All photography provided is of public domain

Since 2015, this project has built community-based collaborations with trans women activists and performers in Cuba and Mexico.

project description

This project traces the representation of queer futurity as portrayed by contemporary trans artists, performers, and activists in Cuba and Mexico. Drawing on theories of queer temporality and affect, my main objectives are to a) tease out the relation between time and queerness, b) examine the depiction of time in queer Cuban and Mexican contemporary cultural texts, such as digital storytelling, and c) trace how these depictions tantalize a queer poetics of hope from which to articulate a critical vision of the future.

By employing digital storytelling as a method and praxis for community building, these stories survey the contradictory sites which allow queer activists to exercise agency within a normative structure, creating networks of care that forgo a social binary of homo-/heterosexuality. These queer renditions of utopia propose alternative forms of establishing intimacy, fostering belonging and creating inclusive spaces for citizenship to those dictated by normative heterosexual logics of imagining the future. 

TEAM

David Tenorio, PhD - University of California, Davis

Robert M. Irwin, PhD - University of California, Davis

Antonio Marquet, PhD - Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Azcapotzalco

Adri Vera Morales, MA - Almas Cautivas

Roshell Terranova - Casa Club Roshell

Alberto Abreu Arcia - Cuban Public Intellectual

Sisi Montiel & Lidia Romero Moreno - Alianza Cubana Manos

Pedry González Reynoso - El Mejunje

Nomi Ramírez & Angeline Llorente - Centro Nacional de Educación Sexual (CENESEX)

Lia García (La Novia Sirena) - Mexico City-based Performer

Viviana Rocco * - Mexico City-based Photographer