The Reimagined Embodiment of Indie Authenticity: Queer Music, Technology and

Voice

“For one of the first pictures of me that ended up on some blog, there were comments

about the hair on my upper lip. There’s these things that you would never think of that

come up right away. There’s more violence than one would think in the internet world of

critiquing women’s appearances. If you do stand out, like, are you masculine? Are you

not glamorous? It seems silly but I was amazed at how much judgment there was. If

you’re a woman and you don’t look like ‘a woman’, people talk about you and say things

to you.” —Merrill Garbus, tUnE yArDs

Introduction

The research detailed in this paper explores how the indie pop genre serves as an

anti-normative cultural space that promotes queerness, gender fluidity and freedom to

express sexuality through the use of music video images and instruments like loop pedals

and synthesizers. Though research has been done on how alternative rock culture alters

the gendered implications of what it means to be a “rock musician” or presents

opportunities for “maneuvering” within and against hegemonic gender norms (Schippers

38), I am interested in how our society’s growing dependence on and interest in

technology expands the ways we can approach gender within the realm of music. I draw

from the work of scholars like Michelle Chilcoat, who builds on Donna Haraway’s idea

of the cyborg and its rejection of rigidity regarding gender, and juxtapose work on

popular music by Mimi Schippers, Sarah Cohen and Wendy Fonarow with the concept of

“technologies of the self” so that we may better understand how technology is used to

modify understandings of gender in popular music.

In order to examine the creation of queer spaces within the contemporary indie

genre through the use of advancing technology, I give a detailed analysis of the bands

Tune Yards and Austra. Both bands subvert normative gender assumptions through their

musical and visual performances, both consciously and unconsciously embracing the

term “queer.” They use their music and online exposure to promote multiple ways of

approaching gender, including the construction of a queer voice through technology such

as loop pedals and recording devices or filters and the embrace of visual imagery that

promotes multiple identities regarding gender and sexuality. Through these techniques,

they undertake a “technologizing of the self” that remains open toward the disruption of

gender expression through technology.

Gender Maneuvering, Authenticity, and Technology in Indie Rock

In Rockin’ Out of the Box, Mimi Schippers writes about the origins of rock music

and how it has consistently challenged normative gender practices while also reinforcing

heteronormativity and privileging masculinity. Schippers describes 1980s bands like

Journey and Poison, where the men wore tight clothes, makeup and big hair while also

performing aggressive masculinity and talking in interviews about how many girls they

fucked while on tour. She argues that, by securing their heterosexuality in spite of their

feminized presentation, these men were able to “gender-bend” without being ridiculed or

labeled as deviant. Schippers makes it clear that this surface approach only furthers

patriarchal hegemony and that the only way to transform this realm is to alter the way we

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look at sexual desire. In other words, as long as rock music values heterosexual

masculinity above all else, it confines itself to normative, docile behavior (25-29).

Schippers suggests that rock music is a reenactment of day-to-day gendered and

hierarchical practices that can present opportunities for change through what she calls

“gender maneuvering,” an active manipulation of masculinity and femininity. She

emphasizes that gender maneuvering is a “process of negotiation in which the meanings

and rules for gender get pushed, pulled, transformed, and reestablished” (37).

Though she acknowledges possibilities for gender maneuvering in musical

performance itself, Sara Cohen, like Schippers, notes that social interactions within indie

rock also take place within the confines of existing rules and practices for gender. For

example, Cohen writes about Kyzer Sozer’s bass player, a self-identified lesbian named

Chris. Though attempting to subvert gender norms, the band members were nonetheless

influenced by existing expectations of gender performance. They discussed what kind of

appearance Chris was to have in the band without consulting her, determining that she

needed to exude a more traditionally feminine style. Cohen observes that Chris felt as if

her band mates were adhering to heterosexual definitions of glamour that greatly differed

from how she and her other lesbian friends perceived glamorous style (239). Both

Schippers and Cohen focus on forms of gender maneuvering and identify social

interactions within indie subcultures as the space where normative gender and sexuality

may be challenged or reinforced.

