Hello everyone and welcome to living in this queer body a podcast about barriers to embodiment and how our Collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. I'm a shape interest and I'm really looking forward to this episode today before we get to the interview. I just wanted to thank first and foremost my listeners, but also the people who have been showing up and participating in the virtue.12 workshops. I've been hosting I really can't express enough how powerful those experiences have been and I guess you kind of have to just try it to see what it's like. So if you are interested I'm doing them monthly and this coming month in December. I will be posting a virtual workshop on December 8th from 6 to 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. I'm and if you can't make it live you can still sign up and get the recording. You can also consider signing up for a one-on-one session with me to get some support during this stress filled season because believe me I feel it too and we can ponder together about how to navigate this complex season. So the virtual Workshop is called query. The holidays and some of the questions that I have been asking myself and that we will be asking one another and thinking about together. How do we identify our needs when the demands of heteronormative colonial settlers and patriarchal holiday discourse has threatened our self-determination. How do we navigate caring for ourselves our partners and our friends during this holiday season? How do we nourish ourselves? How do we know? Know how to nourish ourselves and what we want and what can we generate excitement about so I do hope you join us. These have been very Dynamic and interesting conversations and you can sign up for all of the workshops through the link in my Instagram bio at living in this queer body or at living in this queer body.com, and there's a link to sign up so onto our episode This interview is with Savannah canoe poop and they are just a special person. It's an interview with a wild creative and inspiring and deeply insightful artist in human in this interview. We talked about their Wildlife as JT Leroy their passion for Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Savannah's complex relationship with their mom amongst many. Things Savannah knoop is a new york-based artist who engages in writing performance and object making from 2009 to 2016 canoe co-hosted a monthly queer audio-visual party. Whoa mon, they received their be a at CUNY under the mentorship of video a conchie and their MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University in sculpture and extended media. They have shown and performed at the Whitney Moma the ICA Philly movement research Essex flowers gallery and ACP in Los Angeles in 2007. They published their Memoir titled girl boy girl how I became JT Leroy from Seven stories, press cataloging their experience of playing their sister-in-laws writing Persona and Avatar JT Leroy with director. Kelly they adopted it into a feature length film starring Kristen Stewart and Laura Dern Savannah has studied dance and martial arts for over 20 years. They are currently a purple belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu under Marcelo Garcia, so you can find out a lot about Savannah and their work at Savannah knut dotnet. That's sa VA and nahh canoe p.net. set and they also have an Instagram presence their Instagram handle is Sav a TT e and I will put some links in the show notes to some of their most recent projects which are really cool and interesting and also a link to the film The JT Leroy film that you can watch on iTunes and I think Amazon Prime 2 You should check it out and I really hope you enjoy this episode. Thanks for joining me and I hope to see some of you during the queering holidays Workshop coming up very soon. So Savannah, thank you. So. Much for joining me today. My pleasure. It's good to have you so I like to start each episode with the question. Could you reflect on a time when you were younger? Maybe one of your earliest memories of kind of understanding what it meant to have a body and any thoughts you had about that or messages you you remember receiving about that. I have this memory that I think it's kind of something that I've recently Unearthed, but I think I was about 7 or 8 and I was walking home alone from school and my older sister's friends were driving by and they honk and waved and I waved back and And I remember thinking as they were driving away. They don't know. What a Bad person I'm going to be but it's like I'm going to be and then my mind it was going to end up a prostitute and or you know, the other version was a spy for the wrong side was some I mean looking back on it. I was kind of astonished that I had any sense of either of those things at the time, but it was the Cold War after all so Yeah, maybe it is television there nor whatever I'd seen out there. But yeah, so that's Helen keeps getting rolled around. Hmm. How did how did that kind of deep believe? It sounds like you're still perplexed exactly how it kind of came about but how did it how did it keep like playing out in different iterations in your you know your Early Childhood or did it did you kind of it? Sounds like it was a pretty strong a strong thought or feeling that you had. Yeah, I think I mean it is ground into some sense of feeling like an imposter and also yeah, I mean something about disappointing others and How did it play out? I think it was like I was always. kind of In conflict with my mother in some way or another where I was like You know stealing my mom was a health food addicts addict and so it's like often stealing candy from stores. And I remember I would I stole a roll of you know, pre-made cookie dough like those roles. I stole that and hid it under my mattress or maybe in like a crook a crack of the mat just a bit Blaster bagging was sort of that was like my secret little and Found that and so I think it was things like that where it's like as always kind of stealing or lying to her