[upbeat drum based song]

LEO: Hello everyone and welcome to Changing the Frame. We’re your hosts. My name is Leo Torre, and I use he/him pronouns. 

INDIGO: My name is Indigo Korres and my pronouns are she and her. We’re a podcast that discusses trans and non-binary experiences in the film industries. Every episode will count with the appearance of a trans and/or non-binary multimedia artist in the film industries to talk about their work. We’re really excited to share these amazing talks and discussions with you all. 

LEO: In today’s episode. We are joined by a lovely guest, Hogan Seidel, a moving image artist, currently living and working in Seattle. They have taught experimental film, photography, interactive media and art history as affiliated faculty at Emerson College and the University of Massachusetts Lowell. They’re a co-editor of Analog Cookbook, a UNC press, biannual journal about analog film and art. 

[upbeat drum based song]

INDIGO: This is Changing The Frame.

[upbeat drum based song fades]

LEO: So, hello Hogan. Thank you for joining us. We are gonna get started by having you, having you tell us about yourself and your background. 

HOGAN: Thanks for having me. My name’s Hogan Seidel. Um, I use they/them pronouns. A little bit about my background. I grew up mostly in South Florida. I moved to Boston for college and grad school, and then I currently live on the West Coast of the United States in Seattle. But right now I am at a residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Massachusetts. So that’s where you’re, um, hearing my audio from. Um, and I guess who I am or what I do is, um, I’m a moving image artist. Um, mostly working in the traditions of sort of experimental film and avant-garde legacy. I also work a lot with photochemical abstractions and eco processing. Um, I’ve also used new media, Um, and digital sort of interventions and sort of hybrids between analog and, uh, digital film. But mostly I use analog. I’m kind of a analog lover. I love the tactileness. I love, I love touching my medium. I mean, I can touch my computer screen, I guess. Um, but it’s not the same as like hand processing 200 feet of film and holding it in your hands. Um, or like using, uh, cyanotype paper and actually pressing negatives or flowers or things onto film and, um, really seeing the chemistry react to something. Um, I love it so much. 

INDIGO: Yeah, that sounds amazing. I really want to get into like touching film as well. There’s a filmmaker that I met in the Alchemy Film and Arts and moving image festival, and basically she gets like old film from eBay and she destroys it and it sounds so cool to do. So I’m gonna do a workshop with her, um, next month and it’s gonna be really cool. 

HOGAN: What’s the artist’s name? 

INDIGO: Autojektor. 

HOGAN: I, I, yeah, of course. I, I, I know Autojektor. I, I, um, I work for Analog Cookbook and, um, we’ve published her many times. Big fan, shout out. 

INDIGO: Yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna see Robyn, at, Camp Trans next month and that’s where, um, she’s doing the workshop, so it’s really cool. What made you pursue moving Image art and what roadblocks did you face when you, you were starting out?

HOGAN: So I went to film school. I didn’t really know much about experimental film, moving image arts, non-linear filmmaking stuff that is, you know, really upheld sort of at like vessels like Alchemy, which I love. So shout out to Alchemy. When I went to undergrad, I went to a very traditional film school and I was sort of surrounded by immense amounts of wealth and, and a lot of the value these professors were putting into filmmaking was based off of precision, right? Which had a lot to do with the types of tools you could have. It had to do with the types of lights, the types of cameras, the types of lenses that were available to you. And I sort of felt out of place and I was like, oh, I, I don’t have money. I don’t know what to do. And I took a 16 millimetre filmmaking class and I had this professor, uh, John Gianvito, who one just bought me a bunch of things, saw that like I did not have enough money and was like, here’s a couple rolls of film, I have extra. And really introduced me to the legacy of experimental film, um, Peggy Ahwesh, like all these tactile filmmakers who are painting on film, scratching on film. Um, and I sort of fell in love with this practice ’cause with so little I could create so much, um, with a roll of a hundred feet of film. You know, at the time it was like $17. Kodak has upped their prices a lot, so that’s not the case anymore. But with 17 dollars, I can make an in-camera edit, and make something quite beautiful. Um, and although there’s a lot of precision in 16, there is this sort of, there’s this freedom from that world. I dunno how to describe it. There’s this freedom, like I can, I can disrupt film, I can, I can agitate it, I can scratch it. I can do all these things that aren’t considered precise or pristine or what we consider classic or beautiful filmmaking in the sort of commercial realm. But you can, with so little, you can make so much. And that’s really what drew me to moving image with, for someone who didn’t have a lot. And even when I teach, you know, if you’re a queer trans teacher, after like two semesters, like you realize all the queer and trans students, um, flock to your class, and and I realize they, they also have this issue of means, right? It’s a classic, um, issue in the United States, you know, these students come from less, they have less support from their families, often you know, stranged from their families, without support. And they’re often drawn to the moving image. One because it’s a radical practice that often centers itself around frameworks of like, um, queer theory, radical practice, um, um, liberation. And then also the, what they can do with so little. I mean, I was seeing all this stuff like Autojektor was doing just like, um, allowing yeast and mold to sort of eat film and, you know, these things you can do with, uh, a mason jar, a roll of film you get on eBay and you know, a pack of yeast. Like, like you can create something so incredible and beautiful and meaningful with so little. And that was such a long-winded answer for why I love moving image. But that, that, that is at the heart of it for me. 

LEO: Well, I think that’s brilliant. Um, A brilliant answer. Uh, it ties a bit nicely to what I was gonna ask next, ’cause you have mentioned that you use several different filming materials and edition styles, and you talk about the accessibility for them, um, in, in how they interact with your practice and how you prefer tactile mediums. Um, so something that really caught my attention from all the work I’ve seen of yours is the, the variety ’cause you use many different types of mediums. Um, so I wanted to ask you how you go about choosing the specific medium for each project and how you pair different forms of editing with different ideas.