Like Schippers and Cohen, Wendy Fonarow looks to the ways social interaction

in the context of indie rock scenes contest or reinforce dominant understandings of

gender. She examines the ritual of the rock concert and the sexual availability of the

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groupie. Where many scholars may position groupies as sexual objects, Fonarow views

them as predators who subvert the traditionally masculine “gaze” of the rock musician

upon the groupie and turn the “gaze” onto the musicians themselves, making the males

the object of the gaze. What is important about this concept is that the “sexual acolyte,”

as she calls “groupies” in the indie genre, maintains an interest in the authentic-- she is

not interested in the “image” of the indie rocker but in the individual himself. Through

the construction of indie and the rituals therein, indie artists and their fans create a

subversive space in which traditional gender norms are challenged.

While such scholarship has examined the ways indie pop subcultures provide

opportunities for challenging gender hierarchy through face to face interaction and ritual,

they downplay the role of performance, especially as it is inflected by technology, in

creating texts that influence and open up queer spaces in the indie pop genre.

Participants’ actions in indie subcultures, while useful, ultimately leave the current

gender dichotomy intact. As Schippers points out (p. 33), cultural practices referencing

“structuration” explains how there are already set limits to what options available to those

within the scene. General social and gender order has already been set in place, favoring

the mostly cis, heterosexual order already accepted in daily use.

Performance itself offers other possibilities for reimagining gender. For example,

in her explanation of one performance by the band Kyzer Sozer, Sara Cohen details an

instrumental and vocal progression that exhibits the band’s transformative ability. Major

chords move to minor chords, the lead singer’s voice begins to fluctuate from a hoarse

sound to what Cohen describes as a lighter, more “wistful” sound. The fragmented pieces

of the whole, the masculine and feminine, come together in this performance to create

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something more complete and less static (229). For Cohen, Kyzer Sozer embodies Judith

Butler’s claim that gender is a performed construct, an act that can be manipulated if

desired. Kyzer Sozer’s act of tailoring performances to specific events and contexts is

also a way in which musical performance can be malleable while, at the same time, still

limited by constructed social norms (240).

Performance analysis like the one Cohen offers of Kyzer Sozer has become a

common mode of examining other pop and rock genres. For example, Philip Auslander’s

work uses this mode to comment on how David Bowie’s movements and vocables shifted

between masculine and feminine during his performances as Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin

Sane (131-135). Janell Hobson suggests that artists like Michael Jackson and Janelle

Monae destabilize essentialist ideas of race through their use of voice and physical

performance/appearance. According to Hobson, Monae’s “James Brown” style and

sexual ambiguity is an example of a black body and voice that transcends race and gender

lines (53). Francesca Royster also interprets Jackson as an artist whose vocal

performance destabilizes notions of gender. “Through his cries, whispers, groans,

whines, and grunts,” she writes, “Jackson occupies a third space of gender, one that often

undercuts his audience’s expectations of erotic identification” (119). Similarly, Juliet

Williams examines how Lady Gaga may destabilize gender and race through her use of

“queer new feminisms,” a term that encompasses a desire to improvise and innovate

regarding new identities, all in hopes of achieving a liberatory state.

However, this mode has rarely been applied to indie rock, perhaps due to indie’s

politics of authenticity. Wendy Fonarow emphasizes the importance of authenticity in

indie culture in Empire of Dirt. She examines how indie as a genre fulfills a religious

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type of experience similar to the Puritan ideology for those involved in the scene. Puritan

thought places value on authenticity, a “back to basics” approach that embraces

simplicity and honesty. As part of this aesthetic, Fonarow writes, the indie genre does

away with the majority of technological tools, indulging in what she identifies as

“technophobia.” The absence of technology and the embrace of a simple, almost childlike

performance style is particularly important, according to Fonarow, because those most

interested in the genre are in their late teens to early thirties. These fans are regretfully on

the cusp of adulthood or have already entered it and been quickly disillusioned by

normative culture. For them, indie culture provides an avenue of escape, a way in which

they may express their feelings in pure, honest terms. Whether as a musician or fan,

authenticity is upheld above all, and the big, corporate studio with its high-tech

instruments is quite the opposite.

