Transgender woman’s survival of electroshock therapy made visceral in new VR project – The Art Newspaper

A virtual reality (VR) work premiering at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas will let viewers experience the story of Carolyn Mercer, a transgender woman in the UK who survived electroshock conversion therapy meant to “cure” her gender dysphoria as a teenager.

In the Current of Being (9 March-11 March), by the Texas-born, Los Angeles-based director and digital storyteller Cameron Kostopoulos, is the second VR project they have created with the aim of helping audiences understand the transgender experience. “Right now, with how under attack the trans and queer communities are, it’s really important to reach across the aisle and to invite people to see from your perspective,” Kostopoulos tells The Art Newspaper.

In addition to the VR elements, the work involves audiences wearing haptic vests, sleeves and gloves so that they can feel the rhythm of Mercer’s heartbeat and breathing as her story is recounted, as well as the tremors she felt for decades after receiving electroshock treatment. The process, which involved her being strapped to a chair and shocked as images of women’s clothing were projected on the wall in front of her, affected Mercer for decades, causing her to shake uncontrollably whenever she thought about it, and leading her to hide her true identity until she was in her 70s.

Those who take part in the work will not feel the same kind of pain Mercer did, but will experience a full body vibration that is “pretty intense”, Kostopoulos says. But as well as simulating fear and pain, the haptics in the work can also “create a feeling of defiance”, the director adds, as well as the sense of liberation, peace and recovery Mercer felt when she finally embraced life as a woman.

“The message that our piece ends on in the final title screen is that conversion therapy is not therapy,” ​​Kostopoulos says. “You can’t change someone’s sexuality, you can’t change someone’s gender identity. You can’t make someone be cis, you can’t make someone be binary if they’re non-binary. It’s not something that needs to be cured.”

Mercer’s story is particularly timely since the administration of US President Donald Trump has been moving to erase the recognition of transgender individuals as a matter of public policy, putting an already vulnerable community at further risk. According to a national mental health survey conducted by the Trevor Project in 2024, 90% of LGBTQ+ young people said their well-being was negatively impacted by recent political discourse, and 46% of transgender and nonbinary young people had seriously considered suicide in the past year. Mercer herself only recently started speaking about her experiences publicly, keeping her true identity a secret from even family and friends for most of her life. “That’s why it’s important for us to be sharing this story, because, if she hadn’t come forward, there’s so many like these that are just never told,” Kostopoulos says.

The format of VR also allows stories like Mercer’s to be shared in a more visceral way, something Kostopoulos discovered with their first project, Body of Mine, which allowed users to enter the body of another gender. It won the Special Jury Award at SXSW in 2023 and was shown in Venice that same year.

“Immersive art can be a really powerful tool,” Kostopoulos says, compared to media like film or audio only, which maintain a third-person perspective and can come across as confrontational, especially around sensitive subjects like gender identity. “It’s very easy to stop a movie or to press pause at a podcast or close a tab. But when you’re in an immersive experience,” they explain, “you feel like you’re actually there, you’re so much more likely to engage with it and listen and be receptive to what you’re hearing.”

This was true with Body of Mine, which Kostopoulos says was shown to audiences all over the world, from parents who were not very receptive to their children’s chosen pronouns to 80-year-old trans women who were living life on their terms.

“Interestingly enough, the people who were most emotional were actually the cisgender audiences,” Kostopoulos says. “I think it’s because, even though these stories are specific, they’re also very universal. Body of Mine is more than gender dysphoria, it is just about having a body and feeling comfortable in your body. And this new piece, it’s a story about conversion therapy, but more than anything, it’s a story about authenticity and being yourself no matter what the world tells you to be.”

Like Body of Mine, which has now been distributed to LGBTQ+ centres in 40 states across the US along with VR headsets, Kostopoulos hopes to share In the Current of Being—which was co-produced by the New York-based VR exhibition and production space Onassis ONX—with a larger audience. The aim is to “show people who are making decisions about access to healthcare and gender affirming care” what is at stake, they say, especially since it is still legal in half of US states to perform conversion therapy on children, “and that needs to change”.

• In the Current of Being, 9 March-11 March, South by Southwest, Austin, Texas