Navigating the world of the Transghost at first felt as alien as it looks. Though, with the help of the artists who perform within this identity, the usage of the Transghost and its performance to highlight our understanding of the body, sex and the self, and how this is impacted by our heteronormative society, became increasingly clear.

Described in their Manifesto as ‘a crossing-temporary identity’, Transghost produces resistance to the total understanding of the self and the other, by avoiding a process of codification and identity recognition in prescriptive categories. As the brainchild of performance artists, Rooy Charlie Lana and Giulia Zulian, the Transghost identity subverts any hierarchy on the basis of sex, gender, ethnicity and age. This is done via the use of the zentai - a full-length, tight fitting suit that they use as an epidermal surface to hide distinctive features, such as face and skin colour. Creating anonymity rather than invisibility.

Where are you from? And what country are you based in now?

We are Rooy Charlie Lana and Giulia Zulian and we both come from Italy. We met in Venice during university and in 2019 where we founded the artistic collective -ness. As artists we deal with performance and gender studies with a specific practice on Transghost identity. We currently live between Venice and Milan.

What have the feedback and reactions been towards Transghost?

The audience and the people tend to pay particular attention to the presence of Transghost because they are unable to scrutinize our features that are covered by the zentai. However, we notice a curiosity amongst viewers to look for a direct contact: from the selfie to a more in-depth dialogue on our practices. Initially, at an institutional level, our work has been met with some difficulties. We believe that in Italy there's still a great bias towards research on queer arts. However, we have managed to tighten alliances with artists and independent institutions that support us to continue working on our artistic path.

What influenced the creation of the Transghost identity?

Transghost is the result of our theoretical and practical reflections around the concept of the body. Each generation of artists has had to rethink the body by proposing structural changes. The body is the most sensitive and flexible receptor of changes in society, on a scientific, technical, political, and cultural level. The body becomes the essential paradigm for critical exercises of art as well as the biography and the political emancipation of individuals. The body is therefore a ductile matter, capable of configuring itself as a field of creation starting from a critical reflection on an artistic and socio-political level. Our idea of the body and identity has also originated in personal biographical implications that could not be told if not in Transghost.

What made you decide to write a manifesto?

For us, the manifesto was inevitable. Putting our discussions and knowledge into the form of a manifesto felt only natural as a means of continuing that long tradition of feminist and queer manifestos which are linked to the theories and practices of bodies. The suggestion of putting it on paper came from Dario Alì, editor-in-chief of Kabul Magazine. He had correctly guessed that the manifesto form could best condense our research. Furthermore, Charlie has been analysing the relationships between manifestos form, theatricality and performativity for a long time trough the case study of the Countersexual Manifesto by Paul B. Preciado.

When you say “the Transghost identity leads you to reflect on what it means to be and not-be oneself at the same time.” What exactly is meant by this?

It isn’t an easy task to answer this question in a few lines. Part of the answer lies in the way in which Transghost unhinges the concept that identity is linked to the body.

Nobody has the right to believe that they are their true selves based on the socially constructed labels of man or woman, masculine or feminine, heterosexual or homosexual, old or young, white or black or yellow or brown etc. Where these terms are utilised as a means of categorisation and segregation. The truth of our bodies is not the difference between our organs. The categorisations of sexuality, gender and ethnicity isolate certain aspects of the body from its totality to make them signifiers of identity, where society highlights them as the central truths of who we are.

Transghost accesses the awareness of making itself a presence, becoming a body but making the identity disappear. Transghost, thanks to the zentai, is a blinding presence but at the same time, a hidden one. A Transghost must disappear in order to come to light. We invite anyone who wishes to further expand their understanding of these assumptions of identity to read Transghost Manifesto.

In the Transghost manifesto, you mention “implementing self-fiction processes in the body as a tool of liberation.” How would someone go about enacting these processes?

Everyone should recognize themselves outside of the socially constructed domains of gender, sex, ethnicity, and age. In this sense, Transghost is the version of the body free from determined social and cultural labelling and the stereotypes and connotations which are met by such labels. Transghost performs and produces reality through the tools of fiction. Therefore, the use of the zentai is one of the possible fictional practices. Thoughts, memories, and verbal language make up the intangible body of Transghost. The fiction of the intangible body follows the principles that regulate the self-fictional narrative: an autobiographical text whose story does not respond to the reality of the facts. However, the fictionality of this story is not always codable, since it situates in the problematic relationship between truth and lie, reality and fiction, between memories, desires and dreams that belongs to the author. In this sense, saying you are a Transghost is already an act of self-fiction.

The performance of on a solitary beach, for La Biennale di Venezia, is rather erotically suggestive. How is sexuality positioned and portrayed within the Transghost identity?

