P.ELDRIDGE IN CONVERSATION WITH DANIELLE BRATHWAITE-SHIRLEY

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s new multimedia commission for CIRCA asks what we can do, today, to resist today’s breakdown of individual freedoms. In a conversation to launch Trans & Conditions, her new multimedia commission for CIRCA, she begins exploring answers. 

Speaking at 180 Studios, the Berlin and London-based artist navigates the intricate intersections of community building, the urgency of political action, and the power of artistic expression in a society whose foundations are cracking. Together with writer P. Eldridge, the duo unpack the realities faced by trans people in 2025, examining the critical role that art can play in resisting the erosion of rights, not merely as a form of representation, but as a catalyst for tangible change, prompting critical reflection and inspiring active engagement. 

Brathwaite-Shirley recalls how communities of mutual aid sprung up in working class neighbourhoods and online communities during the Covid pandemic, allowing regular people to support one another, both with words and with resources. “We need to start putting our resources and time into each other,” she proposes.

[P. Eldridge]: Hello, everyone. Thanks so much for coming. Thanks so much to Josef from CIRCA for having us here as well. And thanks so much for coming to celebrate. Trans & Conditions with Danielle and I. The conversation that we’re going to have tonight is kind of roving. I have a few questions on my phone which I will pull out now in preparation. I’m not playing video games, although it would be kind of ironic to be playing video games during this. All things considered. Yeah. But but it’s going to have a. Yeah, have a very roving easy chat. Everyone’s looking cute in the audience. How are you, babe?

[Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley]: Yeah. Oh, hi. Yeah. I’m fine. Yeah. Now, I’ve got a mic. It just starts, doesn’t it?  Hi, everyone. Hi. I think we can do better than that. Hi. Hi. Hi, everyone. So welcome to us today.

[PE]: Welcome to us.

[DBS]: Yeah, the hostess has kicked in really. Maybe we can start with something a bit weird, though. Yeah. Okay, so I’m. You know, I’m all about participation, and I really don’t like passive, enjoyment of anything, so I think, for the initial thing, if everyone could just close their eyes. That’s including you.

[PE]: Oh,

[DBS]: If everyone can just close their eyes and just hum a single note. And slowly bring it up and slowly bring it up a bit louder, a bit louder. A bit louder. And slowly open your mouth and let the note come out with it. A bit louder, push a little bit more. Remember, you can take breaths as well. Okay, beautiful. All right. That’s the note for each other. So that’s a gift that you’ve given to everyone around you. Just a little bit of singing. We never sing together. So, like a little communal moment.

[PE]: That was so nice. We were just talking before everyone got here as well about you being a workaholic. So it seems like quite funny that you get up on stage and you’re already facilitating a workshop. Also, it’s kind of like we got, like, stuck into this conversation about everything that’s happening at the moment. And I have a tendency of starting these conversations, especially with the politics that we’re in right now of two trans people talking about politics, that they’re all, but I kind of wanted to check in with you and see how everything’s going with you, all things considered.

[DBS]: Yeah, with me, oh God Yeah. I feel like right now it feels, it feels so hard to talk about things because it feels like an action needs to take place. It feels like we need to do something. But I feel that, I don’t know how everyone else feels, but I feel like we’ve kind of lost the ability or know how to really organize, movements for things to actually happen. And the government has, basically made it much easier to stop us from correctly organizing. And then tech also plays its part in, limiting what an organization or what a kind of protest looks like. And so yeah, I feel, I don’t know, immensely frustrated right now. And it feels like everything is teetering towards a cliff and we’re there with it. And it feels like we need to kind of hold on to each other as tighter than ever.

[PE]: Yeah.

[DBS]: Which is why this kind of thing was coming out. And yeah, I can only do what I do, and I only know one way of communication, which is I’m worse at talking and I’m better at making shit that makes you maybe cry. So that’s kind of my method of communicating what I can give. But, Yeah.

[PE]: Yeah. And also.

[DBS]: But you can’t skip the question. What about you?

