In The Diary of Anna Comnena, or The Very Political Adventures of a Transgender Byzantine Princess in African Elevators, Zamler-Carhart impersonates the 12th-century Byzantine princess and historian Anna Comnena as she comes out as trans and tries to write her father’s imperial biography, The Alexiad, while in exile in contemporary West Africa.
Outside the Empire, categories become fluid and elevators stop on strange floors. Prose slips into graphic poetry, medieval Christianity into mystical Sahelian Islam, Byzantine chronicles into erotic gore anime. Anna’s first-person diary careens down a series of sinister African elevators and intersectional magic spaces. She is an outcast of the Empire but also a product of it, exploring the dynamics of contemporary African textile production, vernacular theater, animal husbandry, jihad, urban design, television, and coin metallurgy from the perspective of a 12th-century trans Byzantine engineer.
The Diary of Anna Comnena initially adopts the same Empire-centric perspective as the historical Alexiad, but the dystopian confrontation with African reality forces Anna to reflect on what it means for her to be specifically in Africa, and not just in a generic outside space. Together with the author’s previous work, The Diary of Anna Comnena forms a gelatinous ongoing treatise where seriousness is an emerging property, and the distinction between speculative fiction, design theory, and political philosophy is probably just matter of scale.
About the Author
Tis Kaoru Zamler-Carhart (they/them) is a designer, writer, singer, and music composer and, in a duo with Vitaly Zamler, a visual artist and archeologist. Tis’s literary and visual work revolves around objects and materials, speculative worlds, Africa and its futurisms, linguistics, the European Middle Ages, and the fragile boundaries of seriousness. Their musical work as a composer and singer ranges from opera and theater to solo vocal music and has been performed in numerous countries. As a research duo in contemporary archeology, Tis and Vitaly’s work focuses on fragile household spaces. Their most recent projects investigate remodeling strategies in rural Rwanda from the angle of design theory, and the interiors of abandoned apartments in Poland from the perspective of the archeology of political oppression. As an artist duo, Tis and Vitaly’s work sits at the intersection of photography and material design. Their art has been exhibited in museums, galleries, and at international art fairs, and is held in private collections in various countries. Tis has taught transdisciplinary design at Parsons School of Design, medieval literature at Lang College, as well as medieval music and Latin at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague.