RÉMI BELLIVEAU
Triste Nation – essay
Photo : Anne-France Noel
project
Triste Nation is a vast artistic and textual project of speculative historiography that will give shape to Belliveau’s profound desire for a queer-specific ancestrality for Acadia. With the support of his extended family, ethnographic writings of the 1970s and an ongoing collaboration with professionals in the fields of Acadian history and museology their project will retrace the fictional origin of several Acadian beliefs, practices and superstitions by rescripting them as whitewashed remnants of a society stifled by two hundred years of religious conflicts.
A central feature of this body of research is the writing of an essay at the intersection of fantasy fiction, queer autotheory and American academic and writer Jack Halberstam’s concept of low theory. The book-length essay’s argument centers on the fantastical potential—rather than on the historical probability of their previous work— of the queer media worlds of their childhood, namely of the manga Sailor Moon.
Triste Nation proposes a narrative of queer Acadian ancestrality whose ontological markers are dictated by the metaphysics of Sailor Moon, positioning it within the practice of fan fiction.
A central feature of this body of research is the writing of an essay at the intersection of fantasy fiction, queer autotheory and American academic and writer Jack Halberstam’s concept of low theory. The book-length essay’s argument centers on the fantastical potential—rather than on the historical probability of their previous work— of the queer media worlds of their childhood, namely of the manga Sailor Moon.
Triste Nation proposes a narrative of queer Acadian ancestrality whose ontological markers are dictated by the metaphysics of Sailor Moon, positioning it within the practice of fan fiction.
Support in discourse — 2024.
practice and biography
Rémi Belliveau is a trans non-binary Acadian interdisciplinary artist, musician, and writer. Their work attempts to deconstruct and reprogram the foundational, structural, and imaginary principles of the Acadian culture to which they belong in the hopes of cultivating capacities for (self)analysis and critical thinking. Since 2018, their work has focused on theoretical research, particularly in the areas of Acadian and Queer studies.
In 2021, their first writings on the relationship between Acadianness and queerness were published in Canadian Art. They were further developed in French in their first book Hier semble si loin, published by Galerie de l’UQAM. This work was further expanded in the film L’Empremier live at Beaubassin (1970)presented in Dans la peau de l’histoire. Becoming Joan Dularge curated by Ji-Yoon Han at VOX as part of MOMENTA 2023. They are currently teaching the Bronfman laureate course at UQAM on queering the archive through fabulation (Queerer l’archive: les pratiques fabulatrices comme formes de résistance). As an arts professional, between 2014 and 2018, they co-directed Moncton’s Galerie Sans Nom with Annie France Noël, and co-taught Acadian art history with Elise Anne LaPlante at the Université de Moncton. Belliveau hails from Memramcook, New- Brunswick, located in Mi’kma’ki, the traditional unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people. They live between this territory and Tiohtià:ke / Montréal.
www.ruinebabine.com
In 2021, their first writings on the relationship between Acadianness and queerness were published in Canadian Art. They were further developed in French in their first book Hier semble si loin, published by Galerie de l’UQAM. This work was further expanded in the film L’Empremier live at Beaubassin (1970)presented in Dans la peau de l’histoire. Becoming Joan Dularge curated by Ji-Yoon Han at VOX as part of MOMENTA 2023. They are currently teaching the Bronfman laureate course at UQAM on queering the archive through fabulation (Queerer l’archive: les pratiques fabulatrices comme formes de résistance). As an arts professional, between 2014 and 2018, they co-directed Moncton’s Galerie Sans Nom with Annie France Noël, and co-taught Acadian art history with Elise Anne LaPlante at the Université de Moncton. Belliveau hails from Memramcook, New- Brunswick, located in Mi’kma’ki, the traditional unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people. They live between this territory and Tiohtià:ke / Montréal.
www.ruinebabine.com