QueerZone

2018 - 2019
MOD. (Museum of Discovery)
The University of South Australia SASA Gallery

QueerZone is an interactive art exhibition exploring the artistic potential of the video game arcade as a queer counterpublic. Counterpublics are discursive arenas that develop in parallel to the official public spheres and where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counter discourses to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs. Inside, the pink cube, is a functioning arcade game called Mr Pacman, which disrupts the heteronormative tropes found within the arcade. While the arcade itself may not seem heteronormative, in Ms Pacman, the first gender signifiers and heteronormative relationships in video game history exist. Mr Pacman pokes fun at the design of Ms Pacman, instead of feminine-signifying pink bows and lashes, Mr Pacman sports a thick moustache and pink leather boots and cap. Mr Pacman mimics the romantic cutscenes in Ms Pacman. Progression in the game is aligned with the visitor’s ability to help our pink leather cladded daddy find his true love: Pacman.

QueerZone invites visitors to reflect on who is designing experience machines, whose pleasure are we catering to or excluding when creating simulations of what we expect other to find pleasurable?

Materials: Video Game, MDF, Digital Printing, Acrylic, Steel & Perspex.