Video maker, graphic designer, curator. One of the Vancouver school of bad girl video artists, the SFU-dropout Swenson is known for the in-your-face defiance of her sensibility and her hard-talking dyke subjects, and at the same time for the poetic delicacy of the way she brings words and images together. The prizewinning Swenson’s identity as a mother comes out in such works as MotherFuckers (1995, 4), and, most ambitiously, Marking the Mother: mothers, tattoos & how we break all the rules of motherhood (2000, 25). This latter documentary essay on the stigma of marginality within the social networks around mothering is animated by six voices and well-decorated bodies. How to be a Recluse (7 easy steps) (1998, 5) is a wry and ironic as well as sensual rumination on the assets and liabilities of social isolation.