Collaboration with Luciano Chessa
For video and one piano (barefoot player)
8 minutes
2009
Tomboy acts as the lesbian bookend to Tom’s Heart (2004), taking its titles from lesbian literature between the 1920s and 1970s. There was no real lesbian equivalent to Tom of Finland during this period, revealing asymmetrical gender constraints, still present today. The titles chosen reflect the tone set for the queer woman, where characters were afflicted, scandalous, tortured (psychologically), and disturbed, to say the least. (The Cunt Coloring Book shed some light on a sex positive possibility.) While I don’t share the nostalgia for this period, the way Tom’s Heart does, it did open up room to re-imagine these titles both heartbreakingly and mischievously.
Chapter Titles in order of appearance:
• The Twisted Ones
(by Vin Packer, pseudonym for Marijane Meaker, 1959)
• The Well of Loneliness
(by Radclyffe Hall, 1928)
• The Ladder
(by Daughter of Bilitis, First nationally published lesbian magazine from 1956 to 1972)
• The Killing of Sister George
(Play by Frank Marcus, 1964, Adapted for film 1968)
• Cunt Coloring Book
(by Tee Corinne, 1975)
• Odd Girl Out
(by Ann Bannon, pseudonym of Ann Weldy, 1957)
• The Bachelor Girl (French: La Garconne)
(by Victor Margueritte, 1922)
• The Wasteland
(by Jo Sinclair, 1945)
