WatchPeopleDie.tv: Trans Death and Embodiment is writing from watchpeopledie.TV (2025), performed as part of the 2025 VCUarts MFA Thesis exhibition that was on view April 11, 2025, to May 11, 2025, at The Anderson Gallery in Richmond, VA.

In a time of widespread conservatism, watchpeople die.TV: Trans Death and Embodiment is not only unapologetically trans but challenges and transends the vitriol to create urgent and powerful work.

Yvonne states in the forward, “This written portion was made from performing an erasure poem on the text of the sourced transphobic comments and then commenting on the erased words. The text is intended as a performance text. What this means is that I think of the text as not just a documentation of a performance but a performance itself.”

Furthermore, she states, “When I can create this space, it enhances the exploration of the body even more. And it enhances this confrontational thing of, we don’t have to constrain our bodies. Even something as simple as why are we still doing this setup of stage, speakers facing out, audience out there? Why, why do we keep doing that? Having it be a durational performance prolongs that question and prolongs the audience’s memory, with what I hope is that people will go into other spaces and want to see someone working with space in a more interesting way. And that’s It. I want people to ask that question. What is space with/without body?”

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74 Pages

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GenderFail (founded in 2015) is Be Oakley's publishing, programming, and archiving platform. GenderFail is not non-profit but profit-for-survival or profit-to-continue-our-work-without-other-means-of-capital, and, most importantly, to make money for others I publish, to create profit-for-labor. All Books are handmade, risograph-printed, fair-trade, and ethically sourced!