TRANS MUNDI

Even in The Dead of NIGHT, 2024

ENIGMA - MUTHER, 2024

Stained Glass streaky, Obsidian Volcanic Glass – a gift from a friend from Rapa Nui, solder, patina, wire, phosphorescent aggregate, rosin-based bioplastic (body wax) with mica and perfume, jewelry chain with wooden swing, and ceramic black cat. 

Like A Theif in Broad Daylight, 2023

Dragonnfruit pt. 1 , 2024

Dragonfruit pt.2 , 2024

TRANS MUNDI

On Paul Preciado’s Dysphoria Mundi  

I am walking with the Crone, Lantern in hand. They are a few steps ahead of me. They are on a planet far away. A path of light is carved into the purple ground. The Crone turns around to see me checking the boxes of despair on the Empirical Neo-liberal Hellscape ART-Application:

HOW DO YOU IDENTIFY? NB- CHECK! TRANS- CHECK!  ADHD CHECK! DYSLEXIC CHECK!  DYSPHORIC CHECK! DRUG ADDICT CHECK!

One application seemed to really ask: PLEASE SELL US YOU’RE SUFFERING AND DESPAIR. Tell US WHY you are peeing on this moneytree harder and longer than any of the other dogz?


Don’t bite the hand that feeds U. I show my FANGz.

The light in my lantern doesn’t go out. SPARKLE-fever.  The spirit of the red Cardinals keeps that thin veil flowing.  New heights, away from the Empirical standards of suffering, towards a higher power.  A greater good. I go where it’s warm. I send love to the students marching in the street. DIVESTING.

What the Crone shows me is something greater I could never imagine through the  foggy clouds of manmade SCARcity standards. No group or individual is my higher power.  Today the Crone motions that there may be another path away from Dysphoria forever. 



What is this Dysphoric world?

I have been meeting with a friend and fellow traveler, Joell V. a trans-language translator and sound artist that has been reading Paul Preciado’s Dysphoria Mundi in French.  Joell and I meet at Tina’s Diner in Bushwick.  Over omlettes, they explain and gesture to me what is going on:  It’s not working because… nothing is working because… it’s not in English yet because… we are selling our “crazy” because.  As they transform Paul’s words into English, I imagine (or project) this is the only way Preciado would’ve wanted this to happen. What if DYSPHORIA MUNDI could ONLY be translated and it could never be printed in English? Joell and I take turns passing the lantern. Without this witness – this translation, I am in a vacuum floating in Empirical space with no constellations, lost forever in fear and loneliness.

Joell and I felt activated around a similar time, stepping out of the dressing room of imposter syndrome with the NEW WORDS that had finally made themselves visible to us as choices. Joell was the one that would always talk about NEW WORDS – that there would always be NEW WORDS.  My heart was comforted and soothed by this forever option. In the Binary Empire everything has such a definite ending, or tries to always bring death to all the options. I feel this way about art too. I don’t want it to be complete. I want to know or feel it could always change.  In the Empire, the 2-way lane on the binary highway MUST END. There must be car crashes - there must be DEATH.  Someone HAS to die so someone else can live or thrive. It tries so hard to end everything in its own escape of death.  Like an ejaculation, Empirical art becomes too precious in its choice to claim and solidify it’s moment in the pursuit of being liked. 

The Empire is a living being in this context. I imagine creating other living beings just as powerful to teach it boundaries and heal its wounded heart. In the Empire “progress” is always someone else’s suffering. In the NEW WORDS we aren’t delulu that we are still human and flawed, but we aren’t ashamed to be human either. As being human begins to take on new form and meaning.  Human away from Empirical capital value means to just be, and so we begin to value ourselves differently without the shame of not having enough. We are not a handbag. We are not a 4-million-dollar sculpture.  We are not a climate change bunker in Hawaii. We are not a house in the Pines. Words like progress fall away into the dunes and are soothed by new words of ambiguity and fluidity. Ambition is replaced with inspiration and collaboration. Competitiveness just becomes ripping ass- a fart in the wind that no one hears or smells. A small silly secret that once was that could either be funny or embarrassing. Irreverent.