[PE]: I mean, I feel the same. I feel the same. I think, like, in terms of being a writer right now, we were talking a little bit before about the type of language that’s required of us. And usually my work kind of reflects on the relationships that I have in my life. So it’s very localised. It’s about the people I’m entangled with. And because I have a large trans community around me, the language of intimacy is shifting and it’s becoming more about protest or about this, this frenetic feeling that we have of not feeling safe. And so it’s interesting, I suppose, for me, in the process of making work to recognise that the language is shifting and what is required of me as a writer with a profile is to address those things. But to signpost them in a way that recognises we’re trying our hardest, whilst also still needing to take space to tend to our own wounds. Because things are really tough right now. I don’t know about you, but, like, I’m exhausted. I’m, like, doing a lot more than I think I usually would because I think it is what is being demanded of me right now.

[DBS]: Yeah. Like, maybe this is my workaholic tendency coming out like I am exhausted. But I think we have to do more. And I think we’re not tired enough, and I think we’re tired too quick. And like, these movements take a commitment that, we’re not used to giving anymore. And, and I’m talking to myself right now as well.

[PE]: Yeah.

[DBS]: Like, we need to give more to the things we care about, and it takes a lot more before they take our ability to even give it. Because the one thing that’s been super effective is exhausting us. And making us waste time on various things and actually not making us be able to waste time on actually getting our rights, securing our rights, ensuring that they can’t be taken away, which is an impossible. I know that’s impossible. It doesn’t matter what you do. Like someone will try to but it feels like we are, we are so tired already and the fight has really just begun. And the place we’re going to get energy from is from each other.

[PE]: Yeah.

[DBS]: And that’s why we need to start putting our resources and time into each other rather than into like spending money for another corporation to put a trans flag one day and then stamp on your feet the next. Yeah.

[PE]: How do you feel about putting that energy into your work right now then as well?

[DBS]: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that’s a lot about what this work is. I’m trying to figure out, like, how the work can obviously do the work, but at the same time, then integrate with actual politics, then start integrating with, talking to MPs, to speaking to the government, to working with local communities. And this is the website you can go to and you can write, a letter. And then in the end, you can get this letter and send it to your local MP to try and help them support trans people. I don’t know if it’s going to work. That’s the whole point. We’re trying to see if it will work or try to see people do it, to try and see if people fuck with it properly.

[PE]: To break it, you mean?

[DBS]: Yeah. Like, I think the best thing I can do is offer some sort of imagery towards doing something, and I’m trying to figure out how to match those two together. It’s not to say this is going to change the world, but it’s just that, this is my attempt to do it. And hopefully it does something, and we’ll learn from it and then see what’s next.

[PE]: Yeah, I mean, there’s also something  powerful in recognizing that the artwork that you’re creating, also because it will have a public platform tonight, is not something that is stagnated by, you know, just being viewed via a screen. It’s something that you’re actually demanding participation from, from the people who are viewing it. So I kind of wanted to get to asking you about why that’s an integral part of your process, because there’s, you know, in the video games that you’re that you’ve created in the past and Black Trans Archive, we’re glitching over here. There’s, choice for the participant. And it’s something that you always place in the work. And so I wondered if that’s, you know, if that’s always going to be integral or if it’s something that is just becoming more pertinent now as things get worse.

[DBS]: No, no, I think it’s always going to be integral, like, I think the main thing is that the know the medium is, you lot, like you are the most important people there, like, I’m trying to get us to do something. And it might be something stupid like singing together, but it does give us something. Or it might be something bigger, like writing a letter or, caring for someone if they’re crying in the room. But it’s just really about us doing something. Because I do believe art can make you do things. I don’t know if art can change the, big old question, do you think I can change the world? I don’t know. Yeah, but it might make me look at someone and ask them a question. Or it might make me write a single letter, you know, and then that continuous interruption might affect something. I don’t think one art piece can, but plenty of propagandas have happened from a single art piece that wasn’t intended for that, and it was misused. So I do think it can have an effect, but it’s just more about knowing that you can affect things in a much smaller level and that being okay.

[PE]: Yeah.

[DBS]: But knowing that that is the medium like this is the way I’m getting you in because we’re all used to looking at screens. We’re used to having options, we’re used to clicking on things. It’s easy to access it. But this is just the the trick I’m using to get the interaction in your hands because we’re not talking to each other anymore. We’re not breaking out of the bubbles that we’re in. We’re usually speaking to people that we currently agree with. Like we can do a nice little thing here. Like, how many of you have friends that you don’t like? I mean, there’s a few hands Like how many of you would sit in a room with someone that doesn’t like you as fundamentally as a human being and try to understand where they’re coming from? 

