Partly because of my classical studies, partly because of those in psychology, the phrase γνῶϑι σεαυτόν (“Nosce te ipsum”, in English “Know Thyself“) has always fascinated me greatly. Greek and Latin authors claim that it stood there, on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, and there is evidence of it as far back as the 5th century BC. A philosophical motto that has been with humanity for a long, long time, then: an invitation to look within, to understand our own essence, which becomes a way to better understand the nature that surrounds us, our space in it, our personal and social identity.
We might be tempted to say, “Never as in recent years have we heard of an identity crisis,” but that would be a bold statement because if this phrase has been there for so long, then perhaps the difficulty of understanding who we are is an integral part of human nature and also a sum aspiration to step out of our own limitations and recognize our place in the world.
Cover: upcoming project A CURE FOR STRAIGHTNESS, by Cameron Kostopoulos
Never as in recent years though – and this perhaps we can say – have we had at our disposal tools (artistic, narrative, technological) that have given us a way to explore this nature of ours in new and revealing ways. The whole immersive world is certainly about immersing ourselves in a world and a story, but it is also about taking a deep leap into our inner selves, our invisible ancestry and evolutions, and then connecting/reconnecting with all of this through a new experience of who we are and through the experience of the selves of others.
In search of identity: re-discovering gender and sexuality in immersivity
Not only VR has the ability to radically transform the way we see others. It also impacts the way we see ourselves. This is why, when designing experiences that are about identity, it is important to consider that we are dealing with very sensitive issues that can be greatly amplified by immersive technologies.
(Cameron Kostopoulos, creator of BODY OF MINE, currently developing their new immersive piece A CURE FOR STRAIGHTNESS)
There are different ways to operate this reconnection and rediscovery of identity: on the one hand we have the intimate, personal perspective adopted in works that push us to look within ourselves. I think of the wonderful, moving ŽAISTI GYVENIMĄ (PLAY LIFE), recently presented at Venice Immersive 2024. PLAY LIFE takes the user by the hand on a journey of personal exploration through the exploration of someone else’s imagery. A masterpiece of poetry and a journey bordering on the spiritual that awakens emotions and memories in those who have experienced something (in this respect I find it intriguing that the experience, on the official website, is recommended to “viewers with life experience”).
On the other side we have productions that present us with the search and rediscovery of identity made by someone else with whom, however, we are called to identify or empathize. I am thinking of FINALLY EU (FINALLY ME) by Marcio Sal (whom we interviewed during Venice80, where Marcio’s work was presented): there the journey of Mr. Saul, the protagonist, in finding and above all accepting himself is an indirect encouragement to do the same and dance in front of what we feel we are.
FINALLY EU addresses two issues that are separate but closely connected to the concept of identity: gender and sexuality. Different aspects (and not the only ones of course) of the search for self and connection with who we are, that find in VR and immersive technologies a stimulating support.
“There is so much research showing the effects that embodiment can have on individuals”, explains Cameron Kostopoulos, when asked about the scientific way they approached the relationship between identity and immersive technologies in their previous work, BODY OF MINE, presented at Venice Immersive in 2023. “An example regards the Proteus effect, a scientifically studied phenomenon whereby people who feel embodied in an avatar align their psychological traits with those of the avatar itself. For example, inhabiting Albert Einstein’s body causes people to score better on a math test. Embodying the body of an older person leads to more empathy towards the elderly. […] Scientific studies prove that even before VR, digital avatars, for example in 2D games, could help people understand their identity in a private way, helping them in the coming-out process and directly leading them to feel more confident, experience more inner strength, have greater self-acceptance, and generally experience a more positive transition. All these positive effects are amplified by VR. Our work, Body of Mine, was really a way to extend this kind of research in the direction of gender dysphoria”. They continue, “This work pushes the limits of embodiment by combining body tracking, face tracking, and eye tracking into a photorealistic experience. We wanted to see what the impact of such an experience would be on our audience. And we found that people came out of Body of Mine with a much higher sense of body acceptance and a lower rate of body dissatisfaction. In short, the piece made people feel better about themselves, about their bodies.”
