAGuxtACVTUFGrE6AAP7H+GkcPEjrcJl1AwM0FcpKLVOFm80xM8\u002FMEL1lmiiuFZA0SL2yBJrdCGj\u002FZOYc70p94O01lUy+miPhjCfVOZgfmSgvjqUjShAIiHS6pqjMCKATWG6j8yQUa0i2u6p4TfQv8Y2ImXl5aIAAAA=='\u002F%3E%3C\u002Fsvg%3E")\">\u003Cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" src=\"https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory02.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"lqip wp-image-1060\" srcset=\"https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory02.jpg 1920w, https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory02-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory02-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F02\u002Fcory02-100x56.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" \u002F>\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Cfigcaption>Installation view of \u003Cem>The Deadman was a Woman\u003C\u002Fem> (1992\u002F2021).\u003C\u002Ffigcaption>\u003C\u002Ffigure>\n\n\n\n\u003Cp class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In \u003Cstrong>\u003Cem>The Deadman was a Woman\u003C\u002Fem>\u003C\u002Fstrong>, one of the frames in the grid also includes a close up of a table clad with beer, which in the video is surrounded by Chris and her friends chatting about their work and sex lives. This scene is disturbed by a bar patron who heaves a chair at Chris and her friends, who then scatter in slow motion. This modest effect makes the beer appear to defy gravity, spilling upwards when it splashes in its collision with the falling chair. The slow-mo affect is employed elsewhere in the video as a dramatic trope of foreshadowing consistent with the murder mystery genre. Technically speaking, slow-motion is not the slowing of time, but the repetition of an image that narrows the variety of movement that elapses over a sequence of stills. Returning to Stein’s poetry, the subtle variation within the repetition of words short circuits the satisfaction of rhythmic sameness and meaning in a way that has been referred to by feministic literary critics as “grammatical terrorism”\u003Cspan id='easy-footnote-2-1058'>\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Cspan class='easy-footnote'>\u003Csup id='easy-footnote-2-1058' content='Smedman, Lorna. \u003Cem>As a Wife Has a Cow A Love Story: Gertrude Stein and the Ways Words\u003C\u002Fem>, Naropa University, 1991, \u003Ca rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\u002F\u002Farchives.naropa.edu\u002Fdigital\u002Fcollection\u002Fp16621coll1\u002Fid\u002F2807\" target=\"_blank\">https:\u002F\u002Farchives.naropa.edu\u002Fdigital\u002Fcollection\u002Fp16621coll1\u002Fid\u002F2807\u003C\u002Fa>\u002F.' v-tippy='{ allowHTML: true }'>2\u003C\u002Fsup>\u003C\u002Fspan> — charged with reciprocating the destruction of normativity, and instead owning the destructive quality of gender. When Stein shifts from “a wife” to “my wife” following a sequence of umwelt repetition, the sturdy building blocks of sentence making and the historically fixed appearance of hetereohegemonic possession get a little wobbly. It’s a powerful and risky form of confusion that is cultivated in Stein and Corry’s work that fire up questions like, what is “my wife” doing here, in this chaotic poem? What are these queers doing at this bar? What is a woman doing in this job? A socialized inability to accept that there are quite mundane answers to this question — they are just chilling, working, living their contradictions (to some) — results in the tragic misrecognition signified by violently spilt beer. \u003C\u002Fp>\n\n\n\n\u003Cp class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">*\u003C\u002Fp>\n\n\n\n\u003Cp class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I first arrived at Corry’s exhibition, I’ll fully admit that I had some trouble finding the metaphorical front door. In this sense, I rather feel that the exhibition could be called “At Facet Value” as it required some piecing together of the symbolism and fragments of social history through intentional investigation. In the exhibition, there is no historical or didactic context provided for Corry’s installation and video practice. I suppose the mystique is meant to captivate, but I wouldn’t defend this particular curatorial practice as it often permits passive presentation while expecting active engagement. The networked symbolism of installation works like \u003Cstrong>\u003Cem>Forged