Kacper Niburski
The Silhouette
To the surprise of no one at all, I nearly failed grade eight art. I could pretend that I was one of the greats that were denied critical fame with avant-garde masterpieces, but I won’t. I think back to the artwork I submitted over the years and I remember them as bubbling masterworks of creative fervor and passion – whatever the heck that means. But this is just an abstraction of the past, where time makes complex situations simple and memories into ideals.
What they were, and what they will always be, are the deranged scribbles of a young boy whose brain moved faster than his hand, whose reality was a diluted failure to capture his imagination, and whose artwork was the result of grand ideas that lacked consistency and practise. In short, I got a D.
Maybe I’m still trying to justify the mark. I don’t think so, however. I am very aware that I’ll never be a great artist. I am no Van Gogh; two attached ears give me away. I’ll add that I’m not Picasso either – my best attempt at stenciling out a life portrait looks less like a caricature and more like a blunderbuss to the face would.
Yet despite lacking the panache necessary to paint or to draw, somehow and for some reason I am given the chance to comment on art as a whole. With no more weight than a feather, I can brutally, unrelentingly, dim-wittingly, shamelessly vocalize all my qualms about a given piece. We all can.
That is not to say my, nor your, opinion is worth a flying fuck, of course. In a cacophony of voices, I’d hope a voice as self-indulgent, prone to misspellings, and ridiculously exhaustive as mine would drown at the first instance. But it is as though by just being human, by just breathing, eating, and shitting like the animals we tend to grown into, I can judge all things human.
It is a metaphysical assertion at best. No more than some innate predisposition guaranteed the day we are born, even though everyone else we know was born once, we find our judgment. Whether it be the in the tomes of literary jargon, academic highfalutin, or those who believe that by tilting one’s head to look at a painting ruins the “regal elegance” of the whole piece, we criticize the world and its fruits as if we own both.
For the record, fuck those people. I’m sorry for such a vulgarity, and I should probably elaborate, so I will. Listen: fuck us humans. We’re no more entitled to judge art, books, or anything for that matter. We aren’t experts on anything. We aren’t even amateurs. We are all just chewing on broken glass while staring into the never ending abyss, hoping, praying, to make sense of it all.
Sure. We can read. We can write. But that doesn’t mean diddlysquat in a Universe, a World, a damn bedroom that is so much more complex than we can imagine. We are not the Rulers of the Universe, even though we can type that we are. Instead, as humans, we are worse than diseases because at least a disease looks after its own kind.
But some hope at an egalitarian diatribe is not what I’m trying to get at; rather by suggesting humanity’s limitation in judging art – a limitation that is both found and originating from our own birth – I am attempting to determine what makes great art. Undoubtedly my pieces in elementary school were far from it. As is this writing. But there seems to be some general consensus that such and such by so and so is great art.
Maybe it is. Who the hell am I to say different? But maybe in the same line of thought it isn’t. Maybe works are no longer reviewed but revered, and simply the name suggests an unquestioning greatness. Of course, I am not implying that Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Mozart, and the like aren’t great. To be honest, showing those three artist alone to an alien race would be enough to make it look like we were bragging. What I am saying, though, is that there comes a point when our paragons are accepted simply for being paragons.
Certainly I can say that Shakespeare was a twat that forced his plots and character foibles and didn’t damn near mean the things we attribute to him, but would I be right? Most likely not. Nor would any expression of my most outlandish statements about a given work be merited. I’m a nincompoop, and even that may be an insult to nincompoops.
Yet even though such works are unperturbed from any of the foolish and poorly worded assaults I could muster, are they still great? And if so, what makes them great?
I think there is no simple answer, and I won’t dissolve the discussion into some vague abstraction about human values and potential and the works. God knows I do that enough. Instead, I’ll admit viagra lowest price that great works differ by great margins and great people will have greatly different opinions on the matter. There will never be a sliver of agreement, and that is something you can agree on, dear reader.
But at the same time, great art is great for the same reason it is created: because we are human, and in between two milestones that are no more in our control than anything else, we feel, we need, and we die trying to digest an overwhelming amount of information in such a short amount of time. Most of us are lucky if we can even find a matching pair of socks in the morning.
For this reason, I purport that art is not know for its artistry, but for its humanity. A great piece – whether written, drawn, sung, or whatever else it could be – will not simply move you. A fart moves you, for heaven sakes.
Rather, a great piece of artwork will make you close your eyes and imagine that you were having breakfast with the author of the piece and they just told you a funny joke and oh how you both shared in the laughter and they decided to make a day of it and they told you why they painted this and that and why they didn’t paint that and this and why both really don’t matter anyways.
In the little time that you’re drawn into the microcosm of their work, you’re convinced the two of you are friends, author and audience, much longer than your gaze will last.
I have been lucky enough to have a handful of such occasions in my lifetime. The first time was with Kurt Vonnegut. Since then, I have drank with Heller, laughed with Bradbury, cried with Dostoyevsky, triumphed with Dante, entered hyperspace with Card, died with Camus, questioned with Burgess, danced with Bach, wallowed with Kafka, hummed with Chopin, wondered with Sagan, loved with Orang, and more. I have spent the few moments I could control with a lifetime of people who devoted themselves to something greater than themselves, and in that pursuit, became themselves a greater thing than they originally intended.
