Class of 2017
Masters of Fine Arts
Studio Practise & Photography
Saturday May 13th, 2017.
Trouble was offered a significant merit-based scholarship to return to CCA for a second master’s degree and they completed a year before taking a break to attend to company business.
Trouble’s fine art skills blossomed under mentorship across disciplines at CCA but particularly in alternative photography practices, printmaking, painting, and installation. Trouble wrote a thesis entitled Queer Chaos which entwines research into chaos theory, biological diversity, ancient art, and religion and served as teacher’s assistant for Ignacio Valero’s Queer Attractors course. They were selected for the Gender In Translation Symposium and Exhibition, highlighted by a lecture by Judith Butler. Trouble’s thesis exhibition, Queer Porn Archive, displayed 64 one of a kind magazines featuring chaotic and lyrical collections of Courtney Trouble’s iconic pornographic and queer cultural photography work, and a digital hard drive containing the entire Courtney Trouble archive, surmounting to over 220,000 images and videos and meant to be preserved in hiding at an unknown location.
Trouble works at the college and has planned events centered around wellness, including a sex work panel featuring Carol Queen and Chelsea Poe and a sex toy workshop with adult boutique Feelmore 510.
“One of the biggest questions for me is how out I should be at school about being a sex worker. It never may be obvious wether I will be taken seriously in an Art World space or not, so I really focused on making stuff that followed my intellectual questions and trusting my gut when I had to answer questions. CCA fully embraced my history and helped me turn my adult industry skills into teaching skills. I couldn’t be more amazed and inspired by the grace with which this institution embraced conversations around pornography and sex work. They also didn’t pigeonhole me. I ended up improving in so many techniques just by daring to rip things apart. Now I can talk about anything I need to, including my experiences in sexuality, in a lot of new languages. I particularly like abstract minimalism that looks at transforming digital pixels into physical elements like dust and threads.”
CourtneyTrouble.Com has become a personal website and portfolio for Trouble’s art, research, and writing.
Trouble, the award-winning fat femme bombshell behind QueerPorn.TV, NoFauxxx.Com, and the TROUBLEfilms DVD catalog, retired from directing commercial pornography in the fall of 2015 in order to prepare for the experience of graduate school, but TROUBLEfilms has continued to be her full-time job. “2 years ago, Chelsea Poe started directing for TROUBLEfilms and has found massive success with her concepts. It’s an incredible relationship – it is awesome to have a company while I’m in school, and it is awesome that I’ve been able to collaborate with someone so excellent at what they do. Chelsea’s kept the company (and me) afloat for the past 18 months. TROUBLEfilms is in excellent shape, and what’s coming out next will be even better. She’s on a roll.” Poe owns a portion of the company and handles all new productions exclusively. Trouble has moved behind the scenes, editing, consulting, and maintaining the web sites and technical support.
