Sum of its Parts: Glimpses of Future Genders
Close your eyes. Imagine a future gender. It could be five years from now or five thousand years from now. It could be human or inhuman. What could it look like? What color(s) is it? What shape(s) is it? What does it sound and smell like? What does it wear, how does it move? What is its spirit?
Glimpses of Future Genders is a crowd-sourced photo project that experimented with remote forms of co-creation in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. By putting both photo prompts and visual responses into the hands of strangers, we placed trust in the collective imagination and irrational convergences to open up possibilities in trying times. Created in collaboration with Becca Owen and the Five Oaks Museum's Gender Euphoria exhibit, the project was entirely conducted via web, snailmail and remote pickup. Members of the public anonymously contributed descriptions of future genders, which then became prompts for photographs. We paired those prompts with disposable cameras made available via five porch-pickup locations around Portland, Oregon. Participants picked up a camera, then snapped a photographic fragment or glimpse of a future gender.
The result is a kind of “contact sheet” that is simultaneously a portrait of a present-day Portland amidst a pandemic, and a glance towards an imagined future beyond the gender binary.
Thank you to my collaborators:
All of the anonymous and semi-anonymous participants who contributed new names for genders and snapped photographs.
Porch Pickup Hosts— Becca Owen (curator), Everett Owen, Molly Alloy, Brendan Curran, Victoria Sundell
Blue Moon Camera
