Passing Through | Jason Purcell
in conversation with Kyle Terrence
In Kyle Terrence’s 2019 short film ‘Berta Boys, each of the three featured ‘Berta Boys—archetypes portrayed by Terrence, Aaron Brown, and Gabriel Esteban Molina—offer a monologue that frames their individual relationships to Alberta masculinities. Through relationships to physical strength, capitalist accumulation, and resource extraction, respectively, these three artists illustrate the varied ways that masculinity comes to bear on them.
Passing Through is part of an extended conversation and collaboration with Terrence, and offers here fourth and fifth archetypes: namely, the queer kid who keeps slipping out of traditional forms of masculinity, and the man who wears the presentation of Albertan masculinity as a costume. The short video presented here functions as an addendum to the original film and follows the threads of Terrence’s section of ‘Berta Boys, a section concerned with the ways in which masculinity demands to be performed for the gaze of other men. In the world of ‘Berta Boys, homophobia—the anxiety around not being a certain kind of person—is the defining domination that brings us together.
Passing Through evokes the transitory space of the motel, the movement of needle and thread through material, and for the queer Albertan of a certain age, the practice of eliding accusations of queerness. For those who came of age in Alberta during the ‘90s and ‘00s—and perhaps still—covertness and survival are difficult to unstitch from one another; safety, community, and connection, then, were cultivated on the sly, in private spaces. Through a practice of looking/feeling backward, à la Heather Love, this project recasts the prairie aesthetics of compulsory heteromasculinity with a queer eye toward tenderness, desire, and safety, and utilizes scenes from Terrence’s ‘Berta Boys alongside new footage filmed in collaboration with Terrence.
Latitude 53 invites members and guests to the opening reception, Friday July 10 at 7 pm.
Presented online for a limited time to accompany “Passing Through” by Jason Purcell, at Latitude 53 July 8–25, 2026. The film was shown at Latitude 53 in 2019.
Jason Purcell is a writer, musician, and artist from amiskwacîwâskahikan, Treaty 6 (Edmonton, Alberta), where they are a PhD student in Department of English, Film, and Creative Writing at the University of Alberta. They are the author of Swollening (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022) and Crohnic, (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025), the latter of which was a finalist for the Robert Kroestch - City of Edmonton Book Prize. Across their work they’re interested in questions of gender, masculinity, and place.
Photo credit to Tatiana Zagorac.