Interactive Portraits: Trans People in Japan

Excerpt from essay by Amelia Crouch commissioned by Freelands Foundation

Shown on custom-built, hand-held games consoles, each interviewee is represented as a Tamagotchi-style creature; their words rendered as text. Discussions are varied, addressing gender perception, naming conventions and mental health. ‘Kaede’ explains a tension between just wanting to live life and a compulsion to campaign for transgender acceptance. ‘Kensho’ admits familial difficulties and describes hobbies and wider interests. Conveying the “conversations trans people have with each other,” Street’s aim is to represent trans experience “in a way that prioritises trans people's narratives rather than trying to get the trans documentary subject to answer cis people's questions.” Text-based games technology works well here because it allows anonymity and prevents fixation on appearance or voice. As Street explains “it avoids a lot of the problems of representing trans people in media.”

In experiencing Interactive Portraits I wanted to hear everything each character had to say but found this impossible. The choice-based interaction compelled my participation and the work’s comfortable, curtain-swathed installation (including cushions designed by Anne Smithies) made me want to linger. However each narrative’s branching choice points proved too complex to master. Returning to the character ‘Alicia’ on two occasions my route through – and resultant perception of – their story was completely different. The message, perhaps, that we can never grasp someone else’s story entirely.