On Elves and Beasts: an intervention into normative imaginaries

he Elf and the Beast are my artisitc alter egos which I employ in order to make visible certain aspects of, and reflections on, my trans-experience and –identity by means of video, photography and performance.I began developing these non-human identities in my art while living isolated in the rural Austrian countryside. Only later on, when I learned about the many fields of existing transgender discourse, did I start to realize how my figurations eerily reflect certain aspects of Donna Haraway′s work (e.g. ‘Promises of Monsters’), and Susan Stryker′s use of Frankenstein′s Monster as her voice.In my paper I talk about how adopting non-human somatechnics and embodying the resulting creatures allows me to distance myself from the restrictions of our social understanding of what the human is. Further I speak about how it allows me to contemplate my situation in reference to the binary gender system and a range of somatechnics that are outside the performability of my transidentity. I also discuss the use of non-human somatechnics as opening up options of accessing and expressing transpower: the power that inhabits transgressions of physical, mental, and other ensuing restrictions.My alter egos might entice us into practicing joyful resistances against categorizations within the cultural norms linked to gender, sex and sexuality.