Subjectivity\u003C\u002Fem>\u003C\u002Fstrong> (1993) and \u003Cstrong>\u003Cem>Fragility of Origins \u003C\u002Fem>\u003C\u002Fstrong>(1994) are conveyed in Corry’s artist talk, her methodologies become understood through her lasting curiosity and excitement for Greek classics, local history, papal gossip and sculpture as a proto-diss-track, and androgyne epistemologies. When Corry talks she puts all the meaning at the front door. In this sense, the front door is attached to a home, and in her talk, that’s where she is, speaking from her home, looking comfortable as she swats away unnecessarily complicated ways of articulation when she says things like, “Everybody reads,” or, “Nothing exists without discourse.” In one of my favourite moments, she states that she doesn’t mean to sound pompous or dismissive when she says things like that. Simple conditions like “A truck needs to be driven” and “Chris can drive a truck” are mundane and true, yet the logical outcome of “Chris will drive the truck” is perceived as a dire threat to masculine world order. To rationalize that threat, a simple idea has to be made pompous: “Chris is a woman who dresses as a man so she can work as a man since only a man can drive a truck so Chris is a woman who must dress as a man to work driving a truck.” Counter-revolutions begin by complicating a simple idea. \u003C\u002Fp>\n\n\n\n\u003Cp class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After I saw Corry’s talk, I became concerned that the layered and poetic research of these works can’t hope to be transmitted without more invitational prompts from within the space of the exhibition. For me, the front door opened through her talk. This attests to the richness of Corry’s discursive generosity, and of people who attended her talk, who asked questions like whether Corry thinks there is hope for humanity. Observing the remote work of discourse reveals that the exhibition as an infrastructure isn’t really outfitted to enable discourse as much as it relies on our labour and curiosity to hew the meaning out of it. It begs the question, when the artist’s emphasis is on dialogue, but that dialogue becomes an encrypted substrate of the art object or gallery encounter, what are the practices that reanimate that discourse? Should we leave discourse to the mercy of attention economies and historical contingency? I already had my trust in these puzzle pieces, but art shouldn’t pander to the converted or present itself as intellectual assembly required — shouldn’t it be given its best chance to inflame our pedestrian curiosities? \u003C\u002Fp>\n\n\n\n\u003Cp class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As Corry mentioned in her talk, Judith Butler recently wrote that the very concept of gender still provokes a \u003Ca rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.theguardian.com\u002Fus-news\u002Fcommentisfree\u002F2021\u002Foct\u002F23\u002Fjudith-butler-gender-ideology-backlash\" target=\"_blank\">passionate vitriol\u003C\u002Fa>, “It is easy enough to debunk and even ridicule many of the claims that are made against gender studies or gender identity, since they are based on thin caricatures, and often verge on the phantasmagoric.” When Butler describes a phantasmagoric quality prescribed to gender by reactionary biopolitical policing, she identifies a quiver in the pillars of a gendered regime that now resorts to scraping the bottom of a barrel of mythologies in order to secure its bag. Therein lies the pomposity, a complication of the really simple idea that a spectrum of gender and gender identity has always existed prior to the current regime of cisheterocapitalism. Simple things rupture the social fabric that is pulled so taut it can’t accommodate a wrinkle in its logic. On the other hand, saying something is complicated is just one way to dismiss it and avoid engaging with it, since the inverted logic would be that gender is \u003Cem>fine \u003C\u002Fem>and the queering of it is what constitutes a pompous elaboration of an already based Western science. However, most of the time we’re not having an argument, we’re not even having a discussion. It’s that our lives, our work, our friends, our sex lives, and the “gender critical”\u003Cspan id='easy-footnote-3-1058'>\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Cspan class='easy-footnote'>\u003Csup id='easy-footnote-3-1058' content='‘Gender critical’ is a