Want to Confront Racism and Transphobia? Try Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s Video Games
There’s a lot of positive feedback in the guestbook at Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s new exhibition THE SOUL STATION at Halle am Berghain, a space joined to Berlin’s famously hard-to-enter nightclub. But positive feedback isn’t what excites the 28-year-old artist. It’s the negative reviews that give Brathwaite-Shirley pleasure and the negative reviews are the ones they repost. A typical roundup includes their work being called nonsensical to schoolyard insults. One comment read: “My soul is dirty, just like your mom.”
“That comment was particularly fun,” Brathwaite-Shirley tells me, standing on a train platform. Thanks to Berlin’s often unreliable public transport, the artist is stuck giving me the lowdown on the video game-based show through headphones on their way home from visiting the exhibition.
Though they have lived in Berlin for four years and have shown internationally Barcelona's Joan Miró Foundation, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, and the Helsinki Bianual, it is the London-born artist's first solo exhibition in Germany, a two-parter featuring the newly-developed pieces YOU CAN'T HIDE ANYTHING (2024) and ARE YOU SOULLESS, TOO? (2024), the latter of which will be on view from September 12 to October 13. But before the second chapter of their exhibition opens, they have another Berlin show to inaugurate — at the Highsnobiety Store.
So while commuters rushed around in the background, we asked them about the show (presented together with LAS ART FOUNDATION), its themes, video games, and how to make people see something from your point of view.
YOU WON'T FORGET ME EVEN IF YOU TRY, your temporary show in the Highsnobiety Flagship store, has just opened. What’s the message behind its name?
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley: The works I'm showing are about the lack of Black trans people in archives and how they've been erased. It started with an image of a person called Mary Jones, we have a poster of her from 1836, some court transcripts of when she got arrested, and nothing else. That is very similar to a lot of cases with trans people where you can't find out much about them, usually [you can find] something related to an arrest but nothing to do with how they lived their lives or what they did. The Mary Jones poster is actually warning people away from her, they called her the Man Monster.
YOU WON'T FORGET ME EVEN IF YOU TRY is about the idea that even if you try to bury us or erase us, you will no longer forget us because we're going to fight against that.
And the pieces in this show come from a period around 2020 when you started doubling down on creating video games.
Yeah, it was the period when I was making 40-minute-long animated films with gaming mechanics; they were an ode to gaming rather than being interactive. After I made those, I started making games instead.
The reason there's so much interactivity in my current work is that films can be very easily consumed. Sometimes that leads to the artwork, or those in the artwork, not really serving their own purpose: they serve you and your gaze’s purpose. When you have a video game, it requires you to put the energy in and it changes based on what you do, so it becomes more about an introspective moment where you say: ‘What did I do? Who am I?’ Rather than: ‘Oh, that's a pretty flower that's telling me about trans visibility rights.’ It becomes less of a tourist moment into a queer community and more about your own place within the politics of queerness or othering.
It’s interesting that by giving the audience the power to make decisions you also gain power as an artist by leaving less to their interpretation.
When you want someone to see something from your point of view, it can sometimes feel like you're telling them they're wrong. If you say: ‘These are my politics. These are your politics. I don't like your politics and you should think like this,’ [the person will respond with] ‘What the hell, why would I even care about what you're saying?’ You want people to lead themselves.
Danielle Brathwaite-ShirleyIt's really important that people have a human moment where they connect with each other and try to change each other's way of playing.
You Can’t Hide Anything (2024), a new piece presented in your current exhibition at Halle am Berghain, is a group game. How has group participation changed how people respond to the game?
There's been a big difference in how people play because people sit on the sidelines and watch a leader. You can see when someone gets frustrated, they start shouting or walking down and telling the person where they’re supposed to go. That's all baked in, it's supposed to be frustrating to watch someone lead because it's based on democracy. It's based around having a leader and everyone on the outskirts wanting change and feeling powerless to do it.
In this environment, people do shout out and they can affect the game. That interaction is more important than what's going on [in the game]. It's really important that people have a human moment where they connect with each other and try to change each other's way of playing.
You have this moment where people come together, help each other along the way, and change together. That's what democracy is supposed to do but it's kind of falling apart right now which is why I made this game.
How do you want someone to feel while playing You Can’t Hide Anything (2024)?
As the leader, I want you to feel nervous and that you're responsible for the enjoyment of the whole room, and then the task is very overwhelming and nearly impossible, so you feel almost embarrassed at your state of play. As the people watching, maybe it's frustration and the desire to do an action that changes something.
I'm hoping that you don't leave and say ‘Oh, this show was beautiful.’ If you leave thinking that, that's rubbish. If you leave with a negative emotion, it means the art has done something.
Danielle Brathwaite-ShirleyIf you leave with a negative emotion, it means the art has done something.
What's your personal relationship with video games?
I play a lot of video games. I'm interested in the history of video games. I spend a lot of time studying obscure old games and how they were made: what was the engine they used? What was the animation style? How did they animate on these computers that couldn't actually render graphics in the early nineties?
And these are the old engines that you use to create your current games?
Yeah, I use a lot of old engines. Or if I can't use the old engine, I use a lot of the techniques from older video games.
Despite using this retro technology, your video games often feel futuristic or as though they’re set in a different reality. Are you optimistic about the future?
I'm more of a realist. I think there will be a future, [I don’t know] if that's optimism.
I don't think each game is optimistic about the future but they showcase a world where something is more important than it is now. For example, Resurrection Lands (2020) is a game about a technology that can bring back the memories of dead people. We use it to bring back the memories of Black trans people and make it into a library that becomes an e-sport and Black trans people are mined for capitalism. So, it's not necessarily a hopeful future, but it is a future where the focus is somewhere where it isn't now.
I never do utopias. I’m interested in alternative futures that look at the possibilities of something being ingrained within the gross nuances of our culture.
