This project takes the forms of two different mediums with the final goal of finishing a 60-minute feature film inside a performance over the next several years. I want to create multiple month-long performances in various institutional settings that contain physical elements like sculptures or garments made from medical waste from gender transitioning. These objects would be needles and bottles from testosterone shots, binders and gauze and bottles from surgical procedures including my ovarian tubes that are currently being preserved in my freezer. The performative gestures are to be determined, but I’m imagining them to be acts of healing like repairing damaged 16mm film with a splicer for hours or weaving a rug of my previously female presenting body in the gallery space (a throwback to my previous work.) Between these acts I would intermittently be filming, hand processing and editing the project all in the performance space on 16mm film.

The subject of the film is reconciling living in the US with medical trauma. The US healthcare system creates a worker/surplus binary for labor extraction, based on sick people’s capacity to heal and get back to the workforce. This binary is similar to the gender binary in the sense that it rationalizes a political notion that not all people are in fact equal in deserving assistance or support based on their capacity to engage in “work.” The film is about the integration of all these elements- labor, medicine, art and transitioning in a physical body.