2012
Video
6min33’sec.
Istanbul
“philia: a family emancipated from the blood ties.” Deleuze
Bandages are used for breast binding and acquiring a flat chest in transgender experience. They are mostly used by trans men, drag kings and transgender people.
philia is the outcome of a mutual experience in which bodies collide, bind and attach; borders are gradually transgressed. It is an 8-hour-long experience of nudity, touching, tactility, convergence, and intimacy. Being outside the norms of sex and sexuality “ties” this family.
The video is born out of questions such as: Can we share the experience of binding our breasts which is a very intimate part of our daily life? If so how can we practice it? How does the camera’s presence and coming out to the public affect the safe space that we want to create?
It opens up with the images of flat-chested, ambiguously gendered people, signifying that binding is part of transgender life. Then, performers start to undress and they bind their chests together. In the bonds of philia; desire, “siblinghood”, incest and trust follow a queer-transvestite path of solidarity. While the stripes of bandages “bind” the bodies, the camera turns into a site of binding and travels among the bodies which blend-combine-disintegrate.