contemporary dog-whistle for transexclusionary radical feminists and adjacent cisheterohegemonic parties. The term suggests that they are “critical” of gender, or they are critics of gender, which presupposes a discursive occupation, when in reality, they are simply, vehemently against gender that is not reified by institutionalized, medical, or biological criterion. See \u003Ca rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fyoutu.be\u002F1pTPuoGjQsI\" target=\"_blank\">C\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fyoutu.be\u002F1pTPuoGjQsI\">ontrapoints’ video \u003Cem>Gender Critical\u003C\u002Fem>,\u003C\u002Fa> which begins with a dramatic reading of Germaine Greer’s \u003Cem>Female Eunuch, \u003C\u002Fem>an exemplar of reactionary phantasmagoric literature that Butler alludes to.' v-tippy='{ allowHTML: true }'>3\u003C\u002Fsup>\u003C\u002Fspan> will not take it seriously, philosophically, or factually, but they will however, take it phantasmagorically and extremely personally, and thereby, evaporating any possibility of interlocution. It’s a simple question of whose mortality is contingent on our respective simplifications\u002Fcomplications, whose throat gets slashed, and whose beer is spilt when we end things with the milquetoast armistice of agreeing to disagree. Simplicity doesn’t foreclose philosophical possibility as much as it reveals a profound austerity in what can be existentially accommodated at the most mundane level.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\n\n\n\u003Cp class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In her talk, Corry relates history to the repetitive process of people inflating their coalitions, “Sparta and Athens were always at it with each other…the Peloponnesian War is almost like the way that America is working now, each one of them relied on having one more person in their coalition and if they could have convinced Persians to come along, they could have defeated Sparta and…” as she so bluntly puts it,“there you have it…NATO.” We love talking about the personal, about identity and the material of autobiography that compels us into less sterile ways of entering the work, but we also tend to pretend that relationships are satellite forces that whip around somewhere else, a stone’s throw from where the work of history happens, even as we insist that deviant subjects are confronted with the call and opportunity to weave their own mundane histories by ranching, drinking, reading, doing pretty normal stuff, to counter the phantasmagoria. \u003C\u002Fp>\n\n\n\n\u003Cp class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corry, I’ve had a long time to think about what you said about mean little girls, and I hope I’ve understood what you meant. If you start off mean, you stay on this uninterrupted path of meanness because this world accommodates, and makes convenient, a mean world view. What is truly inconvenient is offering and locating genuine abundance. In your work, abundance is crafted, strangely, through taking up space in history, through a dense compilation of cultural and political subjects that only seems complicated for the faint of discourse. You offer meaning so simply in your work that it unsettles at first, and then incites. Perhaps it’s delivered in the way that you aspire for deviant subjects to be received, unfettered by explanation, in plain sight, simple, irrefutable, profound, still holding out for a future without pomposity and mean old ladies. In this respect, I do feel it is worth continuing to inconvenience myself with the risky work of putting what I really mean at my front door, too. \u003C\u002Fp>\n\n\n\n\u003Cdiv style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\">\u003C\u002Fdiv>\n\n\n\n\u003Cp class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u003Cem>At Face Value\u003C\u002Fem> continues at Libby Leshgold Gallery through February 13. Find more details and gallery hours \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Flibby.ecuad.ca\u002Fexhibitions\u002F2021\u002Fcornelia-wyngaarden-at-face-value.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here\u003C\u002Fa>.