Withstanding Podcast Season 5

Withstanding returns with a new season!

The fifth season of FCINY’s podcast focuses on highlighting Finnish artists research, work and exhibitions in New York. This program is made possible with support from the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Envisioning a brighter future, Withstanding continues to bring together art professionals from both sides of the Atlantic to share and speculate, care and criticize, and to dream of more just and sustainable conditions for artists and art practitioners at large.

Make sure to check out also season 4, season 3, season 2 and season 1 of the podcast.

Listen to Withstanding on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or Soundcloud.

EPISODE 16: ON THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ANDROGYNE BY JENNIE JUNE

As part of FCINY’s Withstanding podcast Season 5, Dr. Randall Sell and artists iida jonsson and ssi saarinen come together at the Pioneer Works Broadcast studio to discuss the history of LGBTQIA+ research, New York’s so-called underworld, and the life of Jennie June. On the table lies one of Sell’s discoveries from his early research year’s: Autobiography of an Androgyne by Jennie June, published in 1918.

“In 1918, a series of peculiar books began to circulate quietly by mail. They were addressed not to the general public, but to doctors, lawyers, sexologists, and psychologists. The author used several names: Ralph Werther, Earl Lind, and Jennie June.” – iida jonsson

Over half a century later, a doctoral student at Harvard, Randall Sell, was collecting data on sexual orientation and LGBTQA+ communities. At the time, there were no comprehensive scientific surveys on sexual minorities. As the HIV epidemic was taking lives across the United States and public discourse around gay people was growing, one fundamental question shaped Sell’s research: What is a gay person?

In search of answers, Sell turned to bookstores – only to discover how difficult such information was to access. When he asked about publications on gay life, boxes of books and magazines were brought out from back rooms. Among them, he encountered the work of Jennie June, an author who documented New York’s so-called underworld and non-binary experiences in the early 1900’s, and one of the first transgender people to have published an autobiographical text.

On a rainy afternoon, in the spring of 2026, artist iida jonsson wipes the lens of a 16mm film camera. After waiting for traffic to pass on a busy Bowery street, ssi saarinen starts the camera and slowly approaches the former NYPD headquarters. As they cross the street, the handheld camera captures a view that Jennie June might have seen over a hundred years ago.

jonsson and saarinen travelled to New York to work on a biopic about Jennie June. As part of the FCINY artist residency program, they have been tracing June’s path in the vibrant but criminalized undergrounds of the early 20th century New York through published, unpublished, and partially lost texts. When researching material that was never meant for wider public access, the most effective approach echoes Sell’s method in the 1990s: turning to bookstores and archives.

Listen to the episode and learn, why was the autobiography published as a medical text, what could have been Jennie June’s true identity and how might June respond to today’s discussions on the themes she explored as a pioneer. 

Dr. Randall Sell is a Professor at Drexel University’s School of Public Health, in the Department of Community Health and Prevention. His most recent work has focused on critically examining demographic variables. This work originated in Dr. Sell's research on defining and measuring sexual orientations, and sampling sexual minorities for public health research. Dr. Sell has also extensively researched the history of sexual and gender minorities including the life of Jennie June/Earl Lind. 

Artists iida jonsson and ssi saarinen expand their collaborative practice through moving image, sound, and spatial installation. For their FCINY artist residency in New York, they sought to deepen their biopic research about Jennie June into questions of identity, visibility, and belonging, while engaging directly with the city’s layered histories and contemporary art scene.

Curator Gemma Rolls-Bentley joins Finnish artist Nastja Säde Rönkkö to discuss Rönkkö’s work across video, performance, installation, and text. Focusing on the video work Those Who Kept the Light, the conversation delves into Rönkkö’s research on lighthouse keepers, histories of lesbian artistic practices connected to shorelines, and the contemporary queering of feminist maritime mythologies. Together, they reflect on how the sea has long connected women loving women, from Alice Austen to Tove Jansson.

The episode was recorded live at the Leslie-Lohman Museum, where the audience was invited to view four of Rönkkö’s films from 2022. While the films’ nature scenes transport viewers to the harsh shores of the North Sea, Rönkkö’s soft spoken texts evoke another landscape, one about climate emergencies and longing for loved ones. These wider frameworks, alongside the material presence of sea and shore, are bound together by the enduring figure of the lighthouse.

In Rönkkö’s research, the lighthouse emerges as a space of safety, not only for sailors, but also for the keepers themselves. No matter what happens, the light must continue its steady rotation.

Sapphism is an umbrella term for women loving women regardless of their sexual orientations. The term derives from Sappho, a Greek poet whose verses included her accounts of sexual and romantic love between women.

NASTJA SÄDE RÖNKKÖ’s practice longingly dreams of the future while exploring  presence through politics and poetics of emotion. Her work flows through nordic seascapes and digital landscapes to ask what humanity and the future of our planet looks like in the digital age. Her work has been exhibited and performed internationally in places such as Somerset House, London; SXSW, Austin, TX; Museum of the Moving Image; and Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland.

Gemma Rolls-Bentley has been at the forefront of contemporary art for two decades, working passionately to champion diversity in the field. Her debut book Queer Art; From Canvas to Club and the Spaces Between is a Lambda Literary Award finalist and has been highlighted as a must-read by Them, Dazed, Timeout, The Guardian, Cultured and the FT. Her curatorial practice amplifies the work of female and queer artists and provides a platform for art that explores LGBTQIA+ identity. Gemma has curated for a range of international galleries and institutions. Current exhibitions include Sea State at Wolterton, Norfolk (on until Spring 2026) and She Sells Seashells at the Alice Austen House, NY (on until 21st February 2026). Gemma has taught at numerous institutions including the Royal College of Art, the Glasgow School of Art, and Goldsmiths, and was a juror for the 2025 John Moore’s Painting Prize. She sits on the Courtauld Association Committee and the Leslie Lohman Museum Acquisitions Committee. The forthcoming publication Art Essentials: Queer Art, coauthored with Mollie Barnes, will be published by Thames & Hudson in April 2026.