A process of research at Bishopgate archive led to the box, looking through Rebel Dyke archives, kink/BDSM magazines, letters between trans lovers, magazines for gay men, erotica. Slits allow the audience to gaze into the black gloss interior.
Archival imagery, adverts and writing are embedded into the exterior walls. One side is thumb tacked by hand, mirroring the iconic spanking bench in the archive and reads FTM. Internet archive footage and our own footage is filtered through live feed of our performance lasting around 20 minutes. Translating the films together meant meshing images of bears, piss, sewing, hay bales, farming, rough hands, swimming in the river to construct an open-ended juxtaposition of means of making masculinity.
We leant on the idea of ‘hooking onto the wire’ to exchange weight between us, clipping harness with carabiners. Weaving our way through this research process meant accumulating materials, leaning more and more into an idea of record of survival and existence in the archive and the dykes/butches/transmen/transfags whose lives are otherwise hard to grasp without the materials holding ancestry which otherwise remains unknown.
Documentation of Performance
Research and design process
Costume: Fin
Set Design: Fin, Louie and Celeste
Tech: Celeste