Sexuality and desire are components that move our bodies and define our identities. Transghost also makes a clear reference to fetish-related BDSM practices that involve the use of the zentai.

Sex and sexuality have historically, been utilised as tools for controlling bodies and entire populations. The institution of marriage, or the role of women, etc. are dictated by a patriarchal ideal of controlling bodies through sexuality. In this sense, a Transghost (through hiding sexual organs, ass and breasts as it hides the face through zentai), frees itself from the conditioning imposed by a heteropatriarchal system that confines people and their bodies into normative codes and roles. The theme of On a Solitary Beach is the desire between bodies that we expressed through the dimension of the breath, a vital material for identity. The ordered chaos of inflatables saturates the internal space of a Vaporetto boat until it incorporates each Transghost performer, who disappears inside the accumulation of plastic. The performance insinuates perversion, sexuality, cruising, the exchange of bodily fluids and orgasm.

The boat represents an invitation to travel the perilous journey of crossing from one state to another. Whether this be altering the state of the body, or crossing towards new horizons or drifts of identity. Therefore, the performance tells of mass tourism, holidays, summer frenzy. A parody and subversive quotation of the aesthetic, political and social codes in which Venice has been and is being idealized and consumed.

Your most recent performance is titled “Marriage is a fictional union”. Do you feel the notion of marriage is outdated? Or would marriage be something you would consider?

The marriage bond between a man and a woman dates back to eras with customs and traditions very distant from today. The laws that regulate the institution of marriage refer to a woman as property and therefore, take a patriarchal form. Nowadays we are witnessing the celebration of marriage as the definitive fulfilment of love. But marriage has nothing to do with love.

It became important to think about the performative utterances of "Yes, I do", of the ceremonial formulas. Attempting our queer performance of the union of marriage, undermined its traditional stance as a union of two heterosexual and cisgender subjects. Transghost does not marry but denounces that this act is performative, that it refers to an act of fiction or social construction. We believe the only appropriate way to consider marriage is outside its current normative position.

Do you find freedom in the ability to practice identity dissolution through Transghost?

We are careful to call ourselves free in Transghost, but Transghost has the ability to free bodies from the tight binary codes we have been all educated and socialised into. Transghost is another way of exercising the body outside of a regulatory system that wants us to be recognizable in certain aesthetic and behavioural standards.

In the manifesto, you also describe Transghost as a “crossing-temporary identity.” Do you utilise this temporary aspect as means of escapism from the constraints of your identity when not wearing a zentai?

The notion of time is not unrelated to that of transition and crossing. Transghost is in transition towards a disidentification and a rearrangement of the aesthetic and political codes of the body and identity. The transit is not a defined path that physically proceeds from one specific point to another. Being in transition means exploring the possibilities of the body, not following a definitive destination. Crossing-temporary identity does not indicate the time of use of the zentai, but the temporary quality of the transition, which is not linear or perennial, which does not compress Transghost towards new and monolithic definitions of identity.

The additional clothing you add on top of the zentai is said to “reflect and clash with some mechanisms of everyday dressing, and that analyse the processes and principles of fashion.” Can you give us an example of how this is done?

Transghost becomes recognizable through the surface that it inhabits: a tight-fitting full body suit, known as zentai. Transghost through the use of the zentai, accesses a means of queer performativity that enhances the visual surface of identity without the possibility of gender, age, ethnicity, etc. prejudice. Clothes are the most intimate objects with which the human being has a relationship. In Transghost, the garments are positioned on another epidermal surface which is not the skin but the zentai. In this sense, the clothes do not have to fulfil the function of dressing the naked body but serve to present Transghost through the social, political, and cultural codes that are associated with clothing. This is what fashion does: making clothes that take on different meanings according to the passage of the ages and that become a sign or symbol of changes. For example, Transghost will wear underwear on top of the zentai , which exposes and reveals gender and sex as a fluid accessory to wear and perform.

How do you feel about the current processes and principles of the fashion industry?

We have actively collaborated with young and independent brands and designers such as Reamerei, Marantico, Verissima Fonderia Anonima (etc..).

We have looked for and chosen brands that share with us similar values and aesthetics, such as the absence of a gender determination for men/women in their collections. Currently, we notice that the fashion industry is particularly observant of the political role that bodies have in the identification of the brand. For example, trans musician Arca, being chosen as one of Calvin Klein’s testimonials for their #proudinmycalvins campaign. The processes that regulate the fashion industry are no different from those that regulate the contemporary art fields. We are also aware of how the representation of non-compliant bodies is just one of the many urgent issues that should be taken care of.