HOGAN: Oftentimes I come at a piece from the perspective of process. First, I’m sort of interested in an idea or concept or I’ll read about something then really interested in making work about. And then from there, before I even start thinking of the images structure, the sound, I kind of think, okay, what’s the medium and what is sort of the process? And how does the process reflect the sort of ideas? And oftentimes I do a couple tests and before I even start the piece and like, this is a piece I’m working on and it looks a little weird, but it’s actually, um, negative 16 that I’ve laid onto cyanotype paper and reprinted, and then I’m gonna re-scan it, um, and reanimate it. So this specific piece I’m looking at, especially in the wake in the United States about, um, you know, these drag bans that really are targeted towards, um, trans people, these access to gender affirming healthcare for young people that is very targeted at trans people. And this sort of philosophy amongst the religious nationalist right in the United States that is very much thinking that queer and transgender people are grooming children, like they’re invading our schools. We have to get their books out of here. We gotta like, I mean, I’ve studied the transition from the Weimar Republic to fascism. Early, you know, early Weimar Republic was this like huge beautiful studies of trans healthcare and, you know, trans literature and all these things right before fascism. And like, this is kind of like these books being banned. It’s all sort of like, it’s like parallels right now. And this banning of, um, you know, all things queer. And it’s so funny because growing up in a very right-wing religious household, I find that, um, the tactics are grooming, these ideas that convince children that they are going to helplessly act these sort of ways, the sort of bombardment of like biblical media is very much like a grooming behaviour. And so I’m taking all this found footage of these, um, 16 millimetres, there’s just so much media that came out of like biblical films, um, sort of propaganda and advertisements for these like large, um, religious sort of nationalist, um, churches that showed children like in states of fits and like, like crying and like breaking down like for the Lord as like an act of religious passage. I’m using all these materials and I’m rephotographing them onto cyanotypes. So I’m like creating these sort of baptism both in the film of like washing and then I lay cyanotype onto paper and I do wet cyanotype, so I don’t let it dry. So kind of this underdeveloped paper that I then press it film onto and then expose it to sun and then wash it. So I’m interested in these like processes that replicate some of the images, like these baptism images, and then I’m rephotographing it onto cyanotype. And right now I’m holding up some of the tests I did. 

INDIGO: That’s incredible. 

HOGAN: Yeah, so, and I’m not sure how the piece is going about just yet. I’m just doing tests. I’m sort of interested in the process and collecting these 16 films, rephotographing some digital to 16, and I’m sort of collecting media and which is sort of the same thing with I did with gender reveal party or Genital Reveal Party, sorry, not gender reveal party. I made a film called Genital Reveal Party where I was for so long fascinated by the spectacle and its relationship to other forms of oppression, lots of gun violence, explosives that often go around these sort of gender reveal parties. And gosh, if anyone’s listening to this and doesn’t know what that is, I’m so happy for you. Um, and to explain it to anyone who may not know what it is, people who believe in sex binary, um, have a party where they cut into cakes or they set off explosives. And blue means your child has outward genitals. And, uh, pink means your child has inward uh, genitals and they’re really excited about telling everyone about their child’s genitals. And I found this spectacle so disturbing on so many levels. But especially in the United States, it’s so connected to, you know, violence. Like so many of these are about explosives. Um, so many of them have guns involved with it. And then there also has been this stream of fires that have broken out. And, um, thinking about the relation to sort of climate disaster and gender essentialism and finding all these ties from this, like one act to all these other forms of like disaster and oppression was so fascinating to me. But in that same process where I’m just collecting materials, like with this piece, I often collect, rephotograph, process and then kind of think about how I’m organizing it afterwards. And for that one, I decided to rephotograph it as a 3D film. So I decided to make the spectacle like the most ridiculous spectacle. Like, why are you watching a 3D 16 millimeter film print? Like, it’s just nonsensical. It just, it’s absolutely ridiculous. Um, and I just separated layers. There’s no, there’s like no way great technique to it. It, it’s almost, it almost doesn’t make any sense that you’re wearing your 3D glasses at the time, but it is really funny to look at a full audience watching my film with 3D glasses for like no reason at all. So it’s like becomes like a performance in that way too.

INDIGO: As a moving image artist. Like where do you go to find sound and music that matches the footage that you have and like the work that you are making. Yeah. ’cause for example, I was thinking of the film Pride and like you got Sylvia Rivera’s speech into that and like, how was the process of doing that, deciding what parts of it would you put into the film? Um, but also like in other films, like sound is very important, so yeah. How do you go about that?

HOGAN: Oh, Pride. Pride is actually pretty different than most of the ways I go about sound. But Pride was such an interesting film to make, and it kind of, I started making it and showing it in spaces, often not queer spaces. I was in grad school at the time, which is always like a fun and terrible experience. Um, people like asking you to like kind of exploit your queerness and your work or like exploit yourself. But in this case, I was making this film and I didn’t have the audio yet, so I was, I I, it was all in camera, so it was 16 millimeter. I was like rewinding the camera. I was at Pride 2018 and I was kind of like, and it was before like a lot of people were sort of really addressing, uh, rainbow capitalism. It was at a time when I, when I would talk about capitalism, people would be like, oh, someone took their first, um, Marxist class. And I’m like, no, this is terrible. And I would show it to people and be like, oh, you should be so happy that companies support queer people. And I’m like, that’s not what’s happening here. And I, and, and, and, and in the wake of Target taking down, if you haven’t heard, um, US Target brand had a bunch of pride collection. They usually have a very, um, subtle pride collection over the years. Like they’ll have like a rainbow shirt, they’ll have like, you know, just things that exist normally in everyday life and exist within clothing companies. Not anything spectacular. But this year they were very like, adamant about it. And under any sort of pressure from anybody, um, they will take it away. Once it becomes a liability um, they no longer are an ally. And this is sort of what this piece was trying to address is like these companies are not allies. They take up space in radical communities and they take up space for, um, actual people organising for queer people, for trans healthcare, for trans housing. And they make it a spectacle of brands and banks, and banks that often are, you know, at the time, um, TD Bank was funding the Dakota Access Pipeline and polluting native land. And like, so these like ideas that they will use us. They will market to us until they no longer need us or become a liability. They’re not an ally to us. And when I kept showing this, people were kind of reacting terribly to it and they were like, you should just be happy, Hogan. The mood has changed, which is great. The mood has changed in the US and everyone is not down. But most people were kind of upset when I first showed this and which seems sort of silly ’cause I look at it and it seems so like not offensive of a film. All that leads up to the idea that I knew there was something missing from this piece. And in looking through the archives of sort of early queer protests, early marches, um, often surrounding New York City, you know, I found this piece by Sylvia Rivera that was quite powerful. That is talking about the exclusion of trans people at Pride, which is talking about the mass incarceration of trans people, which is talking about the sexual assault trans people feel within mass incarceration, which is still a problem today. The exclusion of radical trans people, especially black radical trans people in pride. These organisations have been excluded from Pride specifically in Boston to organise to, to walk and, and I looked at this and I said, we’re still having the same problems almost 30 years later. And so to see that speech in comparison with Contemporary Day was really important to me. Looking at past and present as almost this sort of call to, not necessarily a call to action, but a call to realisation of, of this, that, that, that we’re, we’re, we’re still being affected in similar ways. And obviously the trans liberation is also connected to mass incarceration in the US. Like these, these fights are all interconnected and these are the things we need to be organising around. These are the things we need to be talking about. And there are organisations that are barred from walking because these spaces are being taken up by people who are giving these institutions money. And I put Pride TM because it is trademarked. I haven’t been sued, but, um, by Pride. But Pride, pride, New York City, pride, Boston in are all companies. And Mal Bloom, who’s one of my favourite trans musicians, he wrote this really amazing piece about New York, because he was .Living in New York at the time and he was saying, oh, well it’s funny because they ask queer and trans artists to play for free and then they invite Katy Perry and, you know, give her $50,000. So these, these companies are also not supporting or redistributing wealth within the queer and trans community, right? So like the things that, you know, the disparities that affect us, you know, the fact that us trans and queer artists do not have money are, are, are very, um, you know, on the brink of being houseless. Like, like, and you have this amazing institution that can redistribute wealth to these individuals and are not doing it and giving money to not queer people, uh, to play at pride. What is wrong with you all? This used to be. Like, this needs to be about organising and about celebration. Those things can coexist. That’s also another argument, like we have to celebrate ourselves. We can celebrate ourselves and also organise.. And organising is celebrating ourselves, I think personally. And the, and the sound came from needing, um, the sort of the reflection of two historical moments. Right. And, and, and, and for sort of a realisation that this fight is the same one. And for other sound pieces, I am, I, I don’t use a lot of archival usually, unless, um, I’m taking directly from a piece of media that I’m reworking. I love textural noise. Oftentimes if I make like direct animations, I’ll run it through a projector and like output the sound that the direct animation is making on the optical track. Tim Odreick made me a, helped me make, we made it together a contact mic and a hydrophone. So hydrophone is just a, a phone with, it’s like almost like a fishing line where I can like, put it in water or like any sort of liquid materials and listen to the texture of water. Or I can put a contact mic, skin moving or a tree branch. And I’m really interested in these textural sounds and then often I reprocess them through sort of analog synthesisers. I have like a teenage engineering , like OP1, like I have, I have some like smaller things that I can like process them through, um, scales or kinda take that textural music and make it into sort of music. I can take textural sound and make it into music. That’s often what I do. 

