You Only Live Twice

YOLT explores two artists’ lives before and after transitions: from female to male, and from near-dead to alive.

The unspoken promise was that in our second life we would become the question to every answer, jumping across borders until they finally dissolve. Man and woman. Queer and straight.

What if it’s not true that you only live once? In this genre-transcending book, trans writer and media artist Chase Joynt and HIV-positive movie artist Mike Hoolboom come together over the films of Chris Marker to exchange transition tales, confessional missives that map out the particularities of occupying what they call ‘second lives’: Chase’s transition from female to male and Mike’s near-death from AIDS.

Weaving cultural theory with memoir and media analysis, YOLT asks intimate questions about what it might meanto find love and hope through conversation across generations.

‘Chase Joynt and Mike Hoolboom here give each other the gift so many people only dream of: ample, unhurried space to unspool crucial stories of one’s life, and an attentive, impassioned, invested, intelligent receiver on the other side. The gift to the reader is both the example of their exchange, and the nuanced, idiosyncratic, finely rendered examination it offers of biopolitical experiences which, in many ways, define our times. I’m so glad they have each other, and that we have this.’

– Maggie Nelson

‘Despite its complexity, the book is refreshingly clear, direct, and elegant, and pleasingly consistent in tone despite its shared authorship … This is an ode to friendship that is as beautiful as it is revelatory.’

– Shawn Syms, Quill & Quire

‘You Only Live Twice is an intelligent ode to enchantment, to the possibilities that arise in ‘second lives’ when all past expectations have been foreclosed.’

– Chris Kraus

‘The writing is out of the park – strong and surprising, a relay race of brilliant twirling, tossing thoughts back and forth like balletic rugby bros. Joynt and Hoolboom’s dances of disclosure are so courageous and generative, gifts to us all.’

– John Greyson

AUTHOR

Chase Joynt

Chase Joynt is a Toronto-based moving-image artist and writer who has exhibited his work internationally. He recently received a Mellon Fellowship in Arts Practice and Scholarship at the University of Chicago.

AUTHOR

Mike Hoolboom

Mike Hoolboom (Essay) is a Canadian film/video artist. He is the author of three books: ‘Plague Years’ (1998), ‘Fringe Film in Canada’ (2000), and ‘Practical Dreamers’ (2008). He’s a founding member of the Pleasure Dome screening collective (Toronto) and the experimental film coordinator at Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (Toronto). He’s won over 30 international prizes, two lifetime achievement awards, and has enjoyed nine international retrospectives of his work. Alex MacKenzie (Interview) is a Vancouver media artist working with light projection and expanded cinema. He was the founder and curator of the Edison Electric Gallery of Moving Images, the Blinding Light!! Cinema, and The Vancouver Underground Film Festival. His live media works are presented at festivals and underground screening spaces throughout Europe and North America. He is the co-editor of ‘DAMP: Contemporary Vancouver Media Art’ (Anvil Press, 2008). Brian Ganter (Editor) is a writer, educatorand filmmaker. He is the former Media Literacy Coordinator of the Pacific Cinematheque’s Education Department (Vancouver). In addition to a variety of short film and video works, Brian also wrote and directed the 2008 feature documentary ‘Metropole’ which has screened internationally in festivals and forums in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Brian is finishing his Ph.D. in cultural studies in the English Department at the University of Washington and teaches media and literacy studies at CapilanoUniversity in North Vancouver.