about this thing or another and later it became about, you know, going out too late or where was I that sort of stuff? I think we had like a lot of it was a dialogue with her a lot and then some sort of feeling of you know, feeling having crushes on friends and this and that and I was all coming together around the same time, but that was not really Processed through that those right moment control that all came out from yeah. They're in my psyche. Yeah, it's interesting. It's just interesting to hear you talk about how you know your relationship that these certain incidents with your mother sort of reiterated or solidified some idea of you being like aberrant at an early age and that then I think if this is like, I mean, I don't mean to be reductive about your experience, but I think it's a kind of a common experience for a lot of you know, broadly speaking a lot of queer people who you know sort of take messages that they receive and then once there's like crushes or sort of sexual feelings or identity feelings around gender coming about those messages get kind of layered on you know, so you already it sounds like you already had this sort of sense of yourself as like possibly, you know, Prostitute or a spy or someone who stole or was you know, like these these sorts of things. I don't know how much that kind of you think in some ways that ended up shaping aspects of your like your current gender sexuality expression and the right. Yeah. No, I think that's a good point. I do think it's it's it is so many layers that and it's such a feedback loop. So it's hard to know right which which part is coming from where hmm? Yeah. So what was it like for you to have a mother I live in a household. That was what did you call her like a health food? He was a health kind of hell. Food addict I'm addict. Yeah. I called her a health food addict. Were you tho like the one in Rebellion around that or was were your siblings as well? My face, oh, my sister was 10 years older. So if she was in Rebellion, it was sort of like way that I didn't understand that she did she went off to school and I remember that very specifically feeling like we I had a tea a we had a tag team and then suddenly yeah, I was alone. Where's old hmm, you know, so it was a sort of like, you know, My mother is she's kind of she's on her own trip. And I remember her when we would sleep in in the Summer. She would wake us up going lazy girl. That's the way we woke up every morning. But you know, it's kind of like it was more fun when there was two of us. Yeah. Yeah, what did you it sounds like you did it's hard to know if it was Rebellion or just kind of like dis something that was disapproved of by her. But you know, what? Did you find yourself doing in your teen years or like as a result of may be feeling some kind of constriction or not seeing eye to eye. Let's just say it with with your mom and her way of her way of being I mean, I think it was. like a just sort of expect to get kind of emotional about it, but also want to do this. That's okay. Take your time. We were just kind of always in struggle and some kind of like it is a kind of Battling all the time. in small things, but I think it came from. where she was at at the time which was we had been living in the city and then we moved to the suburbs and it was kind of a profound discontent around her life and how she gotten it ended up like there and and ultimately Breathing me on her own show. I think it was something about you know, like this content that I just was bad timing for something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah reacting to that the kind of atmosphere of that aspect of your your childhood and her the way that you two were kind of in it together and maybe kind of alone It in some ways both of you, right it could feel that way. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. So in terms of leaving home and the choices you made after leaving home. How how did you kind of find your way in terms of what resonated for you and what you've come to sort of enjoy or what has motivated you and your life because I think a lot of times, you know, I at least in talking to many friends and people in this podcast. It's like this story of of really not being given often like a the you know, I don't know anyone who actually was given, you know, the most attuned and expansive childhood, but you know this idea of like sort of finally having the freedom of choice in a way and I don't know if it felt that way for you. But yeah, maybe you could talk a little bit about Out some of the choices you have made in your later life. Yeah, so I was always studying dance and God I was always loved taking dance classes, but then they got some point where I started doing martial arts and that has kind of been like that was some kind of Before I was making art or had gone to some point of you know, like finding my own voice creatively. I was always moving my body around. I think that's like kind of foundational area where I figure out what I'm feeling and it comes through through my body. That's a way of me. I got that's the way that I serve process a lot of experiences and I think it's just because I've done it for so long in that particular way. and but taking yeah, like I think I was in taking all these classes at Community College and I was studying I kind of become really interested in in Chinese and I was learning Chinese and like how to write all the you know, it was like speaking and writing and I remember that I was going to I'd gotten to a certain level and there was a grant that It was sort of like you'd go to China and and you get your full ride paid for and then he'd have to go work for the state department after that. It's like I was I had kind of described was there was all these, you know, I discovered raving and I was like staying up all night and had died my hair the hair Hopper and I remember I was wearing something it was kind of like a plastic bag when I ran into Interviews like some wooded thing and it was plasticky and I had