INDIGO: That’s amazing. I’m, I’m really enjoying listening to like all the process that you go through, so thank you. 

LEO: I, I really enjoyed listening about, um, your thought process behind making Pride trademark. And we’re definitely gonna talk about activism and filmmaking a little bit more later. But for now, I’m gonna pick up what you said about putting the contact mics onto water and trees and run with it ’cause I find that very fascinating. Um, and the next line of question was about Konstantin, which is a film you made that came out this year, if I’m right. Um, yeah. Um, so Konstantin uses a layered and complex visual language to explore themes of queer love and queer ecology. And you filmed it on high contrast, black and white film, 16 millimetres. Um, and edit it in camera. Would you like to tell us more about this film and the themes of it and how you made it? 

HOGAN: So going back to this idea of when I was younger, a young artist and really trying to do a lot with feel very little. I made this during, I, I filmed this during 2021 and I didn’t, I, and I, this is often a Hogan thing and, uh, my, my friend and collaborator Gabby Sumney always makes fun of me for this because I’ll just collect materials for a year and then I’ll just like pop out like four films in like a matter of a month. And it’s, it’s, it’s kind of a silly process because I, I, I just will have stacks of things I’ve photographed and filmed. And at the time I had lost a bunch of adjunct work. It was 2021 and it was like another resurgence of Covid in the United States. And there was not a lot of work for me and at a time where I was posting being like, Hey, well if anyone wants to buy anything from me or like wants, any of my excess film stock, like I’m selling. Like, I was basically doing like a foreclosure sale of my life at the time just to survive as many artists were doing or everyone was doing, just like finding ways to make money while, you know, there was no industry, there was no, there was no nothing. And and it was so funny ’cause it was right after, it was like right after I like showed at like Alchemy, like a really big deal for me. I, I really love festival. And so I was doing all these really amazing things and I was showing at these places. I even talked Alchemy, they asked me to talk at their at opening ceremony and all these really beautiful things were happening, but I had so little. I just had nothing at the time. I had like no means to make and print stock. High con print stock, um, is made by Kodak and you can get it from, shout out to a couple places at sell this. They, they buy this really cheap film stock. They downsell it because it comes in like 1200 foot rolls. Um, so places like Mono No Aware re , in Brooklyn, which is an artist run film lab and like collective and then Liaison of Independent Filmmakers in Toronto, and I bought a couple rolls of film for like $15 and I was like, what do I do? I was sort of, uh, sort of studying these ideas and it’s something I’m actually working on right now. These ideas of queer ecology or sort of like an epistemological framework or like what we know and how we know it, and sort of thinking about how people use science or like create categorizations in science, um, that are politicised and used to sort of, um, negatively impact and, and are used politically to basically criminalise trans people. Um, these ideas that there are only binaries, which doesn’t really exist in nature. I’m actually, I’m making a film with my collaborator I told you about, Gabby Sumney who’s an incredible artist and it’s a, and it’s an ode to the ginkgo tree. And ginkgo trees actually can change sex. And oftentimes are between sexes and like these ideas of binaries and nature don’t actually exist. So I had very little, and I was kind of interested in a body, a queer body, trans body lovers, returning to nature and natural spaces. And that is sort of a radical act. And like in a time when I was like locked away, I could not see friends. Um, I only had my partner, my husband, uh, whose name is Konstantine, um, the title of the film, shout out, uh, to my husband. And in this process I was interested in one, returning to nature, using macro lenses to rephotograph these textures. Um, and then also in this idea of destroying binaries and hierarchies, I was interested in creating this sort of collage where, you know in filmmaking, we’re often taught about visual hierarchies. Like, oh, well you frame it this way because you’re sending the viewer’s eye in this direction. Right? You’re, you’re framing in certain ways because you’re always creating visual hierarchies and sort of, um, changes of attention between different parts of the frame. And that can be done with colour, that can be done with lighting. That can done be done with framing. And I was sort of interested in like creating, um, a visual hierarchy, uh, a non-visual hierarchy, just like an overwhelming of a collage that your attention every time you watch it can be sort of focused on something else. There isn’t always like, a piece where you’re like, oh, well this is the focus of the film in this frame, sort of layering and triple exposing. And for those who may not understand or have not done analog or 16 millimetre filmmaking, I have this full ex, and I’m holding up my camera right now and I have roll of film, it’s a hundred feet and I can shoot it, um, underexpose it and then I can rewind it in camera and then rephotograph on it again and then rewind it again and rephotograph it again. That is sort of, uh, the process with making this film. 

