Cultivating Trans Cultures

Paola Gaetano Adi has begun to conduct experiments in bodily fusion at a distance. Her collaborative 'transBody' project invites artists and amateurs everywhere to donate sets of virtual limbs. By attaching video cameras to their waists, pointed upward or downward, and filming their bodies in motion, viewers can help to articulate Gaetano Adi's 'hybrid bodies'. Such are achieved by randomly projecting odd couples (each appropriately comprising a 'top' and a 'bottom') in quick succession. Ultimately, transBody may not prove transformative, for the crucial task of redefining and re-imagining the body calls for more than spectacular splicing, which leaves the viewer’s own somatic self altogether intact. The same goes for redoing gender. (The 'gentleman' icon that serves as the projects online emblem suggests that this mission, too, concerns Gaetano Adi.) Still, interested bodies are encouraged to submit their better halves for sixty-second, Centaurian screenings. An initial sampling of hybrid creatures will be shown December 1-4 at the Centro Cultural España in Cordoba, Argentina. - Ramsey McGlazer