bio
Camille Intson (alias, Camie) (b. 1997) is a Hamilton-born and Tkaronto-based multidisciplinary artist and researcher whose practice spans writing, performance, music, new media, and emerging technology. Her critically acclaimed body of work has been honoured with a Playwrights' Guild of Canada Tom Hendry Award, Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award, NNPF National Playwriting Competition Award, Hamilton Music Award, Best in Fringe/Venue and New Play Contest Award, and a Canadian Folk Music Award nomination. Intson is also currently a PhD Candidate within the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information, where her work explores queer and feminist embodiments of emerging technologies. When not creating things, Camille can be found in the bath, with her beloved cat Leo, and-or womansplaining tactical approaches to competition reality shows. More at camilleintson.com and/or @thecamiliad.
PHILOSOPHY
I like to say that if the self were a bath, it would be overflowing. My practice as an artist is characterized by transdisciplinarity, unexpected collaborations, fluidity between form and genre, and thinking across and between different mediums and modes of expression from a distinctly queer, feminist, and neurodivergent perspective and sensibility. My work frequently explores what it means to identify as ‘femme’ and ‘queer’ in a society which rewards masculinity, cisheteronormativity, whiteness, and coloniality; the nature of belief and spiritual transcendence; emerging technology and digital intimacy; intergenerational power relations; institutionalized whiteness; and adaptations and transformations of the ‘human’ subject in an increasingly technological world.
PLAYWRITING
As a playwright and interdisciplinary theatre maker, my work has been supported by Tarragon Theatre, Canadian Stage, Studio180 Theatre, Theatre Aquarius, Nightwood Theatre, Pat The Dog Theatre Creation, the Grand Theatre London, Expect Theatre, the TAP Centre for Creativity, the Paprika Festival, and the Toronto and Ontario Arts Councils, among others. My ultimate objective as a writer is to reconfigure and complicate queer and/or feminist narratives. I love disrupting queer stereotypes and subverting expectations of queer and/or feminine behaviour; I'm fascinated by messy, flawed, complex protagonists whose politics and desires conflict through their actions. I yearn for stories in the queer canon to move beyond stereotype towards dreamscapes of passion, play, and possibility, even (and sometimes especially) in explorations of moral ambiguity. I am particularly interested in the venture of creating challenging, transdisciplinary work for new generation (under 30) audiences, using visual and textual languages informed by experiments with emerging technologies, ie. algorithms, experimental projections, and virtual reality.
MUSIC
My discography as a singer-songwriter and musical storyteller (under the pseudonym 'Camie') combines traditional folk stylings with contemporary alternative/pop textures, bridging acoustic and electronic sonics. My 2021 EP "troubadour" (Nominee, 2023 Canadian Folk Music Awards) and follow up single "Winter" (Winner, 2022 Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award) were widely acclaimed with premiere features from Indie88, Canadian Beats, Music Mecca Nashville, The Hamilton Spectator, and more. I frequently perform with my trio at music and arts festivals across Southern Ontario, and I most recently performed at the 2023 Canadian Folk Music Awards. I'm also really interested in co-writing and creating genre-smashing collaborative projects with other musical artists.
NEW MEDIA
As a new media artist, I’m interested in complex interactions between bodies, texts, and technologies that breed new forms of digital or technological (non-human) intimacies. Tugging at the boundaries between the physical/digital, embodiment/disembodiment, visibility/invisibility, and presence/absence from a queer and feminist sensibility, my work in the new media arts engages personal archives (as in "betweenspace", "Objects: London, Portrait of a City", and "The Instagram Plays") to consider our fluidity as human subjects in greater ecologies of matter and memory.
RESEARCH
As a PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto, my research examines methods by which queer and feminist creators are using emerging technological tools and techniques within contemporary arts praxis to resist dominant (cisheteropatriarchal, colonial-capitalist) frameworks of viewing and experiencing. Engaging diverse archives of theory and practice, my research endeavours to understand how these technologies are somatically engaging the polylithic experience of queer embodiment. This work comes generously funded by a SSHRC Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship - Doctoral (CGS-D) Award. I've also presented my work at a number of international conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals, which you can find under the "Research" tab of this website.
TEACHING
Finally, as an educator and creative collaborator, I’m really passionate about helping new generation artists muster the tools to explore their unique ideas and perspectives. I've taught numerous post-secondary courses, keynoted various events, and lectured at the University of Toronto (St. George and Scarborough campuses) and Western University. I've also facilitated creative workshops with numerous community groups and organizations across Southern Ontario, which are outlined under the "Teaching" tab. I'm also passionate about providing paid opportunities to queer new generation artists, and have ample experience sitting on arts juries and adjudicating applications.
Want to work together? Get in touch!