Mapping the outer boundaries of fandom in art

NORTH CAROLINA — Star TrekThe vast transmedia universe often reminds me of the “infinite variety in infinite combinations” (IDIC) philosophy of fandom.

Star Trek Creator Gene Roddenberry originally conceived IDIC as a Vulcan belief in the beauty of universal acceptance that influenced the world-building of the universe. Many Trekkies viewed IDIC as permission to freely explore the “infinite variety” of identities and sexualities in their fan activities. Fanfiction, fanart, and cosplay have many origins in Star Trek fan base.

Walk courageously at the Varley Art Gallery, a regional cultural centre in Markham, a city in the Greater Toronto Area, reflects an emerging field of contemporary art that explores fandom as a conceptual framework for art and exhibition design. The show, which revolves around contemporary artists who explore Star Trek Fandom, “aims to show that space is not the final frontier, but rather a rich and diverse arena where science fiction, contemporary art and fandom can come together,” writes curator Anik Glaude in the exhibition’s introductory wall text. While the title of the exhibition refers to the series’ iconic speech “Space is the final frontier,” not all of the works are Star Trek The result is a wavering curatorial directive: the show retreats from the complete exploration Star Trek because not all works deal with this.

This shocking incongruity becomes apparent upon entering the first gallery space. On the left, a black-painted title wall imitates the cyan-colored digital displays of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Enterprise starboard consoles. On the opposite wall, Sonny Assus’ (Ligwiłda’xw of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nations) large-scale vinyl print depicts a futuristic Northwest Coast-style spaceship flying high above an abandoned forest village of dilapidated totem poles.

There is no denying that it is a brave work. It is said to be one of the main inspirations for the show. But it has nothing to do with Star Trek: it comes from Assus season 2014–16 Interventions on the imaginary series, digital interventions of Canadian landscape paintings, most of them by West Coast modernist Emily Carr, that immortalize the fantasy of terra nullius. (Assu was commissioned to create an additional trio of works for the exhibition that deal more directly with The next generation.)

While space in Walk courageously feels vast, with many works mounted on the wall, resulting in an expanse of wooden floors and blank white walls that make the exhibition seem sparse in its layout. Admittedly, many of the pieces were commissioned and accompanied by dense didactic text on glossy labels reminiscent of the Enterprise console. But as a writer and curator who researches collaborative processes of fandoms, I longed for more tangible interpretive representations of fans’ material culture—even a display case of fanzines and other Trekkie fan works would have been fine.

The exhibition contains strong works. The three-minute single-channel video “Alien Kisses” (1998) by the Australian-Canadian artist Dara Gellman takes up a scene from a 1995 S-Video.Tar Trek: Deep Space Nine episode in which two women kiss. The video employs many of the typical strategies of “vidding,” a fannish form of remixing that involves creating music videos from found video sources. There’s the incremental, slow tempo, a pixelated blue quality (likely from copying footage from one VCR tape to another), a sensual mid-tempo techno soundtrack, and a femslash gaze to revel in. The animation “Space Fossil,” commissioned by Canadian artist Alex McLeod, and the 3D-printed chess set “Chess Growth” tackle the fanfiction concept of “canon divergence,” and imagine a Star Trek: The Next Generation “What if?” scenario in which the Enterprise crew ignores warnings about the danger that warp drive poses to life in subspace. (See the 1993 episode “Force of Nature.”) The works, which feature a petrified Enterprise floating on an asteroid field, comment on climate change, but could also be a comment on how toxic beliefs – such as racist and sexist reactions to various characters in a large science fiction/fantasy fandom like Star Wars – can take hold in a fandom’s universe and not let go.

Nevertheless, I asked myself in my own repair What would happen if the exhibition opened with “You are the dreamer, and the dream” (2018) by Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians), a calligram hidden on one side of the main gallery? It is an arrangement of a Deep Space Nine Speech from the critically acclaimed episode “Far Beyond the Stars,” in which the black captain of the space station imagines he is a science fiction writer in the 1950s whose story about a black captain running a space station is rejected. Hopinka arranges the passionate speech in the shape of a Ho-Chunk burial mound. It faithfully interprets how fans cling tightly to each other Star Trek and its “infinite diversity”.

I would have put this work in the spotlight.

Walk courageously runs until September 2nd at the Varley Art Gallery of Markham (216 Main Street Unionville, Markham, Ontario). The exhibition was curated by Anik Glaude.