Heather Cassils: Fast Twitch / Slow Twitch (Dirty Looks: On Location)

2011, 2-Channel video installation
Curated by Bryce J. Renninger
The Spectrum
QUEERLATES class at 4PM, followed by an hour of socialization at the space.

Fast Twitch / Slow Twitch is the two-channel video installation component of Cassils’ piece Cuts: A Traditional Sculpture. Cuts documents the transformation of Cassils’ body during an intense bodybuilding regimen. One channel of Fast Twitch / Slow Twitch documents Cassils’ quest for a chiseled body, showing her ingestion of various foods and pills and workouts from her routine. The other channel documents Cassils’ transformation with recorded portraits showing off her body.

Heather Cassils is an artist, stunt person and a body builder who uses an exaggerated physique to intervene in various contexts in order to interrogate systems of power, control and gender. Often employing many of the same strategies used by FLUXUS and guerrilla theater, her method is multidisciplinary and crosses a spectrum of performance, film, drawing, video, photography and event planning. She is a founding member of the Los Angeles based performance group, the Toxic Titties.

A “queer art, performance, and rehearsal space,” the Spectrum was started by artists Nicholas Gorham and Gage Boone as a way of providing space for queer artists to rehearse and exhibit their work. The Spectrum also hosts various parties and art exhibition series. Stylist Travis Steele Sisk hosts QUEERLATES, a queer-flavored beginner-to-intermediate Pilates Mat class, every Saturday from 4-5PM.