“Patrick Staff: The Foundation”

Patrick Staff’s recent showing of “The Foundation” at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver presented an interdisciplinary exploration into the Tom of Finland Foundation, established in 1984 in Los Angeles to preserve the erotic art of Touko Laaksonen, aka Tom of Finland. Rather than focusing on Tom’s work or career, however, Staff focused on making a film about the community, house and archives of the Foundation, using these intersections as a point of departure for exploring questions of gender, identity, sexuality and the body.

References to construction, in all its meanings and definitions, were evident upon first entering the exhibition space. Large sections of carpet underlay crossed the floor and pipe scaffolding lined the walls, with a large projection screen angled in the centre of the dark room. When I walked in, I was witness to film footage of a large cake being presented to an elderly man, accompanied by a chorus of “Happy Birthday.” Reels of gay vintage porn illustrating various acts of fellatio and anal penetration flickered over the tight white t-shirts of the birthday party bystanders, not only bringing attention to the film-within-a-film metanarrative, but the idea of skin as screen, as well as the body as a site of projection, reception and absorption for moving images and memories.

The Foundation, which weaves together archival and historical as well as documentary footage from the Foundation, also contains interludes of choreographed dance sequences between Staff and an older man within an enclosed and constructed set, further referencing and reinforcing the concepts of construction that frame this work. Co-commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, London, Spike Island, Bristol, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, and Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, The Foundation is the most ambitious and large-scale project in Staff’s artistic career. The Vancouver show also included a purview of expanded public programming to accompany the exhibition: a film screening event and Missives, a broadsheet publication featuring texts by Staff and others.

Staff has the sensibilities of a painter rather than a documentary filmmaker when it comes to subject matter, holding the eye of the camera—or in some shots, an iPhone—for extended periods of time to allow the audience to watch a ceiling fan whir in an empty dining room, or see how sunlight tracks its way through a curtained window against a wall where some iconic big-cock drawings of men hang, a big black leather sofa situated below. Throughout the film, Staff’s attention to texture and materials is acute and captures, in a series of still images, the house of the Tom of Finland Foundation, which is occupied by co-founder Durk Dehner and some other employees and artists. Staff’s portrait of the house is one that is both domestic and political; decorated with erotica and ripe with sexuality, every object laden with manly desire, beauty and lust.

As Staff makes clear, the Tom of Finland Foundation is no ordinary archive; like the people who inhabit it, the house itself is a living body, bearing witness to ordinary and extraordinary acts of desire and creation. In one part of the film Staff goes outside, scaling the architectural perimeter of the house. More than just documenting the exterior, he illustrates how on the outside, the house is a normal residence, but inside it is a private sanctuary of information, containing many catalogues of erotic art, protecting and preserving a vibrant and vital way of life that is ultimately empowering and liberating, creating community.

The community created through the Tom of Finland Foundation and its archive is at the heart of this film, as an extension of individual identity and of sexuality, too. Staff’s film juxtaposes alternating footage of different parties, events and gatherings of men associated with the Foundation, showcasing how Tom’s art and the Foundation’s commitment to educating and promoting healthy attitudes toward sexuality propagated a dynamic lifestyle of tolerance, acceptance and exploration among its community members.

Perhaps one of the most interesting questions contemplated by The Foundation is how an archive is constructed, and how the people who are associated with it are remembered. Tom of Finland, who lived and died in Finland, has been dead since 1991. At the Foundation, Staff captures a room dedicated to Tom, cataloguing the contents with the eye of the camera the way an archivist would describe an item. In reality, the construction of an archive is an aggregation of subjective items that define its owner, but as a collection it is one that must remain objective, since it must be available for public and future use. In this way, then, an archive is both defined and limited by its own constraints—not only as a system of information, but as a historical record of a person or event. In short, not everything can be captured or remembered.

These absences of information are assuaged by the choreographed dance sequences interwoven throughout The Foundation. Often poignant and poetic, Staff’s use of movement and the body in space addresses these breaks in narrative discourse, where documentary or filmed footage cannot answer or represent bigger questions about gender and identity. Staff, who identifies as trans, said in a recent interview in Time Out, that while they were filming The Foundation they were “trying to understand these older men who are very manly,” while testing the limits of their own bodies and the construction of their gender identity. Seen in this way, The Foundation is a highly personal meditation and contemplation on the nature of the body as a foundation and site of desire, as well as being an investigation into the social history and the construction of information about Tom of Finland. ❚

“Patrick Staff: The Foundation” was exhibited at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, from February 12 to April 24, 2016.

Christine Walde is a poet and librarian living in Victoria, BC.