Primary tabs
WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.060 my name is Chris Vargas, and I am an assistant professor in the art 00:00:06.060 --> 00:00:07.020 department 00:00:07.020 --> 00:00:10.380 I teach in the time-based art studio area 00:00:10.980 --> 00:00:17.520 MOTHA is the Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art. It's a conceptual art 00:00:17.520 --> 00:00:24.900 project by me and I do many projects under this name. I won an award from 00:00:24.900 --> 00:00:30.179 creative capital for a project called trans hirstory in 99 objects 00:00:30.179 --> 00:00:35.100 I'm inviting artists to like create objects associated or related to 00:00:35.100 --> 00:00:39.600 trans hirstory in some way so the project is a series of exhibitions and then an 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:40.920 eventual catalog 00:00:40.920 --> 00:00:45.840 there is also a lot of possibilities for different components like multimedia 00:00:45.840 --> 00:00:53.010 touring presentation about the objects podcast to sort of data online 00:00:53.010 --> 00:01:00.180 participatory digital archive and where people can upload their own objects that 00:01:00.180 --> 00:01:05.489 they think have significance to trans history kind of before this moment in a 00:01:05.489 --> 00:01:11.040 lot of ways trans identity and culture has existed under the surface and sort 00:01:11.040 --> 00:01:14.970 of in the background out of necessity really because trans lives just needed 00:01:14.970 --> 00:01:19.350 just for survival needed to not be visible 00:01:20.009 --> 00:01:24.180 luckily we're coming into understanding that one person can't represent a whole 00:01:24.180 --> 00:01:28.500 community and thankfully there's like a myriad of experiences out there but 00:01:28.500 --> 00:01:33.840 there's it's still limited in a lot of ways so it's exciting to just be engaged 00:01:33.840 --> 00:01:38.189 with a lot of people's artistic and scholarly work and that really relates 00:01:38.189 --> 00:01:42.869 to teaching because that's sort of what i do in the classroom i get exposed and 00:01:42.869 --> 00:01:47.430 I get to be witness to all this creative production