Jᴀᴍɪᴇ ʀᴏss

Call for submissions • Appel à propositions I’ve been invited to chair a panel on the state of contemporary art and pornography in Canada and I want to hear from you. Running October 13-15 2026 at Concordia University in Montreal, the UAAC national art conference is a uniquely mixed weekend where critics, writers, historians join artists to share new research. I’ve found it incredibly generative to sit with a wide cross-section of our field to share ongoing projects and work that may still be in process. Do you have a pornography project that relates to contemporary Canadian content creation, porn representation, sexual liberation, camp, theatricality and performance, censorship, class analysis or commerce? Pitch me a presentation. Deadline for proposals: May 31 Proposals and papers welcome in English or French. Link in bio. Panel title: Can-Content: the state of the erotic and the sexually explicit in Canadian art

I know I promised to rein in the hyperbole, but I just can’t contain myself. It’s impossible to do justice in words to a brush with the artists who are pretty much the reasons you decided to make art. It’s a big feeling. The greats Austin Osman Spare, Genesis and Cameron, alongside so many living torch bearers of this lineage, Candice Lin, Edgar Fabian Frias @edgarfabianfrias , Elijah Burgher @poor_little_ghost_boy , and the whole thing is bracketed with an impeccable selection of my personal wheelhouse: RFD, Country Women and historic queer collective tarot projects. Catch this show before it closes in October, mages. Thank you @davidevansfrantz

I know in an instant that something is very wrong when I wake up to the ‘please call me as soon as you get this message’ message from England. It was my friend L. L and I met in Haiti just over a decade ago showing work at the biennial there. He was sensitive and an inveterate weirdo. He was a practitioner of magic. Obviously, we became fast friends. We called each other mage :) Over the years, as my roots grew deeper in LA, so did we. He’d come visit me at my studio and I’d visit him in his. Once during Documenta 15, he took me to the top of the bell tower he’d been using as a studio during the run of the show he and Atis Rezistans put on in a church. We showed spells together at Noon Projects in LA. I reluctantly joined his beloved jiu-jitsu group classes straight from the all night Halloween party, mostly so he’d stop twisting my arm to go. He participated in the group show and symposium I held in a baroque library with 13 artists to conclude my graduate thesis with a gorgeous spell sculpture: a lemon pierced with a rod of iron and he spent the day taking gorgeous photos of the frescoed halls and bronze incense braziers and of me. When someone dies, we turn to the years of photos and emails that document our relationships. And as the shock melted into grief this month, I was struck how effectively he had worked to remove himself from these digital spaces. I realized how effectively he’d avoided the portraits I’m always taking of my friends. And I loved him for it. There was a sort of diurnal-nocturnal optimist-pessimist pull to our friendship. I would post a picture of my speedo online and share my feelings if I thought it would serve me catharsis; he would let his phone die under a tourmaline dagger all weekend when he could. But in hindsight, I wish I had allowed myself to wonder aloud about this self-effacement, to push back against his flair for disappearance. He’d gone by the chosen mononym Lazaros for his whole career. In the last few years, though, this shortened to just the initial L, something which rendered him nearly illegible to google searches. “The artist formerly known as Lazaros” or “the sculptor L” it became. [continued in comment]

Foolish, Beautiful Youth, 2026, inkjet print on archival paper, 8mm film still, 24”x30” This year, I had the utter privilege of visiting the nearly complete print run of the first openly queer writing project in North America at the University of Iowa (1918–1920). The first series of images and collaborations to follow from my deep reading of the strange poetry and prose I found in its pages opens in Montreal tonight, in the windows of the oldest gay sex shop still operating in Montreal, @chezpriape curated by @gossipeltruths and @_daniel_barrow_ for @galeriedesglaces_mtl and @nuitblanchemtl (February 28 — March 14, 2006) In residency this winter in the Gilded Age Los Angeles queer collection of the Clark Library, I was lucky enough to metabolize the metrical poetry of Les Mouches Fantastiques with collaborators, first of which was my brilliant co-conspirator @ronathey_4 himself — collaboratrix par excellence @rehtse_ttelps will perform in the window of the sex shop @chezpriape March 14th as night falls The show’s lineup is truly stunning - truly a who’s who of Montreal’s queer freak fam: @francis.francois @daynarama @hello_elooooooooo @aaronwpollard @bernie_bankrupt @santiagotamayosoler @vogler @internoscia @joachim_magdalena @nelsonhenricks @glenngear @lamathildegeromino @grumplingzinho @anotheramyfung @brokeback.mantra — JR

I’m a Research Fellow at UCLA’s Clark Library in Los Angeles. I beyond grateful to secure funding to deepen my work on queer and trans life in 1910s and 1920s North America. I always am. But now, at a time of yawning institutional austerity, censorship, defunding and outright hate towards our peoples’ histories, it feels like a lump in my throat. This wild library and its collection, its telescope tower and secret halls for lovers was built with gayness, privacy, and sanctuary in mind, and on days like today, I am sitting at my writing desk in deep gratitude.

