Sarah: I'm gonna bring these just because they might be helpful.
Lorenzo: Grab the lighter. Sarah: Ok, I have the lighter.
Lorenzo:The extra hand warmers, we’ve got. Sarah: Okay.
Lorenzo: Jet boil. Sarah: We are not going to be getting in the water today.
Sarah: We are not getting in the water today. Lorenzo: But you're bringing those towels?
Sarah: I'm not gonna bring them cause we're not getting in the water today.
Sarah: No. Lorenzo: We might because we might need to take a dip. Sarah: No.
Sarah: All right.
Sarah: We might need to take a dip.
Lorenzo: I’m gonna put these here then I’m going to tell you ‘I love you’.
Sarah: No. Tell me now.
(kiss) Lorenzo: I love you.
Lorenzo: Because you’re so good with straps.
Sarah: And strap ons.
Lorenzo: Well, okay, so first of all
Lorenzo: Riis in the summmer is like, SO crowded and it's beautiful
and it's a party, and it's where we can both just be so comfortable
just in our skin, in our bodies, and just exist without having to worry
about what our physical presence is doing to other people.
Like, Oh, is my physical presence making someone else uncomfortable?
I love being outside with you all day.
I love the concentration and the effort that goes into it.
And it just feels like,
you know, people talk about like creative flow.
The creative project is our third.
You know, there was a cute dog that just walk by, but there's like,
really no one here.
And it, it just it feels very like...
Lorenzo: Romantic! Sarah: It does. Yeah, yeah! Lorenzo: To be here with you in the winter.
Sarah: (laughs) It is very romantic.
Sarah: One thing to note is, we might want to move the whole setup over...
Lorenzo: (cackles) Sarah: Just a little bit.
Sarah: We came here the first summer that we moved to New York.
Or moved back to New York Lorenzo is from here originally.
But when we moved back from Portland, friends
brought us here and were like, you're going to LOVE it
This is going to make you so happy.
And for me in particular, that expansiveness and
sense of freedom that's here feels a lot like San Francisco
and the West Coast to me.
And I walked up to this and it's like, Oh my God, what is happening?
Like it is amazing outfits and beautiful people.
And it was so, so queer and like a massive party on the beach.
And
I have always been concerned about
spaces, whether or not they start off as beautiful?
What we do as queer people feel like is make everything more beautiful around us.
Like wherever we go with whatever material we have, we make it sparkle
and make it shine and be colorful.
And this space is a really amazing example of that.
Lorenzo: The last bit is to get these triggers working and then we're good
and then just test, I’ve got the kind of general body light
more pointed face light, the sun will be our edge
most likely, but I have an extra edge light over there if we kind of need to just blast it up.
So yeah, getting close, getting close.
Lorenzo: That looks really nice up front. Sarah: Ok.
Lorenzo: So, Sarah’s gonna glitter me and then we’re ready!
Sara: All right. Victoria: GLITTER ME!
Sarah: Glitter me, baby!
Sarah: When we were doing test shots for this and we first covered him
in gold paint, but it didn't have the right magic feeling.
And we tried iridescent glitter and landed on gold
because it just looked so good!
(laughing) Sarah: Sorry. Ok, sit up.
Lorenzo: What do you think babe? Sarah: Yeah, it looks good.
Lorenzo: And then where’s my head falling?
Sarah: Okay, you’re head is no longer... okay
Sarah: We had it so you were in the bricks, right? Lorenzo: No.
Sarah: In the... Lorenzo: Along the glass
God, I'm so sorry.
The camera is about to be decimated.
Lorenzo: Okay, so my head should be in the...
Sarah: ...underneath the second window. Lorenzo: Yeah!
Sarah: Can you lean back a teeny bit?
Perfect!
(flashes beep/camera shutter) Lorenzo: Can I come take a look?
Sarah: Give me...let me do one more round okay?
Lorenzo: Yup!
Sarah: Yeah, when you're leaning back a little bit, the shadows are really good.
Lorenzo: Okay.
