Soulnessless

Deemed "too ambient for broadcast" by MTV's AMP, Thaemlitz' first video "Silent Passability (Ride to the Countryside)" contrasts cinematic footage from drag performances in upstate New York with highly processed digital audio from his CD "Couture Cosmetique" (US: Caipirinha/Japan: Daisyworld, 1997). Thaemlitz is known for her fusion of computer synthesis techniques with non-essentialist transgenderism as two methodoligies which appropriate and critically recontextualize cultural signifiers, whether they be audio sources or gender constructs. The audio for "Silent Passability" deals with fears of violence while travelling in 'passable' drag between safe zones, and Thaemlitz' unsettling compulsion to remain silent in such circumstances so as to avoid confrontation. Antithetically beatific images from the transgendered stage question posturing as a means for alieviating and/or concealing such oppressive circumstances.

In this surreal documentary film, the producer, writer and artist discusses a selection of objects related to her work with close friends and collaborators.

INTERSTICES n (pl) small gaps or spaces between objects 「インタースティシーズ:(名詞)隙間」 There's "no experience required" to enjoy Interstices "easier" format. Terre Thaemlitz adapts selected music, text and images from his CD "Interstices" (Germany: Mille Plateaux, 2000) into a video that makes reading fun. Candidly investigate the interstices between genders, sexual orientations, and other identity constructs. Intersexual birth, surgical gender reassignment, sex acts, and transsexual job opportunities are among the topics processed through filters of private and public expectation.

Once we accept love is not the root of all friendly cultural exchange, the revelation cannot be avoided that when strategizing coexistence in a global context, love is not the answer. From Helen of Troy (love of sex) to the Christian Crusades (love of religion) to Nazism (love of the fatherland) to Operation Infinite Justice (love of freedom), societies have placed love at the heart of conflict and conquest—all of which concealed larger cultural agendas in a cloak of opaque righteousness.

We live in an era in which dominant LGBT agendas are increasingly revolving around themes of family, matrimony, breeding and military service. The cultural terms for social analyses and organizing around such issues requires an aggressive capitulation to peculiarly Western Humanist notions of the nuclear family, as well as private and public space. As a result, Feminist and Queer critical rejections of family structures (nuclear and otherwise) are increasingly scarce. An ability to understand the abuses of family and domestic violence as symptoms of larger institutionalized dominations becomes virtually impossible.