My research calls for a reevaluation of Fonarow’s analysis in part because indie

music has, in the past decade, increasingly embraced the use of technology in ways that

challenge gender norms. “Folk” bands like Mumford and Sons or more vocal-driven

bands like Animal Collective, who previously focused on string instruments and vocals

are now heavily using synthesizers and vocal production tools that would typically have

been shunned during the period about which Fonarow writes. My research shows that

bands like Tune Yards and Austra are using layered, complex sounds, technology, and

digital manipulation of visual texts to create a form of authenticity that may redefine what

that term means, particularly in relation to gender. These seemingly “unnatural” tools are

being used to provide a space for queer musical representation and identities otherwise

unreachable in the “back to basics” indie about which Fonarow writes.

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This turn toward technology, I argue, enhances the possibilities for gender-

destabilizing performances such as the one described by Sara Cohen, providing a more

nuanced space where the meaning of gender and voice themselves may be questioned or

reexamined. Using technology through music takes the musician (and potentially the

fan) outside of the realm of gender dichotomy and into an alternative space, an in-

between performance that cannot be labeled regarding gender and, sometimes, regarding

musical style. New technologies make this genre more accessible and flexible for gender

expression by constructing a reimagined body and voice. The sounds and images in the

indie genre today do away with gender dichotomy altogether, instead viewing gender as a

transformative, never-static identity marker.

In this way, the use of technology in indie music allows for the construction of

what Freya Jarman-Ivens calls a “queer voice.” Jarman-Ivens views “queer” as “an open-

ended practice” that is “not the exclusive property of any one group that is organized

around a collective and stable identity” (16). For her, queer acts are, by definition, anti-

normative. When a “queer” action becomes normative, it is no longer queer. Queer acts

are intent on disrupting normative modes and serving an “anti-normative function”

(Jarman-Ivens 13-17). This research adopts the “anti-normative” aspects of Jarman-

Ivens’ definition of queer, arguing that “queer voices” and “queer music” are particularly

powerful because they cannot be defined by our existing language about gender. They

are neither masculine nor feminine, nor even androgynous. I view queer as any such

intentional act that rejects binary social practices and instead exists in an indefinable

space. Because indie defines itself against and critiques mainstream music and its social

order, the genre provides a fruitful site for queerness to be expressed.

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Tune Yards and Austra accomplish this anti-normative function through new

“technologies of the self” made possible by disruptive audio and visual techniques.

Michel Foucault defines “technologies of the self” as practices that

permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform I [sic] themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality (Foucault 17).

In other words, “technologizing the self” is using tools (in this case, music and

technology) to create a sense of who one is to oneself, as well as how one is perceived by

others. This essay uses Austra and Tune Yards as examples of how indie pop music

engages representation, identity, and the “discovery of new places,” comprehensively

known as “technologizing the self” as a mode for creating multiple forms of gender and

sexuality expression. I agree with Elspeth Probyn that we must move away from what she

calls “impasse of (in)difference.”—the emphasis on distinct, gendered differences—and

embrace a more collective, fluid community of humans in order to begin to reconfigure

how we see ourselves and how we are perceived (Probyn 503). It is my claim that music,

voice, and the growth of technology within it and our popular culture are a large part of

what is helping to create these queer “spaces” within our society.

The Instrumentalized Voice

Tune Yards is a project of musicians Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner who are

currently based in Oakland, California. Garbus attended Smith College and has also

studied as a puppeteer, which is made evident in many of Tune Yards’ music videos.

Fans have labeled their music everything from “indie pop” to “freak folk,” as it often

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incorporates complex drumbeats, unorthodox instruments such as the ukulele, and

layered vocals. Although I will I examine music videos, lyrics, album art, and interviews

by Tune Yards, my main focus is on Garbus and how she uses technology as a tool to

promote gender fluidity. Her frequent use of loop pedals and fluctuating pitch in songs

like “Bizness” and “Powa” allow her to perform a mixture of masculine and feminine

sounds that creates its own need for what Michelle Chilcoat describes as a reimagined

body and a reimagined voice.

Tune Yards’ music and use of looping pedals and vocal pitch and timbre actively

subverts normative music traditions, providing an opportunity for musical and gender

experimentation. The song “Powa” was released in 2011 as a part of the Whokill album,

though the video used for this analysis was uploaded to Youtube in 2012. In “Powa,”

Garbus relies heavily on vocal loops, a technique in which she records multiple fragments

of her own voice that are then layered with other fragments recorded in various vocal

harmonies. Garbus’s vocal loops are often non-verbal and have a quasi-instrumental

sound, which challenges the way we interpret the voice as a representation of the self.

