TANNER SLICK

I’d like to start by giving respect to all the people who have spent lifetimes living without acceptance. And gratitude for all those who have fought throughout their lives to make space at the party only few were invited to. We have come a long way as a species towards acceptance, but a trans person’s prayer is still different than the rest: 

God, grant me the fortunate serenity to be accepted for who I am,

The courage and ability to hide it 

And the wisdom to know when I might be hurt if I don’t. 

I am white. I pass as my chosen gender/person. I come from a blood-line that is friendly to queers (when your mom’s a lesbian your dad’s family can’t talk shit about the gays without throwing one of their own right under the wheels of the bus). I am from privilege that gives me access to choice in many areas of life and living. I have been granted the fortune of this world. I check the boxes that make me acceptable and I am generally accepted. But my people still aren’t.

Acceptance is a process that begins with individuals, then ripples through out their communities. Just as in water, the ripples fade the farther from the source of the poke. We are always poking at the same thing. The hyper-masculine, white, hetero, cis, normy-bodied and brained, capitalist ideals this place was built in. That is the source – the host. It’s still the party’s vibe, no matter how many other people show up. The further a person is from that ideological pillar, the less the ripples of acceptance impact them. This is why the people who face the most hate, danger and violence today are Black and Brown queer and trans people, especially trans women.

Recently, I looked up the number of people in the population who are trans or gender non-conforming (a statistic impossible to see accurately, since coming out risks ones acceptability...) and it said something like 0.06%. I’m no scientist, but I think that classifies as a rare enough outcome to qualify as a mutation. So, I am a mutant.  And I’m into it. Our world is literally made of and reliant on variety and mutations. Ecosystems. Diversity. Mutualism! 

Many people know this already, but some white gay and trans people still choose not to see racism and white supremacy and some trans (often masculine) people who just slide right into the “normal” world and forget the rest behind. We gotta look out for each other and be grateful for the differences we each bring. We must hold them proudly in ourselves and dearly in one another while everything around us is demanding we submit. 

I cheer to ditch this acceptance model and start fresh with everyone just there – in a big, flat, open field of wild flowers, grass and shrubs, doing whatever the hell they feel like doing. Being whoever they happen to be. All the species (still remaining) will be there with us, being their wild selves. We need them as much as we need each other and they too are dying by the hands of our taming.

Fuck these old white dudes and their bland-ass party favors. We need a new party. We need life.

Let’s get wild, 

lets get free,

Let’s make freaky

the way to be! 

Tanner Slick is a sculptor, scavenger and social-practice artist from Atlanta, GA. Their art takes form in hand-crafted objects, installations, public interventions and community spaces. Often working with reclaimed materials or previously existing imagery, they transform normative ideas of of gender, power, sex and violence. From gnarled wood and rusty metal to glam, queer, kink aesthetics, they fuse a non-binary and trans experience with the lawless complexities of the natural, non-human world. They also have a long-standing practice of community-building through collective living and autonomous land, farm and education zones. Currently, Slick is collaboratively rehabilitating a two-story house on farmland into a community living space, growing space and artist residency program in the South Valley of Albuquerque, NM. In this time of COVID-19, they have started a daily story-telling social media project. You can see their videos and follow the development @velvettrashbag on Instagram.