New film clips edits are up on youtube and on the website.
Louis Mitchell, a founding member of LAGADDA (Lesbians and Gays of African Decent for Democratic Action), speaks to sectarian differences in 1980's San Fransisco.
This is the first in a series of clips addressing the relationship between Transmasculinity and feminism. This features Alex Pangborn, a transgender activist, talking about addressing sexism before and after transitioning.
It's two weeks away from the exhibit debut and I've edited about 3/4 of my videos (different from the ones on the website). I've added a Merch page to the site and am looking into different methods to make the docs more referencable before adding too many more.
Showing posts with label transgender oral history project. Show all posts
Showing posts with label transgender oral history project. Show all posts
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Progress Since May
I have not updated this blog in months but I have been making progress, so here is a quick rundown…
MAY
I wrote into the Translating Identities Conference telling them about my project and asking if I could do an instillation of the exhibit during the conference at the end of October. They responded very positively and encouraged me to apply to host a session.
JUNE
I got a call from Brattleboro, Vermont asking if I could make a video clip to show at gallery walk, a monthly festival where art galleries stay open late and host various events. The Hooker Dunham Theatre was showing a queer rights film in honor of stonewall and wanted to use show a clip in the Gallery space. I create a small clip and sent in a flyer with info about me and the project on it.
I edited a clip from Bet Power’s interview and uploaded it to the website. It was the official first short doc clip.
JULY
I also moved to Chicago where I got in contact with people from GednerWorks and the Gay Liberation network. A cross-dresser who works with GLN agreed to be interviewed and expressed interest in conducting some oral history interviews.
The GLN invited me to be interviewed on their Public Access TV show. I am still waiting to confirm the interview but I will post about it if I end up doing it.
I finally filled out a bio and session form for the Translating Identities Conference and am e-mailing the transcending boundaries conference.
I am off to the Allied Media Conference as I type this. The conference kicks off with a session about transgender representation in independent media. Armed with flyers, business cards, and enthusiasm, I’m ready to meet potential allies.
MAY
I wrote into the Translating Identities Conference telling them about my project and asking if I could do an instillation of the exhibit during the conference at the end of October. They responded very positively and encouraged me to apply to host a session.
JUNE
I got a call from Brattleboro, Vermont asking if I could make a video clip to show at gallery walk, a monthly festival where art galleries stay open late and host various events. The Hooker Dunham Theatre was showing a queer rights film in honor of stonewall and wanted to use show a clip in the Gallery space. I create a small clip and sent in a flyer with info about me and the project on it.
I edited a clip from Bet Power’s interview and uploaded it to the website. It was the official first short doc clip.
JULY
I also moved to Chicago where I got in contact with people from GednerWorks and the Gay Liberation network. A cross-dresser who works with GLN agreed to be interviewed and expressed interest in conducting some oral history interviews.
The GLN invited me to be interviewed on their Public Access TV show. I am still waiting to confirm the interview but I will post about it if I end up doing it.
I finally filled out a bio and session form for the Translating Identities Conference and am e-mailing the transcending boundaries conference.
I am off to the Allied Media Conference as I type this. The conference kicks off with a session about transgender representation in independent media. Armed with flyers, business cards, and enthusiasm, I’m ready to meet potential allies.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Website Finished (for now)
After months of development, I am nearing a stopping point in designing the website. I am still not exactly pleased with a few elements, and I definitely have some major web projects ahead of me for next semester (like a fancy animated timeline, and an exhibit walk through). But for the moment I am pretty satisfied with the ground work I have laid and am eager to get working on content! Check out the site.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Oral History Exhibit Proposal (1st Draft)
Background
I started The Transgender Oral History Project as a means to uncover the rich, though often invisible history of transgender political activism. Stories including trans people often become a tiny portion of a subgroup that is largely dominated by normative elements who marginalize them in order to create an image that is more palatable to the mainstream. Furthermore, the narratives Americans are exposed to are so limiting—they are the stories of an individual who struggles with their own body or else the story of victimization by illogical violence. I want to tell different stories… ones that highlight how trans people have been pushed out of self-proclaimed safe spaces and have been abused by the psychiatric and medical establishments under the guise of treating them. I want to talk about the violence that happens when our entire society operates on logics that systematically force trans people to exist on the margins of society—refused healthcare, left out of government programming, and refused gainful employment. But I it would be missing the point to tell a history of oppression without the correlating history of resistance. I want to tell the stories of riots against police brutality, volunteering services in trans-specific health centers, reclaiming public spaces for people who have nowhere else to go, and civil rights marches for legal protections—a legacy of empowerment through community organizing.
