Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley

Who gets the chance to be archived?

Have you ever asked yourself this question? Has the idea that your community, your people may just be ignored by history? Who gets the chance to be remembered and who decides what’s remembered about them? Our history is a storybook of those “important” enough to remain in our current consciousness. But who are those who were seen unworthy of archiving?

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley uses this interactive digital archive to preserve a world built for and by Bla(c)k Trans individuals based in the UK and Australia. As you interact with virtual aesthetics, scenarios and environments the archive will react back to you. The storylines, birthed from merging fiction and reality will be determined by your identity and individual choices. What you see, you are responsible for.

What do your actions mean in reality?

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is an artist making work that seeks to archive Black Trans experience. Working predominantly in animation and sound, they combine the two in a way to communicate their thoughts and experiences around Black, Trans identity. Their video game aesthetic encourages the viewer to become the player and to have an active experience through the choices that are presented and chosen for them.

The Melbourne iteration of this archive was created in collaboration with producer Ono Chowdhury and has stories of Bla(c)k Trans individuals from Australia: Malaika Mfalme, Mackenzie Lee, Cainne, Bedlam.

Ono Chowdhury (they/them). Inspired by Black and Asian-led queer spaces in London and teachings from the 'Erotic as Power' by Audre Lorde, Ono envisioned creating a space of nourishment and relief for racialised queer communities in so-called Australia. From this seedling, Ono launched DEiFY, a queer, transgender, intersex Bla(c)k, Indigenous and People of Colour collective on Ngunnawal, Ngunawal and Ngambri Country (Canberra). As a community organiser, arts producer, and person of Bangladeshi heritage navigating mental illness and trans-masculine experience, Ono is continuously learning to dream and manifest queer futures.

Contributors include Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Marikiscrycrycry, Pacheanne, Tobi Adebajo, Ebun Sodipo, Bernice Mulenga, Ornella Ospino-Blkmoodyboi, Jacob v Joyce, Shay P-W, Zamy, Camus-Doughen, Elijah Che, Travis Alabanza, Raks, Arthur Kibet, Vik, A Marlowe, Christopher, Ono Chowdhury, Malaika Mfalme, Mackenzie Lee, Cainne, Bedlam.

WE ARE HERE BECAUSE OF THOSE THAT ARE NOT was commissioned by Science Gallery London, King’s College London, as part of GENDERS: Shaping and Breaking the Binary.