[PE]: I mean, that’s Adrienne Maree Brown loving corrections. You know, it’s like trying to rope people back into what she calls a loving correction which is to be in confluence even if it is bad with someone who is against you.

[DBS]: Yeah. And I’m not even sure that we should sit in the rooms and, like, try and explain or anything or understand, but it’s like someone fucking has to. In the end of the day, someone has to be sitting in a room with Kanye West, and being like babes like, this has got to stop. Like, at some point, there has to be someone in that chain. I’m not saying that like the community that’s being attacked has to do it,  but I’m saying it somewhere down the line, someone, I don’t know who it could be, you know, for for many people, it was like that past  or it was the the youth club they went to. It was a teacher. Someone has to introduce them to a wider way of seeing. And I felt like we, currently what what’s encouraged is that we avoid that. And there’s not spaces for that. Instead, the spaces that echo and echo, echo and echo and maybe even, and here, this is one of them, you know, this is an echo space too. But we we need to have spaces where the half of this room hates what we’re talking about right now. And yeah, I think that’s quite important. I think that’s why the work is quite good when it’s online, because we get plenty of people being like, fuck you, you know, we get plenty of articles written, like I hate your existence or email sent, but that’s great because then I get an actual look into this person so I can design a work that maybe could potentially reach them, you know?

[PE]: And it’s also interesting, obviously, because the intervention will be turning Piccadilly into a trans space.

[DBS]: Yeah.

[PE]: And I kind of wanted to hear about like that as a scale for you, you kind of touching on it now and maybe you can continue talking about it, but like that as a scale to take over that space. What does that mean for you right now?

[DBS]: I mean, so after this Supreme Court ruling, I felt like we just needed a moment where we were together and when we had this massive protest, it felt amazing that we saw a massive reaction of support. And I kind of was thinking, how can we keep this going just even a little bit? So hopefully this keeps it going just a little bit and there’ll be many other people who are more amazing that we’ll do other things that keep the fire going, but it feels like we can’t just have one protest and stop. It’s going to be a longer battle. And so it feels good to have something this scale, and hopefully other people will do much more amazing, more communal, more communal things.

[PE]: Yeah. And so the intention is to take the letters to Downing Street.

[DBS]: Yeah. So the intention is that everyone writes the letters online. We print them off, we fly post them around London, and then we also make a book and we send that, in the briefcase that Rishi Sunak used to take, to 10 Downing Street.

[PE]: The Rishi Sunak briefcase.

[DBS]: No, but you know, using their language to speak to them. And to be honest, what they will do is probably, I don’t know, read it and say, cool. Where can we file this? I don’t know. I don’t know if it’ll have an actual effect, but what we will learn from it is later down the line, how to have an effect. And so this is not something that like I just do once and stop, it grows and grows and grows. So like I’m hoping to see how people use this. What is good and what is bad and what we can adapt for later. And if it’s actually a better way of getting us into political conversations with people that can actually have change  and how to get us the people that aren’t in the Supreme Court, not introduced to the meetings,not even they’re being funded by JK Rowling. Like, us in the spaces where we can actually put our 2 cents in because that we need to be there, we need to be there. It’s just getting access to them is difficult.

[PE]: Yeah. And those questions on the website as well, I might read them out. And everyone here can kind of like percolate on those. But the first is ‘tell me why trans people’s rights need to be protected’. ‘What are youscared of happening to trans people as they lose their rights?’ ‘What do you want to say to the trans people who are scared right now?’ And ‘what do you want the government to do to support the rights of trans people?’ And so, yeah, like, why those questions?

[DBS]: Yeah. Pretty direct I don’t know, I don’t have this amazing halo that some artists have where like they can speak beautifully around the subject, we were talking about this before, like, you called it nuance, metaphor. And you have the, the bullseye thing in the middle.

[PE]: Yeah. Yeah.