INDIGO: Um, I was just gonna say, and now we can talk about other films as well ’cause there’s quite a few we’re gonna talk about. The next one we were gonna ask about was Herakles & Torn Silk that you made a couple years ago, which is also shown in 16 millimetre black and white film and layers, elements of animation, analog and digital as well. Um, in this film you have exchanged between your body, the natural world, and the mythology of the trans body. Where did the idea for Herakles & Torn Silk come from and why did you choose this particular mediums to make this film?

HOGAN: This film I was at, it’s funny, I was at um, a sort of camp, I dunno how to describe it, it’s like kind of an artist residency, but it’s mostly a camp. I was really young and I, I was not really young. I was like 25 and I, this filmmaker invited a bunch of filmmakers to their island off the coast of Seattle. Um, funny enough that I’m in Seattle now, but I was in Boston at the time. Um, and we actually made black and white film. We synthesised silver halide, we suspended it in gelatin and then we painted it onto film in darkness and we let it dry in darkness. And I filmed a bunch there. And this material I made in like 2016. Again, this thing where I just keep collecting materials and make something kind of really meaningful at the moment, but not sure exactly what it’s, or how it fits into a whole piece just yet. And that was sort of in my more, when I started to be more open about, um, sort of like my queer and sort of trans identity at the time. I was started exploring ideas of like self-love and body and nature. And I was also reading a book by Ann Carson, um, called The Autobiography of Red, um, which is a retelling of the myth of Herakles as sort of a queer boy with wings. I was really, uh, fascinated by these like queer retellings of mythology and how it really helped me think about my body as a myth, textural and, you know, with typographies and, uh, rivers and valleys and, you know, like every, and I was really interested I was like bending my fingers in interesting ways and rephotographing it and like macro, I was like, it was kind of like a love poem to myself. Um, and like a myth story and like a creation myth almost of like my own body at this moment. And I was, and I was having so much fun. I was like, I was really enjoying my body for the first time. Which is something that is hard, you know, um, even for like non, you know, queer and trans people. Um, but especially, you know, and I was having, and I was like distorting my body and like with like a camera in hand, like, like really weird. Like it was, I probably looked so weird doing it in my tent outside this person’s house, but I was learning to like fall in love with nature and my body. And it kind of is very similar to Konstantine in the way that I was, um, connecting with nature and, and skin and body and sort of calling out to something divine. It felt very religious. And as someone who sort of left religion behind, I found sort of religious practice in, um, art and filmmaking. Yeah. Or at least the rituals of filmmaking as sort of religious practice. I think that is the moment where it was like, like this is a piece of work when I rewatched it and there was something even euphoric about, like rewatching it. Um, so one side is the film, the black and white is just regular, the film, the 16 millimetre film that I rewound, a double exposure nature, body exploration. And then also I did, uh, sort of side by side, I did sort of digital interventions, so relaying that in many different types of colours and allowing those colours to sort of bleed into each other. It, it was a moment of revisiting it now. So I wanted an intervention that existed in the present moment because I made it like three years, four years later. And it was me sort of revisiting, restructuring the footage. So we had this sort of original, like, exploration of body back younger Hogan. And then we had this sort of intervention of like, of the Hogan rewatching this replaying, this rephotographing, layering it again, um, and sort of creating something new and beautiful out of what they created before. I made this film and I, and I kind of forced myself to make this film during Covid. Oh wait, I didn’t release it until 2021. Oh yeah. So many years later. So almost five years. Sorry, I should get my dates right. Um, almost five years later, Fountain Street Gallery in Boston was looking for work at the time, and they sort of reached out, um, to me because I was the head programmer of the Boston LGBTQAI+ Artist Alliance, or BLAA, B. L. A. A., we just call it BLAA.And I did a whole program, uh, called Trans Experimental and it kind of, and they wanted a new piece by me, so like, oh, well we wanted a new piece by you working on anything? And I was like, I must have something. And I rediscovered this role of film in a canister like labeled Orcas Island. What is this? I remember this and I like saw it and it like, I don’t know, I just like, my heart stopped. I was like, oh my gosh, this is like a beautiful moment that I filmed with my body and nature. I have to, I have to make this into something. 

LEO: I, I love that very much. I almost flipped the table in excitement when you mentioned Anne Carson autobiography. I’ve read, ’cause I’ve read that book as well, and I, I’m also very much into the mythologies around bodies changing and queerness and all the retellings there are, and a little bit in theme with you finding this film from years ago and kind of doing a metamorphosis of it. I would like to recommend that you read Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith. If you haven’t yet. It’s a retelling of, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, but with this Scottish backdrop instead. It’s very good. It’s very short as well. But yeah, I, it made me really happy. You mentioned Anne Carson. 

HOGAN: Anne Carson, and it’s something I really love is I read a lot of poetry. Poetry is really important to me because the way poets use structure and form the way they really think about process and structure and how something looks on a page, I feel like is very similar to experimental film. And so I feel like oftentimes I don’t like watching films to get inspiration because I feel like I will end up copying someone or like copying something from someone. So oftentimes I go to poetry, um, when I’m looking for inspiration. Um, and, Anne Carson has always been that in how she has sort of changed the way I look at poetry or what poetry can be. I mean, she just wrote this, uh, new book. It’s, uh, she basically just wrote with collaboration of this artist, the Trojan Women and, um, kind of this collaboration of, and sort of mixed form, graphic novel and poetry and really pushing the boundaries of what a poem can be. And I think about that all the time. You know, take so much inspiration from poets and authors like Anne Carson, big fan. 

LEO: Yeah. I think it’s important to find inspiration in more than one place. So it’s great. It’s great. Going back a little bit to activism and filmmaking as an activist tool. So we obviously discussed Genital Reveal Party and Pride trademark, and I wanted to ask you how activist filmmaking is significant to you, but also if you would identify your other films. So like Herakles & Torn Silk and also Konstantine as activist films or if you would separate that. ’cause we are aware that some people view all they make as an activist move and some other people are like, no, this is my stuff. 

