“Cathedral/Canal” is a performance-based video work that documents my experience questioning my gender and medically transitioning. This performance takes audio feedback as a metaphor for the experience of gender dysphoria, which manifests as an intimate, interior sense that also finds external expression. I make my own body into an instrument by inserting a contact microphone into my inguinal canal; the microphone generates an audio input that is then fed into its output. The resulting feedback represents the internal struggle of actively questioning my gender as a trans person, an experience in which the smallest decision (I will paint my nails, I will wear gender affirming clothing) provokes genuine anxiety and fear (What if I am murdered? Will I be able to find work?). Delay and reverb effects are used to reimagine my viscera as a temple or canyon, signaling the natural sacredness of the body. The work is framed by words from Mira Bellwether, honoring the generation of transwomen before me while sharing technical information with the viewer. It is educational in its use of the words “cunt” and “fucking,” and tells the viewer explicitly that my body is the body of a transwoman and the act is one of pleasure. There are calls within the trans community for individuals to tell our own stories for the sake of those of us who feel alone and are struggling. This series is in part my attempt to fulfill that responsibility.

I remember walking to the radio station where I volunteered last March, the day after the closing of my MA show, and thinking, “What is my next big project going to be?” and a small voice asked in response, “What if you made YOU your next project?” I sobbed in the stairwell of the radio station at the prospect of coming out to people as a transwoman. I had been gender questioning since 2018, but this fact never left my apartment. I began medically transitioning in 2020 in the middle of a global pandemic. This connection between my history of organizing happenings in performance and sound, my success in academia, was suddenly questioned as a form of escapism. In time, I learned that it was actually those experiences that led me to the liberation of coming into my gender identity. Performance can be a tool for imagining radical alternatives to the present.