not gotten much sleep and I remember the woman looking at me and going like one. She thought I was old are you and I think it's like 19 at the time and she ski look much older I guess cuz I seem so worn out or maybe I was really hungover, you know, like kind of like you're slogging along and letting off fumes sand And it was kind of a break. I remember walking out of there and going like I don't want to do this. I don't I don't actually want to go this direction and it was a definitive break in terms of like I was kind of trying to go some academic route and the granted I was in Community College. So it was like there was a little bit of fine it I mean it was it was not like anyways, I just started that was a moment where I feel like I veered really I took like a Is it and started making clothes and what our that's sort of what that's where it ended up going and around the same time. I bet my brother's partner at the time this writer or Albert who had this Alter Ego / pen name and I met her she gave me the books and or maybe I read them earlier. Anyways, I started beating her up with her and - and then eventually, she asked me to play this this the body of her character which didn't exist. He was a fiction that she created this character out of hmm. So so that was also a pivot point of that kind of coincided with deciding not to go. Learn Chinese for the state department. Great. Yes, really. I mean taking this whole ride for example, right? Freight was appealing in some ways. Sure. Yeah, but also because when you're young or when you're that age, you really are hoping someone will see you and give you a sense of you know, I did feel sort of bereft in the I mean as I think most 20 year olds do like where's my head? And where's my ass about sure? Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like you know that again the playing the character. And in some ways takes you back to again to your body and and that there's something clarifying that happens when you are, you know for you particularly as you said with, you know, martial arts and dance and even I'm thinking about like, you know by probably designing and making clothing is sort of about the body. Kind of bleeding in terms of your decisions and the direction in which you're taking yourself. Yeah, so I think you know I this is just a little like disclaimer for the audience that there's just a tremendous amount of information out there that is available. If you are interested in part of Savannah's Journey the JT Leroy Journey. But I do I think that part of what, you know, I'm interested in talking about because it you know, his just happening or is just happened and something that you've been part of of late is the way in which that aspect that story and that character, you know was recently. Translated into a film in which you were played by an actor. And so I just did the whole the I love to get into that as we're talking about the body like these kind of duplications of bodies playing, you know, kind of playing characters and we're how you fit in all of that and maybe you can give just a little context for the the audience about about the film surely go so sad. Dilash rela, I think you so to meeting Laura and she was sort of looking for a body to play this character Jay to Roy that she'd been actually living as for many many years before over the she would live over the phone and through email as this character and was writing books as this character. So then they got to some point where she thought maybe I died there like I can't not show up. Show up to my life anymore is JT Leroy shoot and so she asked me if I would kind of casually play this body out in the world. And then and that was something that we just seem like why not. I can't do this for her and and then cut to six years later of playing this character. So I prayed him from 1999 to 2005 and I was 19. 225 is that was the chapter that I played this character. So then eventually private investigator / reporter put it together that if you didn't exist and it's not whole thing came out in the state public way then later. I was going through I'd never written anything down during the time. So I started sort of collecting all of my memories around. experience because in some ways I had really externalized the experience and I had been there the whole time and yet was not totally engaging with all of that. I think and so as I went through and wrote it down. I was kind of astonished at what a crazy ride. I had just yeah, I had you know, so it was like really trying to collect what had happened for me through this experience. So I put out a book in. Parents have been a memoir from my memories. I wrote and then I met this writer. I mean, I'm I met this director Justin Kelly in San Francisco and very slowly like we know we kind of would run into each other and he asked me if I wanted to adapt it into a screenplay in them, like kind of very we have very organically we decided to write it together. Hmm, and and so So we adapted it and it took 10 years of her life Wow to adapt it into the script and kind of all in all to get it to production and it just came out last April 2019 and it's called to to Roy and in it. Kristen Stewart is playing my character and Laura. Dern is playing where Albert and then there's some other great actors in it by and Krugerrand. Calvin Harris jr. So yeah, the think it is a kind of process of translation and you know living and experiences so different than writing it per memory and when you're writing something in memory, your memories are kind of so plastic in some ways and yet like there's these these moments that you very clearly remember that I think point to what you care about in an experience and but through translating it over and rewriting the script so many times and also Laura. I mean I'm worried weeks wrote a draft of it. Hmm eventually we would yeah, so shout out to Laurie its alluring best amazing right also, amazing writer zipper mouth and they'll slowly relative did a huge overhaul on the drafts as also my