Artist Statement
I am a slow artist. I make things I never show. I sit on things I should send out. I move on to the next project before this one is finished. Then I got sick, which made me even slower. The images have been piling up.
The medical term for the treatment is chemical castration. The side effects are brutal. In some sparsely populated quadrant of the gender sphere, masculinity drifts towards the neutral. Trans and queer theories are proximate and illuminating.
I switched from a camera to a 3D scanner as my primary image-gathering tool to make pictures that I can look at on every side. This made me into an animator, reluctantly. I doubt the 12 principles of animation because they aren’t principles. They are aesthetic choices that have dominated and colonized our imaginations.
The qualities of Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony can be a test for future truths. If it doesn’t have these qualities, it’s not reliable and shouldn’t be trusted: Mnemonic, specific, fragmented, vulnerable, emotional, reluctant, self-sacrificial, and courageous.
The animated loop is a balance between constant change and the eternal present. A way of harnessing linearity, utilizing and obliterating it. A seamless loop creates infinity. Beginning, middle and end fold in on themselves and are multiplied.
Historically, eunuchs were bed servants, slaves, middle managers and government functionaries. They came with the house, as Furniture. Now we are mostly cancer patients and M2E trans people, but some U.S. States give the same treatment to convicted recidivist sexual predators.
The grainy collage of xeroxed images and messily typed text established an accessible aesthetic for early zines. The form was made whole by feminists and poc who liberated it from the cafe. Unequal parts script, diary, letter, program notes and personal gift, I make Broodthaersian zines that reside with videos and animations.
Remission is a fiction. A convincing story we tell ourselves to bring hope. Cancer eventually comes back. The trick is dying of something else first, or surviving the return. Supposedly, getting a dog helps. As does exercise and becoming a vegan. I’m doing what I can.
I keep trying to get back to the video camera. About once a year my bolex calls to me. I can’t get past the oppressive linearity of the footage. The social media essay holds some promise as a daily storytelling method of disrupting the feed.
Honesty can be discerned. It has a sound and comes across in the voice. To tell the difference is a discipline, a metier, and requires listening to many, many people speak. Truth may no longer exist, but honesty remains, and will prevail.
Darren Douglas Floyd
July 2021
