Haus of Haraway

“haus of haraway” is a virtual reality piece created using the video game engine Unity. The work is inspired by Donna Haraway’s 1985 essay “A Cyborg Manifesto”, wherein which she writes: "The cyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic family.... The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust”. “haus of haraway” pulls from the idea of the cyborg rejecting the “organic family” and positions it within the context of drag “houses”,which serve as alternative, self-made, families designed to generate safe spaces. By utilizing motion capture programs, volumetric video, and 3D animation, I have filled the physical house with multiple drag-aestheticized figures that represent the fluidity and multiplicity of queer identities. “haus of haraway” examines the link between computer technologies/digital culture and how they relate to queer culture. Digital culture has always had a semblance of queerness engrained in its identity, through its embracement of transformation, artificiality, and malleability. “haus of haraway” combines those elements through the fantastical embodiment of queer figures performing in this house that is sleek and disjointed, slippery and artificial.

(c) the artist