Hotter Than Hell
Video, 3 min 32 sek, 2007

What is "performing gender"? Is there any state you can be in when you are not performing gender? What is a "Drag King"? Is the Drag King performing gender to any further extent than an "ordinary" man?

These were issues that I was having in my mind when I invited different people of all genders, both Drag Kings, men and people in between, to work with me in this video. As I am exposing them all to long shots of just staring into the camera, the viewer has to look them in the eyes for a much longer time than what feels comfortable. What happens to the viewer? What happens to the filmed person? I imagined that the act of performing would sort of fall off; it is really hard to keep your image up for 30 seconds of intense staring. Also, the performing act would become more visible when exposed to a gaze for a long time.

What interested me here, was that you see the act of performing, in the gaze and in the body language, in different ways, but in all of the participating persons. Since some of them are Drag Kings and some of them are not, I am hoping to raise the issue: are we not all, constantly, taking part in the act of performing gender?

In the music, "Hotter Than Hell" by Kiss, the song is slightly pitched to become harder to gender-identify. To me, something really interesting happens when the gender-benders of the video are so to say staring out the sound, an implication of questioning it. Here, it becomes a symbol of questioning the gender-dicotomy "man/woman" that the song represents.

This video was screened in March 2008 at CCA (Center for Contemporary Art) in Glasgow.

In Sweden, it has been screened at Valand Academy of Fine Arts in May 2007, and at the exhibition Waiting Movements at the Gothenburg City Airport, May 2007.