HOGAN: I remember reading this question and thinking, do I consider myself an activist filmmaker? Um, I, because I really never thought of myself as such, and not that my film doesn’t align itself with Radical movements or, you know, uh, other types of, you know, queer theory, intersectional theory. But I guess when I read this, I thought, well, I guess the act of making is radical. The act of making, um, work about one’s self, one’s identity, one’s body is an act of activism. And so in that way, I guess I would consider all my works, activist work. Though, Films like Pride in General Reveal Party, I would say are reactionary films and, and, and that’s the difference I would say between work like Herakles & Torn Silk and Konstantine versus Pride and Genital Reveal Party is those films are reactionary. Like we are all in the US and everywhere, but especially, I feel like oftentimes we’re on battleground, you know, constantly in Flux of our rights being taken away. So a lot of these come from a place of like anger, and I think that’s the difference is where my other films come from a place of self-discovery, love, freedom, liberating myself. These come from a sense of like anger and reaction and a hope for liberation, and often responding to something very temporarily now, right? Genital Reveal Party was reactionary to these like this sort of phenomenon, which never really existed before. It’s actually quite a new thing in the US. I dunno if it happens in Scotland. I hope it doesn’t. I hope it does not. Um, so it might be very US-centric, sort of the anger and, you know, the, this gender essentialism that is harming so many children. Um, that just made me so angry. But then I also kind of wanted to make the film a little funny because it was ridiculous spectacle. So it sort of plays on these ideas of sort of dark and humorous, but um, also, I find that when I pull the thread of one oppressive system, I, I find the interconnected threads between a lot, which is why when I, you know, I found this article about this Arizona fire that’s spread over miles, you know, you know, these sort of connection between climate disaster and gender essentialism connection between, uh, gender essentialism and, uh, violence and gun violence, um, and the military industrial complex. And, uh, you keep pulling the thread. And, and, and I think that is also something as we organise, we certain need to start to think about oppressive systems affect identities and intersecting identities differently on purpose because it doesn’t allow us to organise collectively, right? So everyone’s fighting different fights. Um, but in fact, if we all pull the threads, they’re pretty similar. We’re all fighting kind of. Smaller battles when there should be larger organising, um, happening around sort of late stage capitalism and climate disaster, which is connected to mass incarceration, the military industrial complex, um, transphobia, um, racism. Um, um, yeah. Sometimes it is a little bit hammer on the nail, but I, I, I try not to, I try to allow even my reactionary films to have a lot of space for reflection and not necessarily telling people. ’cause I understand in a world where we’re all need to be responding to things that are you know, violating our, you know, our livelihoods and existences. There isn’t a lot of nuance to activist, um, response right. And there can’t be because it’s about responding to something right now. And that’s why I don’t always see my work as activism, because activism is sometimes I feel super responsive to a, a thing that needs to be fixed right now where I feel like mine is trying to see a, an interconnectedness to be thought about. Um, and not necessarily like stop gender reveal parties. Right? That’s like not the point of the film. I know that’s, my film is not gonna stop that, at all. It’s more picking, at the, the interconnectedness between these forms of oppression that are connected to gender essentialism and not necessarily about organising around like, uh, a book ban that contain, that’s from a transgender author. Right. There’s sort of different, and I feel like activism is sort of an a call for now where my phones feel reactionary, but are more of a, a call to think about the interconnectedness of, uh, oppressive systems.

INDIGO: Yeah. And I guess you use the reaction within your mediums that you’re working with and um, Genital Reveal Party is a 3D film, which is amazing. You’ve talked about it before, um, and you have also had moving image projects displayed in museum spaces. What is it like, what is it like to produce work that doesn’t fit within the narrow or confines of mainstream filmmaking? I know you don’t follow mainstream filmmaking anyways. 

HOGAN: I do, and I don’t. So it’s, I, it’s funny because I, I do follow mainstream filmmaking. I find it as a great source of love and entertainment. You know, there’s a little bit of snobbery with like high church experimental filmmakers, which I try to like, I try to like break that myth. Experimental or avant-garde is very like, you know, salon style exclusive, like the New York experimental filmmakers surrounding, um, you know, anthology is a very much like a boys club, very like, exclusive and, you know, that kind of had bled in. So like, even my mentors, you know, were sort of still breaking outta that as like, this needs to be a tool for everybody, right. Or like a mode of making for everyone. And when I, and when my students asked was like, oh, well what’s your favourite film? I was like, well, technically my favourite film is PeeWee’s Big Adventure. Um, which is not an experimental film. It’s a, so I, I do love narrative work. I just, I found no joy and making narrative work because of the, the needing of resources. And specifically in the US there is little to zero public arts funding unless you come from means it’s hard to make something, um, with, uh, nice cameras and all that good stuff, good lenses. Um, so I, I got a bull that has just lasted through my days. Um, only need one camera and two lenses, uh, for all my media making. Um, I have made pieces specifically for museums, though most of my films are meant to be watched start to end. But the films I have projected in museums, I, I like to choose ones that are visually complex enough that it can be walked into and walked out of. Um, I think Herakles & Torn Silk is a great example of that. I don’t, someone could walk halfway through and still get something quite beautiful out of it. Brian, you know, once said that like, great ambient music is as interesting as it is forgettable. And I, I, I think that’s, I think that’s, um, something that to be said about something so visually complex is like, it, it’s, it’s like a lot to walk into. So you can either really get into it or you can kind of see it at the periphery and enjoy it and walk on in a museum. But most of my work is meant for the screen. Um, everyone to put their butts in a chair and watch it start to end. I, I want to go where people are. I want, I want experimental film to be more accessible. And if more people see my work because it’s in a museum, I think great. But the problem with experimental film screenings in the US and museums in general is museums are expensive in the US. Uh, caveat that a lot of museums are free, um, in other countries because they support arts and people seeing arts. When people want to do outdoor screenings, when people want to show it at… like I just showed a film in like someone’s barn in Seattle. It’s like not, you know, it’s not something for my CV or for like, you know, because it wasn’t a film festival. It’s just like, but when people wanna do that, I love that. I love when people are like, let’s watch this. Whatever gets it to the most amount of people ’cause I often feel experimental film can be very exclusive. It’s like in a basement, in a university, uh, 12 people show up and they’re all like high church academics and you know, art historians or it’s in a really nice museum, but you have to pay 30 dollars to get inside. I’m more interested in my work showing elsewhere if I’m being quite honest, because I don’t find that as radical practice. If it’s not accessible. It’s not radical. So something I’m about to do is just, um, because everyone says don’t do it, but I’m kind of over it. All my films before 2022 I’m just having free online. So by the time people hear this, um, my most of my work will be free offline because I’ve got, I kind, I’ve gotten sick of people not being able to access experimental film and queer, uh, made work. I remember Fracto in Berlin, um, Alchemy gets incredible audiences for experimental work. They really focus on community and like bringing community in and it’s something the US is just not good at. They wanna be exclusive. They want only the coolest of cool to show up. It’s kind of, it’s kind of choking out, um, the interest in experimental film. Yeah. 

