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'Transparent' Producer To Discuss Her Work And Its Impact At UC San Diego

'Transparent' Producer To Discuss Her Work And Its Impact At UC San Diego
'Transparent' Producer To Discuss Her Work And Its Impact At UC San Diego GUEST: Zackary Drucker, multimedia artist

Zachary Drucker is a multimedia artist and producer on the Emmy Award winning series Transparent. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm just trying. Can you just help me out here. Are you are you saying that you're going to start dressing up like a lady all of me all my life my whole life I've been dressing up. That was actor Jeffrey Tambor who plays a transgender woman and her older daughter played by Amy Landecker transparent producer Zachary Drucker will be speaking about her work as a trans woman artist and activist at UC San Diego today. Earlier Drucker joined me to talk about how she uses her art to give voice to the transgender community. Zachary thanks so much for joining us here today. Thank you so much for inviting me to talk with you. The Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego has photos from the relationships series in its permanent collection. Tell us about the creation of that series. Yeah you know I created that series of work with my frequent collaborator and former partner Rhys Ernst and we met each other 10 years ago and we were both transitioning at the same time. Our relationship was a surprise to us I think. And as many you know young trans people do we kind of took photographs of each other and ourselves I think just to see ourselves in the world. And it was really kind of just a personal collection of images that we hadn't intended to put out into the world. But after several years we had amassed this incredible collection that really kind of archived our lines like that we shared together and sort of inadvertently documented our transition. But in a way that was completely now realized it was really a body of work that we coauthored and created together I think that the two magic things in life are art and love and relationship is an embodiment of both. And it was meant as like a private visual diary and yet you made it public and it really seems kind of symbolic of the transitioning process for many people right. Yeah absolutely. And you know I think that there's also just a total dearth of interventions of trans people and love. So that was the piece of it as well like you are about transitioning a trans woman trans man and we wondered like anybody has ever been in a relationship like that and a piece of that was that there was no representations of trans people in relationships together. And I think that piece of buzz for us was to really create something material and the world can attest to the existence of trans people loving each other. And you're a producer on the Amazon series Transparent which has won multiple Emmys and has been watched by millions. How do you feel about the success of that show. You know I think that we've had such tremendous gains especially over the past year in representing trans people stories. I think that we have a long way to go but I really believe that how having gender diverse and trans people authoring their own stories is the future. Well you know I also I. I write in a New York Times article about the creator of transparence saying that you and Rev's are the homecoming queen and king of the trans movement. How do you feel about being a representative of the movement. You know I am just a proud to be and I'm proud to be a part of that community. I think that we all do our part and we all have different platforms and we do what we can where we can. I think that we have a responsibility to go to the areas of the lowest need. And I think that we're in dire need of representation right now. You know cloud says that only 16 per cent of the American public knows a trans person personally tweets 84 percent of the other people are only learning about fancy on film and television. So I think that's a great place to start. I think oftentimes culture does precede all attacks that culture or cultural change happens first. I think that you know the backlash to this cultural change is a desperate effort to keep us in the past but that's just not the way that time works. You know time moves forward. Now how did the idea for this has me come out of the television series Transparent. You know after the first season of creating transparent and it was in part the like the Emmy campaign actually was how we were able to kind of get that into the bigger program and it was a great opportunity to tell trounce stories and the kind of piece things out that we had a trust in the first season of the show. Let's do it. You know really centering the town's all in our community and one episode of the docu series is in honor of a. Parker Tell me about her Nyambura Curtis murder the year that we made transparent the first scenes. I think we wrapped production and she was murdered on Melrose a grade where we shoot transparent you know the Paramount lot and it just hit really close to home. The violence inflicted on trans women of color is a pandemic in America. And you know sitting at that intersection of being in a trans body being in a woman's body being in a body of color. And I have her who was randomly a murder on Melrose Avenue. So we were trying to highlight I think the real issues from the trans community outside of you know the show itself and it was a great opportunity for us to do that. And what impact do you want your art to have on society. You know I think that we create because we have to and if somebody out there see is what you're doing and realize that they can do something like that too. If you can be an inspiration to people around you. If you have an impact on you know just one person. And that's it now. All right. Well Zachary Drucker thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Zachary Drucker is speaking today at 7 p.m. at the UC San Diego Price Center Theater.

Zackary Drucker, a trans woman and multimedia artist, uses her art to give voice to the transgender community.

Drucker is known for her large scale photographs, some of which are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. She is also a producer on the Emmy Award-winning Amazon series "Transparent" and a spin-off docuseries called "This is Me."

Drucker will be speaking about her work and its impact on society Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the UC San Diego Price Center Theater.

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She joins Midday Edition on Tuesday to discuss her work and what she hopes it accomplishes.

Corrected: March 28, 2024 at 5:43 PM PDT
Editors Note: We misspelled Zackary Drucker's first name in an earlier version of this story. We regret the error.