Lorenzo:It's the shadow from the tent coming in too much in the foreground?
Sarah: No, not all all. Lorenzo: Great.
Lorenzo: So arm here, hand...wrist forward.
So leaning back a little bit, how about this shoulder?
Lorenzo: Do I look... Sarah: Let’s do it a couple of different ways...
Sarah: and I’ll tell you. Lorenzo: Does this look okay? Okay.
Lorenzo: All right, okay. Sarah: All right, relax.
Sarah: Shut your eyes for a minute.
Sarah: Okay and whenever you’re focused... Lorenzo: I can’t figure out how to hold my mouth.
Sarah: Put your tongue on the roof of your mouth. Lorenzo: Okay.
Sarah: Make fish lips for a second...
and then relax.
Sarah: Can you turn your face slightly...to your left?
A little bit more.
Okay, now let me see that with the flashing. (flashes beep/camera shutter)
Sarah: Do you see what I mean, I want more light on your chest? Lorenzo: Yes.
Lorenzo: And my face looks weird.
Sarah: I think that more light will help.
(flashes beep/camera shutter) Sarah: Put your left forearm over your leg the way that it was,
I know it feels weird, but it looks more masculine.
Lorenzo: I trust you. Sarah: Okay!
Sarah: One, two, three. (flashes beep/camera shutter)
One, two, three. (flashes beep/camera shutter)
Last one.
Close your eyes. Tongue to the roof of the mouth.
Open your eyes.
Okay, Ready?
One, two, three. (flashes beep/camera shutter)
Okay, let’s go warm up!
Lorenzo: You sure? Sarah: Yup! Positive.
Lorenzo: I was glad I was able to stay out there that long
and work that long on the shot.
A lot of times it's like six or eight shots max, and then that's it.
So today it's pretty moderate.
And that felt really good.
Like at the end, that felt I was like, okay, I could feel it and felt good.
But process wise, like this is pretty, pretty typical.
You know, like we try not to come out below 35 degrees.
Lorenzo: Well, pretty cool.
I can’t believe you found that driftwood!
Sarah: If we had come on Friday or Thursday it wouldn’t have been here. Lorenzo: No.
(inaudible intimate chatting)
Sarah: There was one time, when we were fighting before we got here.
I think we were listening to.
Lorenzo: I don't remember ever having fought with you though...
You never know. Never. Yeah,
like we're kind
of like two bulldozers in relationship, so that's better than one bulldozer.
And when not. Yeah,
but the one of the Trump,
um, hearings was going on and we were listening to it
and there had been this kind of like impeachment pall over
it felt like our households
where we're just like, this motherfucker is going to get away with it.
And it was like we were like fighting out of more of it,
like a sense of despair and feeling trapped
in the political moment that America was in and how
hopeless the sense of eroding democracy can make you feel.
I remember specifically I was like, we got into a fight today
because it feels like democracy is eroding,
but we were like are like just irritated with each other.
And that's not a good place to be coming out to here,
especially when we were shooting in the winter months
when it was like, It's beautiful today, relatively speaking, at 40 degrees,
but like in the winter months and it would be like 30 with winds
and we had like a tight deadline that we had to get shots done by.
We needed to we needed to get these certain steps to happen,
but we wanted to get to a huge fight and stomp way and not talk to each other.
So we like drove out to the beach in silence.
But I remember thinking like,
this is going to be fine once we get there.
We're about to reconnect in this way that we always do.
We just let's I think I even remember what it was be like.
I'm going home. Stop the car.
Right? No, no, no, no.
Well, once we get there and get working and we'll be fine.
And by the end of the day, we were
in love and smiling and happy and like, you know what?
We can keep going.
Yes, democracy's eroding, but we have to stay here and fight for it.
We have to fight for it.
But it like, gives me hope and strength to come make this work.
It like it fills the well.
Lorenzo: Yeah.
Sarah: And I remember even like,
even after we, like,
parked in the parking lot and we're just about to be like,
we’re gonna go haul this equipment like, let's try to not fight while we are,
you know, put, you know, calling everything out there.