INDIGO: I had a great time at Alchemy, like it was great to see sold out screening after sold out screening with like 80 people in the room watching experimental film. You know, like it’s, yeah, it was stunning. 

HOGAN: I, I, I think I have to submit again because I love them so much. And when I showed it was all online because of Covid. But I remember doing my sort of, it was me and four other, three other artists who were doing like an opening presentations of like our work sort of reflecting. We were doing like artist presentations on a theme. And I remember looking at a Zoom and there was like 200 people in the zoom room listening to me talk about experimental film. And I was like, what is this? Like, this is incredible. I was like, I’m used to, and this is no shade at, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s hard to market. You know, the US is very narrative commercial focused. There’s not a lot support for avant garde or new ideas or new experiments in cinema. So it’s hard to get an audience, um, but going to Alchemy. And then also you can kind of see how many people were viewing the live stream of the program I was in, it was like 170. I guess you get a lot more when you have an online program because anyone can show up, um, around the world. But what you’re saying, like sold out experimental screenings.

INDIGO: Yeah, and it was just great to go to the Scottish borders and like see loads of artists together in a small space. It’s just stunning and the work that Alchemy does within the community where they’re at with like arts and residencies and yeah, it’s just like Julia Parks was one of the filmmakers that participate in the arts and residences, and she made four experimental films that she showed at the festival that I was at. And it was just beautiful to see like how she connected the community with analog filmmaking. 

HOGAN: It’s a community practice and if it’s not thought of such, um, It becomes completely inaccessible, right? And there’s something happening, um, especially when it comes to, uh, countries that support public arts. Um, and it allows arts to exist separately from the need of capital. So when you publicly fund arts, it allows people to experiment in unconventional ways and create quite incredible things and create support for those sort of experimentation and like form that doesn’t always happen in places where you have to have capital or the piece you make has to make capital. I’m always impressed to see what happens abroad. 

LEO: I, I believe that experimental filmmaking should be accessible for both making it and for viewing it. Um, which is why it’s very exciting that Alchemy Film Festival is doing the work they do. I. I’m quite excited about whenever they open the submissions again ’cause I am hoping to submit as well and I’m, yeah, very, very excited. Um, we were hoping to talk a little bit about your experimental documentary now, which is the Backside Of God. You told us that you made it using archival footage, digital glitch, chemical abstraction, and direct animation, and you explore your relationships with family, religion and queerness and how they interact and how they’re like interlinked in a way. So what was it like going through family archival footage and repurposing it for experimental documentary making? 

HOGAN: So it’s like the first, I guess, closest thing to a conventional documentary I’ve ever made. Um, so when I was making it, I, it’s so funny. I, I would show it, I was still in grad school, so this is my graduate thesis. And it, it showed at Alchemy. Um, so that was one of, its, I think that was its first or second screening or something. I remember I was with a bunch of conventional filmmakers who are very interested in like, um, narrative arcs, which still exists within documentaries, like ideas of um, sort of, uh, climactic moments, um, happening and very structured. So I was getting a bunch of feedback being like, okay, well you should reveal this then you should create a structure like this then. And I was like, and I kind of pushed back on that. Also is told by a thesis advisor that needs to be less than 12 minutes or no one’s gonna program it, which is something, I dunno if that’s, if that’s the word over on your side of the ocean, but in the US they’re like, if you don’t have a short under 10 minutes, no one’s gonna program it because they wanna program more. So my film’s like 27 minutes. It’s like not a short but it’s not a feature. John Gianvito. Oh my gosh, who’s that person I told you back earlier in my undergraduate degree, gave me film stock, gave this poor little queer kid with no money, like all these resources, looked at me dead in the eye and said It needs to be as long as it needs to be. And I remem- and I say that to my students now, um, because I’m sick of people telling people how long films need to be or like, what, what will get it the most programming or a film needs to be as long as it needs to be. I wanted to sort of replicate the feeling of trudging through this archival material. And there’s moments of just like darkness, like you kind of see some animation, some direct animation, um, but mostly in darkness. And I remember listening to these audio tapes late at night recording them. These sort of sermons, um, that I had all on cassette tapes that I was digitising and I would be listening to them in the darkness. And going through that archival footage was very hard. It was reliving a lot of trauma that I experienced and it was sort of perpetrated against me as a young, uh, uh, queer person. And the feelings of fear, insecurity and, you know, all these sort of, it was sort of confronting a past that I had left behind. Um, and oftentimes as queer people, we have to reject family and come up with new family. And that family isn’t just blood, right? Family exists in many, many different types of formats. That isn’t just the people who, um, helped in procreation and, and created you. It exists in many other ways, but I was, I was really interested in reconfronting that. Like, and I went to meet, um, with my uncle, um, who had passed away at that moment, um, and who had agreed to sort of film with me and I, and he died when I arrived, so I was kind of left with nothing. So like I had no, I, I was supposed to, I wanted to record a bunch of audio with him and you know, like I said before, I just collect materials and then make meaning out of them later. And so I was planning on just doing a bunch of audio recording and seeing what we can make about it together. And I was really interested in this idea of, Queer temporality. And I had been reading a lot of theories about that, about how time changes, how time exists differently out like hetero familial timelines. Obviously now with access to, um, reproductive rights for queer people, you know, you don’t, our timelines exist more similarly than they did in the past, but you know, when you don’t have access to these sort of benchmarks for what we consider to be a happy and healthy life, or the fact that you may not want those things at all, um, the way you experience time changes. And I was interested in looking at his queerness in rejection of it as a temporal moment of like, uh, his upbringing and really thinking about how our temporal existences are so different. Um, and in fact exploring like, is he’s still queer, even in rejection of his queerness? Like, would I, ’cause I also was raised in a very extremely religious household, could I have easily taken a path just like that for the ease of, of living, rejected it, even though it would’ve internally tormented me as it did him? Um, and I was interested in exploring those ideas, um, that are kind of hard to think about because we often, for safety reject like, like, you know, I, I’ve had to put a lot of my family, you know, out of my world for safety and, uh, to come back to that, to look at the nuances of some of that, especially for someone who said, had a lot of battling with their sexuality, reckoning with the idea that, um, this sort of queer phobia was linked to trauma and pain and like, do I still love him? It was really exploring these nuances that I feel like I wasn’t able to explore before and, and I’m not sure still. Do I love him? I did when I was a child. I didn’t later in life, but do I now? Are there, can I love parts of him? Can I sympathise with someone like that who caused so much harm, knowing that a lot of the pain they caused was because of pain they felt inside? I’m not sure and I still don’t know. And that’s sort of the reason the archival was so important, ’cause I really needed to look at the breadth of the recorded media about him and to see, to sort of find reasons, answers, which there are none, there’re never answers. But to sort of explore those sort of, uh, two different queer timelines, mine and his, right?

