TX-1

The enchanting Earth is too-often made inhospitable to those marked as transgender. To survive we xenomogrify ourselves through social and biological technologies, altering our surfaces, our viscera, our molecular balances. None of us have been to space even if we possess somatic knowledges of deep bodily transformations, necessary experiences for extraterrestrial environments.

TX-1 launches bits of my hormone replacement medications, marking the first-known time that elements of the transgender experience orbit the earth. TX-1 includes a fragment of my spironolactone pill, a slice of my estradiol patch, and a miniature handmade paper sculpture, included to gesture towards the absent-yet-present xenoentities of the cosmos. A symbolic exodus to an orbit high above, the eventual return of TX-1 to Earth is also a sign of resilience, of not being disposed, of coming back to thrive once again.

On March 6, 2020, MIT Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative launched a payload to the International Space Station with my three minerals aboard. The payload, “Sojourner 2020,” featured a three-layer structure which created three different “gravities.” Each layer of the structure rotated independently. The top layer remained still in weightlessness, while the middle and bottom layers spun at different speeds to produce centripetal accelerations that mimic lunar gravity and Martian gravity, respectively.

Source: https://tranxxenolab.net/projects/tx-1/