Scripted Infection: A Mixed Media Exploration of Autistic and Transfeminine Marginalisation

Abstract

Drawing from my lived experience as an autistic, transfeminine person, this study explores how three animated short films and accompanying soundtracks might draw on dream logic and abstraction to create a form of audio and visual storytelling that articulates the experience of not integrating into a cisgendered, heteronormative world. Theoretically, the inquiry is framed by the concept of scripted infection, which describes the psychological damage one experiences while trying to conform to societal expectations. In the study, discourses from psychology, film, and queer studies are used to unpack embodied experiences and apply them to narrative and sonic treatments in an artistic mixed media design practice. The study’s research methodology is structured along an experimental 2D animation production pipeline. The significance of the study lies in its ability to express the sense of threat, loneliness, alienation and hope that one experiences as an autistic, transfeminine person. As such, the project suppliments existing theoretical discourses with an artistic voice that positions lived experience beyond the realm of the pathologised and statistical.