KYUN-CHOME “Living Diverse Genders 2”
The video works that KYUN-CHOME presented at the Aichi Triennale 2019 were re-screened at Shinran Kōryūkan (Kyoto).
KYUN-CHOME is an art unit made up of two members, Eri Homma and Nabuchi.
Following their own instincts and desires, they base themselves in various locations in Japan and abroad for medium- to long-term stays, and by repeatedly engaging in actions, research, interviews, and video production, they cut into the most core realities of each place.
This exhibition screened two works — “Until Our Voices Give Out” and “I Am Seiji” — centered on interviews with “people who have rewritten their own names and genders.”
Until Our Voices Give Out
“Until Our Voices Give Out” is an interview work that features three people — FtoM, MtoF, and X-gender — each in 15-minute segments (45 minutes in total). It is composed mainly of interviews about the paths each of them has walked, and concludes with a performance in which they keep shouting their own names out loud.
FtoM (FTM): Short for Female to Male. A person who was born female but wishes to live as, and be treated as, male.
MtoF (MTF): Short for Male to Female. A person who was born male but wishes to live as, and be treated as, female!
X-gender: Refers to a person who feels discomfort with the sex they were born with, but does not draw a clear line between male and female for their internal gender.
I Am Seiji
“I Am Seiji” is a video that records an FTM character who has changed his name from Ayano to Seiji as he tells his mother about it, and expresses his past and present names in calligraphy.
Together with gender, the work questions the great weight of meaning that a name carries.
