Dancing to Mason's Ballad

Jubilantly singing and brandishing various items—a staple gun, a paint roller, a can of fly spray, a disassembled fan—Wesley John Fourie dances across the screen. Filmed in the artist’s studio, Mason’s Ballad (2024) comprises three different videos from Fourie’s ongoing HYPERBALLAD series in one frame. Playfully engaging with expressions of identity, internet culture, and queer experience through performance, in Mason’s Ballad, they are both creator and star.

Shot from different angles, the work’s three vignettes each depict distinct but intersecting perspectives of the artist dancing, rendered uncanny in their juxtaposition with one other. Utilising props, music, and editing techniques to discordant effect, Mason’s Ballad simultaneously interweaves evocations of otherness and alienation, belonging and joy. In each scene, Fourie makes use of the eclectic assortment of objects found in their studio, which act as prop microphones and playthings for their performances. Shot at different moments in time, they wear different clothes and sing along to different songs, each with their own significance.⁽¹⁾ Where in the Hyperballad source works these songs can be heard, in Mason’s Ballad, Fourie overlays the original soundtracks with a recording of themselves playing the harp.

Windmilling their arms, playing with their hair, and spinning around in circles, Fourie’s movements are accompanied first by soft notes and graceful chords, then a clashing together of strings and sound. Their dancing is earnest and silly, but through these fragmented rhythms is made eerie, decontextualised from its pop music references. With the changes in melody and intensity, the effect shifts from chaos to calm, from discordant to delicate and back again. Sometimes, the harp pauses, creating pockets of awkward silence as Fourie’s dancing is momentarily, surreally, without accompaniment.

The work is drenched in queer subtext, reflecting Fourie’s interest in investigating notions of queer sexuality, desire, love, and loss in their practice. They describe themselves as "not trans nor male nor female nor anything else that could fit into a label but rather … an alien that has been dropped down to earth and shattered…"⁽²⁾ The clashing harp and shifting frames, then, could act as allegories for the often unpredictable nature of existing as a queer person in the world. Mason’s Ballad resonates with the conflicting experiences of discomfort and jubilation, dysphoria and euphoria which can come from being queer, gender non-conforming, or trans. That one of the unheard songs is The Carpenters' 'Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft' imbues further meaning; the song toys with themes of alienation in a very literal sense, narrativising an extraterrestrial’s message to Earth.

Fourie’s works also explore the role of internet culture in contemporary modes of communication and expression: from highly curated digital personas, voyeurism, and parasocial relationships, to the cliché influencer 'apology' videos prevalent on social media platforms. As a whole, the HYPERBALLAD series is an internet-era update of the Greek myth of the beautiful yet cruel Narcissus, who becomes fatally transfixed by his own watery reflection. In these scenes, the pool of water into which Narcissus gazes is represented by the phone screen, while Fourie is a Narcissus-like figure, engaged by their reflection.

Across the three panels of Mason’s Ballad, Fourie’s close proximity to the camera mimics the manufactured environment of authenticity—of the mediated sense of closeness and connection—seen on social media. This is perhaps most prevalent in the centre panel, where Fourie speaks directly, though unheard, to the viewer through the screen. The visual parallels created by these references bring to mind further questions of how expressions of sincerity, authenticity, and vulnerability play out both in digital contexts, and in the work itself. Is Fourie being heartfelt? For what it’s worth, I think they are sincere in their address, and experience genuine moments of glee, self-consciousness, and mischief throughout their dancing sprees. Nevertheless, their ostensibly genuine appearance must be seen alongside the currency of online confessionalism, performed vulnerability, and pored-over Tumblr blogs—an element of curation remains.

Fourie’s awareness of the presence of the camera and performance for it—for us—is made apparent by their frequent engagement with the lens. Making their recognition known, they play with the discomfort that comes from the viewer's perception of insincerity or pretense. This palpable sense of artificiality in Fourie’s choreography is made more pronounced by aspects of the work’s staging, such as the fluorescent overhead lighting and the sometimes staticy, uncomfortable noise of the harp. Mimicking the vanity of Narcissus, they drink from a wine bottle, blow clouds from their vape, and leap in glee. They want our attention! But then again, they probably won’t ever see our reactions on the other side of the screen. As an interface, the screen creates a disconnect between us and them, preventing 'real' communication between viewer and performer. Both beckoning viewers to consider their own habits of online consumption and satirising the reverence given to digital status, Mason’s Ballad invites conversation regarding the impacts of (chronically) online culture, and how we perform and communicate our identity in the digital age.

What stands out the most for me in the work is how resonant the ideas and motifs expressed—alienation, anxiety, doubt, dysphoria, discordance, but also playfulness, dynamism, the outrageous and indulgent—are with my own experiences of queerness, of transness, and of being in community with other queer people. As I wrote this response to the work, I reflected on queerness as reclamation, as challenging the norm, being unabashed. These qualities of queer identity, alongside an oftentimes more messy, knotted reality of vulnerability and precarity, make themselves known in Mason’s Ballad. Throughout, there are reminders of the gritty, glitchy experiences of queerness, of the need to build solidarity, to reach out and care for each other beyond the confines of the screen. To see a gender non-conforming artist challenge the boundaries of artmaking in the moving image, bending the rules, asking questions about ourselves and our vanity and our insecurity, being bold in their performance, and embracing the uncanny and bizarre—I was reminded again of the importance of community, of sharing our art with one another. While Fourie may appear isolated on the screen, we don’t have to be.

Kat Rowan (they/them) is a Pākehā, nonbinary writer based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. They have a particular passion for exploring contemporary queer artistic subjectivities. Kat's writing has been published in Bad Apple Aotearoa and Salient, and an extended version of their writing on Mason's Ballad was published in Wesley John Fourie: HYPERBALLAD, Wellington: New Lands Art Trust, 2025.