Overview: The Basic Idea
I would like to create a multimedia historical exhibit that leads the audience in exploring the
issues that have fostered the evolution of the trans community over the past fifty years. I hope to engage viewers in the passage of time by creating a spatial representation of a timeline that they move through as they move through space. The timeline will portray the events and conditions trans people were operating within, but also the collective responses that enabled trans people to deal with these circumstances. I hope to make viewer think about how this community necessitated by a hostile environment that is not of its making but more importantly, to see the means by which this community has constituted itself.
I plan to accomplish this through using a combination of text, photography, ephemera, audio, and film. The central three AV elements will be video clips of vignettes from the Transgender Oral History Project situated within the context of the time period as created through the timeline. I am concerned with showing how the historical moment frames what is possible for people’s lives by showcasing stories that exemplify how this intersection is experienced.
Audience: Marlboro and Beyond
I see two distinct audiences for my piece—one of normative people with liberal political sympathies and one made up of people who understand themselves as gender-variant.
Of primary concern to me are people who understand themselves as gender-variant. I believe collective action and movement building begins with seeing ourselves as having common experiences and drawing from a shared sense of history as well as having shared ambitions for the future. This project is, at least in part, my own search for community, but I want it to extend further than that. I hope that I can engage other people who identify as transgender as seeing themselves as part of something larger. I want to reach people for whom exploring how the trans community has been shaped and where it is going, is a profoundly personal matter.
My goal is that I can communicate the continuing need for community while encouraging collective action.
My secondary audience is the Marlboro community. I anticipate this exhibit being different in two major ways. First of all, I intend to have more contextualizing information, more explanation and analysis. The purpose of the Marlboro version will be to introduce this community to the transgender community’s struggle and to make connections between the trans community and other communities we study or may even be a part of. In the process of exploring how transgender activism has intersected with, been co-opted by, and collided with the womyn’s and Gay and Lesbian rights movements, I want the community to think about inclusion within their own social circles and subcultures. Secondly, I will be hoping to address to concern stated above about how limited the portrayals of trans people are in mass media by presenting competing narratives. I want viewers to see a more multidimensional version of how trans people understand themselves within the context of broader society.
Logistics: Venues and Timing
Because it will be more of an overview, I feel like I already have access to the material I need in order to create this exhibit on campus. For this reason I would like to explore creating the exhibit next semester. I also understand the drawbacks since it would be more competitive to get gallery space and it would mean my outside examiner could not experience it. I am not even sure that the gallery is the best space for the project because of acoustics (I am concerned about how loud it will be if there are multiple, differing AV components), monitoring (I will be using electronic equipment that is expensive and am unsure of how to ensure it does not get stolen), and space (movement is central to my idea and I am unsure of how to create the kind of movement I want to in that open of a space).
Because my target audience is necessarily a scattered population, I do not know what kind of venues would be most appropriate for this exhibit. There is a yearly conference put on at UVM that I have attended for three years now: the Translating Identities Conference. It seeks to build community and provide a forum for the exchange information among trans communities throughout the northeast. I see my project as being very in line with this goal, so I think it would be a good fit.
I started The Transgender Oral History Project as a means to uncover the rich, though often invisible history of transgender political activism. Stories including trans people often become a tiny portion of a subgroup that is largely dominated by normative elements who marginalize them in order to create an image that is more palatable to the mainstream. Furthermore, the narratives Americans are exposed to are so limiting—they are the stories of an individual who struggles with their own body or else the story of victimization by illogical violence. I want to tell different stories… ones that highlight how trans people have been pushed out of self-proclaimed safe spaces and have been abused by the psychiatric and medical establishments under the guise of treating them. I want to talk about the violence that happens when our entire society operates on logics that systematically force trans people to exist on the margins of society—refused healthcare, left out of government programming, and refused gainful employment. But I it would be missing the point to tell a history of oppression without the correlating history of resistance. I want to tell the stories of riots against police brutality, volunteering services in trans-specific health centers, reclaiming public spaces for people who have nowhere else to go, and civil rights marches for legal protections—a legacy of empowerment through community organizing.
