Performance artist and Central lecturer Nando Messias talks about their project Transmission: Sissy TV, recently performed in London. It aims to reimagine archival practice and address the gap in the representation of trans and non-binary voices.
TransMission: Sissy TV is a project investigating trans archives. It seeks to address the gap in representation of trans and non-binary voices in institutional archives and starts with the personal and artistic archive of Nando Messias, accumulated over two decades of creating work. Messias uses their archive as a framework to discuss larger issues such as transphobia, the pathologisation of trans bodies and identities, trans exclusion, social violence, and visibility. They travel the country with their archive in tow, performing inside their closet which they set up on stage. The audience is invited to enter and sit with Messias, to touch their costumes, to smell their perfume, to try on their shoes and to queer exclusionary notions of who has the right to speak up.
We spoke to Nando Messias about the project and their approach to archives.
Why did you take this approach to your archive?
The haptic approach proposed here goes against the received knowledge of how to archive and display collections. In essence, I am arguing that the archive should not be sterilised. It lives in the lipstick stains, in the sweat stains, in the blood marks. The archive is in the tear of a fabric that has been badly mended, it is in the broken heel of a shoe. Things, in sum, that can only be gleaned up close and if left well alone.
How did this project come about?
The first research and development phase of TransMission: Sissy TV received generous Knowledge Exchange support from Central. This support allowed for a collaboration with arts organisation Artsadmin, who hosted me for a two-week residency. This enabled conversations about archival practices and how an artist could bring change to traditional ways of treating ephemera.
What’s next for this project?
As a result of this two-week period, I successfully applied for a funding award Arts Council England to further develop the piece with artistic collaborators. The funding enables me to tour it to and Manchester (Contact and University of Manchester) and to Cambridge (as part of Disrupt Festival at Cambridge Junction). Also as a result of the residency, my archive has been acquired by The Museum of Transology, where trans history is archived by trans-identifying archivists and volunteers to make sure that our history is told by us rather than by others.
