Body Double 34 recreates an iconic scene in Gus Van Sant’s independent film My Own Private Idaho (1992) showcasing the two protagonists as cover models for gay pornographic magazines. But instead of solely focusing on gay magazines, Body Double 34 expands the premise of the original film to include various transgender health, culture, fashion, and lifestyle magazine covers. And while the original dialogue and composition are kept intact in the reenactment, the scene is repeated twelve times across multiple monitors by fourteen amateur actors, all of whom alternate between portraying the two protagonists and other supporting characters. The constant shifting of perspectives embedded in this framework of repetition and variation leads to a series of similarly structured yet subtly different versions of the scene, each depicting a scenario in which representations of multiple gender identities cross and converge.
