Hey all,
I have finally uploaded the second interview clip form bet power, entitle legacy. It's better than the first, so I urge you to check it out.
Also, I am going on the Gay Liberation Network's Chicago Public access TV show on Friday. I composed a clip from the project to show on air, and that can be viewed on youtube if you look on the channel TransOralHistory. There is also a link on the webpage under short docs.
Showing posts with label oral history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oral history. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
San Fransisco Historical Society
The San Fransisco's GLBT Historical Society has an exhibit going up about the transformation (aka gentrification) of Polk Street in the 1980's. I have contacted the exhibit curator about using his material in my exhibit. He seems friendly and sympathetic, so it looks like it will work out.
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
Meeting Allison Bechdel
04/03/08
As she read from her memoir, publicly displaying the lascauxian creation myth of herself as a queer artist, she peered out at us from beneath her brow furrowed in uninhibited anxiety. It had made an irrevocable impression on me how she had defined her past into discrete panels of reflection. Her persona was more awkward than funny, her comic more tragic than funny. I could relate to the dry, absurdist tendencies of my own malformed humor.
There was a fastidious quality that permeated her voice as she recounted episodes of OCD that made up her artistic process. Apparently it involved posing and taking pictures of herself for every character she draws before embarking on creating the panel detailed in minutia. That’s thousands of pictures over the course of the entire graphic novel. Then there were a series of layers drawn by hand and on the computer, super imposed over one another and melded into a painstaking whole. It comes out to several hours per square inch. “There went a whole weekend” she would joke, flipping through sketches of the Victorian wallpaper endemic in her childhood home. I could so clearly imagine her silhouetted in a lonely house etching the images that her (understandable) resentment had seared into her psyche. What is the difference between the compulsions that enhance our humanity and those that detract from it?
The familiarity of her fidgety and uneven breathing escalated during the q&a period when she as she squinched her face up into a lost expression as she told us she didn’t understand why she did what she did. She almost seemed to plead to the audience to validate her compulsion. Her openness was uneasy on both sides. She seemed pretty desperate about the manner.
How do the stories we tell shape who we are? How do they limit or expand the ways we can understand ourselves? The way we can relate and connect? How does making sense of the world and oneself in relation to it lend justification to our existence? Is there any such thing as credibly and authenticity when one tells one’s own story? How do we prove to ourselves that certain stories belong to us? Why do some people need to share?
As she read from her memoir, publicly displaying the lascauxian creation myth of herself as a queer artist, she peered out at us from beneath her brow furrowed in uninhibited anxiety. It had made an irrevocable impression on me how she had defined her past into discrete panels of reflection. Her persona was more awkward than funny, her comic more tragic than funny. I could relate to the dry, absurdist tendencies of my own malformed humor.
There was a fastidious quality that permeated her voice as she recounted episodes of OCD that made up her artistic process. Apparently it involved posing and taking pictures of herself for every character she draws before embarking on creating the panel detailed in minutia. That’s thousands of pictures over the course of the entire graphic novel. Then there were a series of layers drawn by hand and on the computer, super imposed over one another and melded into a painstaking whole. It comes out to several hours per square inch. “There went a whole weekend” she would joke, flipping through sketches of the Victorian wallpaper endemic in her childhood home. I could so clearly imagine her silhouetted in a lonely house etching the images that her (understandable) resentment had seared into her psyche. What is the difference between the compulsions that enhance our humanity and those that detract from it?
The familiarity of her fidgety and uneven breathing escalated during the q&a period when she as she squinched her face up into a lost expression as she told us she didn’t understand why she did what she did. She almost seemed to plead to the audience to validate her compulsion. Her openness was uneasy on both sides. She seemed pretty desperate about the manner.
How do the stories we tell shape who we are? How do they limit or expand the ways we can understand ourselves? The way we can relate and connect? How does making sense of the world and oneself in relation to it lend justification to our existence? Is there any such thing as credibly and authenticity when one tells one’s own story? How do we prove to ourselves that certain stories belong to us? Why do some people need to share?
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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