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\n\n\n\u003Cdiv style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\">\u003C\u002Fdiv>\n\u003Cdiv class=\"easy-footnote-title\">\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Notes:\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fp>\u003C\u002Fdiv>\u003Col class=\"easy-footnotes-wrapper\">\u003Cli class=\"easy-footnote-single\">\u003Cspan id=\"easy-footnote-bottom-1-1058\" class=\"easy-footnote-margin-adjust\">\u003C\u002Fspan>Robert Rothon, “The Vanport’s tough dyke crowd”, \u003Cem>Xtra Magazine\u003C\u002Fem>, April 8, 2009, \u003Ca rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fxtramagazine.com\u002Fculture\u002Fthe-vanports-tough-dyke-crowd-24974\u002F\" target=\"_blank\">https:\u002F\u002Fxtramagazine.com\u002Fculture\u002Fthe-vanports-tough-dyke-crowd-24974\u002F\u003C\u002Fa>.\u003Ca class=\"easy-footnote-to-top\" href=\"#easy-footnote-1-1058\" aria-label=\"Back to note 1 in the text\">\u003C\u002Fa>\u003C\u002Fli>\u003Cli class=\"easy-footnote-single\">\u003Cspan id=\"easy-footnote-bottom-2-1058\" class=\"easy-footnote-margin-adjust\">\u003C\u002Fspan>Smedman, Lorna. \u003Cem>As a Wife Has a Cow A Love Story: Gertrude Stein and the Ways Words\u003C\u002Fem>, Naropa University, 1991, \u003Ca rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\u002F\u002Farchives.naropa.edu\u002Fdigital\u002Fcollection\u002Fp16621coll1\u002Fid\u002F2807\" target=\"_blank\">https:\u002F\u002Farchives.naropa.edu\u002Fdigital\u002Fcollection\u002Fp16621coll1\u002Fid\u002F2807\u003C\u002Fa>\u002F.\u003Ca class=\"easy-footnote-to-top\" href=\"#easy-footnote-2-1058\" aria-label=\"Back to note 2 in the text\">\u003C\u002Fa>\u003C\u002Fli>\u003Cli class=\"easy-footnote-single\">\u003Cspan id=\"easy-footnote-bottom-3-1058\" class=\"easy-footnote-margin-adjust\">\u003C\u002Fspan>‘Gender critical’ is a contemporary dog-whistle for transexclusionary radical feminists and adjacent cisheterohegemonic parties. The term suggests that they are “critical” of gender, or they are critics of gender, which presupposes a discursive occupation, when in reality, they are simply, vehemently against gender that is not reified by institutionalized, medical, or biological criterion. See \u003Ca rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fyoutu.be\u002F1pTPuoGjQsI\" target=\"_blank\">C\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fyoutu.be\u002F1pTPuoGjQsI\">ontrapoints’ video \u003Cem>Gender Critical\u003C\u002Fem>,\u003C\u002Fa> which begins with a dramatic reading of Germaine Greer’s \u003Cem>Female Eunuch, \u003C\u002Fem>an exemplar of reactionary phantasmagoric literature that Butler alludes to.\u003Ca class=\"easy-footnote-to-top\" href=\"#easy-footnote-3-1058\" aria-label=\"Back to note 3 in the text\">\u003C\u002Fa>\u003C\u002Fli>\u003C\u002Fol>","\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Images\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Col>\n\u003Cli>Installation view of \u003Ci>At Face Value\u003C\u002Fi>, Libby Leshgold Gallery. Photo: Blaine Campbell. Courtesy of Libby Leshgold Gallery, Vancouver.\u003C\u002Fli>\n\u003Cli>Ibid.\u003C\u002Fli>\n\u003Cli>Installation view of \u003Cem>The Deadman was a Woman\u003C\u002Fem> (1992\u002F2021), in \u003Ci>At Face Value\u003C\u002Fi>, Libby Leshgold Gallery. Photo: Blaine Campbell. Courtesy of Libby Leshgold Gallery, Vancouver.\u003C\u002Fli>\n\u003C\u002Fol>\n",null,[35],{"id":28,"slug":30,"name":29,"firstName":36,"lastName":37,"bioHtml":38},"Steff Hui Ci","Ling","\n\u003Cp class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u003Cstrong>Steff Hui Ci Ling \u003C\u002Fstrong>is cultural worker, labour researcher, and occasional critic, poet, and film programmer living as a guest on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ \u002F Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) First Nations. Her most recent book is \u003Cem>MIXED MARTIAL ARTS\u003C\u002Fem> (House House Press, 2022), a book of anti-work poems in response to the “work poetry” of the Vancouver Industrial Writer’s Union (1987–1993). She is a PhD student in Sociology at Simon Fraser University where she also works as a teaching and research assistant in Labour Studies, and the School for Communications. For fun, she designs and co-edits \u003Cem>STILLS: moving image tract \u003C\u002Fem>and organizes study groups.