This positive perspective that encourages approaching who we are from a different point of view is also an integral part of the approach to self-knowledge adopted by a number of works currently in development that were presented this year at the Venice Production Bridge, held during Venice Immersive 2024.
“There is a need to talk about pleasure”, tells us Paula Orlando, when we question her about the role of sexuality and why to talk about it in an immersive mode. Paula is the creator of MONS VENUS, a project that went through the Biennale College Cinema experience as well. “Pleasure has often been treated as taboo, but seeing it that way can actually create health issues. In my own experience, there was a real lack of sexual education – I didn’t know I could explore my body and felt like I had to be ashamed of it. As I grew up, I carried small wounds, traumas, and shame that impacted how I saw myself. [..] We’re also taught that sexuality should always involve another person, not only as if that’s the only way, but also as if self-exploration isn’t important or meaningful.
This is why I believe it’s crucial to have open conversations and education around these topics. We need to rethink how we connect with our bodies and challenge the rigid boxes we’re often placed in – especially since pleasure is so diverse and deeply personal. With this in mind, I began developing Mons Venus to encourage that reflection and create space for these important conversations.
MONS VENUS (which we discussed in a preview with Paula Orlando herself and producer Rocio Pichirili) accompanies users to rediscover their bodies in a personal and symbolic space in which sounds and images recall the pleasure dimension without ever referring to it in explicit ways.
“Our goal is to empower users to take an active role in shaping their own experience. We want them to rediscover their own pleasure and create a positive, personal journey. Throughout the experience, they’ll connect with their surroundings, learn to give and receive pleasure with an amorphous body, and paint their figures – using this process as a way to explore themselves” Paula explaines further. “There’s no language, no human bodies or genitals, and no sounds typically associated with sex. Instead, the experience features shapes, colors, textures, and liquids, all presented in an experimental, poetic style. A crucial element is the sensory soundscape, which adds depth to the experience. We’re creating a new visual and emotional language that opens the door to fresh interpretations and meanings.”
“I think one of our biggest challenges is precisely to talk about sexuality and pleasure without talking directly about sexuality and pleasure,” adds producer Rocio Pichirili. “We are trying to avoid obvious directions to let people discover their own. We also combine familiar forms in different ways so that new interpretations emerge, but also to give our user the freedom to find themselves”.
The importance of offering intimate fruition modes
To talk about sexuality, particularly in the immersive context, can be a tricky business. Not only is it necessary to find ways not to superimpose your own perception as a creator on that of the person who will experience the piece (after all, the perception, in the case of pleasure, is also a physical one, so to find your own way through it is very relevant).
A related challenge also concerns the ways in which that specific work should be experienced, considering its intimate nature.
The relationship between intimacy and fruition is something we have often found ourselves debating in a field, the immersive one, where the user, particularly if inexperienced, may feel embarrassed to know that they are being observed while, with a headset on their head, they are almost unaware of the world around them.
Even more so, these reactions may intensify when the subject matter of the piece is considered taboo in some cultures and is still seen by many as a “personal” matter to be addressed privately.
Paradoxically, in cases like this, the context of fruition can become a barrier between us and the work itself, and prevent us from fully understanding the important meanings that it tries to convey, because we are too distracted by the feeling of unease that the context is conveying.
I noticed this when IN THE MIST (2020) by Tung-yen Chou was presented in the Best Of section at the Venice VR Expanded 2021 (78. Venice Film Festival). A reflection on loneliness and loveless love expressed through a voyeuristic view of sexual interactions in a men’s sauna, IN THE MIST presents strong theatrical elements, then expanded further in the connected project Gazing, In the Mist (2022), with its performance element, and finally in the third chapter of the saga, the even more personal yet collective experience presented in 2024 at Cannes: TRAVERSING THE MIST.
