I did another interview for my trans climate migrant/disaster survivor doc Unsettled Climate. It was good but also intense and also fits a lot of pieces together with the other interviews. I still need to get some more diverse representation so I’m continuing to look for people to talk to, ideally BIPOC. But anyway, I am learning a lot of things about how trans people are responding to climate change and also to political climate issues with fascism and the American government. They told me how hard it is to leave the country, the US can delete their passport information for being trans and then they get deported back to the United States. And because of the Safe Third Country Agreement, if they come to Canada they just get turned back over to the Americans. It sounds very troubling and terrifying. We all can see what happens to people in the United States who don’t have citizenship, and basically that is being stripped from trans people. I don’t like seeing where the future is going and I hope it can be changed.

I’m seeing the common threads in the stories I’ve heard while I have been interviewing people, I’m starting to get a sense of how the project might fit together. I’m giving myself another year, like there will be a version done for presenting this summer as part of my residency. But I think I need stock footage to fill in some gaps which makes me think I”m going to try doing crowdfunding. I don’t really have a lot of faith in grants right now and it’s already been a project that Canada Council juries turned down twice. I did apply somewhere else for funding but I don’t know that they will be interested. I think I asked for a lot of money too which could be really helpful or else, I dunno, maybe too much money? I would be able to do some really good stuff if I got it tho. I feel like I have managed to get a lot recorded from doing this Queer/Trans Artist in Residence gig at the Mark S. Bonham Centre of Sexual Diversity at U of T. I was able to give people honorariums for doing interviews with me which was my main concern. But now I have all this amazing footage and it’s going to be hard to choose what to keep and what to lose.

I’m kind of letting the research tell me what this video is going to be. And it has been altering the direction sometimes. But it’s also really fascinating to let the project grow into what it’s going to be. I like doing documentaries because of that, there’s so much potential and surprise.

But it does need a lot of B-roll which just doesn’t exist, there’s some footage one of them sent me about their experience when their home burned down in a wildfire. But not a lot else. I know there’s tons of stock footage of climate disasters though.

Also I have to admit at some point I just have to stop and work with what I have. Because there’s a lot of footage. 298 minutes! I don’t even know what the shooting ratio is, my film might just be sixty minutes but also it could be 90 I’m not sure. I’ve never done a 90 minute documentary though that’s a lot.

On the other hand the subject matter deserves a lot of time. Even though it’s been hard to get off the ground, I’m glad I’ve had this time in this residency to do a lot of research and film a lot of people. I’m never really going to know why it was getting turned down for grants before. It was disappointing though, because it was going to have some more components to it that I can’t afford at all. And I guess also because I thought for sure people cared about trans rights and climate change and I guess I’m wrong. Or not the right people or whatever. The art world is also conservative.

I’ve been dealing with what I think is some blacklisting in the art world based on speaking up about Palestine and the genocide in Gaza. I was never super vocal but I do repost stuff a lot on my social media. And hearing about how Nan Goldin was censored by the AGO because of a donor was so crazy (but also not at all unexpected from the AGO considering what happened with Wanda Nanibush). Anyway I think there’s probably people not curating me for political/donor reasons. I wish people with money didn’t rule the world, because they’ve done a really fucking piss poor job of it. People are being mass murdered every day, people get arrested by ICE every day, no one can buy a house except the rich people’s corporations, and yet people make sure I can’t afford groceries most of the time because they disagree with my speaking up against genocide? Man grow the fuck up and get a heart. I wish there would be a reckoning, but I have lost faith in the goodness of humanity. I think people look the other way when shit like that goes down and permit it, rather than say “This is wrong.” 11 people in that acquisitions meeting voted against Nan Goldin because she spoke up about genocide. 11 people. That’s not just a few people. Personally I think if the AGO follows what the donors want, they should be completely funded by donors and not take public funding. If you are censoring curators and artists, you don’t deserve public funding.