a night with alterotics | Musclefest

Muscle presents a special evening with filmmaking, screening, performance, and cruising collective alterotics. Co-founded by Anaïs Alias and Avery Jaye in 2023, the group’s transgressive moving-image sex art—like the Stephen Sayadian-influenced Rat Trap—has quickly found a hungry audience both at international queer film festivals and especially in Chicago, where they have fostered a growing community centered around their monthly cruising parties. For this screening, we’ll present a survey of the group’s work over the past three years, including its latest short film, Character Syndrome. All four films are New York premieres.

Rat Trap (2025, 15min)
Angel is your typical rat girl: sneaking through grocery stores, shoplifting cheeses, scurrying. The world is her dumpster… until one night she falls into the clutches of pervert ratologist Dr. Fontina. Abducting the rat girl and taking her to a lab deep underground, Fontina and her lackeys use science to put Angel into a state of teledildonic trance. She can’t resist. Infused with orgasmic energy, her body becomes an experiment in rat-human transgenesis. A hybrid girl squeaking with lust. And to Dr. Fontina this creature becomes a plaything, a seductress, a variable out of control… You’ll never guess—or forget—what happens next. Don’t miss this genre-bending romp featuring an all trans cast, crew, and production team.

Superlunacy Clinic (2023, 21min)
Anais and Avery talk art, politics, and “the big O” in an exclusive interview with journalist Wendy Stroker. After seducing Stroker into a career-ending snafu, however, the two starlets are bound to face her wrath. Their fate: to be devoured by the spawning sturgeons of Lake Michigan. Marvel in lust as girls and fish get frisky under the radiance of a supermoon!!!

The Naturists (2026, 21 min)
alterotics culturati Avery Jaye and Anais Alias explore the perverse intimacies—and frictions—of the notoriously gay sand dunes on a drizzly day trip to the lake retreat town of Saugatuck, MI.

Character Syndrome (2026, 35min)
Yes, exactly: in Character Syndrome, therapy *itself* becomes a new digital neurosis. Seeking your undoing here genuinely makes sense. POV you’re Lisa Boston: relationship therapist, sex worker, gambling addict, and all-around dopamine burnout. Managing these scattered persona-streams is all you care about, overriding any concern for your clients’ wellbeing. You’re losing it, succumbing to every failure mode—until a background observer kindly pops in to help.

alterotics is an arts collective devoted to activating public life for trans/queer people. Moving-image sex art, archival research, event hosting, and community building make up the broad strokes of their practice. It was co-founded and currently run by Anais Alias and Avery Jaye.

Q&A with Anaïs Alias and Avery Jaye following screening, moderated by Nea Ching.