“Powa” begins with Garbus singing in an airy, high pitched voice, which is then switched

to a raspy, guttural, more masculine sound. This maneuver is similar to the one Sara

Cohen identifies in Kyzer Sozer’s performance, using vocal sound to express aspects of

the self as alternately or simultaneously masculine and feminine. Yet, Garbus does not

seem to be concerned with making “two parts a whole,” as Kyzer Sozer does; instead, she

begins to experiment with alternative sounds that code as neither masculine nor feminine,

but find their space in the in-between. After the creating her initial vocal loop and playing

the first two verses, Garbus makes a “whoo” sound in a high pitch, followed by ebbs and

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flows of higher and lower pitches. She uses her semi-acoustic ukulele to make yet

another kind of echoed and neither masculine nor feminine sound, a technique she

extends at one point by singing into the ukulele to amplify her voice and fuse it with the

resonance of the instrument. Afterward, she employs the vocals she put on the loop pedal

again while projecting her unlooped voice louder and louder, moving closer to a coarse,

low-pitched “rocker” scream. By the end, she shifts again to extremely high-pitched

vocals that could only be likened to the operatic. Through the production of embodied

and disembodied sounds of masculinity and femininity, Garbus creates a reimagined

voice that transcends normative gender, producing a queer persona in sound.

The video for “Powa” allows viewers to see technology being used in conjunction

with the natural body, showing how Garbus manipulates sound and voice to create new

effects. At the start of the video, Garbus explains that they are using two loop pedals for

this song, which is how it differs from their previous music. The use of the multiple loop

pedals gives “Powa” a distinct sound. Indie musician Feist is also known for her use of

loop pedals, but she typically uses them for vocals that are overtly feminine in both

melody and vocal part, so that they simply reinforce the gendered persona of the

dominant vocal part. Garbus, by contrast, uses the pedal as a layering tool not only for

her voice but for her instruments as well, blurring the distinction between the animate

body and inanimate tools. Her vocal loops are an ideal example of “technologizing the

self,” as she layers and experiments to transform her voice to produce an anti-normative

sound that transcends traditional notions of gender. These actions are precisely what

Foucault writes about when discussing how technologies of the self allow--by one’s own

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means or with help, in this case from recorded loops and musical instruments--alteration

of the self for a positive effect/affect.

Garbus’s emphasis on the manipulation of her voice is particularly important in

relation to existing theories of the body. Jacqueline Warwick explains how girl voices

and groups in particular created a uniquely feminine form of expression that demanded

recognition of the body’s importance in producing meaning. She engages with Roland

Barthes idea of the “grain” of the voice, pointing out the power of the body creating

sound that comes from within it. The connection of the voice with the body is what gives

it discursive power and allows for a transformative space within the musical realm (40-

42). This understanding of the voice echoes Michelle Chilcoat’s discussion of the

cyborg. Chilcoat builds on Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto,” but instead of

eliminating gender by use of technology, as Haraway argues, Chilcoat counters by saying

that gender is irrelevant if we do not also acknowledge the body. Thus, approaching

bodies as transformative through the use of technology opens humanity up to a plethora

of gendered, embodied “cyborg” experiences. Chilcoat writes that the promise of the

cyborg “is not about escaping from or to bodies…. Rather, it is about putting the practice

of imposing limits on the body into question.” Through Tune Yards’ use of technology,

their music challenges the imposition of limits on the “body” or voice and uses the

reimagined body to engage in queer practices (Chilcoat 170).

Another track on the 2011 Whokill album, “Bizness,” uses queer vocal sounds and

combines it with a stronger emphasis on the role of instrumentation than in “Powa.” The

vocal and instrumental sounds comment on the lyrical meaning, placing a more nuanced

value on the words being sung. The first sounds on the track are two saxophone players

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who begin to alternate playing scales. The instruments play in the same key during this

section of the song, but never play the same note at the same time. Their layered sound

lies between confusing and pleasing. The layering itself can be seen as anti-normative

here, as the confusion denaturalizes the traditional construct of a “pleasing” sound.