[DBS]: And so, yeah, I was just, I was like, which how many bullseyes can I hit? And make it easy for people also to write because I think something about this is also, I was looking up how to write a letter to my local MP. And there’s different sites to do it, and some sites offer you, a kind of, like, already pre-written letter. Other sites offer you just a guideline, a loose guideline, and then they say go here. But it was kind of difficult to will myself to literally sit down and write a letter and have faith that that letter would do anything, then sign the letter and send it. So the whole aim of this was to make that super simple. So it makes the letter for you, and if you want to send that, you can. And that way it’s kind of, by the time you finished the experience, you’ve got a letter that you can use rather than having to like worry about how to do it and where to find all this information. So we’re just trying to streamline this approach to actually like getting into politics. And maybe someone later down the line, someone might use it for something else for another cause, which is great. And maybe we’ll adapt it, I don’t know, but like I feel like it’s just important that we do remember that, we’re in a point right now where everyone wants to reduce funding for arts. There’s a very particular reason why arts gets cut, and there’s a very particular reason why, like a small set of artists, during times where fascism rises, a certain set of art comes into fruition and it’s very visible. And that’s because, like, art does have the power to make people think in a certain way, or stop thinking, you know, and distract people. And so for me, it’s we need to tread that line again between art and politics and I’m learning alongside everyone else. And so this is me learning and seeing if it works. And if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. We adapt. But yeah, I’m not going to be like, this is the best thing you’ve ever seen and this is going to change everything. There’s no point to that. But it’s like let’s learn together. Let’s slowly do it. And hopefully by the end we’ll be able to have a community where people can teach each other. And I’m sure someone’s going to give me tips like, ‘love, what the hell are you doing?’ You should have done it like this. And that would be great. Like, I remember when I made Black Trans Archive and someone was saying like, this is not an archive, you need to do it like this. But then we had a great conversation and they helped us later on in the work. So that to me is great.

[PE]: Yeah. And why the glitching with this?

[DBS]: Yeah. So it kind of, came out of a conversation with me and you over there hiding in the corner, Josef. But we were talking, basically this idea of, like, a critical error has happened. The Supreme Court ruling has said now, like, a woman is a biological woman, and the critical error is the inference is now trans women are not women and are not safe and can’t be in any of those spaces. And then the inference is for companies is that finally we can drop the support and finally we can ban them. And then the inference further is that all other companies now, considering that we have to ban them as well, should we ban them? And so like to me that’s a massive critical error because we could have if you think about it, we could have had that ruling. And there have been the judge being like, but this is not a ruling on trans women. We need to have a separate ruling on trans women because it’s actually not the conversation. We didn’t have that. We didn’t have any discussion on that. We had this ruling and then we had a heavy inference from everyone. And like, and so what for me, that is like a critical failure of not even recognizing people as human, not even having them there. I’m literally saying this definition has nothing to do with you, and yet you now don’t exist. And so for me, that that’s a critical error. And so that’s why it kind of completely glitches, because it is a critical error and needs to disrupt the space. 

[PE]: And also does the this new notion now coming out about creating third spaces for trans women or for trans people in general. And it’s kind of interesting that your archival work, like Trans Black Archive or even this, is that third space that remedies that, not going to the bathroom, obviously, but finding a space where trans people aren’t eradicated or erased? And so I kind of wanted to, like, know more about how, like on the, you know, you had a person tell you that, looking at Trans Black Archive was a way that like, they had explained it that trans black women, it was a, it was a piece about trans black women being killed when rather it was actually about preserving the histories of trans black people. I kind of want to get into that a little bit more with you.

[DBS]: Yeah. And this is kind of why I want us to enter politics. Why I want us to, I’m doing it from an art perspective, but I kind of want us just to be the MPs and to actually be there because it’s not the the way in which someone sees an identity they don’t understand means that even if they try and do something good, they approach it from a perspective of what they’ve heard. And that can always have quite negative effects, even if it’s positive. So even if you’re designing a third space, you know, it’s not going to be, you designing the space, it’s going to be Brian in the temp office

