INVERSE/THE FUTURE IS OFTEN A STEP BEHIND

INVERSE/THE FUTURE IS OFTEN A STEP BEHIND is a multi-part experimental documentary project that weaves together the lives of a diverse group of people who celebrate difference through gender non-conformity, non-traditional relationships, radical sex practices, activism, politics, and subversive art. Challenging the mainstream assimilation of LGBTQIA+ identity, INVERSE maps a cross-generational queer community by engaging in the daily lives of its participants. Experimental in approach, the project takes form as a four-part immersive video installation that vividly combines stories, interviews, portraits, and ephemera. Made over the course of 7 years, INVERSE foregrounds fluidity and change; both of gender and sexuality and our understandings around them.

The first part, 'Night & Day', is the centerpiece of the project. This 20-minute four-channel video ‘quadriptych’ follows five people side-by-side as they perform their ordinary lives against the backdrop of New York City. Resembling a filmstrip, these parallel narratives unfold on each screen and visually play off of one another. Illustrating a sense of daily reality, the installation is infused with the sense of six degrees of separation, as the characters become interconnected through their movements. Night & Day features Alok Vaid-Menon, a gender non-conforming performer and writer; Raiden, a transgender man and kindergarten teacher with a wife and children; Chealsea, a transgender woman from the House of Xtravaganza; Alex, a bisexual cisgender woman and journalist married to another woman; and Shaktii, a gender-fluid teenager and activist.

The second part, 'Voices', is a collage of conversations with 40 people –ranging in age from 12 to 77 years old – who live their lives beyond the normative bounds of mainstream gay culture. Including the participants from Night & Day, each conversation gives context to the larger project by spotlighting the particular issues of socioeconomic barriers, bigotry, misogyny, racism, transphobia, toxic masculinity, HIV stigma, and other forms of violence confronted on a daily basis. Voices will also address the right-wing ‘culture war’ and the current backlash facing the Queer community; trans people and queer youth in particular. Voices is intended to be watched across seven video projections or large HD monitors, each displaying 20 minute looped segments. The audience will walk into a room to a cacophony of voices. Audio coming from ‘directional' ceiling speakers will allow one to isolate conversations enabling one to clearly ‘hear’ what is being said by each person making this a truly immersive experience.

The third part, 'Objects', is personal ephemera shared by the projects many participants. Items that have had impact or personal significance to their identity as a queer person (such as protest flyers, chest binders, copies of legal name change documents, hormones, HIV med containers, self published publications, ballroom trophies...). Showcased in glass display cases and presented like museum or historical artifacts.

The fourth and final part, 'Faces', is a single 20-minute video projection that is the child of Jenkins’ most recent project, WALK! For 30+ years Jenkins has been documenting New York’s Queer Black and Latino Ballroom scene. WALK!, is a testament to Jenkins’ passion for this singularly inclusive and diverse community. Celebrating difference over similarity, house ballroom culture has much to teach mainstream, heteronormative society about gender, sexuality, and community. Faces, portrays the fierce joy, defiance, and pride of voguing ball attendees. Uncomplicated in their set-up: these subjects move and pose, alone and together, for the camera against a simple backdrop.