1 What do you want to make?

An interactive digital ((audio-)visual) narrative about queer histories in the Balkans, something close to but not quite a game. The narrative will make use of time-travel, non-normative or non-linear time, loops (in space-time) and 3D models, and might include tiny bits of text but will attempt not to be solely text-driven. Depending on the public's interactions with the work, different portable outputs of archival information will get printed (on paper) for them to take. This printed output is different based on each set of different interactions (fluid changing publications). The narrative would be screen-based, although the interaction with the screen would go beyond the keyboard, possible including a range of 3D printed gadgets the public can use to navigate.

I would like to continue working with Blender as a way to build worlds, and tell stories through the rendered output.

2 How do you plan to make it?

Using the languages HTML, CSS, JavaScript, alongside with open-source software such as Blender (for 3D modelling), and possibly Godot (for the game). Still to be figured out: - How to connect to a printer and which printer will be the one? - Possibly 3D printing and working with Arduino (if time allows for it)

3 What is your timetable?

Sept–Oct:

Contact and meet with researchers
Read like your life depends on it
Write a myriad of research questions to further locate the exact one
Get to know different printers better

Oct–Nov–Dec:

Sketch physically, on paper or digitally using the Wacom.
Afterwards, sketch and model scenes in Blender. (Start with the point of any travel (including one of into the past) - the airport. The places where identities of all kinds are policed, including trans ones.)
Fiddle with different printers and decide how you want it to be printed. Learn about the impact of each printer available to you, in short get to know the printers intimately
Write down ideas about how a person interacts with the screen and sketch out prototypes
Research and play with interesting interactions in Java script
Write a tad (try to synthesize some of the things you've been reading into thoughts)

Jan

Think about sound
Narrative weaving
Collecting the material that will be printed
Make models for 3D printing?

Feb

Testing playability of snippets?
Circuits?

March

Testing playability of snippets

April

Test paper
Testing playability

May

not sure

4 Why do you want to make it?

Because the notion that queer people and communities in the Balkans are an export of the "rotten West" unimaginative at best, violent and detrimental at worst (also blatantly false and just dumb).
There is a whole history of overlooked queer practices and thinking that we are yet to find a vocabulary for in order to make sense of them. Different histories require different treatment, and copy-pasting activist approaches from a different context with a radically different history don't fully work..

In a way, this project also aims to rethink how we engage, and deploy archival material, findings or how we speak about queer pasts that are full of gaps, uncertainties, violent histories, and were the subject of othering and further othered...

In terms of public, I want to be part of a current of queer Balkan artists, designers and thinkers who imagine and inspire a new future in being. So this project speaks to the Balkan context and is looking towards there, but equally since it will be thinking about archival approaches and (in part) queer theory, it would hopefully also be interesting for practitioners working with archives here. (But the project will in a lot of ways be made for queer people)

5 Who can help you and how?

Ana Milić - can help with research, and theoretical grounding in the post-Yugoslav migrant queer histories by facilitating a knowledge exchange between our research.
Bojan BIlić - can help with research and theoretical grounding in post-Yugoslav queer topics with a possible interview.
Milena Turajlić - can help with archival research and theoretical grounding in the Yugoslav imaginary by giving me a change to watch her triptych "Non-Aligned & Ciné-guerrillas".
Louisa Teichmann - can help with 3D printing and game interaction. (I need to ask if I can 3D print at .zip again)
Lidia Pereira - can help with resources about more political games and game interactions.
Brin Žvan - can help with game design and thinking about queer post-Yugoslav histories through feedback, and interaction advice and testing.
Luka D. Misiūnaitė - can help with narrative structures in games and Blender advisory through feedback, meeting and testing.
Arimit Bhattacharya - can help with narrative structures in games and Blender advisory through feedback, meeting and testing
Teoniki Rożynek - can help with the role of sound and silence by providing feedback and possibly teaching me how to master.
Katayun Taraporevala - is a good person to talk to about non-western approach to queer histories (in the context of India)
Nora Bekes - can help with narrative in print as a graphic designer whose work bridges typography, illustration, writing and more.
Thijs, Alessia, Victor, Lorenzo and Bernadette - forming the game talks

Possible: saltpeperpeace.com - can help by sharing their insigths about archival approaches to queer histories in Turkey

6 Relation to previous practice

Momentary Lapse in Memory - working with memory, oral history, (radio-television and personal) archives and against nationalistic narrative building (an examination of memory during times of conflict).
NFF Research fellowship with ARK - working with institutional film archives, collective knowledge production and violence within archives
Balkan Futurism/Stay (a) Stray - a choose-your-own-adventure game about the implications of future balkanism and land segregation
Archival Crevices - workshop on fictioning, critical fabulation and conversational footnotes in archival practices.
Work in SI22 Fictioning episode and ByteNoise, SI23 Sick Host, SI24 Fly on the Wall.

I've been obsessed with alternative ways of archiving and knowledge production for quite a few years now, many workshops, artistic and research projects have been focused on them. Additionally, I've worked on more non-linear and fragmented narratives as a way of transmitting stories, knowledge, information in a variety of ways.

7 Relation to a larger context

Thinking about alternative (read: intersectional queer feminist) archival approaches to western knowledges.
Reclaiming historical erasure while also fighting nationalistic currents of historical revisionism.
Trying to find a vocabulary for non-Western queer discourse.
Fighting homonationalist ideas of the non-Western contexts.

8 References/bibliography

Ugrešić, Dubravka. Confiscation of Memory.
Bakić-Hayden, Milica. Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia.
Todorova, Maria. Imagining the Balkans.
The Yugoslawomen+ Collective. The tale of ‘good’ migrants and ‘dangerous’ refugees.
Editors Bilić, Bojan and Milanović, Aleksa. Post-Jugoslo/avenski TRANS.
Kosofsky Sedgwick, Eve. Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or You're so Paranoid You Think This Essay is About You.
Butler, Octavia. Kindred.
Keser Battista, Ivana. Places, non-places, spaces.
Visser, Barbara. Alreadymade.
Lorenz, Renate. Queer Art: A Freak Theory.
Machado, Carmen Maria. Dream House.
Kolev, Kaloyan. Yugoslavia’s Digital Twin.
Hartman, Saidiya. Venus in Two Acts.
Hartman, Saidiya. Intimate History, Radical Narrative.

User:Senka/Project Proposal

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