Communication is fraught. We talk, we listen, we try to explain ourselves, and we hope the other person understands. Sometimes, no matter how much we explain, the person in front of us just doesn’t see what we mean. Sometimes all we need is a good editor.​

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I'm Jennifer Beman, a documentary film editor, with an illustrious career in storytelling. I've created a visual storytelling tool that brings the editor's process to people to help them understand and share their internal stories: how they feel, what they think, what meaning they create out of their experience.

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Just as an editor takes the raw footage and shapes it into a compelling and emotionally resonate documentary, every human takes the raw material of their sensory input and shapes it into meaning and story in their heads. The tricky part for us all is getting that out of our heads and into other people's heads so they can understand it. It's a matter of organizing your thoughts into narratives.

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But, really, this story begins with sex.

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In 2016, I started a monthly discussion group for women to talk openly about sex, called Women Uncorked. I initially thought I would use it for research for a documentary about women's feelings about sex. I mostly I wanted to create a safe space for honest, vulnerable conversations.

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One night my husband and I were talking about our sex life, and I had an inspiration. I grabbed some old math manipulatives from our kids’ school days. I made a color-coded key of the typical ingredients in our sexual repertoire and then arranged the cubes to show what I liked, in what order, and how much of each. We played around with mapping out different scenarios and preferences: a quickie, a leisurely Saturday afternoon, his favorite flow, mine. It was fun, clear, and unexpectedly revealing — for both of us.

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I took the idea to my Women Uncorked group. Soon, we were all making colorful timelines of ideal sexual experiences. It was surprisingly powerful. Naming the pieces of sex, arranging them, made it easier to understand and to talk about. 

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The next year, I decided to turn it into an interactive art installation: The Graphic Sex Project. I intended it as a way to open up conversations about sex, and de-shame sex by showcasing the tremendous diversity of people's sexual preferences.

 

Hundreds of people made cube-based 'graphs' of their sexual preferences various art happenings, and later in workshops. The cubes gave people a way to see themselves more clearly — and a fun way to start conversation they may have been avoiding: "Hey, let me show you this funky thing I made and tell you about it."

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From Sex to Everything Else

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The pandemic shut down my fun with the Graphic Sex Project. But that's when I realized that the things that maks BioGraffs good for talking about sex — its playfulness, the breaking down of story into its parts, the way it's a catalyst and support for challenging conversations — makes it good for talking about so much else.

 

I began working with people to use cubes to talk about so many other things:

 

• Their depression and anxiety

• Their grief

• Their relationship issues

• Their values and how they manifest in their lives

• Their goals for the future

• Arguments they keep having

• Their struggles as a parent

• Perspectives on their history

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Literally anything.

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And that’s how BioGraffs was born. They are little 'graphs' of your biography.

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I found that therapists and coaches love using this as part of their toolkit working with clients. It's something they can have on their shelf and put out whenever words aren't enough, when their client feels stuck, or isn't sure what to talk about, or what they even think.

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It’s a method for turning your internal world into a visual map. A way to move beyond language when language fails. It's your story, well-edited. A way to say, “See what I mean?”