This experimental video is a response to the artist’s experience working as a professional stripper. What began as a beautiful and exciting adventure quickly turned dark as the artist was criticized and ultimately fired for not having an augmented body. Shot with a tiny toy camera, the digital harinezumi guru, the artist was able to capture performance footage backstage quickly and stealthily, giving the piece the feeling of sensual security camera footage. This work ultimately explores what happens to one’s relationship to our own bodies when one performs professionally for the male gaze.
Official Festival Selections:
Antimatter festival 2017, Victoria BC
Athens Film and Video Festival 2018, Athens Ohio
Winnipeg Underground Film Festival 2018
Revelation Perth international Film Festival 2018
Splice International Film Fest 2018
Sydney Southam is a filmmaker, performance artist, and professional pole dancer. She often works with archival 16mm film, exploring themes of nostalgia, death, memory, and identity. Her current work explores the backstage and domestic lives of exotic dancers and how their private and professional lives are defined through ideas of Feminism, objectification, power, and love. Sydney is one of the founding members of Vancouver-based Iris Film Collective, and the curator of the potluck dinner and artist talk series Special Sunday Supper. Her films and artwork have shown across Canada, Europe and Asia, notably at MOCA Taipei and Gabriel Rolt Galerie (Amsterdam). She graduated from Central Saint Martins with a BA Fine Art First Class Honours in 2011 and a BA in English, Philosophy and Cinema Studies from the University of Toronto in 2007.
