Deep Time Transcestors

Deep Time Transcestors (working title) is a performance project celebrating non-binary prehistory and is carried out by Ana Teo Ala-Ruona, Even Minn, Camille Auer, Alvi Haapamäki, Satu Kankkonen and Eeti Piiroinen. In addition to the above-mentioned core working group, the project includes producer Riikka Thitz, performance dramaturge Santtu Uuttu and LARP consultant Pihla Lehtinen.

Deep Time Transcestors explore our evolutionary prehistory and find kinship in early life forms. Using LARP (live action role-playing games), play and somatic methods, the project examines what a prehistoric non-gendered and multi-species body might have been like and what it feels like to incarnate it in the modern day. Deep Time Transcestors speculate on the radical physicality of our prehistory from a transfeminist perspective. Some key questions for the project are: How could we rewrite and understand our history and evolution in a way that doesn’t acknowledge the binary concept of gender or strengthen cisgender and heterosexual norms?

At Saari Residence, our core working group have played, done reading and somatic exercises and read and discussed texts on queer ecology and on the cis and heteronormative nature of biological and evolutionary stories. In addition, we have had in-depth discussions on the safety of the working group and developed common consent technologies for both touch-based and other exercises and discussions. We have also pondered the cis and heteronormative elements within the canon of somatic exercises and worked to make somatic exercises as trans-inclusive as possible. Above all, we have spent time getting to know each other and forming a safe, permissive and caring work atmosphere.