This Thesis Project is Ongoing.
Currently, through Taubman College I am part of the thesis group MASA (Mexican Architecture Student Alliance) with the advisor being Robert Adams. I have pivoted from a previous thesis proposal to this one due to its cultural relevance, however as Thesis Year is still not finished, neither is the research.
The investigation into Mexico City will put me in contact with environs that welcome all walks of life, and I will be frequenting spaces like nightclubs to speak with people of different identities, and from there, connections will be drawn. I will be looking into where certain groupings of individuals congregate after the club scene dies down, and where in daylight people tend to stay. Analysis will be made to obtain the material realities of gender within CDMX and what it means to dwell outside of the binary in that culture, what tools are necessary to craft the fantasy and to live unencumbered by certain pressures.
Muxe Material.
I will essentially be recording a podcast for this research, interviewing people across the spectrum of expression to fully grasp what it means to create a non-normative or “Third Gendered” Space. I plan on obtaining several confessional-style shots, similar in format to that of “Paris is Burning” or “Kiki”, with those who live the realities at the forefront, telling me what it is like to be as they are. I plan to have this be an ongoing series post-thesis because these stories deserve to be told and preserved. The interviews will be posted visually on YouTube and auditorily on Spotify, with this exploration into Muxe culture in being titled “Mu-vers and Xe-kers”. (Investigations into Mahu Polynesian Culture will be titled “Ma-gic Hu-mans”.
Interviews
This is where I will be documenting the results of these ponderings, the lenses necessary to see the invisible populations among us. I do not have a perfect grasp on what that fully equals yet, but it could very well be something incredibly tactile, a dwelling or a pop-up, or even a stage meant to be interacted with to understand the 3rd Gender experience of space.
