For me, one of the hands down highlights of 2023 was the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival’s Inter:Active exhibition, which featured the ballsy theme “Breaking the Code.” Expertly assembled by risk-taking Immersive Curator Mark Atkin, it starred “artists using the 1s and 0s of computer code to explore the messiness of nature and humanity beyond binary definitions… The creators are for the most part neurodiverse, non-binary, queer, marginalised and activists, subverting established visual languages in order to address our existence between the physical and digital realms from an non-heteronormative standpoint.”
And that mission statement was certainly accomplished in droves.
And though I was swept away by a number of these outside-the-box projects, four in particular managed to truly blow my mind. The first of which, Taiwanese filmmaker / theater director / production designer CHOU Tung-Yen’s In the Mist, was appropriately placed in the “Immersive Subversive” program. (And likely won’t be coming to a theater near you. Unless, that is, you happen to have a VR-equipped, XXX venue operating in your neck of the woods.) While admittedly “Yes, please!” was my first reaction when I learned of this virtual reality experience set in a gay sauna, In the Mist nevertheless managed to shock. And this had nothing to do with hardcore sex (though there was plenty of that), but with how artistically rendered and emotionally moving the piece actually was. Blurred bodies slowly emerge from behind curtains of steam, stark naked and wholly innocent of the viewer’s peeping tom presence, as we follow a lonely young protagonist on his journey of unrequited desire; and longing to shake off societal shame.
As for the three other new media artworks, all appearing in the “Twisted Games Arcade” section, each was equally compelling and uniquely revolutionary. BLACKTRANSARCHIVE.COM / WE ARE HERE BECAUSE OF THOSE THAT ARE NOT was perhaps the buzziest, as the British artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, who conveys the experiences of Black Trans folks through a variety of media (including animation, sound, performance, and video games), has exhibited at such illustrious institutions as the Serpentine and the Tate. For this specific video game – part of the DOTCOM series, a collaborative archive of Black Trans stories – Brathwaite-Shirley returns us to a simpler time of circa 90s, low-res graphics on a basic screen and a trio of big buttons, which the (presumably liberal) participant can press to navigate a path through the Black Trans world; and question whether they live in a parallel (a)moral universe.
Indeed, how far out of your way would you go to help a stranger arrive safely home? And how onboard are you really with destroying the entire cisgender supremacist system? (Did your hand hesitate over that “Yes, please!” button?)
Another provocative artwork – and perhaps also a bit buzzy as it did win the IDFA DocLab Digital Storytelling Award last year – He Fucked The Girl Out of Me is the brainchild of Taylor McCue, a “queer mentally ill game developer from the United States” according to their bio. Likewise low-tech and retro (in this case employing 2D Game Boy aesthetics), the piece is in-your-face radical as it deals with a subject the anti-sex work camp loves to exploit and the sex work-positive movement finds just too hot to touch: trauma. By allowing (forcing?) us to step into the avatar skin of Ann we learn, detail by excruciating detail, how exactly a trusting transwoman can get sucked into an often-deceptive lifestyle that allows her to afford that gender-affirming new body – while also sucking away at her very soul. Or, as McCue puts it in the game’s trigger warning page, “Trauma is a part of life. Everyone has trauma. Trauma is common in trans people. This game is made of memories. Those memories are about sex work. I’ve fictionalized them. That is the only way that I can get close to the truth without getting messy.” No bells and whistles required when you’re willing to wear your heart on your sleeve.
And finally (thankfully) there was the The Zizi Show, an unabashedly queer joy delight from the other British artist of the bunch, Jake Elwes (who’s exhibited at the V&A as well as extensively internationally). While I’m certainly no stranger to the drag scene, this was my first time attending a “deepfake drag cabaret” – though hopefully not the last. Via a “virtual online stage” (i.e. a big screen), and with a simple clicker, the participant is allowed to mix and match drag queens and kings with a queue of songs from the greatest camp catnip voices (Bassey! Bowie! Sylvester!) The “twist”? You’re actually watching a “synthesized drag identity created using machine learning.” Elwes, who works at the intersection of AI, queer theory and technical biases in order to “queer technology” hopes to explore “what AI can teach us about drag, and what drag can teach us about AI.”
Here’s hoping every one (and zero) of these brilliant visionaries will move fast and break things far into the nonbinary future.
Image: The Zizi Show by Jake Elwes Artist Images CC
.jpg){kind=link}