But we didn't even as soon as we put the equipment on, we’re like, okay, all right.
So it feels like
our practice in that way where you're like, you show up, it will be good.
You don't know how, but it will become good.
It will be better than the day they started off.
Lorenzo: I also think that, like if there's like a creative disagreement,
I think a lot of times we'll like
just try it
both ways, every way, you know, like just keep, you know, just kind of keep it open.
Sarah: And then there's another process, we be like, okay, that's enough.
We’ve shot it in a bunch of different ways.
Something, will,
you know,
it's not like something will come out in the wash,
but like, we've each, we've each gotten,
like, the shot and the light that we are looking for.
I remember that a couple of times being like, No, this like this way. Yeah.
But then we get home, like go back into the tents,
take the SD cards and the like, split them into our two backpacks.
So we each have a copy of the shots for the day, then go home.
And there's another like process of sorting through everything and arguing
once we get home like this and this and that and just like sorting in.
Lorenzo: Yeah. Sarah: In Capture One
and then there's, but
there's almost like a sense of equilibrium that we come to at the end of the day,
like after the sorting process at home where it's like.
Lorenzo: I think it's, it feels really important
that we started this project January 2020.
We had a residency.
And a deadline for the show
and then
You know,
March, you know, so January, February,
we're shooting, you know, a lot to meet our deadline.
And then, you know, COVID hit and then the uprisings
and all of 2020 happened and then 2021, you know, like this massive
So I think also being here, it's like a
touchstone or something.
Lorenzo: It feels.... Sarah: It made it possible for me to stay in New York
when New York felt insane.
Lorenzo: Yeah, it was.
It's just I just feel like
with all the displacement that happened during 2020 and people losing housing,
not being able to stay, then people of more means leaving, you know.
And so like all the upheaval of the city and the shifting literally of
bodies in space
and now were in three years later, 2023
and that's still trying to...
Sarah: Like the housing!
Lorenzo: Yeah, housing is like still being sorted out like it's...
going to
you know of course landlords are now like raising their rents
and all that again, like they trying to make up their own losses.
Sarah: Yeah.
Lorenzo: But more to the point, I think is like
when we started this I didn't realize how it's about Riis
But I also also didn't how much it was about New York for me.
And then we had the show in October 2020.
It was the first show that a lot of people had been to like since COVID.
And I mean, we weren't able to have an opening,
but it was amazing how many people, and individual visits
and just realizing like that, seeing the work in a gallery
in New York was a way of taking up space as well.
And so it's about Riis and taking up queer space
and claiming space for ourselves
and people, queer people, artists in New York have always done that
And it's always a fight because of the disparities that we live in here.
Lorenzo: That we live in everywhere. Sarah: That's one of the other reasons that this place is special.
Lorenzo: It’s so amazing. Sarah: Because it’s public
And accessible.
And it's here and like this.
This shoreline is a national shoreline.
It belongs to US, you know, it's what starts right here belongs to the city.
Lorenzo: Yeah.
I just loved the way that, like, I don't know.
Now, seeing the pictures in other spaces it feels like a continuation of claiming space.
And hopefully.
Yeah, like, the pictures make it
other people also feel like they belong.
Sarah: Yeah, I can see your teeth chattering.
Lorenzo: (laughs) It’s okay!
Serichai: We should get you inside. Sarah: Yeah. Serichai: Or get you in the tent, get warm, get warm!
Sarah: I just saw him try to smile. He was like, (chattering emoji)
Lorenzo: Is there anything else? Serichai: No, no, get inside!
Lorenzo: Sarah and I were,
you know, talking a lot about how we were sick of being read as
like a straight couple or as a gay guy and a fag hag,
which is super problematic and misogynist and just feeling invisible.
Lorenzo: You know, me being trans Sarah: Me being pretty fem.
Lorenzo: And so that frustration layered with the Trump administration
taking the word transgender off of all federal websites
and then New York Times, leaked the memo about how the Trump administration
was trying to create a federally mandated definition of gender as ascribed
by your genitals at birth. And, you know, inalterable from there.