[PE]: Or Sally

[DBS]: who’s like, right, I’ve got to get the third gender space, I guess I’ll get them half a urinal. And yeah, I guess, you know, like, oh, there will be a toilet, but with a, I don’t know, what do they need? What do they have? Everything. It’ll be a urinal that you can sit on, like, you know, like it’s going to be designed for us, but not by us. Not alongside us. And so for me, I’m always wanting transness to become a non-issue, to become boring. So just become part of the fabric of everything. Like, oh, that’s Sally, that’s her. There we go. That’s done. It’s finished. It’s enough. And so instead of it, I don’t think we need extra things. I just want to be seen as normal not even minutely interesting, you know? Like, that’s what we’re trying to get to. We’re not trying to get to being special. We’re trying to get to not being special. Literally just being part of that every day and being appreciated for what you do, rather than what you look like and who you are. No. Who we are is the good thing. Just what you look like, or what you identify as. And so, yeah, I feel like it’s just for me, it’s super critical that, and understanding that. The intention behind something isn’t the most important thing. It’s actually who is part of that process. And that’s what this like archival process began began when that’s usually why when we’re archiving people we have them in the room and we’re talking to them because they’re the ones being archived. And there’s other projects where the entire work is the audience. So we’re designing for the audience. For example, we have a show later on in the Serpentine, and we’re designing for the audience to have a conversation they don’t want to have. So we’re literally thinking about how to get people to sit together with a stranger that they would never talk to, and they get bad vibes from. We want them to have a conversation together about not a light topic.

[PE]: Yeah.

[DBS]: About something that’s like about immigration. 

[PE]: You were kind of explaining the game as if it was it was a lie.

[DBS]:Yeah. The game is a trick to build trust. And when you play a game together, it’s like if you play Mario Party and, anyone plays Mario Party or Mario Kart or Jenga or Monopoly? You could be sitting with Stank Face Baby over here. And then five minutes in and you’re like going, oh my God, what a move. Like there’s there’s been a moment of trust there that’s been built and that’s what an interaction like games do they really help you build that moment of trust really quickly. It’s not like you like will tell a person your deepest, darkest secrets, but there’s a slight moment of trust like we are in some rules. I know the rules. You know the rules of engagement here. The great thing about games, you can use those and then chuck in something extremely real and difficult to talk about, and then they navigate that through that bit of trust. So then obviously not going to go super deep in that moment but they’ll take another step. And then you can make them take more and more steps until it’s just having a conversation. And I feel like for me what I’m missing is just having these conversations, that, that are difficult. And, to be honest, for me, there’s a lot of censorship happening right now. And I remember I had this conversation with two women in Liverpool that ran the, first abortion clinic, underground abortion clinic, for Irish women. And they were asking me why, why do trans women dress like that? That was kind of what they were asking. And I was asking like, okay, like, what does that mean? Because I don’t I know what you’re talking about. And they were kind of saying that they were saying, okay, big boobs, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay, where’s the information from? Like, what’s the information? And it turns out they were just the news articles that were being pushed around that time, which is presenting like the dolls, like big boob dolls. And to them, they didn’t like that. And that was the idea of what trans women were just these dolls, which I love the dolls. So anyway. Anyway, but it was great having a conversation with them, because I could see that they had provided something amazing for Liverpool’s history, and yet they were in danger of erasing other women that had provided something amazing for Liverpool’s history. But they had no idea of it. They just didn’t even know. And we had a really good conversation in the end. And, and we didn’t leave like, they didn’t leave, like suddenly changing the mind, but they left understanding that what they thought about trans people was not true. And for me, that’s what I want more of. And I kind of like having those conversations. 

[PE]: And do you think public intervention where trans people are able to represent themselves as themselves rather than being negotiated into media as some boobalicious doll or otherwise, is a way of doing that?

[DBS]: Yeah. I think it’s just being,  having trans people in spaces that aren’t necessarily just like in the entertainment industry, which they are in, but also having their voices being cared about and not being silenced, being given opportunities to speak when you didn’t think you were allowed to speak. Knowing that, a policy can be made that to include you as well, knowing that trans issues can be are also involved in other issues. And so people can see a conflation there. I think it’s we do need to get away from this idea that just like trans stuff and other stuff, because to me, now that trans women aren’t seen as women in this country, fundamentally we’re on a road to just eroding women’s rights, and we’re going to have men going to toilets saying you’re not woman enough or women, and I don’t know how the fuck they’re going to do that. But to me, that like that is the beginning. They’ve just started at the end of the line of women, and that’s where trans women were, and they’re going to keep going. And so for me, there’s so many conversations between reducing 1 to 1, fringe group’s rights to then a larger group’s rights. It’s like the trial run so they can do a more dangerous run. And just knowing that, like the, the fight that’s actually happening is so much bigger. And the distraction is like, this is the side thing, this is the side doesn’t matter. They’re just like trans people, but actually like, no, this is the beginning of something huge. And we all know it and we all feel it and we all can’t just put into words exactly what’s happening, but we feel it happening everywhere.