LEO: It’s just, it’s, it’s hitting very hard ’cause being aware of, of like how people who have hurt you have done the hurt because they’ve been hurt as well. It’s very complicated ’cause like you sit with the ideas of I have been hurt, but I care about this person deeply and I can see that they’re also hurt and that the actions they perpetuate are coming from a space and a mindset of like her as well. It’s very complicated. So it’s it’s. Taking it, in thinking about it. 

HOGAN: Yeah. And it’s something that I felt like I’ve dealt with as a teacher, um, as well is, um, oftentimes we, and even, you know, we’re taught when a student causes harm, like emotional harm, is to sort of take them out, like separate or extract or reject, right? Like to get them out of the classroom. And you find that those people who cause harm are often the people whose the most harm has been perpetuated onto them. And that in living with that idea and like separating and, and, and taking away these sort of punitive systems like interpersonally and within like education, that sort of…. That don’t actually deal with pain and trauma, um, just kind of separate it, um, and reject it. And, you know, if someone is causing harm, it’s not about, um, reconciling with it, it’s about, um, separating it. Um, which is a form of protection too. Um, but we find out that it doesn’t really solve a lot. And I found that that has been the case many times over with me dealing with my family is I’ve separated it for the current moment of safety, but that pain still exists and I have not really reconciled it and I’ve not really dealt with what sort of traumas they’re going through. And it doesn’t, and it doesn’t necessarily make it what they did. Okay. It doesn’t make it forgivable, it just makes the nuance of it more, it makes it more complicated to, to not be able to see the nuance in these things. You know, we, we live, we live in a place, we live in a world where, you know, we often, we often lack to see nuance in these things, which is fine. It’s for, and I want to keep saying that it’s for protection. Sometimes you have to do that, right? Sometimes you just have to protect yourself. Um, but sometimes you have to kind of revisit, um, the pain to see that nuance, um, to find some sort of understanding in it. And I think that’s what I was trying to do with this film.

INDIGO: Yeah, the film was very impactful for me, I found, and all of your films are amazing. I really like the one that spoke the most to me was Herakles & Torn Silk. I’m not sure why, but I watched it like five times in a row. Um, and yeah, I’m just like really happy that we got to watch all of the films and talk to you just now. Um, and I just wanted to ask a question about accessing funds. I know the US is quite bad with like, I, I mean, I’m not sure, I’m not from there, but like, but like especially accessing funds to create experimental projects. And I know you’ve mentioned that you’ve done some arts and residencies as well, like how, what, what’s the process of like finding the arts and residencies and then going through them and, yeah, and accessing other types of funding?

HOGAN: I usually look at a bunch of resources online. This Week In Experimentals, like, uh, it’s actually a friend created it, but I use it as a resource that posts funding opportunities both nationally in the US and internationally and residencies. Um, word of mouth, um, between people who’ve done the residencies. Often I have friends who are like, I just did this, like, you should do it. And often residencies don’t give a lot of funding, but they give space, which is really important. Like right now, um, I have space, um, mentorship, colleagues, a bunch of, um, artists here who we’re all sort of interacting with and showing each other’s work. But when it comes to funding, it’s about resource sharing in the US. It’s really about community. So oftentimes when I have extras, I hoard any sort of resources that are in abundance, I hoard and then I redistribute And that’s kind of a, something that happens within experimental film world. Like someone will give you a camera, they’re like, oh, I have this extra camera, I have this extra lens, here you go. I have this extra film. I have friends who are professors who get a bunch of funding from their institutions and then they redistribute it. So it’s kind of like this inner connected system of redistribution of resources and it’s kind of intense. I don’t really get a lot funding. I kind of teach, um, as a way to fund my practice and also get support from my work. And we’ll see that a lot in the US. A lot of artists are institutionalised and I make that sort of as a double kind of pun as both, uh, kind of like are within an institution, but also within this sort of like, um, like looney bin of like, and you know, a lot of artists need to connect themselves with universities to get access to funding. And when that doesn’t happen, you turn towards resource sharing. And then there’s also a growing community around artists run labs all over the US, Mono No Aware is great, Interbay Cinema Society in Seattle is great. Um, there are all these sort of local institutions that have resources and, and workshops and sometimes lab, AgX in Boston, and we really have to rely on each other. There’s not a lot of funding. Sometimes I’ll get some small amount of funding that will last a little bit of time from like the state or the city or I’ll apply for a grant. Um, but it’s few and far between. So when it comes to funding, it’s often about collective resource sharing amongst each other. We sort have to really rely on each other in the US really have to be vulnerable and be like, I really need something, but I don’t have the resources. And someone who does will sort of often offer it. 

INDIGO: That sounds a lot like the trans community and like GoFundMe, you know, it’s like very Yeah, just trans people giving each other money. 

HOGAN: Money and, and trans healthcare. So that often is, is is publicly funded and you know, redistribution of like personal wealth. Um, where if someone has, like, if I have a little bit extra and I see things like that, I’ll often donate because I’m like, okay, well I’m giving a little now because I know there will be times when people give me . And yeah the same thing, access to healthcare, access to research and artistic funding. It’s like all interconnected, like the same reason we have to do this, the same, you know, systems at play that cause us to not have healthcare also are the same that causes us to not have artistic resources. Um, like the thread is linked even though we kind of see ’em as two separate battles. Right. 

LEO: Are there any other creative practices that you’re interested in? 

HOGAN: Yeah, I, I’ve been doing a lot of, um, print work, so although I do moving image work, I’ve been really interested in also doing a lot of print work, um, using those same experimental techniques. Um, this isn’t done, but I’m, um, and I’m, I’m doing a ton of different layers and different toning of like, cyanotype like images. And so right now it’s just plant material, but I’m, um, I’m doing a bunch of different layering and then I’m gonna do layering of like, um, negatives of bodies intermix with, um, plant materials. So I’m very interested in print work. I realise that a lot of my work incorporates a form of performance. Um, and I would love to get more into doing performance work, um, if I ever had the confidence to do so. And then poetry, I, I, I always come back to poetry. I, I love writing it. I’m not a great poet. I find that reading and writing poetry often helped me work through the actual practice I wanna do on, in the moving image space. 

INDIGO: We’re getting to the, not quite close to the end, but, um, what advice would you give to trans creators that are just starting out?

