From shulea@waag.org Wed Sep 9 02:29:45 1998 Received: from theta2.ben2.ucla.edu (theta2.ben2.ucla.edu [164.67.131.36]) by A01.waag.org (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id CAA04754 for ; Wed, 9 Sep 1998 02:29:44 +0200 Received: from [207.217.13.25] (pool0025-max1.ucla-ca-us.dialup.earthlink.net [207.217.13.25]) by theta2.ben2.ucla.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id SAA36214 for ; Tue, 8 Sep 1998 18:33:11 -0700 X-Sender: vrosario@pop.ben2.ucla.edu Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 18:35:30 -0800 To: tabody@waag.org From: vrosario@ucla.edu (Vernon Rosario) Subject: Re: material Hello everyone, I'm still trying to figure out what we will be doing on Sunday Sept. 20 at the Guggenheim. Any concrete hints would be appreciated. In the meantime, I'm preparing some comments on a handful of phalloplasty articles from surgery journals, all to be accompanied by slides (accompanied, not illustrated). Tentatively, the thing is called "Phallic Performance." SO matthew, could you please arrange for a slide projector? Matthew: Might not the same be said for transgendered identity? Does the digital represent such an easy conduit from one identity to another that it eventually deflates the "risk" involved in analog transformations? Perhaps it's because of this research, perhaps because I'm reading Jay Prosser's book __Second Skin_, and/or perhaps it's because I spend my time examining material bodies (listening to hearts, doing rectal exams, etc.) that I find all this cyber chat a bit disconnected from the hard realities of people--particularly TG folks. I guess I agree with Susan. One's sense of gender and of sex is usually an extremely embodied one--grounded in the internal perception of the materil, bodily surface. While the cyber world may allow one to play with that, I imagine most of those who do play with it recognize this as play. If not they are slipping into psychosis. And I do periodically see schizophrenic patients with gender and sexuality psychoses. I do think it is important not to be so PoMo, radical, theoretico-cynical in our thinking as to pretend the erasure of any distinctions in people's sense of reality. It was not long ago that psychiatrists thought all homosexuals were psychotic, and even now TS are still labeled that way by some psychiatrists. Anyone who cannot distinguish between the risks of digital transformation vs. the risks of material/surgical transformation is in big trouble. I would not want to think this is the case for most TS. Cheers, Vernon PS: I couldn't find too many web pages at the Brandon site: JERK, and PACK, big doll, the changing squares, and lists of proposed narratives with nothing behind them... and lots of credits. Did I miss some magic doorway? From shulea@waag.org Wed Sep 9 02:56:16 1998 Received: from home.actlab.utexas.edu (home.actlab.utexas.edu [128.83.194.11]) by A01.waag.org (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id CAA04837 for ; Wed, 9 Sep 1998 02:56:15 +0200 Received: from starhawk.banffcentre.ab.ca (host5.gabrielino.uci.edu [128.195.183.5]) by home.actlab.utexas.edu (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id UAA06892 for ; Tue, 8 Sep 1998 20:59:47 -0500 Message-Id: <199809090159.UAA06892@home.actlab.utexas.edu> X-Sender: sandy@home.actlab.utexas.edu X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0.1 Date: Tue, 08 Sep 1998 18:56:31 -0500 To: tabody@waag.org From: Allucquere Rosanne Stone Subject: Re: material In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 06:35 PM 9/8/98 -0800, an entity claiming to be Vernon Rosario wrote: >I'm still trying to figure out what we will be doing on Sunday Sept. 20 at >the Guggenheim. Me too:) From shulea@waag.org Wed Sep 9 09:21:36 1998 Received: from rgate2.ricochet.net (rgate2.ricochet.net [204.179.143.3]) by A01.waag.org (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id JAA05968 for ; Wed, 9 Sep 1998 09:21:35 +0200 Received: from 204.179.137.14 (mg137-014.ricochet.net [204.179.137.14]) by rgate2.ricochet.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id CAA17187; Wed, 9 Sep 1998 02:21:24 -0500 (CDT) Message-ID: <35F5E636.596@ricochet.net> Date: Wed, 09 Sep 1998 00:21:42 -0200 From: Susan Stryker Reply-To: mulebaby@ricochet.net, [also@ricochet.net, mulebabyxx@aol.com] X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.02 (Macintosh; U; PPC) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: aslane@earthlink.net CC: tabody@waag.org Subject: Re: material/message from J. Terry References: <35F49EE9.7B39@earthlink.