In the mist emerges strongly for its poetic content and visual narrative, but the context of fruition in Venice – Inevitably defined by Covid’s mandatory rules – was significantly counterproductive. Users were forced to experience something that in itself was very intimate in a setting that was not intimate at all, surrounded by other users doing other experiences, and ushers who could see in screencasts the direction in which the person’s gaze was facing. Something I myself struggled with.
Talking about very personal topics in more private contexts, on the other hand, facilitates the transmission of meanings. We saw this happen in the aforementioned BODY OF MINE (SXSW 2023, Venice Immersive 2023). For this work, Cameron Kostopoulos chose to allow the user to explore the gender dysphoria theme in an enclosed, private, safe space, a structure created specifically for the occasion.
“When bringing audiences into an immersive work”, they comment, “you want to make them feel safe, welcome, and open to having a transformative experience, because no one will have a transformative experience if they have a poor onboarding process or if they feel insecure or watched, or even if they feel alienated from the experience”.
A concept that also resonates with the team of Mons Venus.
“We understand that it might be difficult for some people to see works like ours in open spaces,” explains Rocio Pichirili. “That’s why we are thinking of an installation, a kind of cocoon that can convey a sense of privacy and intimacy, of which we control the intensity of the sound, the temperature, the lights. In which a soft carpet soothes your bare feet. A total environment where you can relax.”
“Almost like a mother’s womb”, adds Paula. “So that, just like in the womb, the user can feel protected in our work. And at the end of the experience, they can emerge into a new beginning, a new way of thinking of pleasure and themselves”.
An intimate setting, such as the one provided for MONS VENUS, can thus have the dual advantage of giving narrative meaning to the experience, but also of facilitating immersivity by respecting the different approaches that different people may have to sensitive but important issues. Something that Cameron Kostopoulos also had to consider as Body of Mine left the festival circuit to land on online platforms:
“Distributing experiences like this on stores can be complex, because as an artist you are not there to help onboard your audience. So you have to find ways to design that into the experience itself as well. In BODY OF MINE, now on Quest, we added an initial question about whether or not you have experienced gender dysphoria. This is our way of being more inclusive. Those who have never had the experience find themselves in a different gender; those who have, can choose any avatar, so that they have an experience of gender affirmation rather than dysphoria”.
A path of social rediscovery with surprising historical roots
We have mentioned several experiences whereby a more intimate approach facilitates the user’s immersion and the discovery of self and others.
However, it is not necessarily implied that to talk about gender means to do so exclusively in an intimate way. There are so many aspects of identity, gender and sexuality that a univocal approach is not enough to cover them all. We find, for example, reflections on the same topic that present it in more flamboyant (in the best sense of the word) ways. Operations such as Jake Elwes’s THE ZIZI SHOW , the “deepfake drag cabaret” presented at CPH:DOX in 2023 alongside the show Zizi & Me, come to mind: a piece that brought to the stage as a performance a new reflection on the concept of queerness, delving into its relationship with technology, but also highlighting the social elements that go hand in hand with queer representation.
We are talking in this case about a work that rather than addressing the intimacy of the individual, aims to engage them in a joyful celebration of queerness and the society that surrounds us. Yet, it indirectly still inspires personal reflection.
A similar path is taken by another piece that was presented this year at the Venice Production Bridge: the VR adaptation of WHEN BROOKLYN WAS QUEER. The project is the pilot of what promises to be an exciting, vibrant and meaningful series with an artistic as well as educational value, and promises even greater quality precisely because of the deeply personal significance that connects it to its architects, Yasmin Elayat and Wadooah Wali.
“History does not always capture everyone. People who record history can be very selective about which moments and which people to remember. This is extremely problematic for LGBTQ+ representation and identity, because many people out there think we popped up like leprechauns in the last decade or after the Stonewall riots!“, explains Wadooah Wali, “The book that inspired our series, When Brooklyn Was Queer by Hugh Ryan, makes it clear that the LGBTQ+ community has always been present in history and contributed to the social fabric”.
