MARCO JURÍDICO

Kim Kozzi and Dai Skuse, Canadian artists and practicing witches have been fusing their lives, politics and interests as the collective duo,

Fastwürms since 1979. Their output began as Super-8 filmmakers steeped in DIY punk culture and has expanded to utilise installation, performance, sculpture, large public commissions and any number of dinky handicrafts like pipe-cleaner structures and crochet rugs. In Kozzi’s words: We venerate vernacular style.93

Fastwürms evolution is beautifully described in the promo for their 2011 retrospective at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver

DONKEY@NINJA@WITCH:

92. The unruly woman – the witch is immodest, highly sexual and powerful. The unruly body – that refuses to conform to standards of desire. This one is invisible, completely unattainable. The unruly mind – that makes things happen with the power of intent matched with arcane knowledge.

93. Robin Laurence, Fastwürms play in the workshop of witches, Georgia Straight, Vancouver's News & Entertainment Weekly. April 03, 2014. <http://www.straight.com/article-134755/in-the-workshop-of-witches>

130 They have built a practice that collides the rigour of conceptual art with pagan

rituals and popular aesthetics, creating a fresh language of their own where they are alien witches who make films, video, installations, performances and teach at the University of Guelph, Ontario.94

Kozzi and Skuse integrate their lives as environmentalists, cat-loving Wiccans95_{, their interests in science fiction, pop culture and queer politics}

and their practice of a rich melange of media into a magickal art-language of symbology, communal experience and rite. They combine it all with humour and a kitsch pop sensibility into considerations of nature, humanity, socialism and power with a range of cape/pointy hat/pagan stylings to boggle the eye – from acid wash denim to red satin to hunters ghillie suits. Aware of the Christian-based falsehood that makes up the popular pointy-nose-and-hat image of ‘witch’, they operate theatrically in ‘witch drag’ in order to ensure we are all on the same page.

While they do not label any of their works specifically as a spell, a charm or a curse (what they are making is most definitely art) and their identity officially Wiccan96 _{as opposed to their more fantastic art-identity of}

‘Witch’, Fastwürm’s output pitches transformation by donning the drag in which we expect to see our witchcraft packaged and manages to convince an audience that transformation is indeed possible.

94. FASTWÜRMS – Donky@Ninja@Witch, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver.January 2008. http://www.contemporaryartgallery.ca/exhibitions/fastwurms-donkyninjawitch/

95. Wicca is a form of contemporary pagan religious practice founded in the Twentieth Century. Some (but not all) Wiccans engage in folk magick, a practice that has led to the common, but incorrect, merging of the meaning of ‘Wiccan’ and ‘Witch’.

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Figure 52. Fastwürms House of Bangs 2007 iteration. Installation view, Art Gallery of York Universi- ty

In Unisex: House of Bangs (1999), an installation of a psychedelic salon, heavily illustrated with faceless hairdos and decorated with wigs and false moustaches, the duo offered free haircuts to visitors.

Given the significance of hair (and any other DNA containing body remnants) in the history of curse construction and hoodoo as well as the duo’s stated investment in the promotion of ‘witch positivity’, I view it not only as a fun art hangout (as it appears to have been) and a socialist service provision but a grand gesture towards trust between the witches and the wider public. There was nothing to fear but style within that space - literal, singular transformation.

Another denim-themed installation Blood and Swash (2002) allows visitors to acquire (make or have made) denim patches and sharpie tattoos to the hosts or the visitor’s design.

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Figure 53. Fastwürms Blood and Swash 2007 iteration. Installation view, Art Gallery of York Univer- sity

Figure 54. Fastwürms Blood and Swash 2007 iteration. Installation detail, Art Gallery of York Uni- versity

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Figure 55. Fastwürms Tailgate Party #1: Into the Void 2000. Still from SD video documentation of performance

Tailgate Party #1: Into the Void (2000), was an action that took place in the Toronto street where, to the strains of the first side of Black Sabbath’s Masters of Reality album, Kozzi and Skuse were adorned in lightweight, summer witch-drag (long shorts under white capes) and danced together in a solemn silliness before shaving the legs of two ‘initiates’ with

sharpened axes (a repeating Fastwürms tool/motif as they are farmers as well as witches) and repeated posturing in the stage-dressed flat-tray of their truck.

A gathered crowd can be heard in the video documentation clearly

enjoying the show.97 _{It is a light-hearted honouring of their acolytes with a}

ritual of a grooming service and not unlike the behaviour of their much- venerated posse of feline familiars.

97. Fastwürms,Tailgate Party #1: Into the Void, YouTube video, 9 minutes 43 seconds, July 24, 2009. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x5St1cBExY>

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Figure 56. Fastwürms Telepathacats 2003. Stills from single channel digital video

Fastwürms investment in thought-force itself is most clearly

demonstrated in the video Telepathacats98_{(2003) where Skuse and Kozzi}

are dressed in black velvet hat/cape combos and frolic with their cats in the snow. Crouching and making hand gestures that give the appearance of controlling the cats’ movements by instruction, these shots are intercut with borrowed footage of a scientist and assistant operating a large mechanised piece of equipment. The white-gloved scientist gestures gently, waving the thing into position as his technician follows his direction. Their actions exercise complete control over their equipment and the juxtaposition instils confidence that Fastwürms are equally in communication with and control of their familiars.

Sally McKay described the act in an exhibition catalogue text: The scientists in the video are goofy in their solemnity, yet they also exude confidence. They have a system, and it works. The witches’ demeanour is similar. Nobody except Fastwürms could wear those funny hats and pull it off. They seem both convinced and convincing because, while they are certainly playing, they aren’t just playing. Fastwürms really are witches, and they really do communicate with cats. 99

98. Fastwürms, Telepathacats, YouTube video, 3 minutes 20 seconds, March 02, 2007. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgU9Y6wMRJs>

99. Sally McKay ‘Nature in the Network’, Fastwürms: Donky@Ninja@Witch: A Living Retrospective. (Toronto: Art Gallery of York University, 2010),84.

135 In all Fastwürms works, as much as the vernacular and nature, there is a

veneration of the artists hand – either through the labour of intensely detailed crafting in string-art (the bat from Blood and Swash) and giant webs crafted from dollar store G-strings (from Gusset Nation, 2004) or through the gift of personal engagement through the possibility of

receiving a haircut or a temporary tattoo – their projects are highly social affairs and the duo themselves highly accessible.