Jean Carla Rodea and Gavin Tao’s “TR_RT” is a collaborative visual rhizome that purposely addresses issues of belonging while dealing with technology.

The status quo is a master surveillance camera, an agent holding dominance in space and time. By live-projecting video onto each other, our gestures clash against images recorded by the camera. We attempt to make the images more visible—such as each directly controlling the mapping of the projection and creating a bodysuit out of paper to utilize it as a makeshift screen. This exchange between projectionist and performer establishes a space of queer temporality. This intervention creates a perfect imbalance—the technology lags behind human stamina, music dominates over our voices, and our bodies glitch as a mechanism of defense.

We start with a ritualized action where we interact with personal objects and take time to rest and care for each other. Our common ground is a shared experience as immigrants inhabiting a constant liminal space where belonging is challenging. This glitch is precisely where “TR_RT” exists. Overlapping multiple realities exert constant pressure on us and therefore trigger a succession of imbalanced loops of memories, messy transitions, concatenated languages, and clumsy movements. All this while our bodies negotiate sharing space while trying to keep in sync with technology as the hardware becomes bloated and lags behind.

Lagging and glitching are not interchangeable, but rather, they are consequences of each other. RAM is pushed to its limits and initiates a chain reaction of time delays and setbacks.