(Update: launched! Check it out at zoy.itch.io/iportrait…)

This Tuesday March 31st will be International Transgender Day of Visibility. I’ve been planning to launch a downloadable version of the Interactive Portraits from Japan for this year’s IDOV, and though it feels a little out of step with what’s on everybody’s minds right now, I’m still going ahead with it.

vimeo.com/401492347

If you’ve played this before, either at an event or because you got access to the link where the works in progress were available to try out, then you know there’s a lot of wisdom shared by the trans people I interviewed - thoughts about how to build resilience, how to take care of your community, and how to deal with the massive scale of human suffering.

The joy of making work based on interviews, particuilarly the open-ended and reflective interviews that I have found myself doing, is that you quickly find this bedrock of compassion and insight that underpins the human experience. I hope the full release of this project will bring some much-needed solace to someone, somewhere.

[gallery ids=“3385,3386,3387” type=“slideshow” link=“none”]

I’m going to spend the weekend making some final changes, and then I’ll post here on Tuesday with an itch.io link where you can download Interactive Portraits: Trans People in Japan.

(Update: launched! Check it out at zoy.itch.io/iportrait…)

During this time of webinars, Zoom rooms, and Discord discourses, I’d love to get together with any folks and chat about this project, and about my work-in-progress that applies a similar idea to trans people in the UK, so please get in touch! My email address is zoyander at gmail.