The 20-minute pilot currently in development reworks in a fictional way people portrayed in the book who really existed and who strongly impacted the artistic and cultural world of late 19th-century Brooklyn.
“Our pilot is set in 1894. The Brooklyn Bridge had already been opened and Brooklyn was being shaped as a major port city. It was a time of wonder and excitement, when anything seemed possible. At that time, academics and scientists had not yet entered the scene and begun to discuss sexuality and deviance, and these people-Drag Kings, trans people, and so on-“they were living out loud. They were the celebrities of the day, the influencers… They traveled around the US and Europe and there were whole communities that gravitated around them and were excited to see them. They showed who they were, their identity, to the whole world, in a way that seems incredibly progressive when you look at how things are today.”
“We are also talking about people significant to black history”, Yasmin Elayat adds. “Our pilot is inspired by some of them: they literally revolutionized the entertainment world by inventing the Creole shows, a vaudeville performance that was about taking over the representation of the black community and thus countering the racism and stereotypes of minstrel shows”
“And that’s why it’s important to share these stories”, Wadooah further elaborates. “To say that we didn’t always have the problems that we have today – that there were people who actually imagined and tried to create a different world that we could all feel represented by”.
Know Love Thyself to build better worlds
Stories like WHEN BROOKLYN WAS QUEER, in this respect, are less intimate than BODY OF MINE or MONS VENUS, but they operate in somewhat similar ways, offering audiences a different perspective on themselves and the world. Whereas MONS VENUS takes the user on a personal journey to self-experience, and BODY OF MINE does the same through the connection with others, WHEN BROOKLYN WAS QUEER looks specifically at the community journey made and yet to be made. But it is important to note that all these works address their user in the same way: positive and proactive. And because of this very choice they are even more likely to impact them.
“BODY OF MINE is designed to be a euphoric experience, regardless of gender”, says Cameron Kostopoulos. “The culmination of these experiences is represented by this glowing silhouette, this warm soul representing our shared fluidity and humanity. It led to people showing not only a greater understanding and empathy for transgender people, but also a greater identification with the struggles of trans people, which I think is even more significant”.
Indeed, it is certainly true and amply proven that a narrative can lead to extraordinary results when, instead of being based on accusation, it is based on celebration and self-love. Works like WHEN BROOKLYN WAS QUEER seem to be about that as well: crowning dream and enthusiasm instead of injustice. Elements that taken together can perhaps change the world more effectively than anger.
“Theater is one of our main characters”, says Yasmin Elayat. “We were deeply inspired by it. What was happening in those theaters was revolutionary. It was creation, it was possibility, it was resistance, it was activism. They were staging the world they wanted to see. As Joe (a/n Joe Brewster, co-creator of THE CHANGING SAME, our interview here) likes to say, ‘joy is resistance’. And I think that applies to many marginalized communities: joy really is resistance”.
“As a queer black woman”, confirms Wadooah Wali, “I have spent a lot of time in corporate America. But in the last five years I finally realized that showing up as my authentic self is activism. People like me, like Yasmin, like Cameron, want that representation to exist in this immersive, artistic space precisely because it’s a new space that’s being built today and it allows us to finally retell history differently.
That’s why we are actively participating in the catalog of content that is being developed, telling the stories that we have always gravitated toward, inspired by things that are happening and have happened in the past. And maybe that is also part of being marginalized communities: to be seen, to be visible. To look at the people who came before us and understand the path they took to get here. It’s something that contributes to the whole shared human experience”.
MONS VENUS and WHEN BROOKLYN WAS QUEER are currently in development- keep following us to find out how these two promising productions evolve.
And while waiting for Cameron Kostopoulos’ next work, A CURE FOR STRAIGHTNESS, you can download BODY OF MINE on the Oculus Store, on which it recently landed.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.