Garbus then begins the layering of her vocals and sounds through the loop pedals to

create the “reimagined voice” referenced in “Powa.” She builds on her loops using

several drum parts and then lowers the background tracks, making her singular, live voice

the main focus. As her voice takes center stage, Garbus employs her masculine lower

register and gruff timbre when she sings, “Answer me, answer me, what’s the bizness,

yeah!” She follows this line with a light, falsetto voice singing, “don’t take my life away,

don’t take my life away,” followed by more gruff vocables. Throughout this passage, she

alternates and in turn melds her contrasting vocal sounds together almost seamlessly.

Moreover, she uses her masculine voice to sing “I’m a victim, yeah!” and “I’m addicted,

yeah!” The declaration of her victimization is, ironically, not weak; here, Garbus

juxtaposes the traditional gender roles equating weakness with femininity and

masculinity with strength. Instead, she reappropriates terms like “victimization” and

“addiction,” terms traditionally associated with weakness, to make them declarations of

strength. After the section in which Garbus’s voice dominates, the saxophones return, this

time playing the same notes in different keys, one higher and one lower. The vocals

recorded on the loop pedal are then used in another offbeat rhythm, as Garbus taps a foot

pedal to start and abruptly cut off the non-verbal sound of her voice, creating an effect

like a radio station signal going in and out. Through changes in vocal keys and timbres,

“Bizness” acknowledges the ebbs and flows involved in transformative gender

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performance while encouraging instrumental experimentation in order to create new

sounds. Like “Powa, the song demonstrates how Tune Yards mixes advanced musical

technology with analog instruments to create something that is as confusing as it is

enticing. In doing so, it challenges the normative aversion to technology within indie

music and draws specific attention to how the voice and the self associated with it can be

reimaged with the use of technology.

The Technologized Image

Tune Yards’ music effectively shows how the manipulation of sound can

deconstruct gender dichotomies, but they also use visual effects to achieve the same ends.

In their video for “Water Fountain,” elements of cartoonization, pixelation, posterization,

puppetry and costumes, and consistent dialogue with technology are all used to confront

issues of the real, the self, the other, and gender performativity and expression. Through

these techniques, Tune Yards creates an alternative approach to understanding the world

that uses technology as an avenue to disrupt normative expectations.

For instance, Tune Yards’ use of pixels and pixelation--a visual style that relies on

breaking apart or blurring a picture or video into the smallest visible “patches” of a

computerized image--serves as a technological tool that symbolically distorts our visual

and ideological perceptions. By inserting an “unnatural” image into the video, it forces

us to contemplate the grey area between what is real or fake, natural or unnatural.

Ultimately, pixelation is a technological tool that reimagines the body and creates an anti

normative space for exploration. Posterization similarly uses technology to challenge

naturalized understandings of reality and perception. It transforms an image, inverting its

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colors and emphasizing aspects that would not usually be as detailed. Altering an image

through technological tools like pixelation and posterization can be likened to what

Merrill Garbus does with her multiple loop pedals and singing into her ukelele. Through

technological alteration, she pushes the boundaries of vocal and bodily ability. Applied to

gender, posterization and graphics, along with musical tools like loop pedals, allow for an

alternative mode of interpreting gender expression for oneself as well as how the self is

perceived by others.

The video for “Water Fountain” begins in one of a few discernable “cartoon

worlds,” which welcomes viewers to the place where Tune Yards is dancing to “Water

Fountain.” A superimposed live-action image of a smiling Merrill Garbus slides across

the screen over top of the cartoon background, and the camera pans into what might be

called a “living room” if only for the large, red couch located in it. Once the viewer gets a

complete view, it is apparent how “unnatural” this room is. The large, red couch has eyes,

two sharp felt-looking teeth and its cushions move up and down, forming a mouth. There

is a monster puppet, a smiling cartoon with the head and body of a circle, Merrill Garbus

dancing with a dog on its hind legs, and a screen showing a pixelated pink sky and some

lighter clouds.

