Join us for a dialogue between artist collaborators Brody Weaver and Elliot Ciz, and curator Excel Garay, on the Artist Project they brought to C’s current issue “Codes.” In advance of the program, C Magazine presents a special on-demand viewing link for Weaver and Ciz’s documentary film Born in a Body (2023), the basis of the Artist Project. The film is available to watch now until December 5, 2023, at 11:59PM.

How have trans people acted not as passive receivers of discourse from medicine, law, and media, but as agents in the construction of knowledge about their own lives? Codes can be many things: sets of complex instructions that allow a series of actions to be replicable, an "if-you-know-you-know" communication style and use of subcultural terminology, and even a vital piece of information that allows access to some precious space.

In Born in a Body, Weaver and Ciz present an experimental, animated documentary film that positions trans people as experts of their own lives, bodies, and (medical) needs. The film presents an opportunity for viewers to reconsider pathologization, typologies of (in)access, generational differences, systems change, and what might be possible when we see trans healthcare as one component of a larger project of well-being. Garay writes, "It offers an alternative form of representation, one that oscillates between visibility and invisibility in a place void of time. This denies viewers direct access to the bodies of participants. It instead presents an intentional angle that heightens the viewers' intrigue, and privileges the observations of the participants. It encourages viewers to be more aware of their own subjective perceptions."

Brody Weaver is a white-settler educator, media artist, and writer living and learning in K’jipuktuk (Halifax). She has a BA in Art History and Contemporary Culture from NSCAD University and was a Media Art Scholar at the Centre for Art Tapes in 2022–2023. As a genderqueer woman, she is entranced by the construction of historical and contemporary knowledge about gender, sexuality, medicine, and trauma.

Elliot Ciz is a white-settler trans man born and raised in Bedford, Nova Scotia. A self taught animator and DIY filmmaker, he is drawn to intuitive processes and sees media as an emotional medium and has taken classes on film production, film history, and cultural studies at University of King’s College and Toronto Metropolitan University.

Excel Garay is an artist-curator and community worker operating on Mi’kma’ki in K’jipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia). Her work, in these intersecting roles, is informed by mutual desires discovered through acts of collaboration. She graduated with distinction from NSCAD University with a dual Bachelors degree in Art History and Fine Arts. She is co-Director of The Khyber Centre for the Arts. Her artistic and academic lenses are informed by hauntology, which allows her to better commune with postcolonial cultural productions, trans aesthetics, apparitional aesthetics, and anti-colonial works.

Directed by Brody Weaver and Elliot Ciz, and structured in three parts, Born in a Body (2023) features dialogue from over fifteen hours of interviews with nine transgender and gender diverse community members. The film brings viewers on a poetic journey through their inner worlds, life experiences, and critical perspectives. Among the locales named and described in the self-narration of these community leaders are Sherbourne Health in Toronto, Ontario; Clinic 554 in Fredericton, New Brunswick; a Pride Parade in Truro, Nova Scotia; and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health's 27th Symposium in Montreal, Quebec.

Disrupting the medicalization of the trans community, the lived experiences and knowledge of this group position trans people as experts of their own lives, bodies, and (medical) needs. This film challenges viewers to reconsider pathologization, histories and realities of healthcare (in)access, generational differences in the trans community, systems change, and what might be possible when we see trans healthcare as one component of a larger project of liberation and wellbeing.

Register to watch it today!