For transgender people such as I, the body is no more than a source of problems. Its form and manner of expression do not correspond to my identity, instead forcing me into roles and behaviors that are not in alignment with who I really am.
Therefore, I decided to cut myself off completely from the physicality as I know it and to adopt an alternate form, without basing it off of any living creatures known to me, nor off of any figurative associations.
The project is in a way a self-portrait, divided into three parts, each one increasingly more deconstructed than the previous, all of them inspired by shed animal skins. The least processed part, with a counterpart in the VR space, blurs the boundaries between the physical and the virtual, incorporating touch into interactions with the digital object.
The title Ekdyzon (ang. ecdysone) is a molting (or skin-shedding) hormone, a chemical compound present in both plants and animals. It affects metabolism, causes growth and development of organisms, serves a protective function, and enables molding. This last function makes for the best metaphor for the process of attaining the correct form that I was going through for the past year.
I deprive myself of my current humanoid form, the banality and ubiquity of which makes it a restrictive copy of uninspired existing patterns that contradict empathizing with any possible future forms. I discard the gendered aspect, which, to me, has always been an unnecessary burden.
SHOWN AT:
Reality Bender - exhibition of 3DiZW2’s MA Diplomas, WOK Lab, Warsaw (2023)
SPECIAL THANKS:
promoter: Jakub Wróblewski PhD, Prof. ASP
co-promoters: mgr Andrei Isakov, Sebastian Sebulec, Dorota Kozieradzka PhD
reviewer: Maryna Tomaszewska PhD
Pilip Menlyk, Jan Łęcki, Magdalena Góra, Dominika Sochacka