At Tina’s Diner, Joell and I focus on just this simple light-lantern idea that things just aren’t working anymore.  Joell says: It’s not even working for the people that Empire was supposed to be working for!!!! I GASP.  We begin to brush the hair of the addicted empirical beast chained to itself. Eggs over easy. We pass the salt and discover that in this place of self distructive disarray and territorial horror, that there will always be new words and feelings in our hearts and our voices yet to be discovered. A limitless place of light and love and freedom. Hot Sauce. We begin to cut the chains of the empirical beast only to realize they are already open, just tangled a bit. It was an illusion this whole time. The Devil laughs at the foot of their golden holy mountain.  The Crone gestures, and they smile to each other and wave - neighbors of the tarot. What a wonderful lesson to learn of life’s addictive distractions.

The Devil card in the tarot deck is one of my favorites, depicting two figures with open chains next to them -choosing to be in the checkboxes until they choose otherwise. The Devil doesn’t wish me harm, if I am paying attention, the Devil shows me where I get in my own way and how I stay there. Some abuses are REAL, Some mental health struggles require more than just choosing your way out on your own, and some violence is too painful to verbalize as it moves through the body paralyzing it. But I cannot stay here – in the Empire’s dysphoric trauma. When we are ready, the Devil shows us that we can choose to leave.


Le Diable (The Devil)

Studio VISION on TRANS MUNDI- When it comes to sculpture, I create a boundary not a rule. As boundaries are fluid and can stretch and reimagine themselves. It can NEVER just be a pretty object or a cool-hot aesthetic of the moment. That can be present I guess, but it can’t be the only thing. There must be a lantern. There must be confusion and evaluation. There must be the devil. Stained GLASS as Rocks- AS EARTH.  If the Empire wanted stained glass to indoctrinate those that couldn’t read, THEN in Trans Mundi I will depict NO STORY.  I will translate out of English. We gesture. We change our bodies. We just create rocks. We create Earth. We look into the lantern.

WHAT HAPPENS after DYSPHORIA?

I can’t stay in this place forever checking my little boxes of despair in this art world that has its own caste system and bank of ideas that it draws from.  EVEN IN THE DEAD OF NITE.  Instead, I turn away to the ENIGMA- MUTHER and feel collaboration more and more and more. Responsibility more and more and more. Grieving more and more and more. We see the Genocide happening more and more and more.  Protesting more and more and more. DIVESTING from the Empire more and more and more. Making more queer art space more and more and more. We create our own beast-earth- body - or energy that can stand up to the Empire. Together.  

I said to Joell so what is the solution to Dysphoria Mundi then IF nothing is working?? They simple said Trans Mundi.  

Forever transitioning, forever moving, and shifting and forming and growing and churning and pulling apart and back together. There doesn’t have to be finite words that are the end all be all. There doesn’t have to be ANSWERS ALL THE FUCKING TIME. We don’t have to police each other in this motion of transitioning – pushing each other down for visibility. Pleading. What happens next, is that I’m no longer Dysphoric anymore. I am forever transitioning into constantly becoming something that isn’t about me.  

The Crone takes us all to the river, and we float down – being carried. Our silvery skin in the moonlight.  While I close my eyes and feel the cool water covering the twilight of my psyche.   I envision swinging next to my true love. Robert. We open doors together 2 the unknown. We C each other.  When we feel restless and confused, we walk down to the swing sets in the neighborhood and swing together hand- in-hand. Looking at the bright streetlight - a neon moon carved out of the night sky. Our hands grip the shiny silver chain of the swing. The chains which usually are meant to capture, keep out, or restrain become a tether to the sky. A pendulum of stardust where we can move through the air like the swinging of the lantern. Guided by a gentle force of never-ending knowledge that can never be colonized, weaponized, or used against us in our healing.


- earth


“The swing” from Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits, 1965