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Tuesday, 02 December 2008 13:33
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 Collective Denial
By Jacob Anderson-Minshall
“I felt lost as a queer artist in the world,” laments Smitty Amabilis. “I didn’t feel like I had any mentors.”
To combat the “erasure” marginalized artists face, Amabilis founded the Portland, Oregon art cooperative Collective of Geniuses (CoG), which is premiering their latest work, Denial of Self this first week of December. CoG aims to empower artists to create economically sustainable art and challenge hierarchies of class, gender and privilege.
“We hope by creating a history—through art,” Amabilis explains, “that we’ll become more visible; and through visibility will come acceptance and understanding.”
“Our purpose is to create a voice for marginalized artists [especially those] who identify as trans and queer,” adds CoG technical director Jack StockLynn “We chose this population because it’s who we are.”
StockLynn prefers gender-neutral pronouns ze and hir and says, “I identify as a transfag, as a gay man, as queer and as a weirdo. I have a female body, and mostly don't mind that—currently.”
While attending Cornish College of the Arts, StockLynn founded a performance ensemble and established a recital space, which ze subsequently facilitated, organizing events for three years and presenting five of hir own original works. Since then, StockLynn has continued producing original pieces, including Jack Castle, PhD and The Container Projects.
 In four years as CoG’s technical director, StockLynn has created a plethora of new work including an interactive installation The Toys Versus the Commuters and a gender-queer fairy tale, PrinceCapades.
Meanwhile Amabilis sticks with masculine identifiers, contending, “when people try to use ‘ze’ they default to ‘she’ and then are unhappy when I don’t behave like a girl ought to. [‘He’] gives me more room to be comfortable with myself.”
When it comes to his sexual orientation though, Amabilis admits, “I’m not sure how I identify. I lived a large portion of my life in closets inside of closets so I’m still becoming myself. [Right now] I’m a transfag, preferring relationships with gender variants. [But] I might also be a bear or a straight acting man or all of the above.”
As Collective of Geniuses’ creative director, Amabilis is a self described DIY aficionado, a community organizer and director of The Rooster Farm—a production cooperative that produces everything from clothing to zines and postcards. Previously he also managed 321 Clubhouse, a grassroots arts center for Portland queers that hosted regular gallery shows, discussion groups and the Insurgency open mic.
Before settling in Portland, Amabilis founded Spokane Falls Community College’ Earth Club, created and ran a youth arts program at the Peaceful Valley Community Center and helped establish the Olympia Community Free School. Also a spoken word artist, he has been featured at Seattle Spit and the Seattle Slam.
“I truly want to be a Renaissance man with art,” Amabilis explains about his diverse creative experiences. “Moving from two dimensions into many dimensions was easy for me and…I hope I continue to create new ways for people to interact with art that transcends the notions of art and medium. Maybe someday I’ll stop being so polyamorous with my art—but I hope not.”
Meanwhile, Collective of Geniuses’ new play, Denial of Self, is all about you.
An investigation into narcissism and the way the web feeds self-adoration and ones sense of self importance—say, by the number of “friends” you have on MySpace—Denial of Self is a play written “by the people for the people” (aka by you, for you) utilizing a Wiki page (narcissist.wetpaint.com) to enable members of the public (you) to contribute content that’s then incorporated into the play.
Denial of Self opens this week and StockLynn says ze hopes audiences won't hate hir “too much” for implying you’re all narcissists.
“I hope that they will,” Amabilis counters. “Hate is a powerful motivator. I hope that they’re motivated to do something.”
Amabilis defines a narcissist as, “a person of privilege [who] doesn’t see that their excess means that someone else is lacking.” He argues that “cultural narcissism is prevalent in the way our country operates: it’s okay that children work in factories just as long as they aren’t in our country, just as long as they’re not our children, just as long as their skin is a different color.”
“It’s very important to me that my work involves a social critique aspect,” insists StockLynn. “It’s one of my favorite things about theatre; that you can go into a room and talk and think about all these complex social problems and still come away entertained.”
Amabilis agrees. “The core of who I am and what I believe in is linked to my class. It’s the dividing line between me and so many goals I have in my life.”
With that in mind, Amabilis is thrilled to have received an Oregon Cultural Trust grant which will allow CoG to offer their audiences “pay-what-you-can” nights.
Although the content of Denial isn’t specifically LGBT-oriented, Amabilis argues, “To me this work is queer because we’re really talking about what privilege and oppression are. It’s a lack of compassion, a lack of empathy, of altruism that creates the hate and oppression minorities have to live through.”
As a trans man, Amabilis recognizes that he’s coming to a point in his transition where he can pass as a bio boy and is “stepping into this different realm of privilege. [Still], I haven’t un-learned my oppression enough to actually reap any benefit. Moreover…I want to blur those lines between the oppressed and the oppressor; between the us and the them.”
StockLynn says hir identity has had a positive impact on hir creativity. “I think being queer has opened up—for me—a vast world of possibilities. If we don’t have to be straight or eat meat, what else don’t we have to do?”
Trans writer Jacob Anderson-Minshall co-hosts kboo.fm’s Gender Blender radio show and co-authors the Blind Eye mystery series; the latest edition, Blind Faith comes out this month. For more information visit Anderson-minshall.com.
© 2008 Jacob Anderson-Minshall
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