And so all of that frustration and that sense of like invisibility
kind of, I think came to a head and we were like,
okay, we have to make something about this.
And so kind of simultaneously you saw this like wooden stump that,
you know, looked like the shell from Botticelli's, like Birth of Venus.
And I had the sense that I wanted to, like, use my body as a
sort of a visual source, you
know, source material for a project that was like an urgency, basically.
Sarah: And you had decided to stop taking testosterone after ten years.
Lorenzo: Yup.
Sarah: Because you had started thinking and talking a lot about gender abolition
and how you were read as an individual, how we are read as a couple.
And there was like a lot of, a lot of anger.
Lorenzo: Yeah.
Sarah: But also a lot of like creative, generative energy going on at that time.
And, you know, like sometimes when things are really hard,
you're like, I have to do something with as
I have to turn it into something better and making it into art
like transmute some really hard experiences into something more beautiful.
And I think that for me,
that aspect of how we landed on presenting you in these photos
both as the characters of the celestial bodies of planets
that you're portraying, ultimately, I still wanted to
like physically turn this anger into something beautiful,
both to participate in the conversation visually,
but also to take the energy that was being created
between us with all of this anger but hope and resistance.
Lorenzo: Like our experience.
Sarah: Yeah, and we like
living together and working together.
We turn a lot of our lives experiences into art.
Lorenzo: Yeah. Sarah: As a way of surviving.
We went out to the beach one day with like our whole set up
but without our cameras and stuff and like, sat and had just a writing day on the beach,
which was so lovely.
And like the,
we like wrote and pass our notebooks back and forth
and we're like kind of writing and writing about like
what the project meant and what we were like,
how things had changed between 2018 and 2020
and you were in the midst of... had just finished the Baxter Residency
No, no, this was right at the beginning.
Lorenzo: Yes, I was in it.
Sarah: It was right before the show was being mounted.
and going through all these different iterations of the titles.
And this one at, at the moment, it felt very politically stark,
like things that dark at that time.
And I think that the title ‘Shimmer Shimmer’ was connected to a number
of like theoretical things we were talking about,
but also to me it was just like hope on the horizon of being like, okay,
we have to get through this. We have to get into a better place.
And, you know, things feel very rough politically right now too, and.
People's lives and existence are in
danger and being.
Lorenzo: Yeah, it's the same urgency, right now, I think.
Sarah: The urgency still feels that way
But the sense of creating something to help us keep going.
Yeah.
And it's kind of like Stonewall, like resisting resistance fatigue.
Lorenzo: So ‘Monumental Resistance: Stonewall’
is a project where I am
standing in front of the Stonewall Inn for 24 hours
Sarah: From midnight to midnight on Pride Weekend.
Sarah: 2018 Lorenzo: 2018. Yeah.
Lorenzo: And we were talking about, like, resistance fatigue.
And, you know, when the Trump administration
first took office, I can’t remember who coined the term.
This idea of resistance fatigue came about because
activists were, you know, scrambling to put out all the fires that the Trump
administration was starting all at once,
kind of intentionally to try to burn us out, basically.
So this idea of resistance fatigue kind of,
you know, came about and we were talking about like,
how do we create a project that's like resisting resistance fatigue?
And I had this idea of like
standing for 24 hours as like a symbol of resisting resistance fatigue.
And so I had originally thought, I want to do this at Times Square.
I want to be like in in like, you know, Times Square is like to me
it symbolizes like the most public space you could be in, you know, in the US.
Lorenzo: And so... Sarah: And the center of capitalism also.
Lorenzo: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
And so I was like, okay,
I wanted to go to Times Square 24 hours yadda yadda and we go set up the shot.
And then as we're there, you're like, this just doesn't, it doesn't feel right.
People are really objectifying me in
a way, and was like, I was really kind of into this, you know, going with this idea
of a spectacle and, you know, using my body, my trans body as a spectacle.
You were like, actually, this really doesn't feel right.
