What we wrote about it at the time: Transexuality is most often discussed as a process of becoming: maybe in line with Simone de Beauvoir’s statement “one is not born, but becomes a woman”. Doesn’t this sound worryingly like the positivism and self-actualisation of capitalism / humanism? What if we were to think of transexuality as an unbecoming (stemming from an inability to live with your birth body)? Does it allow us to think more about our material conditions rather than some transcendental other? Would it allow a kind of deprogramming in relation to ideas of the self, the soul or religion? Thaemlitz will discuss those questions and more in this reading of the text “Soulnessless – Introduction,” along with a Q&A, in preparation for their evening performance of audio selections from the album and film of the same name.

“I concede the inescapability of religious and spiritual dogma to one degree or another in all corners of life – from extremist religious militarism to the seemingly harmless transcendental pretenses of “soul music,” ambient, new age, classical, pop, rock, folk, house… No matter how much I wish for the eradication of spiritual thinking, I have no faith in the possibility of an atheist society or godless world. I am truly without faith. In a media marketplace that demands soulness, I can only offer soulnessless.”

Terre was interview by Neil Cooper for The List.