Wild Suburb is about power. The power of a mask to possess me to do things I wouldn't normally do.
It's about trust. Working for it. Earning it. And not betraying it.
It's about play. Social and environmental.
It's about belonging, in society and nature, not necessarily restricted to the human experience.
After a year and a half of working on it, I've come to see it, at least in part, as a metaphor for my own assimilation and acculturation into Western Canada.
I'm Mitch Kern, a photographer and educator based in Calgary. I identify as a bi-coastal, Judeo-Christian, dual citizen. I was born in New York City, but moved to Los Angeles when I was eleven (although I've lived in seven US states). I was raised in a Jewish family, but married a Protestant (although we're both agnostic). And I spent the first half of my life living in the United States, but now I'm living the second half in Canada (as a citizen of both countries).
The seeds of Wild Suburb took root in 2019 when I used a deer for the first time in my work, by literally smashing a taxidermy deer head onto a male mannequin for pop-up art show, armed him with a toy rifle, and projected him into a camera obscura.
My goal at the time was to shift the power dynamic between humans and animals. And I liked the way he represented an outsider, something that felt eerily familiar. So for this and other reasons, in the summer of 2023, I decided to become him.
My idea was simple, to invert the cultural tradition of humans photographing wildlife, by having wildlife photograph humans. I was motivated by a sense of play and a desire to explore human relationships with animals, using a camera as a weapon, instead of a gun.
Months earlier, I'd hatched a plan by constructing a mask, choosing the deer as an animal I felt could be trusted not feared, having worked with him in the past.
On May 8, 2023 my alter ego was born at the Fairmont Chateau in Lake Louise (at the aptly named Troublemaker's Conference) immediately following a talk I gave about power relationships in photography. After my talk I walked down to the water's edge, put on the mask, and began photographing tourists, who in turn photographed me, and posed for photographs with me. From the conference room facing the lake where I'd delivered my talk, my colleagues watched the scene unfold.
The opportunity to perform at the iconic Lake Louise and Victoria Glacier is what galvanized my thinking; the irony and absurdity of placing a camera in the hands of wildlife here.
The experience motivated me to go further, as I began staging photographs in my neighbourhood, knocking on doors, asking for permission to stand in a neighbour’s yard or garden, as the mask became a vehicle for creative inquiry. What I've discovered since is a paradox, its power to, through concealment, reveal.
Wild Suburb is about the natural and social beauty of my neighbourhood, its eclectic mix of culture and ecology in northwest Calgary, in southern Alberta, in the Bow River Valley, in the foothills of the Rockies, in Western Canada, where prairie grasses meet cul-de-sacs, and the mighty Bow River flows past suburban strip malls.
As an immigrant, artist, teacher, and runner, I'm grateful to live and work here, and I'm thankful to the people of Canada and the traditional stewards of this Blackfoot, Treat 7 land for accepting me. I mention running, because it's a daily practice that connects me to my environment.
On my daily route I pass familiar sites; houses, bus stops, a community centre, and an elementary school. I drop down a hill into a public park with rolling hills, a creek bed, bike paths, and a cemetery. I'm only ten minutes from downtown, but I'm running on the edge of the Canadian Wild.
I pass cyclists, golfers, and cross-country skiers. Jackrabbits, skunks, and coyotes. Birders twice a year, with cameras and binoculars looking at Warblers, Redstarts and Cooper's Hawks.
One day, prairie grasses crept into my work. Then blue skies. Before I knew it an animal made an appearance. And eventually, something wild. On July 4, 2023, two months after my Lake Louise performance, I migrated over to Instagram for the first time, to try and exploit the platform as a contemporary performance art stage.
Masking in Ritual Performance
The use of masks in ritual performance is nearly as old as culture itself, dating back to prehistoric times in virtually every civilization. Early masks have been found in North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
The most common explanation for an ancient masking ritual ties it to spiritual belief. That by masking, one can channel or embody an ancestral spirit, and become possessed by it. Covering the face allows the spirit to enter, transforming the masker with ancestral power. Belief in the power makes the transformation complete.
There is also a corresponding loss of inhibition, where things one might not normally do, they suddenly have the power to do (1).
In Mask and Masking: A Survey of their Universal Application to Theatre Practice, 1984, Inih Ebong writes, “Masks are profound universal statements on the metaphysical paradox of being and existence.” Quoting the anthoropologist Elizabeth Tonkin he states, “…at its most fundamental, the act of masking is an embodied paradox: the wearer has a face and a not-face (2).”
Jackalope
The jackalope is a mythical creature of North American folklore described as a jackrabbit with antelope horns. The earliest documented case of a taxidermy jackalope dates back to 1932, when two amateur taxidermists in South Dakota made a hoax mount.
In the century that followed the jackalope became a staple of western kitsch and Americana found in local bars and roadside attractions across the American West. According to jacka-lore, jackalope mate only during a lightning storm, their milk is a powerful aphrodisiac (although they’re notoriously difficult to milk), and it’s the only animal that can throw its voice.
They say if you’re out camping and you sit by the fire and sing, the voice of the jackalope will harmonize with you (3).
In an American west that has been endlessly objectified, commodified and parodied, the jackalope is a fitting symbol of folk humour. But the mythology dates back further to ancient drawings of horned rabbits from Europe, Africa and Asia, and one described in an early Buddhist text (4).
Chimera
History is replete with stories of hybrid creatures known as chimera. The original chimera is from Greek mythology. It had a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail. Today the word commonly refers to any hybrid creature made up of different animal parts; a horse with wings, cats with eagle heads, or fish with fur.
Erving Goffman
The influential Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman blurred the line between performance and reality by suggesting that everyday social interactions are akin to theatrical performances occurring on a main stage and a back stage. On the main stage, individuals reveal what they want others to see about them, while on the back stage, they keep other parts of themselves hidden. Goffman essentially proposed a theory of self where individuals, motivated primarily by the desire to avoid embarrassment, strive to control impressions others form about them (5).
References
1. Dr. Gwilym Morus-Baird, Celtic Source: Exploring the Myths of the Celtic Nation, Celtic Source Online, 2024
2. Inih A. Ebong, Mask and Masking: A Survey of their Universal Application to Theatre Practice, Nomos, 1984
3. Michael P. Branch, On the Trail of the Jackalope, Pegasus Books, 2022
4. Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Imaginary Beings, Penguin Press, 2006
5. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Doubleday, 1956