How are we going to do this for 24 hours? The police were coming, giving us trouble
for me.
Like two things, a number of things happened like that night.
Like that Friday of 2018 Pride Weekend.
You were like, Let's go to our community. We should do this at Stonewall.
Lorenzo: You were like, Stonewall became a monument.
This is the first and only LGBTQ national monument is at Stonewall.
So we should call this project ‘Monumental Resistance: Stonewall’
and I know there's something like in the cab
ride from, like Times Square to Stonewall.
All of a sudden we were like, Oh, we're like, fully collaborating on this.
Like, you know, And you got you were behind the camera,
you were operating everything.
You were running that shoot.
And I was standing, you know, doing my things.
Sarah: As an act of endurance. Lorenzo: Yup.
Sarah: And so we were taking and shooting every 15 seconds and
it was a really amazing night.
And you you're poor, but I mean, not your poor, I’ll just say you're AMAZING body
you were standing there and.. Lorenzo: I remember that you would clap
and then, like, count down. Sarah: Yeah.
Sarah: And like, by the end of the midnight
the next night, there was a huge group of people
that had stayed with us for a number of hours.
There was, you know, a guy that stayed with us
for most of the night because he was worried
and he gave you that amazing fuzzy coat that you were wearing in one of the pictures.
It felt collaborative with the community. And
starting at Botticelli's ‘Venus’ I think we started looking online.
We had been shooting around broadly all over New York, but when we shot
a test shot at Riis, we were like, Wait, the whole thing can happen here.
This would be amazing.
It feels really right.
Just and in these moments where you like, trust your gut to be like,
this is the right path forward. I remember going home that night and
looking at all of the other, started scrolling through the Uffizi site
and looking at all of the other poses that were pictured in the statuary there.
And I was like, okay, that would that would be a good Jupiter.
That would be, like we started thinking about starting with classical sculpture
and then extrapolating the ideas and moving away
from that kind of traditional male female God pairs in Greco-Roman mythology
and moving into the celestial bodies that were named after these gods,
but then therefore stripping away the gendered
portrayals of them in the Uffizi to a
not like abolishing the gender that took place in those statues and
you using your body in this performative way to embody gender abolition and
each of the poses
has an origin in the story of the planet that it's assigned to.
So yesterday or on Monday when we were shooting,
we were working on Mercury and the idea of communication and
Lorenzo: Yeah, so we like we had,
you know, in Mars we have the front portion of the building.
But for Mercury, thinking about communication,
we wanted to have an image in the series that
includes and
kind of memorializes the, you know, the ‘Queer Trans Power’
and then the eyes painted with the progress flag and
Sarah: On the front.
Lorenzo: And then the ‘Know Your Power’ Sarah: The building at Riis Beach
Lorenzo: Yeah, which didn’t exist
in early 2020 when we made Mars.
So now Mercury will have that.
And then that's like a great
metaphor. You were saying this the other day.
It's like our community communicating to each other.
Know your power!
Sarah: I think that that writing went up during the uprisings in 2020,
after and that June after we had made the first series of images.
So in this, it's been three years, as you’ve said you think your body has
stopped changing.
Lorenzo: Yeah. Sarah: In relation to
the absence of testosterone or the testosterone shots that you were taking.
So it's...we're still like not going for like a
before and after situation.
But at the same time, there is
there is an element of time that I want to recognize.
I'm not exactly sure how to do that yet, but we'll see as we take the last
four of the series,
kind of what shakes out in a lot of how we work together is going by gut instinct.
And so there's a lot of research as a baseline.
So I feel like
we've got a lot of shared language to work with before we go out and shoot.
And, you know,
we talk about this in the car and on the train
and as we're walking the dog and it's like, I love this.
I love this time of our lives, we're like swimming in a project together.
It feels really good.
Lorenzo: You know, we had this idea, Sarah and I, that we wanted to
see what it would be for a while, and now we've wanted to take the glitter
constellation images and make them more of a full installation.
So we created site specific glitter
constellations for floor to ceiling and floor covering wallpaper.