[PE]: Yeah.

[DBS]: And so yeah, I that’s a very badly answered question, but that’s kind of just roundish the way I’m feeling.

[PE]: Yeah. No, I think it makes sense to all of us here. I’m also interested in terms and conditions. I know that you’re obsessed with terms and conditions, which is where Trans & Conditions gets its name. Can you explain that to me? 

[DBS]: Yeah. Like who reads the terms and conditions?

[PE]: I mean, sometimes.

[DBS]: The whole thing?

[PE]: Not all the time.

[DBS]: What phone have you got?

[PE]: Why?

[DBS]: Like you got Apple phone?

[PE]: Yeah I do. I didn’t read the terms and conditions when I hit accept.

[DBS]:  Yeah, yeah I just I feel like we’re often like accepting terms and conditions on things without reading them. And for me the terms and conditions can lay out the rules of engagement. They do like they, they lay out what rights you’ve lost and what rights you maintain. The privacy you’ve lost, which is everything. The privacy you’ve maintained, which is not much. None of us have much privacy now. Like, I think about them a lot because I think because I’m in tech, every most pieces of tech are actually always also used to collect data. So when you’re usually playing a game, there is some data collected on you. And so just simply as putting in your email address or simply as what you’re doing, people learn from you. And so essentially you’re dehumanized in a way that just used as inputs and outputs. And then suddenly the next game you’re like, oh, it feels better. And that’s because you were in a data set and then you were used. And that data set doesn’t stay with that person. It travels. So it may you may start in one project that you really care about, but it might go to a project that you would really be against. And so for me, it’s really important that we do not collect data on people, that we don’t use them like that. And so I like to use the terms and conditions and sets out like this to set the rules of engagement. So you understand where you’re sitting, where you’re standing, how to approach it, and to not then secretly co-opt you into something else. So it’s quite clear. Also, terms and conditions are usually insanely long.

[PE]: Yeah.

[DBS]: And these ones are nice and short. So you can understand what you’re getting yourself into, what risk you’re taking and how much you failed yourself or others.

[PE]: Yeah. I kind of want to ask about the gaming as well. Like what you’re interested in as a Game girl?

[DBS]: Oh, God.

[PE]: Yeah.

[DBS]:  Oh, God.

[PE]: Were you like cat ears, long socks? E-girl? Was that you?

[DBS]: No, I mean, I would love to call myself a gaming historian because it sounds very official and like, lovely, but that’s not true. So what I’m into, okay. So I would say, like, even though We were talking about narrative games before. Yeah, but my main thing is tech. Well, my main, my main thing I look at is how it affects the audience. So I often look back at old engines and then see what the effect is I have when playing it. So I play a lot of old games, I play a lot of games, but I don’t play them for very long. I’ve had them for like five, ten minutes to see the feel, but as we’re shouting people out. So I’m just going to shout out to people in tech. So there’s an amazing video game designer from 1987, called Muriel Tramis. She is one of the first black women to make, amazing video games. Archiving Martinique. And she’s still alive today. She’s incredibly famous, yet no one knows her. Then she went to work for, like, massive game company. I mean, she’s amazing. And she made, a game called Freedom, which was about, slavery and escaping slaves. And then she made a Mewilo, which is about, a folk tale in Martinique. And then she went to make some erotic games, and then she made, some very big mainstream games. And then another person who maybe some people know, Rebecca Allen. Does anyone know Rebecca Allen? So Rebecca Allen is the reason we have motion capture. She used to do motion capture physically. So she didn’t do it in 3D because it didn’t exist. And she made the first moving face, the first moving mouth, the first dancing body, the first moving hand in 3D. She made all of those things. She made Kraftwerk’s singing video and she’s an amazing, amazing, amazing artist as well. And these are some of my inspirations in tech. And she’s, worked with Virgin Interactive. She’s made her own game engine. She’s like amazing pioneer. She’s literally a pioneer. She didn’t get her recognition at the time. She’s getting it now. But I would just shout out those people because those people are people that look at tech and look at the effects it having on the audience. I’m trying to think, how can this have a bigger effect and study the effect that the audience has, rather than how beautiful the tech is? Because for me, most of the things you see, it’s not about how beautiful it is. If you leave one of my works and you say, God, that was lovely, it’s failed. I, I’ve failed you. But if you leave thinking about yourself or thinking about the risks you wanted to take or didn’t feel comfortable taking, then that’s something a bit more successful. Because I’m not interested in making beautiful art. There’s enough people making amazing, beautiful art. I don’t need to do it. I’m interested in making art that makes you actually feel something or feel like you’re not doing something. We’ll see if this one does it tonight.

