Black Trans Futures | Go Find Me

A talk with Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley and Ebun Sodipo dedicated to giving Black Trans people a space to speculate on their present allowing thought of how a Black Trans future could come from the space we are in now.

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is a London- and Berlin-based Black trans artist, game developer and mother. Through video game aesthetics and technologies, Danielle aims to bring to the forefront the experiences of Black trans women and, more generally, to archive the Black trans experience.

Ebun Sodipo is an artist and writer making work for those who will come after: the black trans people of the future. Their interdisciplinary practice narrates their construction a black trans-feminine self after slavery and colonialism. Through a process of fragmentation, collage, and fabulation, they devise softer, other-wise ways of imagining and speaking about the body, desire, archives, and the past. Their recent work considers the instinctual, bodily desires and pulls Sodipo feels as recognitions and readings of an embodied knowledge that connects them physically across space and time to non genetic trans ancestors, providing an alternate account of ’transness’, agency, and the archive.

You can register here to take part in the discussion on zoom. Please note this event will also be streaming live on Vimeo, YouTube & Facebook.

Go Find Me

Go Find Me is a digital archive of Black Trans people designed by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. Black Trans people have a history of being erased. Archives have failed to collect any first-hand recordings of our histories. Often the way trans people are archived reinforces or centers the violence we experienced whilst living. An archive that holds a Black trans experience needs to be careful about not recreating and centering trauma. Archives created by Trans people for Trans people can enable us to more accurately record our existence. Creating our own archives allows us to use different methods of archiving to more fully record a Trans perspective.

The aim of this project was to create an interactive fantasy archive that records conversations around Black trans online spaces, organising, bringing trans inclusive spaces offline and care through fiction. Through a series of workshops, designing avatars to represent those involved, interviews, and soundscapes created for the environment. The end project will be an interactive archive that can be hosted both online and physically. Different areas and conversations within the archive will be accessible depending on your identity and choices within it. Not all the archive may be accessible to the viewer at any one time.

Inspired by Online game (MMORPG's) recording the missions and quests Black trans people go through when exploring the internet. : Looking for representation, looking for Hormones, looking for their history, creating groups to hold space for others, combating trolls, etc.

---

EMBODIED ARTS FESTIVAL

Curators, artists and cultural practitioners have been exploring identities, belonging and embodied memories through diasporic, decolonial and queer perspectives as part of Oyoun’s first curatorial focus: EMBODIED TEMPORALITIES. The outcomes, encounters and queries will be presented and celebrated during the EMBODIED ARTS FESTIVAL from 8th - 18th April. View all events here.