Thanks for suiting up for a swim this year, a sea cave, a sunset, or a film screening. Love ya. Flipping over the cover of this year of great pain and loss with a slam — catch you on this weird website in 2026 🧜‍♂️💙

[français en bas] Big thanks are in order for a brilliant week of development and community at @forumridm @ridm_festival - the next step in bringing this amazing film into being! Major gratitude to @cineground and the forum jury for awarding us the feature-length pitch award for our presentation. The support is major. It takes a village @rw_moore @leather_sad @audreyanndp @milaaungthwin @kristenbrowncamera @barbed_wire_kisses @justevergon 🚔🌳🏴‍☠️ Un énorme shout-out pour une semaine incroyable de développement et de communauté aux @ridmforum @ridmfestival — une autre grande étape pour donner vie à ce film ! Encore plus de gratitude à @cineground pis au jury du forum pour nous avoir remis le prix du pitch long métrage. Vraiment touchés. Sérieux, ça prend tout un village pour faire lever un projet de même — @rw_moore @leather_sad @audreyanndp @milaaungthwin @kristenbrowncamera @barbed_wire_kisses @justevergon 💙

[ français en bas ] beyond grateful to be back in Montreal dedicating a second summer to the queer ecology park film at Eyesteelfilm, the first film that will look at 150 years of queer history in our park. We’re bringing our research to the biggest stage yet for the Montreal documentary film fest RIDM Doc Lab. A circle of incredible queers, photographers, and ecologists have gathered around this project with stories that must be told. 🪲 On est tellement reconnaissants d’avoir eu l’occasion de dédier un deuxième été au développement du premier docu sur l’écologie queer au Canada — un poème d’amour du Parc du Mont-Royal, et de ci faire avec l’équipe de rêve chez Eyesteelfilm. On amène maintenant notre recherche à la plus grosse scène à date : le Doc Lab des RIDM, le festival docu de Montréal. Une belle belle gang de queers, de photographes et d’écologues s’est rassemblée autour du film, tous avec leurs histoires qui pressent d’être racontées. ⛰️ Photo credit : 1,3 @nickbostick

In May, Montreal image art centre Dazibao invited me to curate a screening. I selected the new documentary by UK artist Sam Ashby, a moving 16mm tribute to the utopian writer, community builder and fisting mystic Purusha and her pre-AIDS communities in California and the high desert. We had to add chairs, the response was so electric and full. People were gooped. And also deeply unaware about our phaggod feature film canon. So I decide to channel this energy this summer and I dubbed it a film club. The rhythm would be simple. I would select an explicit feature film and pair it with a local short steeped in sexual cultures and futures, moving image at the fertile ‘yes-and-“ overlapping edges of pornography and art. One pre-AIDS icon with one local short. Next month we’ll be back at Mes Pants de Queer for our last screening. This month: my neighbourhood. A filmmaker from here, a brilliant filmmaker up from New York. A post-screening conversation. I can’t wait. September 22, 7:30pm Ticket link in bio +(lalumierecollective.org) Screening runs 66 minutes Followed by a discussion with the artists (ENGLISH). Snatch those tickets fast. Seating limited. ECSTATIC UNITY (2024) Gerard X Reyes and Poppy Sanchez 19 minutes In summer Berlin’s lakes become mystical places where people go to transcend their mundane lives. Ecstatic Unity follows Jorge and Gerard on a ritualistic trip to one of these lakes. Enraptured by their natural surroundings and guided by primal instincts, the bearded boys spin themselves into a whirlwind of blissful breath and tantric touch. A TIRED DOG IS A GOOD DOG, PART TWO (2024) Matthew Lax 47 minutes A psychosexual investigation of canine and human behaviors initiated in 2020. A quadruplet himself, Lax’s intimate collaborators include the artist’s family, who breed Collies; professional dog trainers; and members of the Los Angeles and Paris pup play kink communities, in which humans role-play as dogs. Structured around Herve Guibert’s 1982 smut novella, Les Chiens, Part 2 explores pack behavior and training through inter-species exercises in dominance, submission, trust and consent. [Canadian Premiere]

