The Queer Art of Interpellation: Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley and Gabriel Massan's Digital Video Games

In this presentation I examine two video games, created by contemporary artists Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley (UK) and Gabriel Massan (Brazil), to explore how the medium-specific affordances of digital games intersect with queer interpellation and critical race and postcolonial frameworks in shaping ludonarrative strategies. I ask: how do digital technologies, in the form of critical art video games, produce entanglements between narratives and digital embodiments beyond white and ableist cis-heteronormative imaginaries? I demonstrate how worldbuilding, fabulation and storytelling are central devices for intervening in the overdetermined and discriminatory significations imposed on bodies. By analysing two specific video games in the context of their display in art exhibitions, I link queer digital media to exhibition strategies oriented toward audience engagement.