“Artifacts from the Future”: The Queer Power of Trans Ritual Objects

What follows is a conversation between artist Nicki Green and scholar S. J. Crasnow. In this conversation they consider two of Green's artworks in relationship to historical and contemporary Jewish practice and especially in relationship to queer and trans Jewish communities. Green's pieces, Incantation Crock and Bedikah Quilt Topper, are themselves trans, Jewish ritual objects, and in this conversation Green and Crasnow investigate the underlying themes of queer/trans Jewish futures, history preservation, ritual innovation and challenges to “traditional” Judaism, the queer/trans body as a holy site of transformation, and craft and cultural production to parse and question modes of making and of religious practice.