Avatars & Fantasies: Through the Lens of a Drag Queen Gamer
In this Thursday Night Talk, members of collective Queer Arcana present a performative talk on non-binary' 'drag gaming'. 'The talk will address the evolution of non-binary drag and how it has influenced the queer community's discussions of gender identity.
10 March 2022 19:30 - 21:00
Non-binary drag gaming has become a way to strengthen social cohesion and to explore the self with regard to gender identity, humanity, and position in life.
Gamers and the drag community both interact with avatars and visualise (shared) fantasies. What else do these groups have in common? In the case of drag, experimenting with fantasies (through costumes, make-up) strongly connects to how practitioners relate to their real-world identities. The talk will zoom in on the recent revival of TTRPGs (tabletop role-playing games), which enable queer and non-queer gamers to use games like Dungeons and Dragons (and live action roleplay, or LARP) to roleplay characters/avatars of all genders and orientations, as a safe playing field to test out potential new identities for "real life". The overlap of queer consciousness and game formats turns fantasy worlds into social and psychological tools that can help us to better understand ourselves.
Queer Arcana
Queer Arcana is a theatre/game collective that organises theatre shows in which a group of drag performers play Dungeons and Dragons on a live theatre stage. Queer Arcana tries to enhance the visibility of queer gamers and investigates what happens when you overlap different subcultures in art and design. The members are working towards setting up a large digital and analogue gaming community where gaming is used as a tool for strengthening social cohesion, and as a way to explore the self regarding gender identity, humanity, and position in life.