Silk Worm: Don't Ask Me

Don’t Ask Me features two videos, Lifetime Achievement and Humble Haughty Child, by Silk Worm and emerges from her ongoing research into passing: passing for a woman, passing for female, passing for cis.

Campy and theatrical, the videos respond to works by Claude Cahun, Claire Denis, and Susan Stryker as well as the theoretical interventions of C. Riley Snorton and Julia Serano. The title Don’t Ask Me is inspired by a quote from Sandy Stone’s “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto:" "The essence of transsexualism is the act of passing. […] I could not ask a transsexual for anything more inconceivable than to forgo passing." 

With this project, Silk Worm asks: Where is power located in the act of passing? What does it mean to be a trans woman in public? Who tells me what I am? And when oh when do I get to accept my Oscar?

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