HOGAN: Be vulnerable. Lean on others. Find people who are interested in community. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Find mentorship, that’s a big one. And ask people, I mean, you don’t have to directly be like, well, you’d be my mentor. But, um, really relying on the established, uh, community that’s already there. Who wants new people? Especially in the US we’re, we’re where this, the experimental filmmaking community is a community of legacy. I mean, when I think of my mentor and my mentor’s mentor and it’s, it goes down like this really amazing route of, um, uh, makers and the legacy needs to continue. Um, so people are looking to share resources, share knowledge, open the space up to you, though it may not seem so on the outside. So feel confident to insert yourself in those spaces. Um, be vulnerable. Um, share your, submit your work, like stop thinking that you need, this goes to all students or early makers thinking that you need the perfect piece to insert yourself into the art world. I used to think that for so long. I was like, oh, this isn’t, isn’t perfect or what I thought was perfect. You deserve to take up space everywhere. Um, I had, I, it’s so funny ’cause I, I think actually after Alchemy, I have like a couple of people just reach out about some of the processes that I use and I’m so willing to share that because, um, experimental filmmakers have been so generous to me about techniques and, and process and like how they create images that often if you even see something reaching out to a maker and being like “hey, I am really interested in that type of making and like that type of practice”. Often times you will be given so much love. And if they don’t give you love, leave them. They’re, they’re, they’re not, they’re not good people anyways. If they’re not opening their arms to young or new makers, like they’re not, uh, practising the community, we wanna continue throughout experimental filmmaking. 

INDIGO: I’ll definitely message you about it. I, I did study film in, at uni, but the production course got cancelled because of Covid and we didn’t really get, well, I didn’t really get to make many films and I really want to get back into it ’cause I, I basically went into film curation and that’s kind of the career that I’m in. But I wanna kind of go back to making things and yeah. So that’s a goal for my next year. 

HOGAN: Well, you’re doing the work of keeping the legacy alive, which is, I mean, curation is an art form I think. 

INDIGO: Yeah. Yeah. I love curation. It is just that I want to make stuff as well. I was just gonna ask, do you have any other, I know you mentioned a little bit at the beginning of the interview, but do you have any new projects on the horizon that you’re working on?

HOGAN: I am, I am doing a bunch of work with, um, eco processing, so using plant matter to create black and white developers. That’s what I’m sort of working on at this residency, is creating non-toxic black and white developers. Um, working with a lot of plant materials, integrated with, um, images of queer bodies, looking at ideas of queer ecology and how we’ve categorised natural and unnatural things in the world, and how we often relate that to, uh, science in quotation, you know, the same type of science that also is linked to like eugenics, gender essentialism, like all these sort of oppressive forms because you know, in a world where, you know, we’re trying to protect each other during Covid, we’re often saying, believe in science because we wanna protect our public health. But then also there’s this other science, science that is used as an oppressive form, a science that is meant to try to prove natural and unnatural things that actually don’t exist within that sort of binary. So I often say when people are like, believe science, I’m like, who’s science? Yes, COVID is real. Yes, we should get vaccinated. Do sex binaries exist? No, actually they don’t. Um, and many people who study science understand that hormones and genitals are, are in quite variation between each other. They aren’t just one or the other. And that also doesn’t exist in the natural world, and which is why we’re making me and my collaborator and good friend Gabby Sumney are working on a film that’s an ode to the ginkgo tree, which, um, often changes, changes in sort of, uh, being a pollinator versus a, uh, a fruit producer. Um, and often exists somewhere between this sort of even binary we often give to plants as a way of sort of looking at the natural world. Um, so I, I’m doing a lot of studying, collecting materials, printing things, creating different processes, um, in hopes to create a couple films surrounding the idea of queer ecology. 

LEO: Nice. Yeah. Very exciting. I’m gonna keep an eye out to see what you make and what you put out in the world. But for now, we’re gonna wrap up by asking you if you have any recommendations for our lovely audience. So that could be queer, it could be not queer, and it could be films, books, podcasts, anything you fancy sharing with the listeners. 

HOGAN: One of my favourite, uh, musicians, um, Mal Blum, is an incredible trans, um, musician, um, vocalist all around human. I love, uh, his work. Such a great, I love listening to it. It’s great to listen to while you’re driving. It’s very, it’s, it’s quite beautiful. In terms of movies, I recently see one of my favourite, uh, trans experimental filmmakers, or it’s hard. I, I, I think he, it’s there’s often distinction whether we should call ourself experimental or like nonlinear. There’s often moves of like changing the name. Very radical filmmaker, Malik Amalya, um, recently just made this film called Living Lessons in the Museum of Order, um, which is looking at, um, the interconnected link between two forms of oppression that happen in San Francisco. One is the sort of, uh, commercial practice of going to Alcatraz and enjoying like the remnants of this very oppressive system and then also Sea World, um, and looking at the interconnectedness of how we incarcerate, find enjoyment, incarceration of humans, and then also animals. And so this incredible film, I, I, I can’t get enough of it. I’ve seen it so many times, and I feel like if Mal listens to this, uh, he’ll laugh, uh, at me, but we know each other. But, um, I, I was just so, it, it, it moved me so much because it’s these things that I try to pull out of my work, this sort of inner this find this very small thread between these like, forms of oppression that exist. Poetry. I’ve been reading, I’ve been reading some Anne Carson, this, um, new this book. Um, it’s h it’s H Of H, it’s an incredible, um, book of poetry and art. Um, and it sort of is looking at both, you know, the Greek tragedy of Herakles. Um, specifically looking at, uh, Euripedes, um, sort of Tragedy of Herakles, um, in this very beautiful retelling of both art and poetry. Um, and I just started and it’s quite incredible. And so, yeah. And it’s also interesting revisitation of, you know, Anne Carson’s Autobiography Of Red, um, which deals with a different story of Herakles, but, um, because it also integrates a bunch of really beautiful art in it too. So really again, pushing the form of what poetry can be and the sort of different things poetry can sort of breathe into it like a graphic novel or watercolour.

LEO: That is very exciting. I, yeah. Thank you. Thank you for joining us today and for having these big discussions with us. It’s been very, very lovely to get to know you and your practice. 

HOGAN: Thank you. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. And I still wanna open that up, that if anyone wanted reach out to me they can , as we think of the accessibility and legacy of film, my arms are as wide open as I can allow them to be..

INDIGO: Thank you.

[upbeat drum based song]

LEO: I loved this conversation with Hogan. We just want to thank them so much for joining us today. It’s been a pleasure. 

INDIGO: Make sure to follow Hogan on social media to check out their work. Their links are on the episode description and you can find more via our Instagram. 

LEO: Thank you so much for listening to this amazing episode, and stay tuned for the following episode next month.

[upbeat drum based song fades]