Amidst an explosion of interest in the ‘trans experience,’ we also run the risk of calcifying our cultural narratives. Finn is a short, fresh breath of air, at once reaching deep into the roots of a singular trans man’s experience while simultaneously opening up the conversation around what we all share, rather than what separates us. Directed by Lydia Garnett, the film is a simple, elegant testament to the importance of honest and unfiltered storytelling.
Finn — Finnegan Shepard
Both&
Director — Lydia Garnett
Cinematographer — Ben Marshall
Producer / Sound Recording — Marie Malarie
Camera Assistant / Loader — Trey Joèl Robinson
Music — Sasha Wilde
Post Production — ZED
Editor — Amber Saunders
Offline Producer — Harriet Cawley
Colourist — John Lowe
Sound Designer — Seb Bruen
Online Producer — Harry Watts
Design — Luke Tudor Griffiths, Skyla van der Pols, Ned Botwood
The video for Lonely Cowgirl by Trouble Wanted follows a queer, lesbian romance that unfolds in a fantasy roadside bar, full of high-drag, lusty visual exchanges and John Waters-style weirdness.
Produced by a team of creative talent from London’s queer scene, the careful attention paid to lighting, art direction and styling make this otherwordly saloon feel like it could be set in any time period between 1970 and 2030.
Music production, mixing and backing vocals – Sasha Wilde
KERAI means ‘charm, spell and glamour’ in Lithuanian. “Show Me a Future Where I Can Live” is a testament to both resilience and vulnerability – from Sasha Wilde’s post-Soviet childhood, growing up queer in a hostile environment, through to surviving an actual witch-hunt. Sasha Wilde and Julian Wharton weave together a tapestry made up of sounds influenced by moody Russian New Wave, Scandinavian electronica, and Lithuanian folk – all punctuated with deep and punchy bass and kick. Ursula K Le Guin and H. G. Welles’ sampled voices evoke longing for a new way of being. “Show Me a Future Where I Can Live” is brimming with references to alien worlds, (transphobic) monsters, otherworldly creatures and ghosts, cruising and struggles with mental health. Prepare yourself for some serious shapeshifting.
Commissioned by Mother Tongues collective, 2020
I’ve been thinking about translation for a very long time. Most obviously, I am a migrant who primarily speaks a language that is not native to me. I also studied Tibetan language as my undergraduate degree and I am a literary translator working from Lithuanian into English.
As a non-binary trans person, I also think of translation as a mode of living that anyone who is not aligned with the hegemony of the time, are constantly doing. How do we as queer people navigate language when it has been tampered with to exclude and erase us?
I often think about the sense of grief and melancholy that lots of queer people live with. While a linguistic angle is certainly not THE explanation for queer grief, I believe that so much of our sense of loss is rooted in the fact that we had and still have to learn an inadequate cisheteronormative language; and that, if we are lucky enough, we can begin to see its inadequacy and begin to unlearn it.
The moment we realise we do not speak our language and our own bodies are a foreign land is the moment that marks the beginning of rewriting, and all the joy and playfulness, and invention, and discovery rooted in the process.
I made this piece as a mostly non-linear network of fragments. I included speeches, readings, traditional Lithuanian music, as well my own song and essay fragments. It felt like this was the most authentic way to try to represent what thinking about translation evokes for me.
Samples, sounds and texts used:
Ursula Le Guin reads her own translation of Tao Te Ching
Traditional Lithuanian orphan song
Judith Butler on Grief
Ursula Le Guin reads her own translation of Tao Te Ching
Sasha Wilde song fragment
Karen van Dyck on Migration, Translingualism and Translation
Introduction to Ludwig Wittgenstein
Teju Cole On Carrying and Being Carried
Sasha Wilde essay fragment
Lithuanian pagan song for the god of thunder Perkūnas by Kūlgrinda
Sasha Wilde singing a fragment of an essay as liturgy
Time and space warps in the year 2020. This is my sonic uncanny valley for the occasion.
sashawilde.com 