Here, technology allows Tune Yards to create their own space in which to make

music that is denaturalizing, show images that do not “make sense,” and alter norms to

produce versions of the world that would otherwise not be possible. In the same vein,

each member of the band is dressed in a costume at some point in the video, but these

costumes are also part of an alternative narrative. For example, Nate Brenner, bassist for

the band, is dressed as a dog in a chef’s costume, while Garbus begins the video in a

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nurse’s hat, her body then changing so that her head sits on a colorful, posterized lower

body. These visual strategies exemplify Chilcoat’s idea of technologizing the self as

transformative acts of the body. “Water Fountain” shows bodies being placed onto a

green screen that then has layers and layers of digital images inserted, creating what

Chilcoat describes as “bodies reimagined” (170). Each of these examples serves to

question the natural and unnatural, the norm versus the deviant.

One of the most intriguing sections of “Water Fountain” is called “How to Talk to

Your Computer.” In it, Garbus is shown with sunglasses that have lenses flashing a

horizontal hold pattern that would have appeared on an old television with bad reception.

After a floppy disk is inserted into an old computer, a program loads and the camera

zooms in to the images on the computer’s screen. The viewer is then taken through 11

separate doors, each showing brightly colored, pixelated shapes that vary from pencils to

mushrooms. Each door offers a completely different scene with what feels like unlimited

possibilities available. It is only after going through these doors that Garbus is able to

manipulate and destabilize her own “natural” body: the video shows a disassembled

puzzle of human organs such as lungs, liver and intestines, followed by an image of

Garbus’s live-action head atop shoulders composed of cartoon bubbles that resemble the

exaggerated muscles of a body builder. Thus, “How to Talk to Your Computer” becomes

less about talking to the computer, and more about understanding the self and the body

through the computer and the technology it represents. This moment resonates with

Chilcoat’s argument on bodies; she writes

If the body is received in terms of perpetual transformation, resistance and

disruption are no longer antithetical to the normal that dictate social

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behaviors, but characteristic of the norms themselves: it becomes normal

not to be normal. . . . Instead, the “deviant” body . . . constantly push[es]

back against the forces seeking to regulate them (170).

At the same time, the racial dynamics of “Water Fountain” point to the possible limits of

this reconfiguration of the body. Garbus has spoken in interviews about Haitian artists

who have inspired her music, and she incorporates caribbean rhythmic patterns into the

song and Haitian Creole into the lyrics. Though undoubtedly meant as an homage, the

“inspiration” Garbus has taken from Haitian influences might be likened to Toni

Morrison’s concept of the “Africanist” in Playing in the Dark. The music and dance

techniques are taken from their original culture and placed in the realm of the still

predominantly white, indie genre. This type of appropriation is not new to the music

scene; Janell Hobson, among others, recounts how Madonna took “voguing” from the

Harlem gay ball culture and made it mainstream, erasing from larger society the original

voguing and its roots (51). Juliet Williams takes a contemporary look at how many white,

self-identified queer scholars employ a sense of possibility regarding gender, sexuality

and race, which ultimately ends in a call for a postracial society (37). The lack of

acknowledgement regarding the privilege that comes along with subscribing to

postracialism is a problematic issue that seems to arise in Tune Yards’ incorporation of

Haitian instrumentalism and dance. Though this does not take away from the examination

of gender and sexuality, the appropriation of blackness to illuminate white fantasies of

difference and liberation remains problematic.

The Reimagined Body: Things Are Not As They Appear

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The addition of technology allows for the construction of a queer space within

indie’s politics of authenticity. The music of Austra is more like traditional indie in its

seriousness and introspective nature; whereas Tune Yards uses puppets, bright, vibrant

colors and completely alternative worlds, Austra maintains a sense of realism that

grounds them more fully in traditional ideas of indie authenticity. Austra’s approach to

anti-normativity is more far-reaching but also less explicit and concrete. Their work

expresses their frustration with normative behaviors and offers a series of anti-normative,

“unnatural” images that disrupt tradition and what is considered normal. In other words,

the visual field provided in Austra’s work challenges norms by the randomization and the

denaturalization of images, even when it does not directly address gender.