family but it was kind of yeah amazing writer and it was sort of like a kind of passed back like, you know, first you were trying to be very just and I were to be very follow the book and follow the order and be really kind of concise about all the different places because of course the trip as it goes on and now on it's all about showing up to these public events. And so there's all these different like trips and things that eventually it's like that you only need one trip kind of So eventually the script itself with was whittled down to one trip one photos. Two one whatever the public anyone reading whatever the public event was that Tech was that this experience is just circling around but memories then become even more plastic. So it would be it's like each form translates because of the form itself. It's translated into a very different experience every time I think. Ink but also just in terms of trying to get to the the emotional trajectory that actually does not change throughout the mmm the different experiences of it. Yeah. What were you trying to get at or what? Do you what did you kind of land on in terms of that that felt resident you about the emotional trajectories emotional experience? So to me, it really is the experience trees. So centered around this exchange with Laura the writer and and also this this experience with in my actual life. It was this filmmaker Asia Argento who wanted to make GTS work and do a film and then as this came there are these two different relationships that I think my experience keeps moving. towards in one is or both of them have to do with feeling like are you being seen or are you not but You know with with one of them, it feels very much like you are. doing something for them and do they see you to basically centers around these relationships with these two people which I think have to do with The kind of complexities of intimacy with another person and and is it possible to feel seen by another person and can we really engage with one another you know, honestly and and when you do it's like it's just it's also about the messiness of that when you when you're actually trying to be with another person intimately. It's like all of this merging is a tricky business. What did you have blessed? Yeah, well, I guess I'm just in terms of that emerging quality and we can we can talk about this in any way you like, but I guess I'm curious how as a As someone who's being depicted by another actor, like what? Wow, how did how did that feel for you to presumably I imagine Kristen Stewart spent time with you trying to understand you as a person and how to portray you and yeah, I want that's its own kind of like messy intimacy that maybe you could speak to a little bit as well. yeah, I mean it's I think that that had the potential to be very painful just the way that it is painful to kind of see yourself in a recording or we need your voice on the phone that I got ya know, but I think it does sort of feel like a miracle and that or just great casting in that I felt like she really held this all of the kind of complexities of my quote unquote character and I felt really seen by her and that feels like a miracle just in terms of how how Yeah, how often we repel ourselves from ourselves. Yeah, so my mom when she saw it she said Question is she really gets you and she's the James Dean of our time. Oh, my the way, she kind of I think because what my mom saw probably was that out. She's moving so much like me and there's something mannerisms but it's like I feel like what she's picking up on his history very physical way of being someone else and yeah all the kind of yeah, I think that's yeah. I've heard from we have we know each other and have mutual friends and met and people who have seen the film and who know you well have also, you know commented on how kind of alarming it was to wash being depicted by another person and to feel as if Kristen really picked up on the physicality of your presence because I you know as someone who knows you as well, you know like that. That is its So specific right? It's so specific for all of us and to have some head to attend to those qualities or the subtleties of who you are. I mean, I'm kind of can't imagine what that would feel like as you said. It has the potential to be like a kind of a disaster and totally painful but it sounds like her yeah, it sounds like it actually somehow I wonder how that how maybe that shifted some kind of self concept you had about yourself to see to see and be able to see I guess your your character depicted with a lot of care and nuanced. Yeah. Yeah, and I think also because it was such a public outing at the time and at such a kind of point in time when I think you're Really trying to put together who you are and what you care about and how you navigate the world that that it was very healing to have this to feel like somebody had understood you because in the Press, I mean at this point, I don't want to rail too hard on the Press, but I do feel like the mainstream media. Never really took the I mean, I think it has to do with again with form and that there's just not enough. Space Maybe to totally understand what the story was about but that that I had never felt like anybody had gotten it right. Yeah. So in some ways Christian is through playing me she's playing all of the public facets of of me and then also yeah, I think she did it with a lot of love and care. Mmm-hmm. Yeah. Wow, so this story broadly speaking. The story has really been a big part of your your adult life or your early adult life. I'm also curious to hear about the other aspects of your adult life. I am like, you know what has been sustaining you and how maybe I guess specifically I'm curious how movement has an embodiment has sort of continued to be a part of your life. A guy a way of guiding you and helping you understand your emotional world. Like how is that playing out recently or you know in your life now, so I think partly it's been played out through being a performer for other artists and