Overall Project
Trans Stories Transcending Borders (in Indonesian, CERITRANS: Cerita Transpuan Lintas Batas) is a collaborative arts project for trans women in the greater Jakarta area to share their stories through prose, poetry, and filmed performances. The project aims to elevate and celebrate trans women’s voices, and increase public awareness, respect, and empathy for trans stories and experiences.
The project was launched to the public on 31 March 2021 on Trans Day of Visibility. From early March to mid-May, we held writing and performance workshops with ten trans women collaborators/storytellers, mentored by collaborating artists. After that, filming, post-production, illustration- and poster-making, and translation processes took place. The ten stories, illustrations, and films were officially launched on 19 June 2021 on an online event, and they are now accessible at www.sanggarswara.org and Sanggar Swara’s YouTube channel.
Insight Gained
Through the Trans Stories project, we have gained insight into the particular experiences of Indonesian trans women, showing us that their stories are not limited by or to personal suffering or societal discrimination, but defined by courage, resilience, creativity, self-love and acceptance.
Their originality and desire to be heard can be seen in the deep and varied themes of their self-expression in Trans Stories, from stories of coming out, personal triumph, religious devotion, to legal name change and stage life. Working with these women proved our conviction: that anyone given the opportunity can tell their own stories and create poignant works that can help make the world a more empathetic, inclusive place.
One of the most difficult things for our prose-writing mentor was asking the writers to describe a painful memory or a traumatic event. On one hand, their stories could be much stronger if the memory or event was more fleshed out, on the other hand she realized that revisiting a painful memory was not easy, and it was asking so much out of the writers to do that. She was moved every time the writers said, "It's okay, I want to tell it."
Working with individuals who are often targeted for attacks meant we had to be vigilant about safety. We chose to work with adults only and communicated clearly, both verbally and in written form, over the scope and outputs of the project and acquired their signed consent prior to joining. We developed creative strategies that are in line with collaborators’ comfort level (they could use a pseudonym or choose to not show their face if they so wished, for example).
Finding collaborators and working remotely
In creating Trans Stories, we have connected with many people with a strong sense of solidarity and dedication to support trans women by contributing to the creation of trans-centred works. Our project started with a discussion with Sanggar Swara in the summer of 2020, where Swara expressed their desire to write their stories and perform them in a live and in-person trans festival celebrating trans women’s works in a “unique and spectacular fashion.” For our UK counterpart, we were already familiar with Okka’s work in both the arts and disability justice, and we were confident that Okka would be the right poetry mentor for this project. We then reached out to our network, people who have worked with us in our past programs or are familiar with our work in InterSastra and House of the Unsilenced, to find more collaborators, such as our illustrator Cindy Saja and our translators, proofreaders, and speakers. We also tapped into each of our members’ personal networks and found some of our collaborators through our friends’ friends or their professional contacts, such as our film director Ruth Marini, music creator Edacitra, psychological first aid mentor Benny Siauw, film production houses Seven Ten and Hore Besok Libur, Samahita Foundation volunteers, and website designer Rickdy Vanduwin. We also found some collaborators via open calls where we advertised positions in social media, such as artist Myla Corvidae, photographers Paula Nanlohy and Dea Ratna, and some of our psychological first-aid officers.
The most exciting part
The most exciting part of the Trans Stories project is watching the ten trans women’s stories develop from ideas that they talked about during the beginning of our workshop sessions into their finished forms as poems, personal stories, posters, and films, with the contribution of so many other artists and collaborators.
It was very moving to hear how some of the trans women collaborators were surprised to find themselves able to write poems and stories. Small phrases such as “I wish to have long hair” or “the sky is pissing down on the earth” grew into full-fledged pages of personal stories and poems, published online with illustrations in the pink, blue, white hues, following the colors of the transgender movement flag. The stories and poems were then adapted into short films and performed by the trans women themselves, with all the charms of the movie-making process: cameras, costumes, lighting, music, makeup and props.
Our performance mentor and director, Ruth Marini, was instrumental in the filming process, and she has done such a fantastic job of mentoring and directing, as she was in the room observing, interacting, and discussing stories and performances with each of the trans women as well as the film crew. Overall, the filming process of Trans Stories was the most unique part of the experience for many of our collaborators.
Potential new partnerships / projects with the UK
We are looking to print and distribute our Trans Stories posters with our network in the UK, Europe, and Australia at some point in the future when the pandemic situation improves. We are especially pleased to have worked with Myla Corvidae, a trans non-binary UK-based artist, writer, and publishing entrepreneur, who spoke at our “Transcending Borders” public discussion, and has expressed interest to participate in future artistic, writing, or cultural exchange programs. In addition, there is an opportunity for us to showcase Trans Stories in the UK-based Wasafiri magazine, where one of InterSastra’s former team members is now serving as an editor-at-large, with the potential of having a trans works exchange between UK and Indonesia.
