Francisco-Fernando Granados

encounter. Assisted readymade, screen grab video animation. 1:40 minutes. 2010-11. Exhibited as part of Convergences: 11 Stories of Migration in International Video Works at Kulturhuset Stockholm on November 14-15, 2011 and the Canadian Embassy in Sweden on November 18, 2011. Curated by Lara Szabo Greisman.

The work documents a conversation between myself and a stranger in the randomized webcam site Chatroulette on July 14, 2010. Upon first seeing me appear on the screen, the stranger performs a racializing/criminalizing hailing that marks my body as both ‘faggot’ and ‘terrorist’. In the brief encounter than ensues, I resists these markings by mirroring the stranger’s question, and refusing to either confirm or deny his assumptions. The conversation ends when I ask him to identify himself.

My refusal to confirm or deny the stranger's identification of my image as a ‘faggot terrorist’ aims to de-stabilize his assumptions, ultimately reversing the game of naming and applying it to the stranger. As the frames progress, the reading of the work pivots between allegory and documentary: the work operates to visualize perceptions and attitudes towards racialized people (some of them migrants) in the Euro-American imaginary, but also serves as an account of an incident of everyday racism and homophobia.

Convergences program (pages 14-15)

bio

Francisco-Fernando Granados is a Guatemalan-born, Toronto-based artist and writer working in performance, video, drawing, cultural criticism, teaching, and curatorial practice. He has performed and exhibited at venues including Kulturhuset Stockholm, the Canadian Embassy to Sweden, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the LIVE Biennial of Performance Art, Queen Elizabeth Theatre, VIVO Media Arts Centre (Vancouver), the University of Western Ontario (London), the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, and the Images Festival (Toronto), as well as other artist-run spaces in Vancouver and Toronto. His writing has been published in FUSE Magazine, where he currently contributes as a member of the Editorial Committee. His talks and curatorial projects have been presented at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University, Centre A, 221A Artist Run Centre (Vancovuer) and Gallery TPW (Toronto). A recipient of the Chancellor’s Award and the Governor General’s Silver Medal for academic achievement upon graduating from Vancouver’s Emily Carr University in 2010, he is currently finishing his Masters of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto. with the support of the J. A. Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship. Upcoming projects include his thesis show at the University of Toronto Art Centre, a performance at the Transmuted Festival Internacional de Performance in Mexico City, as well as a performative lecture at Bard College’s Hessel Museum in New York State.