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello, all: Hopefully this note will tie together some of the things Jennifer, Vernon, Sandy, and Shu Lea have brought up in recent posts. Re the "magical sign" of Brandon becoming the organizing principle of a cybersite investigating a far-flung set of abstract issues-- When Shu Lea first contacted me about being involved in the "Road Trip" portion of the project, what intrigued me was the prospect of imagining different "Brandons," each one representing a different aspect of a brutally foreshortened life. I think one of the reasons that the historic person Brandon fascinates and moves people so much and has triggered so much cultural production is the sense of (multiple) incomplete trajectories in life interrupted by the violence of rape and murder--we (at least those of us who identify to some degree with Brandon's gender-dissonant situation) all want to imagine where he was going, claim him as one of our own, and yet are frustrated by all the contradictions and counter-indications he gave that prevent all smug and simple foreclosures of his identity. We have here something truly tragic--a sense of barely realized and potentially unlimited identificatory possibilities all cut short before they can be realized or stabilized. This sets up the desire complete his story, and throws us into the mode of fantasy. The hypertext of the www is actually a great place to represent that sense of multiple potential simultaneous storylines. The shift from the historic-material life of Brandon Teena/Teena Brandon to the imagined fantastical ones of "Brandon" is paralleled by the shift in medium or register from the "real" to the "virtual". Playing with those shifts, using the medium of the www to think about/learn about those shifts and their consequences, and to show them to others--that was the main atraction for me. It wa like writing poetry and scripting a movie all at the same time--such a necessary economy of visual syntax coupled with stripped-to-the-bone narrative. I liked the idea of different versions of Brandon all magically "living" after death in different cyberspatial altiverse, encountering there on his road trip to oblivion several historical transgendered figures who, had he knowledge of them when he was really alive, might have helped steer him into safer and less troubled paths. Brandon TeenAngel encountering Heculine Barbin in the moment of her death, as the two of them are teleported onto the UFOs. Brandon the smooth operator engaging with Venus Xtravaganza in a sultry online CU-CMe one-handed tranny sex chat. Brandon, committed by friends and family to the community mental health center while in the midst of a sexual identity crisis, meeting proto-gay-ftm Jack Garland, who was similarly psychiatrically incarcerated in San Francisco at the turn of the last century. Brandon amongst the Teletubbies. As Shu Lea mentioned in her post, when she and I and Jordy Jones were working on the road trip interface, we had this breakthrough moment where we realized how differently we each conceptualized this project that had occupied us off and on for several months. Shu Lea seemed frustrated with my scenarios and scripting, and complained that I kept resorting to images of heaven/hell in the Herculine Barbin segment. I defensively pointed out that we were using angels as the primary symbol this encounter and commented that this was, after all, Brandon's afterlife, that he was dead. Shu Lea insisted that Brandon had somehow evacuated the scene of his own murder, and met Herculine while the two of them were both still alive. As we talked about this difference in concept, it became clear that Shu Lea wanted to save both the charaters/real historical persons from the fate of death in her/our imagining of their impossible encounter--a literal deus ex machina coming and taking them away to a better place, a place where they were safe from the kinds of physical/emotional violence that had actually killed them. In cyberspace, everybody could hear them smile happily ever after. While I recognized that her conceptualization was rooted in a desire to protect Brandon and Herculine, I was adamantly opposed to them being represented as "alive." It seemed to me a wish-fulfillment fantasy, a denial of what living a gender-ambiguous life can wreak upon a person's body and soul. It seemed important to me to acknowledge their death, and to insist that any "happy ever after" would have to be in an afterlife. This