Austra is a project of Toronto musicians Katie Stelmanis, Maya Postepski and

Dorian Wolf. Their musical sound is somewhat more subdued than Tune Yards’, earning

genre labels like “synthpop” and “indietronica.” The band members have been very vocal

about their positive stances on gender and sexual exploration; they have often used non-

binary performing folks and sex workers in their music videos to correspond with their

lyrics and views on gender and sexuality (Out). Frontrunner Katie Stelmanis has a

Tumblr presence where she makes a point to call out misogyny and display images that

coincide with Austra’s style. There are posters of concerts where Austra has performed or

will be performing, pictures of folks like an older Vivienne Westwood in leather lingerie

and personal blog posts. Katie, who does the majority of interviews and fan interaction,

has repeatedly written on her Tumblr about the personal importance of her identifying as

gay along with experiences she has with misogyny while on tour playing shows. Her

passion for social justice and pro-feminist, pro-queer political stances are made clear

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through her posts, whether image- or text-based. Through her personal statements and

Austra’s music, Stelmanis has made it clear that they desire to align themselves with

marginalized groups.

In their 2014 video for “Doepfer,” Austra realizes indie pop’s potential for

pushing back against normative modes of perception regarding gender. The video

visually emphasizes the cultural surveillance of the “natural,” and particularly the

gendered body. Symbolism regarding surveillance and body policing is evident from the

beginning, starting with the presence of a green laser that loosely focuses around two

humans who are plainly dressed, but obviously gendered, one male and one female.

Often, the laser is actually pointing vertically on their bodies, as if scanning for

something, but there are also several scenes where the laser is making a shape around the

body placed in the image. It does not seem to be harming those it makes contact with, nor

do the humans seem to notice its presence. The green laser invokes a combination of the

natural and technology, the green being symbolic of the natural and the laser signifying

technology. In the scenes where the humans are present, they are only shown in three

positions: with their backs turned away from the camera, at the far end of a dark hallway,

or in the foreground facing toward the camera with their bodies in a faded, “ghost-like”

state. The laser stands as a method of surveillance that surrounds and polices the body,

similar to Foucault’s “panoptic gaze,” which serves as an omnipresent but unseen

authority that constructs norms without any direct intervention.

These symbols and scenes tie into a larger picture—how we perceive reality itself.

An instrumental piece named for an early model of synthesizer, “Doepfer” uses

electronic music to create a technologized soundscape that supports the way the images

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in the video question the boundaries of reality and what is “natural.” The images in

“Doepfer” begin as singular pictures, which then begin to pixelate and morph into blurs

of what they once were. What begins as a time-lapsed image of a dumpster full of foil, an

airplane on its ascent, and what looks like a large fountain found in a public park, become

symbols of time and movement-- nothing is static. By the end of the video, three to four

images are meshed together and the final scene is a watercolor image where all colors are

bleeding into one another, flowing together and creating a lasting image that symbolizes

the fusion between the natural and technological, duality a thing of the past.

Another video, “Lose It,” further develops Austra’s interest in gender

performativity, technology, and political issues such as violence and war. “Lose It”

follows in the pattern of several other Austra videos by combining disconnected short

scenes and shots that ultimately construct a larger narrative, though not in linear fashion.

This randomized presentation of loosely related images identifies a problem but does not

ultimately resolve it through narrative. “Lose It” features six characters total, all of

which hold symbolism regarding gender and power. The video begins in what appears to

be an apartment or living room; the camera introduces all the characters in more or less

still shots: Katie Stelmanis, two young girls in nude-colored tops and jeans, a man

dressed in all black pointing what at first glance looks like a gun, a woman in a pale-

printed button-down shirt who is sitting on a couch with sunglasses on, and another

person with long, curly hair who is wearing a t-shirt. The last character is perhaps most

intriguing, for he/she/they are only seen from the waist up—the rest of his/her/their body

is seemingly stuck in the floor of the room/apartment. As a whole, “Lose It” attempts to

spark a conversation on how hegemonic gender norms help to establish power

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hierarchies; further, it points out how many get “stuck” or lost in hegemonic modes that

uphold violence against “the other.”