That is great art. It is a feeling like one’s time isn’t wasted despite living in a Universe that is as much as a hysterical accident as we are.
Hamilton-based drag queen reveals the impact of the pandemic on drag shows and how she has kept her artistry alive
When the series of lockdowns began in Ontario last fall and all public gatherings were put on halt, live performers, including drag queens, were faced with the challenge of keeping the art and community alive from home. However, despite months of stay-at-home orders and cancelled shows, drag queens of Hamilton have proven their resilience and unfaltering devotion to their craft by employing creative digital ways of connecting with their audience.
Like many of us, Karma Kameleon, a Hamilton-based drag queen, didn’t initially know what to do with all the extra time or how to stay connected with her community. Kameleon started performing three years ago and was about to launch her full-time career in drag when the COVID-19 pandemic hit hard in March of last year, cancelling her shows in 10 cities across Ontario. It was devastating to have her long-awaited goal interrupted so suddenly without warning.
To cope with the loss of a physical stage, Kameleon and other drag queens turned to digital content creation. At first, most people remained hopeful that this would be a short-term solution and that live, in-person shows would be back on soon. However, as time went on and reliance on digital platforms became heavier and more important, more queens got creative with their online performances and experimented with various platforms, starting with livestreams.
One of the most memorable livestreams Kameleon did was for St. Patrick’s Day because everyone was still inexperienced in the digital drag era. It was filmed from her decorated basement and although she described it as a “disaster”, it was supported by a great audience. Besides the learning curve of online content creation, Kameleon said the biggest obstacle has been copyright infringements. As livestreams became more popular among drag queens, copyrights forced their videos to get taken down or blocked, pressuring them to get even more innovative with the types of content and move onto other digital outlets such as music videos, Instagram and TikTok.
Kameleon also took on a challenge to improve her makeup and sewing skills during the months in lockdown. She was more known for her comedy and stage performances than her looks. Having extra time for personal skill growth made her more proud, more confident and happier with her artistry.
Despite building a successful online presence during the pandemic and maintaining the art of drag digitally, Kameleon said ultimately, nothing could compensate for the lost experiences of in-house shows.
“I’ve tried every avenue of digital drag and at some point, it just kind of stagnates. I’m glad to have any amount of a platform or any amount of an audience, but after a while I just missed the instant gratification of saying something stupid and someone laughing,” Kameleon said.
Kameleon desperately missed the experiences of being swept up by the atmosphere of a crowd, fighting with seven other drag queens for a mirror and being able to develop a higher level of human connection through real, in-person interactions. Every moment of normalcy she got back during the gaps between lockdowns made her realize how much she missed every aspect of performing live and a greater appreciation for the community of continuous supporters. When Ontario announced its reopening plans, she was beyond grateful to have in-person shows started up again.
Her favourite part about live performances is when only one or two people are paying attention to her song in the beginning but by the end, watching more and more people begin to put down their phones and get captivated by her eccentric performance. That’s the kind of human connection that she longed for the most.
Kemeleon’s first return to live shows was on June 18 at Absinthe Hamilton with the House of Adam and Steve. Her biggest worry during the pandemic was whether she would still have an audience when she could have live shows again.
But to her surprise, the response was overwhelming. The patio reached full capacity and a long line up crowded the streets.
“[During the pandemic], you could have an audience, but you couldn’t necessarily charge a price for there to be audience . . . But as we’ve kind of moved forward, I’m trying this brand-new thing of actually charging for my shows and I was terrified no one would show up. But the response has been phenomenal,” Kameleon said.
Especially in a city like Hamilton without an established queer scene or a dedicated queer space, the resilience of the arts in the city was heartwarming to observe.
Kameleon also missed working with other queens during the months spent doing at-home online shows. The sisterhood of being in a community of individuals with similar struggles, experiences and backstories is an important source of support for any drag queen.
As Ontario enters the next stage in the reopening plan, Kameleon is most excited to showcase her growth as an entertainer over the past year. She also hopes to help reshape the drag scene to ensure artists are treated with respect and compensated fairly for the work that they do.
“[As we are] talking to the people who are part of the [drag] scene in every city, there is this understanding of, ‘Now that we know what it’s like not to have it and now that we know what we miss about it, we also kind of know what we deserve,’” Kameleon said.
More importantly, she is looking forward to more diversity in the drag community and the reopening of the world through the lens of everything that has happened last year, especially regarding the Black Lives Matter movement, Stop Asian Hate movement and the treatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada. She hopes to see the world and the drag community in Hamilton move forward with a more open and inclusive mindset and more credit given to people of colour in the drag scene.
If you love drag or appreciation for any of the arts, Kameleon encourages the local community to provide any form of support. Even if you can’t financially support an artist, every like, comment, or reshare is a form of support that can help boost their online platform and help their art feel more validated after a difficult past year.