difference of opinion seems related to me to the discussion about real/imaginary, risk, embodiment, and representation. I was not interested in "Brandon" the multimedia project as an escape from the real embodied risk of representing (trans)gender identifications somatically. The prospect of violent death through transphobic violence is part of that life. Rather, I wanted "Brandon" to be a place to creatively explore what it meant to take precisely those risks, and in a way to honor the tranny dead by making up nice stories about them, keeping their memories alive and writhing in culture. But I couldn't forget that Brandon died for being a genderqueer in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I couldn't write something that negated that harsh reality. But anyway, I think _Brandon_, because its organizational conceit is a particular individual historical embodied subject, is admirably suited to investigating in fairly abstract ways some of the issues that impacted Brandon in a radically concrete fashion. And yes, what exactly are we going to be doing on the panels? Susan From shulea@waag.org Wed Sep 9 14:42:31 1998 Received: from www.openx.aec.at ([195.3.80.8]) by A01.waag.org (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with SMTP id OAA09098 for ; Wed, 9 Sep 1998 14:42:30 +0200 Received: from earthlink.net (unverified [195.3.80.132]) by www.openx.aec.at (EMWAC SMTPRS 0.83) with SMTP id ; Thu, 10 Sep 1998 02:44:48 +0200 Message-ID: <35F67882.EBDA0299@earthlink.net> Date: Wed, 09 Sep 1998 14:45:54 +0200 From: shu lea cheang Reply-To: shulea@earthlink.net X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (WinNT; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: mulebaby@ricochet.net, "[also"@ricochet.net, tabody@waag.org Subject: mothership landing References: <35F49EE9.7B39@earthlink.net> <35F5E636.596@ricochet.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit just need to clear a few matters first- (1) vernon, the site does contain the narrative... the credits pages contain synopsis for low bandwidth reading. When you get to the bigdoll interface (the many picture ones), click pix to find an underneath layer, the middle one on the top row would take you to the major interface, roadtrip, which should take you to all others. i.e. No Passing Zone takes you to panopticon interface, Detour to mooplay, and a Theatrum Anatomicum icon animation takes you to TA interface, on the roadtrip, there are various different personality icons would take you to various encounter, per Stryker's description. (2) on susan's note: >>>>>As we talked about this difference in concept, it became clear that Shu Lea wanted to save both the charaters/real historical persons from the fate of death in her/our imagining of their impossible encounter--a literal deus ex machina coming and taking them away to a better place, a place where they were safe from the kinds of physical/emotional violence that had actually killed them. In cyberspace, everybody could hear them smile happily ever after. While I recognized that her conceptualization was rooted in a desire to protect Brandon and Herculine, I was adamantly opposed to them being represented as "alive."I have no desire to protect Brandon and Herculine from the fate of death. I think the line being drawn here is 'do you die and conduct after life?' or ' you live and die in the actual and virtual juncture' or in a narrative, do you use past or present tense? They are never presented alive nor dead to me... like the FM devide, it is not to identify being F or M, rather neither F or M, neither hetero or homo, it is this inter-section, I hope that we can dive in... and this brings us to what I see emerging from a a few posting we're seeing here.. the concept for Brandon remains on the parallel development of digital-flesh. The embodiment that some so treasure and the mothership that lands to uplift me (my own entaglement with sandy for the mothership landing)-- or as Vernon questions, 'Does the digital represent such an easy conduit from one identity to another that it eventually deflates the "risk" involved in analog transformations?' precisely this points out the lead in for the project. Here i am sitting at Ars elctronica, where the elevator opens to slices of Virtual Human like the cold meat in the freezer. Meat can only be sliced when it´s mostly frozen and liquid-blood-less. my physical grounding is transferable. but we do perform for a public. sl > From shulea@waag.org Wed Sep 9 15:36:29 1998 Received: from gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net (gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net [207.217.120.85]) by A01.waag.org (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id PAA09462 for ; Wed, 9 Sep 1998 15:36:20 +0200 Received: from [153.37.114.220] (1Cust189.tnt4.nyc3.da.uu.net [153.37.114.189]) by gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net (8.8.7/8.8.5) with ESMTP id GAA28078 for ; Wed, 9 Sep 1998 06:36:04 -0700 (PDT) X-Sender: lcartwright@mail.earthlink.net Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1998 08:43:47 -0400 To: tabody@waag.org From: Lisa Cartwright Subject: the panel Hi folks, I want to respond to everyone's question (including mine), what will we be doing at the Guggenheim (and the TA). It's a question I've posed to Shu Lea over the past few months as she asked me to help organize this panel. I get the sense from Shu Lea that we are free to keep our presentations separate from the material presented on the Web site--in other words, we're not there to frame that work, or Brandon as real/mythic figure, but to bring our own work to the project. My interpretation is that she would like us to address some of the issues we (differently) cover on issues including transgendered identity, biomedicine and surgery, sexuality and race, body, digital technologies, technosocial body (whatever these terms mean to each of us). So this is an opportunity to do short and informal presentations or performances, not academic papers, and to discuss one another's contributions with the audience and among ourselves. The format is really open so input from all on what you would like to bring to this would be great. I like Vernon's plan for a presentation a lot. I am especially appreciative of his point that it is important not to be so PoMo, radical, theoretico-cynical in our thinking as to pretend the erasure of any distinctions in people's sense of reality. I would love to have this as an issue of discussion for the panel. I also appreciate Jenny's points about Brandon ans a referent and Susan's clarifications about the origins of this. I spent a lot of time online asking Shu Lea about the connection to the real/mythic figure, and she seemed pretty eager to leave that behind. But that's up to each of us. For my part of the gig, I plan on bringing slides and video having to do with the Visible Human Project and telesurgery to talk about the differences and slippages between digital and real bodies in medical fields that rely on the digital. I'm working on a paper now about the aversion to the concept of real flesh, death, pain, loss, and fear in work about digital culture and media, and the impossibility of denying a real body when you're a patient or someone who works on patients (technician, doctor, what have you). My images will come mostly from online anatomies, especially the VHP. This project is partly inspired by Vivian Sobchack's Body and Society paper (Beating the Meat) but mostly by a recent surgery experience in which most of my cervix was seared away as I lay awake watching on the screen and smelling my own flesh burn to my absolute horror, all the while having small talk with my gynecologist to relieve the tension. This was *minor ambulatory surgery*--not terribly painful and not a dramatic transformation of body. But this experience made me at the very least more clear about the fact that there are problems in biomedicine, cyberculture and clinical medicine alike with using/making claims for the potential of technology--particularly distance technologies--without dealing with the psychical consequences of physical changes, real surgeries, and client/patient agency. While I won't deal w/the *personal* much if at all in my presentation, I thought I'd mention it anecdotally here for what it's worth, since there seems to be a level of abstraction that I am partly responsible for, and that I'd like to get past. Hope this is useful input, Lisa Lisa =+-+=+-+=+-+=+-+=+-+=+-+=+-+=+-+=+-+=+-+=+-+=+-+= Lisa Cartwright, Associate Professor English/Visual and Cultural Studies Department of English Morey Hall University of Rochester Rochester, NY 14627 Phone:716-464-9318 Fax: 716-442-5769 Email: lcartwright@earthlink.net =+/-+=\+-+=+-+=/+-+=+-+\=+-+=+/-+=+-+\=+-+=/+-+=+-\+= From shulea@waag.org Wed Sep 9 17:29:31 1998 Received: from www.openx.aec.at ([195.3.80.8]) by A01.waag.org (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with SMTP id RAA10398; Wed, 9 Sep 1998 17:29:31 +0200 Received: from earthlink.net (unverified [195.3.80.132]) by