And then we also have been exploring this idea of the grotto
that has its roots in the word grotesque and so I was thinking about like
anti-assimilationist embodiment and how like being willfully grotesque is part of that.
And anti-assimilationist way, potentially, and
you're like, why don't I make a grotto?
I know you're like, I can build a grotto for SPRING/BREAK
like you do the wallpaper.
I'm going to make this grotto. And we're like, Great.
So we got the specs. We're like, okay, it's going to be a 12 x 12 room.
Then like two weeks later, No, actually, it's a 30 foot wall.
Okay, great.
Then like a week after that, actually, it's a 30 foot wall
with like two other freestanding walls. But we'll get you the dimensions soon.
And so
you just started creating this crazy spray foam
insulation on the third floor here, and you mocked it up like, really well.
It was pretty cool. I mean, it was close.
Sarah: I guess I've been in a somewhat of a New York bubble because I did not...
I know that this work
we created the work in order to push the conversation forward.
But I was an unsuspecting about how much that conversation
would need to be had at SPRING/BREAK and how many times over and over and over
I would have that conversation with people.
And it was a little shocking that of of like, Wait, what's happening?
What am I looking at?
And a lot of older white men feeling
really emboldened to discuss your body and ask like, really,
invasive questions where I just want to be like Google that, okay?!
we don't need to have that conversation today.
And you ended up putting on your mask at times,
it was when it felt more crowded but also when it was you're like,
I don't know that I need to take a break from standing in front of this work
where I am portrayed, and I'm getting so much
transphobic feedback from people and like a lot of really good feedback too.
But it was a little shocking.
Lorenzo: Yep, shocking. It was a number of people.
Yeah, mostly like, you know, cis white dudes, but whatever.
But there were like a number of guys who came up to me and were like,
Yeah, I mean, it's really cool.
I mean, at first I was just thinking like, where is his dick? And I'm like,
like, you see that you were talking to me, right?
And I'm like, and I'm like, well, you know, that's,
you know, it's
one of the conversations that we're hoping to have is about gender
and what does that mean and can it be, you know,
is it always attached to our bodies and the like?
And but it was like shocking to me that that specific thing like,
‘where’s his dick’ was at least six people said that to me,
which is very, I think specific.
Sarah: Many people said that to me too.
Lorenzo: Yeah, and so and then in a way, I'm like, okay, great.
So this to me, I, you know, means that
that the work is doing its job as hard as it might be to
be so vulnerable in that space, to be like literally putting myself on display
for the sake of that.
In a way
it is, you know, even though does it seem very like radical to me,
I guess I'm like, I think the work actually is.
Sarah: Do you think that it's in part because, like, as we were creating these images,
we talked so much about the characters that you were playing that like,
I suspected that maybe like that there was a a step back,
a step away from the closeness of it, but then putting it up on the wall,
I remember having like, oh, like a feeling of like, oh, this is not safe.
And I'm like, No, this is safe.
This is a picture of you. You're just fine. You're right here.
Lorenzo: Although my favorite, though, was the and I'm
just going to make some assumptions here about like, the like
women or that the ladies of a certain age from the Upper East Side,
presumably like walking by, you know, and then being like, ooh,
like, intrigued, you know, like male nude and then being like, wait a minute.
Oh, I don't know, like sort of, like quickly walking away.
But you could see like their whole,
like mind exploding of like, I don't know who I am anymore.
They didn't want to talk, but it was so amazing to to have like
that many people come through and get to experience it.
And like, I talked to so many artists who are there and people, it was always the best,
like people would recognize the space, the building and we could talk about Riis
and everything that's happening there.
And like in a way, like thinking about queer space
and the importance of creating and taking up space,
it really felt like we were doing that at SPRING/BREAK, like taking up space
and then giving people space to have those conversations too.
Sarah: Yeah, that was really great. Lorenzo: About Riis, about queerness and what we love
Serichai: Okay, one more question for both of you...
I want you to take a second and think about it because this is going to be difficult... Lorenzo: Okay...