Join queercore legend Bruce LaBruce for a conversation about his photography with AGO Program Curator, Performance and Live, Bojana Stancic. While Bruce LaBruce rose to international prominence with his transgressive and subversive films, photography has always been a key part of his practice.  His photography books Death Book and Photo Ephemera (in two volumes), from Baron Books, have been published in the past several years, the former a collection of his most extreme images, many taken during live performances, the latter two consisting of a visual autobiography of sorts, constructed with personal snapshots, moments with lovers, friends, trips, and behind the scenes clips from his films.

Bruce LaBruce is a filmmaker, photographer, writer, and artist based in Toronto. Along with a number of short films, he has written and directed fourteen feature films, including Gerontophilia, which won the Grand Prix at the Festival du Nouveau Cinema in Montreal in 2013, and Pierrot Lunaire, which won a Teddy Award at the Berlinale in 2014. As a photographer he has had numerous gallery shows around the world, including “Obscenity” at La Fresh Gallery in Madrid which caused a national ruckus in Spain in 2012. His film Saint-Narcisse was named one of the top 10 films of 2021 by John Waters in Artforum. His latest porn feature, The Affairs of Lidia, from Erika Lust Films, was released in 2022. La Bruce has had film retrospectives at TIFF Bell Lightbox in 2014,  MoMA in New York in 2015, and la Cinémathèque Québécoise in Montreal in 2022.

Bojana Stancic is Program Curator of Performance and Live projects at the Art Gallery of Ontario. In nearly ten years in her role she worked on the late night series First Thursdays, subsequently launching AGO Live, a series of large scale performances throughout the building that hosted the Canadian premiere of Zadie Xa’s performance work Grandmother Mago, an in-gallery edition of choreographer Daina Ashbee’s work Serpentine, Merce Cunningham Trust’s centenary celebration and an original commission for antiphonal choir by Owen Pallett, amongst others. Prior to working at the AGO, Bojana was a performance designer who worked with experimental dance and theatre artists, as well as artist liaison for a Swiss-Canadian music festival. She holds a Bachelor degree in Theatre and Semiotics from University of Toronto, and an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London.