www.openx.aec.at (EMWAC SMTPRS 0.83) with SMTP id ; Thu, 10 Sep 1998 05:31:54 +0200 Message-ID: <35F69FAD.CCED16D1@earthlink.net> Date: Wed, 09 Sep 1998 17:33:01 +0200 From: shu lea cheang Reply-To: shulea@earthlink.net X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (WinNT; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Justin@LiveOnLine.net, tabody@waag.org, rosine@waag.org, bram@waag.org Subject: Re: the panel References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit on the question of what we´re doing for the forum... i am discussing here some technical approach.. also am cc. to Roos and Bram, software engineer at DeWaag and justin who is assisting on AV upload in the Guggenheim. The forum conducted here with you panelists and listserve discussion would#all be served as part of Brandon's development on the web. We have designed the forum with 2 aspects of interface (1) data forum, with keywords Lisa would moderate some writing on the topics.. your writings, in quotes (paragraph) would be served as database and get retrived when the topics are on view.. thus, i would like to see if we can focus on a few topics and have some say from you. This interface is open for public input... they can also sign on and enter their say on the topics and will become part of the database that gets retrived on the site. This text entry from you or the net users will also be transformed into speech manner. meaning one can choose to have the texts spoken on line. (2) on the day of the forum, you are not only presenting to the 'public' at one location, but you're mostly on the net and also 'dialoguing ' between New York and Amsterdam... the interface that Bram is devising would allow you beign identified when you speak, note that your 'voice' will be heard over the web..(meanwhile the pix of the forum is webcamed also, but NOT IN SYNC with the person) and we do need coordination between Amsterdam, New York and maybe Banff, alberta (as of this point, we're discussing maybe Sandy will be coming in from Banff).. so that all voices has to be coordinated to be heard at the two presentation/public space. Now, the netusers can choose to come in with their say, but Typing their words.. and then their words can be transmitted as spoken, cutting into the panelist. Your talk will also be archived and audio streamed. so, in regards to modes of presentation, I leave it to lisa to moderate.. only, I would like to suggest to CONFORM all your visual materials for the web.. so, if you do have slides, would like to scan and put it on the website, which on the day of the presentation, can be accompanied with your talk and shown on the videowall, rather than presented on slide projection. Lisa, what do you mean by showing video? if you like to show VHP, I would rather show the site..note that we have 3 net access on the videowall, we can always reserve on section of videowall to link other website.. in New York, the presentation is promoted with Downtown Arts Festival (september 10-20) in Amsterdam, the forum is held in conjunction with World Wide Video Festival. so, we do expect a live audience participation in both cities. If we can all talk about how you want to introduce your talk... and if you do have visual, can I ask that the visual be sent to Amsterdam, where I can put them on the web? hope this can get us started... meanwhile, really looking for database materials on Lisa´s topics. sl From shulea@waag.org Wed Sep 9 17:56:35 1998 Received: from guggenheim.org (smtpgate.guggenheim.org [205.232.24.31]) by A01.waag.org (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with SMTP id RAA10579 for ; Wed, 9 Sep 1998 17:56:23 +0200 Received: from SOHO-Message_Server by guggenheim.org with Novell_GroupWise; Wed, 09 Sep 1998 11:53:38 -0400 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.2 Date: Wed, 09 Sep 1998 11:53:22 -0400 From: "Matthew Drutt" To: vrosario@ucla.edu, tabody@waag.org Subject: Re: material Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by A01.waag.org id RAA10582 <<< Vernon Rosario 09/08/98 10:35PM >>> <<< I couldn't find too many web pages at the Brandon site: JERK, and PACK, big doll, the changing squares, and lists of proposed narratives with nothing behind them... and lots of credits. Did I miss some magic doorway? >>> Yes. You need to go back to Bigdoll and click on the center square on the top row until it creates a path to the roadtrip. Depending on your connection, this could take some time, so be patient. The roadtrip takes a while to download. Matthew