having a really positive experience with that. Yeah, because in some ways with Laura it felt like it was a sort of like, okay. You give yourself up to someone but then they don't actually honor the kind of relationship that or that very I think tenuous and and vulnerable. Yeah thing that happens when someone's in another person's work. So I have I feel like that's been great. And I recently I was in there was a show about dance. Judson dance theater and so I did I was a one of the performers for Simone forties pieces and we did it for six months and we trained with her and then and there's about 20 of us maybe and it was that was like an amazing. experience to do someone's work for six months and and in such a public space and then also I've been As I mentioned before doing martial arts and I did sort of switch at some point. And now I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu and that which is a form of wrestling. It's grappling and it's submission grappling and can you describe that a little bit more? What? Yeah really interests that mean? Yeah, the submission grappling. Yeah. I like that terminology kind of yeah. I mean, it's very techy. X rays which are giving discussion grappling but basically to just choose, you know, there's like what you do if you're standing with someone in that sort of traditionally, that's Judo. That's the for originally there were all these different forms. So it's what you do in the when you're standing with one another and then Jiu-Jitsu traditionally was what happens when you get on when you fall on the ground the other what can you do in conflict and in struggle and in this kind of art of conflict is how I always think of it. So Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a hybrid form of that. We're so it's all groundwork. You're always on the ground and it's different than other kinds of wrestling in that you can really be a smaller body personal traditionally like your weight is very, you know, it's hard to determine who yeah, it's hard to kind of get anything going if you're much lighter than someone else but in Jiu-Jitsu, To its everyone rolls with one another every weight class and you can dominate or you can kind of kind of eat up someone's space and get a submission from being on the bottom, which is very unusual. And so you're doing it's a kind of very mechanical thing. It's a kind of like a game of tapping like You do uncle or your cash like that. So you're looking for a submission is a Chokehold to me around the neck or a joint lock which would be your arms or your legs. So you're kind of playing like, you know with terms like it's like a kind of very mechanical thing where it's like oh if I don't tap or it's very like Edge play ish if you don't tap then Then there are that sort of what's making you tap that if you don't tap you might hurt yourself or you might pass out. That is something that I incorporate into a lot of my work in terms of like I've developed this performance called the tripod sweep, which is I've been doing it now since 2014. I do it kind of whatever someone asked me to but it's like taking just one move from And it's kind of basic sweep where you merge with someone else's body. They put your foot on their hip and you kind of fall to the ground and you push and pull at the same time. And one of the things that to me is so fascinating about your jutsus. Just how much non verbal contact you have with another person real contact Lee intimacy. I mean you share so much for someone else, but you don't talk about It which is kind of weird and interesting. There's all these people that I spent so much time with this point that I just I don't know anything about them. Yeah, I don't know is their sweat their yeah. Yeah everything right everything and And so I guess in some ways it's a find it like it's a great it externalizes a lot of the ways that I thinking about like some of these themes of the GT project that I was talking about where you're like, how can we be with with one another? Yeah, and also I made all the like when I'm making sculpture, I think it's a similar thing where it's sort of like how Can you touch something enough to know it hmm? There's a whole series of sculptures that I think that seemed to be a part of this work this body of work that are kind of a piece there pieces of furniture that are solid wood laminated two-by-fours together. And at first you can't it's like I glue so many pieces together that I can't move it. You know and that's that's sort of totally freaks me out. So I got stuck with this thing. And how do I how can I be with this thing? And so then I carve it down into these rocking tails that are pieces of furniture that he sort of you they have these little imprints seats and you can sit on them and engage with the way and rock and sort of feel your tail their concept Furniture. Yeah. I feel like those are Also connected to movement and sort of moving things around and like kind of their built-in into these pieces are all the time you spent with them. Right? And so the tripod sweep is is also I think a part of that work, but ultimately it's all about this sort of practice of repetition and transmissions and translation. Maybe two mmm, it's also it sounds like you know, I mean just I'm reflecting on what you said earlier about. You know, how long you actually played this character and then how long the film you know creating the film. There's there's something about kind of sticking with a project repetition of a product, you know, repeating the the performance piece and and kind of sticking with it in in the same way. It sounds The Jujitsu the practice or the kind of sticking with that entails kind of bringing something up to its Edge, right? You know, I mean like really sticking with something until it if it reaches some kind of conclusion, I guess but I mean, I guess we could call this like, you know broadly speaking like durational work, but it's not that's not exactly what it is. It's I think it is about yeah. It's like like you repeated until it