Stelmanis’ profile is the initial image of the video, and her somber expression sets

the tone. She walks barefoot to a window only to see the poorly inserted image of a

missile headed for land, followed immediately by a shot of a man dressed in black

holding the futuristic “gun.” He is wearing a leather jacket and a helmet that resembles a

Cold War-era combat helmet. As the video progresses, Stelmanis comes back to the same

man and steps in front of the “gun,” seemingly moving his hand so that it is pointing at

her head. The next scene shows that the item is not a real gun, but a device for spray

tanning. This narrative creates a mix of fear and anticipation for the viewers, followed by

relief. All is not what it seems to be at first glance—the male “soldier” is holding an item

typically associated with women and feminine beauty. These two scenes back-to-back,

along with the recurring image of the missile, create a compartmentalized story about

violence due to gender stereotyping and social assumption.

Yet, “Lose It” also implicitly employs the “technologizing of the self,” displaying

ways in which individuals can view technology within themselves and through the

performance of their gender in a liberatory way. Lyrically, “Lose It” is a simple song,

which often repeats the same line, “Don’t wanna to lose ya, don’t wanna to lose” while a

steady beat guides the sounds of the synthesizer. The most stunning and thought-

provoking aspect of the song itself is how its haunting melody pairs with the obvious lip-

synching of the vocals in the video. The voice is literally removed from the body that

plays with understandings of who can perform a given voice. This effect heightened by a

scene in which Stelmanis is shown singing with the two girls. I use the term “girls” as a

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feminine term regarding to youth, for I believe Stelmanis intentionally had the girls dress

in a way that highlights their innocence—they wear nude tops with their hair down and

not styled, faces free from makeup and bodies free from jewelry. Stelmanis stands in

front of the girls and leads them in a soprano vocal riff. All of the vocals are Katie

Stelmanis, but she removes her voice during the beginning and positions the two young

girls to take part in the soprano interlude melody. The absence of synched vocals breaks

away from the mode of many videos, and Austra places itself and its influence as the

stand in for all bodies. The unsynced vocals separate the physical body from the voice,

which then challenges the “self” that the voice represents. Further, the denaturalization of

the relationship between the self, the voice, and the body allows Austra’s work to push

back at normative structures and move toward the anti-normative “queer” Jarman-Ivens

details in Queer Voices.

Although Austra actively expresses the desire to see changes against hegemony

and discrimination through their conscious responses in interviews and the material they

release, it is also apparent that Stelmanis is not always quite sure of how to articulate

what the band ultimately wishes to accomplish with its music. For instance, when asked

about the video “Lose It,” Katie Stelmanis seemed only vaguely aware of how the video

aligned with her anti-normative politics.

The Director gave us this concept of us saving the world . . . from the rocket ship

I guess. We didn’t understand the concept behind the video, or what we were

doing, or how exactly we were saving the world. . . . It’s so unexpected and

random!

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Here, Stelmanis intuitively connects the notion of “saving the world” with subverting

expectations, but she does not seem to have a clear grasp of what the video accomplishes.

Nonetheless, the steps the band takes to destabilize the visual field using technology puts

the relationship between real and unreal, between accepted norms and disruptive

performance in question. This destabilization is not didactic but aesthetic, suggesting that

“technologizing the self” does not have to be expressly pedagogical in order to be

transformative. When Stelmanis says, “It’s so unexpected and random!” she is also, even

without full awareness, asserting that Austra’s work makes a place for the randomization

of text, or the randomization of larger concepts like gender itself.

While Tune Yards offers an obvious example of technologizing the self, Austra

takes a less concrete approach that creates a general aesthetic that challenges normative

behavior. Although Austra does not always exclusively and deliberately talk about

gender, their aesthetic provides opportunities to critique how gender is perceived within

their realm of experience and within the indie genre. The randomization and

“unexpected” nature of Austra’s work allows viewers to imagine what possibilities may

be available to them, using technology to confront and extend the limitations of the voice

and body. While Tune Yards’ work is consciously focused on musical manipulation as a

means of challenging gender expectations, Austra simply produces an aesthetic that

supports the reimagining of the body.

Though previous discussions of the indie genre emphasize the avoidance of

technology as part of the embrace of authenticity, I believe that Tune Yards and Austra’s

music suggests a need to reconsider whether technology engages a deeper, more nuanced

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self. Instead of producing a performative sound, as seen in pop or hair metal, indie uses

technology to destabilize gender norms and authenticity politics. Technological tools

within indie help to transcend the boundaries of traditional authenticity and provide an

avenue for gender and sexuality expression that has not yet been acknowledged.

23

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