Overview: The Basic Idea
I would like to create a multimedia historical exhibit that leads the audience in exploring the
issues that have fostered the evolution of the trans community over the past fifty years. I hope to engage viewers in the passage of time by creating a spatial representation of a timeline that they move through as they move through space. The timeline will portray the events and conditions trans people were operating within, but also the collective responses that enabled trans people to deal with these circumstances. I hope to make viewer think about how this community necessitated by a hostile environment that is not of its making but more importantly, to see the means by which this community has constituted itself.
I plan to accomplish this through using a combination of text, photography, ephemera, audio, and film. The central three AV elements will be video clips of vignettes from the Transgender Oral History Project situated within the context of the time period as created through the timeline. I am concerned with showing how the historical moment frames what is possible for people’s lives by showcasing stories that exemplify how this intersection is experienced.
Audience: Marlboro and Beyond
I see two distinct audiences for my piece—one of normative people with liberal political sympathies and one made up of people who understand themselves as gender-variant.
Of primary concern to me are people who understand themselves as gender-variant. I believe collective action and movement building begins with seeing ourselves as having common experiences and drawing from a shared sense of history as well as having shared ambitions for the future. This project is, at least in part, my own search for community, but I want it to extend further than that. I hope that I can engage other people who identify as transgender as seeing themselves as part of something larger. I want to reach people for whom exploring how the trans community has been shaped and where it is going, is a profoundly personal matter.
My goal is that I can communicate the continuing need for community while encouraging collective action.
My secondary audience is the Marlboro community. I anticipate this exhibit being different in two major ways. First of all, I intend to have more contextualizing information, more explanation and analysis. The purpose of the Marlboro version will be to introduce this community to the transgender community’s struggle and to make connections between the trans community and other communities we study or may even be a part of. In the process of exploring how transgender activism has intersected with, been co-opted by, and collided with the womyn’s and Gay and Lesbian rights movements, I want the community to think about inclusion within their own social circles and subcultures. Secondly, I will be hoping to address to concern stated above about how limited the portrayals of trans people are in mass media by presenting competing narratives. I want viewers to see a more multidimensional version of how trans people understand themselves within the context of broader society.
Logistics: Venues and Timing
Because it will be more of an overview, I feel like I already have access to the material I need in order to create this exhibit on campus. For this reason I would like to explore creating the exhibit next semester. I also understand the drawbacks since it would be more competitive to get gallery space and it would mean my outside examiner could not experience it. I am not even sure that the gallery is the best space for the project because of acoustics (I am concerned about how loud it will be if there are multiple, differing AV components), monitoring (I will be using electronic equipment that is expensive and am unsure of how to ensure it does not get stolen), and space (movement is central to my idea and I am unsure of how to create the kind of movement I want to in that open of a space).
Because my target audience is necessarily a scattered population, I do not know what kind of venues would be most appropriate for this exhibit. There is a yearly conference put on at UVM that I have attended for three years now: the Translating Identities Conference. It seeks to build community and provide a forum for the exchange information among trans communities throughout the northeast. I see my project as being very in line with this goal, so I think it would be a good fit.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Installation possibilities
What was most immediately interesting to me about the project was the actual footwork--doing interviews, starting conversations, visiting archives. Now that I have collected some material, I am spending more time think about what I am actually ging to do with it. I started out my project assuming I was going to make a documentary. However, lately I've been thinking about alternative ways to present my material. I want to involve people in history; help them feel connected to it; engage them in the process of building connections through it.
I've come up with the idea of creating an interactive multimedia history exhibit. It will be more work, but there is the potential of soliciting community involvement, which is very appealing to me. Also, it could be presented in various situations and tweaked to the audience. It would start on campus, but then I would hope to put it in more queer places, like at next year's Translating Identities Conference.
More to come as the idea unfolds...
I've come up with the idea of creating an interactive multimedia history exhibit. It will be more work, but there is the potential of soliciting community involvement, which is very appealing to me. Also, it could be presented in various situations and tweaked to the audience. It would start on campus, but then I would hope to put it in more queer places, like at next year's Translating Identities Conference.