becomes. Clear what it is. Yeah, but you're figuring that out in the in the process. I think that's just really interesting as someone, you know myself as someone who's like very much Ken can get really lost in my head and you know, really figuring kind of sorting and figuring things out intellectually and coming from certain conclusions that are may be disconnected from the like consensual reality or the outside. World and you know what times and it sounds like you know, you have a process or an approach that you know, sometimes works for you where you really kind of invest your body into a process and then determine the meaning right? Yeah. I think it is. trying to recognize and sort of respect the language of the body, which I think is much. It's much more. Well, it's just it's a language that is unacknowledged for so many of us and also culturally unacknowledged and and I think often we make work that we're trying to make remind ourselves as something which is to kind of like for me. I think it is about kind of reminding myself that that this is SpaceX generative that's that I value that I want to share with people and you know intern for for us to kind of be in that language together if it's possible. Yeah, I guess, you know, I'm curious if in reflecting on that that story you told me at the beginning of the the interviewing you your you know, you had this notion of who you who you are kind of bound to be or what your your organism was bound to to do in the world and I don't know knowing what you know now or what you kind of just reflected upon around the generative nature of your own body, and it's experiences. And what's possible. I don't know. Is there something that you would maybe say or convey to that younger version of you? I mean the ice and maybe it is about insisting on. I'm sort of giving that that notion of someone who's doing the wrong thing in the world. Yeah, giving it room to kind of do Extinction. Yeah like to play any kind of play it out into kind of insist on it and hmm and and and give it you know, Give it room to not be villainized or pathologized or whatever. I mean that might be one one way of thinking about it. Yeah, but I do often feel like a lot of my work is about a kind of permissive space and it's like that thing where you look at someone's hair cut you think that's the haircut you're going to give me or the way that your kind of you want to share something. Actually, it's to share share with yourself and with others, right? Yeah, so we are about out of time, but I want to make sure that people can there will be links in the show notes to the the pieces that you you described. But I want to hear a little bit about how people can find out about what you're doing and also about the film and how they can see it. So I often. I pushed everything on Instagram. And then I also have a website. It's Savannah canoe doc net. Yeah, maybe and then my handle is at savate S as in Sam a V8 e TT e Triple-T and it's private, but I I probably it's just a kind of filtering for trolls on the internet. So Don't be dissuaded by that and then and the film is on iTunes. And I think it's on Prime at this point Amazon Prime amazing. Yeah, so you can have it any time. You can see any time you can rent it. You can own it. I think there's a DVD Blu-ray coming out. Oh my gosh. There's also a really cool press that you did. Some beautiful images I saw with I'm not sure which magazine it was an interview with you and Kristen Stewart the Collier. Yeah. Yes. That was uh, no three to see her amazing German magazine. Yes, that was beautiful. And that was also maybe that's as far as kvetching about the mainstream press and what you know, that's like a piece that they let us do. I think it's a The word interview and we had no there was no rules and that's kind of really special in that way. Yeah. Everyone's just talking frankly. Hmm. Okay, guys, we are now costs blessings. Yeah. Well Savannah, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. Thank you after thank you for this podcast. I'm just so happy that it's out. Here again. Yeah. Maybe maybe not. Maybe not maybe not.
This is a special interview with a creative, inspiring and deeply insightful artist and human. In this episode we talk about their wild life as JT Leroy, their passion for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Savannah’s complex relationship with their mom amongst other things. Savannah Knoop is a New York-based artist engaging in writing, performance, and object-making. From 2009-2016, Knoop co-hosted the monthly queer audio-visual party WOAHMONE. They have shown and performed at the Whitney,MoMA, the ICA Philly, Movement Research, Essex Flowers Gallery, and ACP in Los Angeles. In 2007, they published the memoir titled "Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT LeRoy" (Amy Scholder, Seven Stories Press) cataloguing their experiences of playing their sister in law's writing persona and avatar JT Leroy. With director Justin Kelly, they adapted it into a feature length film starring Kristen Stewart and Laura Dern. Savannah has studied dance and martial arts for over twenty years. They are currently a purple belt in Brazilian JiuJitsu under Marcelo Garcia. Savannah Knoop   https://www.savannahknoop.net/about   @savette   A TRIP TO THE RUSSIAN BATHS WITH ARTIST AND NOW FILMMAKER SAVANNAH KNOOP https://www.culturedmag.com/savannah-knoop/   JT Leroy Film https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/j-t-leroy/id1458164572   LITQB Podcast:   This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another. The Host:  Asher Pandjiris Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator Queering the Holidays Virtual Workshop December 8th:  https://www.livinginthisqueerbody.com/virtual-group-workshop SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody  Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris  ---   Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asher-pandjiris/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asher-pandjiris/support 