[PE]: And do you like, yeah, I mean, I have the tendency of being like, that was beautiful. But I was going to say, with the technology itself, do you feel like there’s a big responsibility to ensure that it’s provoking that from the audience to ensure that, like, say, we’re all about to play the video games? We’re all about to log online to Trans & Conditions. If one person in the room said it was beautiful, do you feel like it becomes a burden to you or a responsibility to then amend that in the next project?

[DBS]: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like I’m planning on people telling me, oh it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful. But for me, like, I’m wanting to make sure that that that’s not the focus, you know? But that’s not something to study. And often, if, if you’re doing that, then you’re avoiding what the work’s about. And that’s, and we talked about this before.

[PE]: Yeah.

[DBS]: Like when someone doesn’t consider something in your work, you would say that, they’re just not reaching into it.

[PE]:Yeah.

[DBS]: And then for me, if someone doesn’t consider that thing, I consider a failure because I designed it specifically around that. So if it didn’t hit that I consider that it might that aspect of the work or failure or that version of failure which is fine because we learn from it. But I have these fail states, these super hard fail states of like, for example, if I make a film and I’m like, I need people to cry here and no one cries there, that is a failure. And I will say that just failed. And for me, someone might say, but yeah, it was very ephemeral and I loved it. And like, no, no, no, you were supposed to cry. We designed it so you would cry. I thought about how how do I make you cry? I put in everything to make you cry. I cried while making it, and you smiled? That’s a failure.

[PE]: Yeah.

[DBS]: And for me, it’s very hard and set like this. Just because if I don’t think like that, the work risk. You’ve seen the work. My brain’s already all over the place. The work risks falling in this, lake, of just niceness. And I don’t want it there, like, I want it on the shore and I want you to jump over the shore and to go on your destination. So, yeah, that’s kind of how I feel about I’ve forgotten the question. I’m just going on and on and on. 

[PE]: You answered that. Don’t worry. Did you have a letter that you have submitted?

[DBS]:  I’ve written it and I don’t have my phone. Put me on the spot. But what we can do is everyone got a phone, who’s got a phone? Yeah. Let’s just hold your phones up. Let’s just see how beautiful they are. Let’s see them.

[PE]: Oh, the terms and conditions.

[DBS]: Wow. Right, so everyone got browser?  Everyone got browser? Does everyone got a browser now? Yeah. So okay. Open your phones type in transandconditions.com. Yes. Yeah I’ve spelt that right at least I think. Yeah. There you go. So you should be on a site. Looks like your phone got hacked. And you go through and you can write your letter so you can write, ‘trans rights I think they should be protected because, trans people are cool innit.’ ‘I like them because they should be my friends. And I think the government should give me their phone numbers’, I don’t know, write whatever you like.

[PE]: Thank you so much Danielle. Please.

[DBS]: Thank you.

P. Eldridge (they/them) is an curator, writer, tranarchist, and founder of the radical force SISSY ANARCHY; a multifaceted platform dedicated to exploring the intersection of trans and queer identities with anarchist philosophies, most recently featured at the 60th Venice Art Biennale 2024 and named the leading indie press in London by AnOther Magazine.
In their work, Eldridge explores the intersections of gender, sexuality, and identity across an array of projects. They uses a diverse set of means to engage these issues, including curating, writing, editing, performance dramaturgy, and social media. Their process is fluid, with no privileging of rigid methodologies, and centres the ethics of listening and love geared towards developing a revolutionary trans disciplinary.
Recently, they interviewed Judy Chicago for Flash Art Magazine and, upon Chicago’s invitation, for STUDIO Magazine in 2024. They are based between London and so-called Australia and are the Director, Managing Editor and Partnerships Lead of Worms World C.I.C. and Co-Founder of The Compost Library.