Bochmann, Lara and Hampson, Erin

Getting ready for entering public space is a seemingly mundane everyday task. However, in the context of a world that continuously fails or refuses to recognise trans existence, the act of “stepping outside” means to move from a state of self-determination to one of imposition in the social public. Our presentation will discuss the film project “Step Out” (produced and directed by the authors) and through an auto-ethnographic analysis, investigate the concepts of recognition and vulnerability in relation to non-binary becoming and embodiment.

This film invites one to share in the vulnerable and caring moments before stepping outside that depict hesitant motions, anxiety, and strength and beauty at the same time. In these contradictions, potentialities, and emotions lies the realm of finding and crafting one’s own modes of existence. It is also the birthplace of rebellion against imposed expectation and allowing care for one’s trans-ness. The intricate and often ambivalent layers of forming a counter-image, rebelling against, and compromising with the outside world are depicted in co-existence, as something that cannot ever quite be resolved.

Proceeding the creation of the film, an investigation of being a non-binary person in public was conducted using the film as auto-ethnographic material (Ellis, Adams, Bochner 2011). In addition to this, we include an interview transcript as second item, which took place between the authors. The emerging themes all intersect through the notion of vulnerability. We analyse the themes of (bare) skin as grounds for inscription, binders as reference to trans-ness, breath as a tool of re-normalisation, anxiety as an ‘emotional cost’ for non-normative ways of being (Ahmed 2013:107) and the blurry boundaries between the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. The analysis concludes with a discussion of implications for non-binary lived experiences and possibilities for resistance.

• Ahmed, S. 2013. The cultural politics of emotion. London: Routledge.
• Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., Bochner, A. P. 2011. ‘Autoethnography: an overview’. Historical Social Research,Vol. 36,No.4: 273-290.

Lara Bochmann and Erin Hampson are a pair of queer, academic, activists, based in Berlin. They are producing queer-related art projects that relate to their lived experiences as non-binary queer people in tandem with their academic research in the fields of gender and sexualities studies. Their film StepOut has been screened at the Berlin Trans Film Festival 2018. They are also independently producing zines on queer and trans topics.

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