More to come as the idea unfolds...
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Class Issues and the Transgender Community
10/22/08
I've been at the task of making generalizations about the trans people I've met over the last 6 months of researching and being fairly active in trans communities in the area, and the one set of issues that comes to the surface most blantantly is class issues.
If the standard of living of normative society could be measured on a 1-10 scale, I think the whole spectrum of transfolk could fit within 1-6 and probably would cluster around 2-4. What does it mean that I was part of an organizing body whose six core members were mostly underemployed or unemployed despite having marketable skills (the group included a lawyer, a marketing executive, a web developer)? These are the leaders. They and others like them are the people in our community who have the most education and stability who are most willing and able to start families. These are our success stories. And among the people I admire most in our community, none of them have health insurance. Many of them are married to bio-women who make more money than they do (we all know that bio-women make 75% of what bio-men do). Many are part-time employees. Few own the houses they live in. Most do a little bit of a lot of things to barely make ends meet.
It's not just that the trans community are poor, but that we are one of the only downwardly mobile communities I can think of (if you ave others then please leave a comment). This means that on average trans people have less wealth than their parents. Whereas most people maintain the same level of wealth as their parents or even gain wealth (because they have access to cultural capital that helps them accrue wealth) to pass onto future generations. What does it mean that our children are less likely to go to college than we were, less likely to own a house, less likely to have access to any number of opportunities purely by virtue of their parent's gender identity/expression?
I've been at the task of making generalizations about the trans people I've met over the last 6 months of researching and being fairly active in trans communities in the area, and the one set of issues that comes to the surface most blantantly is class issues.
If the standard of living of normative society could be measured on a 1-10 scale, I think the whole spectrum of transfolk could fit within 1-6 and probably would cluster around 2-4. What does it mean that I was part of an organizing body whose six core members were mostly underemployed or unemployed despite having marketable skills (the group included a lawyer, a marketing executive, a web developer)? These are the leaders. They and others like them are the people in our community who have the most education and stability who are most willing and able to start families. These are our success stories. And among the people I admire most in our community, none of them have health insurance. Many of them are married to bio-women who make more money than they do (we all know that bio-women make 75% of what bio-men do). Many are part-time employees. Few own the houses they live in. Most do a little bit of a lot of things to barely make ends meet.
It's not just that the trans community are poor, but that we are one of the only downwardly mobile communities I can think of (if you ave others then please leave a comment). This means that on average trans people have less wealth than their parents. Whereas most people maintain the same level of wealth as their parents or even gain wealth (because they have access to cultural capital that helps them accrue wealth) to pass onto future generations. What does it mean that our children are less likely to go to college than we were, less likely to own a house, less likely to have access to any number of opportunities purely by virtue of their parent's gender identity/expression?
Friday, October 31, 2008
Welcome!
Greetings!
The Transgender Oral History Project is under way. For more information on the project visit http://transgenderoralhistory.weebly.com/
This blog will be place for me to give updates on the progress of th project. It also is also serving as a director's journal for the documentary I am making about transgender activism since Stonewall. The documentary will be based primarily on the interviews I conduct as part of the larger project.
I'm a little unsure about having a blog for this project because I have so many blogs to keep up with. However, I am dedicated to keeping up dialogs with any community members who want to have a part of this project. I am also interested in logging my evolving consciousness around trans issues and the trans community as I continue with the project.
If you have an comments, questions, or suggestions, e-mail me at cperez@marlboro.edu.
The Transgender Oral History Project is under way. For more information on the project visit http://transgenderoralhistory.weebly.com/
This blog will be place for me to give updates on the progress of th project. It also is also serving as a director's journal for the documentary I am making about transgender activism since Stonewall. The documentary will be based primarily on the interviews I conduct as part of the larger project.
I'm a little unsure about having a blog for this project because I have so many blogs to keep up with. However, I am dedicated to keeping up dialogs with any community members who want to have a part of this project. I am also interested in logging my evolving consciousness around trans issues and the trans community as I continue with the project.
If you have an comments, questions, or suggestions, e-mail me at cperez@marlboro.edu.
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