It’s a long story, but my Dad and I finally made it back to the last studios he danced ballet, at the Banff Centre, just over 50 years later. We had a chance to visit the film we made about our relationship, included as part of the summer exhibition at the art museum there alongside work by many brilliant friends including @therealmckeough and @sadbirthdays showing collaborative work with their parents and kin curated by the ever-sharp @_jacqueline_bell But Dad had his unitard in his bag so wtf - we danced to the 70s synth warble one more time ! The pandemic made it so that we couldn’t visit safely while we shot our film, but the timing was finally right and we just celebrated the hell out of this wild project in the turquoise glacial water. A full-chested high that will take a long time to come down from. The show runs at @walterphillipsgallery until September 7, and our half-hour film streams for free on @newyorkermag Documentary and @tenk.ca — link in bio. A massive web of friendship made this possible, from my Outdoor School residency faculty at Banff in 2018 where I developed the film @amishmorrell @dianeborsato @ willardart to the Banff archivists and film artists from the 1970s like Linda Jade Fong and our beloved ballerina collaborator @evelynhart4456 , to my film collaborators @kristenbrowncamera @anthonyabbatangelo @boban_bikepacker @damien.a.a @jdutchermusic @waltmcclements and many more Grateful for our funding from @onf_nfb @lecalq @canada.council Thank you.

[english below] Ce mois-ci, on vous sort un gros canon de l’histoire du cinéma érotique queer, cher·ère CinéClub : Falconhead: The Ultimate Act of Submission (1976). Ce film ésotérique, envoûtant et fichtrement sorcier — oui, c’est du hardcore — a été projeté dans les cinémas de Montréal dans les années 70, avec une trame sonore qui inclut une tune de Alice Coltrane ! Et un dom... qui est littéralement un faucon. Que des légendes ! On ouvre la soirée avec un court métrage puissant et étonnamment touchant : Frank’s Cock (1993) de Mike Hoolboom, un court canadien qui est une des plus belles élégies dédiées aux grandes queues marquantes de la vie. Un vidéo-poème sublime sur le sida. 🖤 Cet été, joignez-vous au CinéClub HERAKLES, une série informelle de projections de films d’auteur, des long-métrages kink et hardcore, avec moi, Jamie Ross, artiste et cinéaste montréalais comme programmeur, en collaboration avec la librairie Mes Pants de Queer et de nombreux artistes en personne. J’ai sélectionné des classiques du cinéma queer hard, et à chaque projection mensuelle, un·e cinéaste local·e ou invité·e présentera un nouveau court métrage queer de sa création! 𝙇𝙞𝙗𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙧𝙞𝙚 𝙈𝙚𝙨 𝙋𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙨 𝙙𝙚 𝙌𝙪𝙚𝙚𝙧 2025 𝙧𝙪𝙚 𝙋𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙣𝙖𝙞𝙨, 𝙨𝙪𝙞𝙩𝙚 241 𝙈𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞 22 juillet, 19𝙝30-20𝙝30, 𝙂𝙍𝘼𝙏𝙐𝙄𝙏 𝘾𝙖𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙧 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙩 à 𝙫𝙚𝙣𝙞𝙧 𝙈𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙖𝙫𝙚𝙘 𝙖𝙞𝙧 𝙘𝙡𝙞𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙨é! 𝙉𝙤𝙬 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝘼𝘾!🧊 This month, we’re pulling a heavy hitter in the annals of queer erotic film for you, dear CinéClub: Falconhead: The Ultimate Act of Submission (1976). This esoteric, atmospheric warlock hardcore screened in theatres in Montreal in the 1970s with a soundtrack featuring Alice Coltrane! And a dom top who is also a falcon. Legends only! Our opening film is the surprisingly heartfelt Frank’s Cock (1993) by Mike Hoolboom, one of the most powerful elegies for those great cocks of one’s life. A gorgeous AIDS poem. <3 Mes Pants de Queer presents Cinéclub HERAKLES: a monthly informal gay kink and hardcore arthouse film screening series programmed by Jamie Ross #queerfilm #montrealqueerfilm #queerfilmMontreal #queermtl #mtlqueer

It’s an honour almost beyond words to have been invited last fall by Mojeanne Behzadi and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal to create a new film work for a dome space.
 For years, I’ve lived in awe of the psychedelic dome cinema experiments that Stan VanDerBeek and his communities built in the woods of the Northeast, just south of Montreal. 
Picking up a significant mantle from Stan’s dome work, which always involved found footage collage, cut-ups, and performance against empire, I wonder what the artist, who attempted to make expanded cinema to trigger cultures of peace — constructed with image fragments or pieces — I wonder what pictures would fill flicker in hid forest domes if he was to return today. When I returned to California the day the Eaton and Malibu fires broke out in January, destroying many friends homes, I started to work immediately with two of the artists I most admire in this world. Han Chen donned his last uniform as a U.S. Army Sargeant Han to inhabit his character in an adaptation of a 2500 year old play of queer mystical resistance to authoritarianism as musician and artist Christos Tejada joined me in that dance, coordinated with a new track of his creation. Life, sometimes! -- Jamie Fight all fascism. Move, make, speak. Commissioning curator: @themidnightcat @macmontreal Music: @christostattoo Performers: @hansnuff @christostattoo @ms.topia Post-production: @primcentre mirendao Projection: @sat_montreal Documentation: @mikepatten.ca @labelleprovenance Coordination: @gennjuice