Playing Queer: Repurposing games to create differently
Published
ASTERISK and BEK invite you to a three day workshop with Chloé Desmoineaux exploring a playful repurposing practice: hacking existing games and their interfaces and creating new game interfaces from a creative, queer, and inclusive perspective.
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
September 2., 3. and 4. 10:00 – 15:00
BEK, C. Sundts gate 55, floor 9.
The workshop is free, designed for queer people over 18 and will be hosted in English.
Limited spaces, sign up here.
We will take an existing game, or its controller, and repurpose it to open up new gaming possibilities. This practice, which can be called hardware hijacking, consists of hacking circuits, modifying rules, and twisting original functions to create unexpected gaming experiences.
We will draw on a Playing Queer* approach (Bo Ruberg, Sarah Ahmed), focusing on the power of projection, appropriation, and transformation that each player possesses. By mobilizing marginalized desires and perspectives, we invent alternative ways of playing.
In concrete terms, this can involve:
– Modifying a controller circuit to make the joystick more accessible to a different body or gesture;
– Changing the goal of a game by deliberately limiting the controls—for example, by blocking the “forward” button in Super Mario, the game becomes a minimalist runner, playable with a single button linked to the “jump” function;
– Tinkering with interfaces to open up the game to other rhythms, other bodies, other forms of pleasure, and agency.
A simple lunch will be provided, however you are also welcome to bring your own food.
No previous experience of gaming, soldering or building consoles is needed.
Chloé Desmoineaux
Chloé Desmoineaux [they/them] is based in Marseille, France and works as an Alt+Ctrl artist and independent game curator with a focus on technofeminist collective practices. Inspired by tactical media and hacking practices, they create interactive installations, hijack video games and reflect on alternative ways of conceiving screen-controller interaction. Since 2016, their work has included a curatorial dimension, and they choose to work more with their queer and dissident communities.
In 2021 they opened the transfeminist and voluntary hacklab FluidSpace, a weekly gathering where they explore technology through a feminist prism. Here they organized some queer game jams in chosen mixity.
ASTERISK
ASTERISK is a Bergen-based queer interdisciplinary event series and platform founded by Kaeto Sweeney in 2020. By celebrating local and international queer artists, it serves as an alternative event/production project aimed at creating space for queer and trans people within institutions and public spaces. Here, they have the opportunity to showcase interdisciplinary artistic works such as happenings, performances, sound and visual art, film, and everything in between.
Accessibility
BEK’s space unfortunately is not wheelchair accessible. Please send us an email at bek@bek.no if you’re using a wheelchair, and we’ll do our best to facilitate your needs. Our space has all gender toilet facilities. Service dogs are welcome. We also provide the option of a quiet room.
Images: 1) Photo: Chloé Desmoineaux 2-6) BEK
*Bo Ruberg and Sara Ahmed are two scholars whose work intersects in the field of queer game studies, particularly in analyzing how video games can be spaces for exploring and challenging normative gender and sexuality.