Aaron Pollard

Burlesque mavens Sasha Van Bon Bon and Kitty Neptune use their inimitable style to skewer that most contrary of movements from the early 20th Century. Dancers in suitcases and story-telling plushies are just some of the “anti-art” craziness paying homage to the grandchildren of the radical anti-establishment movement.

Delusions of Grandeur navigates between the boisterous and the reflective. Funny and smart, Pollard’s video explodes and recedes in an operatic paean to identity, film noir and music videos.

A video dealing with the experience of a despised body, focusing specifically on the queer male subject grappling with societal attitudes towards the homosexual in the context of the AIDS crisis. The phrase, "We do not go instinct," is lifted from a Lynda Barry cartoon, and is indicative of the way the video shifts between humour, rage, despair and resistance. In its appropriation and critique of popularized AIDS images, the video points to the lack of oppositional queer subject positions within the mainstream media AIDS discourse.