works
Bureaucratic Matrilineal Name-Giving
budget cut
Operating Theater (Diorama)
gaslight, gatekeep, hope labour
band-aid series
having issues
Have you ever been mad at something that didn’t explain itself to you? (Außenstelle)
The Questionnaire
all that is lost may grow (Zagreb beach towel)
(un)patient
flower petal (60x magnified)
Sowas wie Sie machen wir hier nicht
wtf is a non-binary university
how many stones until...
all flowers i found at funkhaus are purple
Zellfeld
microverse
writing
CV
contact
Bureaucratic Matrilineal Name-Giving
2025
Fight or Flight II - an exhibition about money , Stadtwerkstdt Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Berlin
Print on acrylic glass, steel cable
63 x 102 cm
Digital print and stamped ink on transparent paper, pencil on paper, aluminum frame
42 cm x 29.7 cm
Bureaucratic Matrilineal Name-Giving tells a generationally intertwined story of bureaucratic interference in the process of receiving ones name. The work narrates the process of my legal name change as a trans person and the gatekeeping mechanisms encountered during it. I connect it to the story of a surprisingly similar interference in the naming of my mother in the same german registry office, almost 60 earlier. The work is an account of the impact, that not having documents with ones own name or gender has psychologically and materially, as well as the absurd scenarios that systemic policing of gender leads to.
It was first exhibited at Fight or Flight II - a show about money, in 2025 in Berlin.
“Until August 1st 2024, a legal change of name and gender marker for trans people in Germany under the so-called Transexuellengesetz (Transexuals Act (TSG)), cost €1,868 on average and was accompanied by mandatory psychiatric assessment and a court case.
FIRST ACT. The performance Bureaucratic Matrilineal Name-Giving begins with my refusal to participate in this invasive and costly process. This means that I am, for example, denied the opportunity to sign employment contracts, maintain a bank account, take out insurance or register as a freelancer without outing myself.
I am now entitled to the joy of being a bureaucratic inconvenience.
I decide to transfer the discomfort caused by this ghost name of mine to bureaucrats, hotline staff, ticket inspectors, insurance workers and my employers in the largest possible quantities. My stubborn refusal to be ashamed of the possibility of discrimination and the certainty of always being an unusual case wherever I go become the core of this work. As my appearance changes and I start passing as a cis man, it becomes increasingly uncomfortable for my bureaucratic counterparts to realize that the mismatch between my paper identity and appearance is not only completely legal, but also actively enforced through gatekeeping by the TSG.
The TSG was replaced in 2024 by the Gesetz über die Selbstbestimmung in Bezug auf den Geschlechtseintrag (Act on Self-Determination in regard to Gender Registration (SBGG)), which enables trans, intersex and non-binary people to change their name and gender marker via their birth registry office for less than €100.
SECOND ACT. In the process of taking advantage of this new law as soon as it is introduced, I encounter further hurdles in my so-called self-determination. At its beginning, registry office employees often interpret the law in a way that doesn not allow for a change in the amount of first names one has. It is also forbidden to have a first name that does not match with the newly chosen binary gender entry.
Which first name corresponds to the gender entry is up to the registry office to decide.
As I was given two first names at birth, this means that it is neither possible to take my name, Felix Deiters, without registering another first name, nor to keep my middle name, Amelie.
In 1966, the registry office in Nuremberg informed my grandfather that it was not possible to have my mother‘s first name, Andrea, entered on the birth certificate as her sole name, as it is also an Italian male name and therefore too ambiguous for a girl. So he spontaneously gave her my grandmother‘s name, Elfriede, as a middle name to make it possible to name her Andrea.
THIRD ACT. When I apply for my name to be changed, the employee at the registry office refuses to let me keep my second name and asks me for an alternative that would “better match my male gender entry”. My answer is Andrea.
In response to her confusion, I point out that Andrea is also known to be an Italian male name.
The change of my name to Felix Andrea Deiters becomes effective in November 2024 and ends the performance upon me receiving my new ID in May 2025.”
photos [c] Kollektiv Symbiose; image courtesy of the artist