\u003C\u002Fp>\n",{"title":40,"robots":41,"og_locale":47,"og_type":48,"og_title":40,"og_description":49,"og_url":50,"og_site_name":51,"article_publisher":52,"article_modified_time":53,"og_image":54,"twitter_card":57,"twitter_site":58,"twitter_misc":59,"schema":61},"Against Pomposity and Phantasmagoria \u002F\u002F Cornelia Wyngaarden at Libby Leshgold Gallery - ReIssue",{"index":42,"follow":43,"max-snippet":44,"max-image-preview":45,"max-video-preview":46},"noindex","follow","max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview:-1","en_US","article","Steffanie Ling reviews Cornelia Wyngaarden's At Face Value at Libby Leshgold Gallery.","https:\u002F\u002Freissue.pub\u002Farticles\u002Fagainst-pomposity-and-phantasmagoria-cornelia-wyngaarden-at-libby-leshgold-gallery\u002F","ReIssue","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.facebook.com\u002Freissue.pub\u002F","2022-02-10T20:05:05+00:00",[55],{"width":22,"height":23,"url":20,"type":56},"image\u002Fjpeg","summary_large_image","@reissuepub",{"Est. reading time":60},"15 minutes",{"@context":62,"@graph":63},"https:\u002F\u002Fschema.org",[64,79,81,95,110],{"@type":65,"@id":50,"url":50,"name":40,"isPartOf":66,"primaryImageOfPage":68,"image":70,"thumbnailUrl":20,"datePublished":71,"dateModified":53,"breadcrumb":72,"inLanguage":74,"potentialAction":75},"WebPage",{"@id":67},"https:\u002F\u002Freissue.pub\u002F#website",{"@id":69},"https:\u002F\u002Freissue.pub\u002Farticles\u002Fagainst-pomposity-and-phantasmagoria-cornelia-wyngaarden-at-libby-leshgold-gallery\u002F#primaryimage",{"@id":69},"2022-02-07T19:16:23+00:00",{"@id":73},"https:\u002F\u002Freissue.pub\u002Farticles\u002Fagainst-pomposity-and-phantasmagoria-cornelia-wyngaarden-at-libby-leshgold-gallery\u002F#breadcrumb","en-US",[76],{"@type":77,"target":78},"ReadAction",[50],{"@type":80,"inLanguage":74,"@id":69,"url":20,"contentUrl":20,"width":22,"height":23},"ImageObject",{"@type":82,"@id":73,"itemListElement":83},"BreadcrumbList",[84,89,93],{"@type":85,"position":86,"name":87,"item":88},"ListItem",1,"Home","https:\u002F\u002Freissue.pub\u002F",{"@type":85,"position":90,"name":91,"item":92},2,"Articles","https:\u002F\u002Freissue.pub\u002Farticles\u002F",{"@type":85,"position":94,"name":6},3,{"@type":96,"@id":67,"url":88,"name":51,"description":97,"publisher":98,"potentialAction":100,"inLanguage":74},"WebSite","critical discourse for experimental art practices",{"@id":99},"https:\u002F\u002Freissue.pub\u002F#organization",[101],{"@type":102,"target":103,"query-input":106},"SearchAction",{"@type":104,"urlTemplate":105},"EntryPoint","https:\u002F\u002Freissue.pub\u002F?s={search_term_string}",{"@type":107,"valueRequired":108,"valueName":109},"PropertyValueSpecification",true,"search_term_string",{"@type":111,"@id":99,"name":51,"url":88,"logo":112,"image":116,"sameAs":117},"Organization",{"@type":80,"inLanguage":74,"@id":113,"url":114,"contentUrl":114,"width":22,"height":115,"caption":51},"https:\u002F\u002Freissue.pub\u002F#\u002Fschema\u002Flogo\u002Fimage\u002F","https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2022\u002F06\u002Freissue_logo.jpg",1118,{"@id":113},[52,118,119],"https:\u002F\u002Fx.com\u002Freissuepub","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.instagram.com\u002Freissue.pub\u002F",{"id":121,"slug":122,"title":87,"contentHtml":24,"acf":123,"backgroundBlur":126,"seo":127},48,"home",{"background_image":124,"isBlack":18,"header_text":125},"https:\u002F\u002Fcms.reissue.pub\u002Fwp-content\u002Fuploads\u002F2026\u002F11\u002Fdaisy_reissue_2.jpg","ReIssue: art and criticism in \u003Cbr>\r\nthe cosmos of cultural production","url(\"data:image\u002Fsvg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\u002F\u002Fwww.w3.org\u002F2000\u002Fsvg' viewBox='0 0 320 213'%3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'\u002F%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'\u002F%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'\u002F%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'\u002F%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'\u002F%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'\u002F%3E%3C\u002Ffilter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image\u002Fwebp;base64,UklGRoIAAABXRUJQVlA4IHYAAADwBACdASogABUAPu1qqlEppaOiqAqpMB2JZwAAKf0c+TYjyG8vhTeRaShCpli8uAAA\u002FnFf8QBzP1T7FqMQfN+5P0sEZp4TM\u002FtvUeu\u002F6PKH+GHrebLLz8IW4Q6wQ5kHZO6aqggnKrdkv+u62izeOgqi4jMyAAAA'\u002F%3E%3C\u002Fsvg%3E\")",{"title":128,"robots":129,"og_locale":47,"og_type":48,"og_title":128,"og_url":130,"og_site_name":51,"article_publisher":52,"article_modified_time":131,"twitter_card":57,"twitter_site":58,"schema":132},"Home - 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