Faculty of Art

Integrated Media

Wrynn Geswin

DEER-MACHINE-ECOSYSTEM

My final thesis work. An immersive audio visual, live reactive, multi sensory installation that acts as a safe space for the queer community.

“Deer-Machine-Ecosystem is the culmination of a multi year exploration of mediums, identity, religious trauma, nature, and queer culture. It is an installation that blends facets of my life growing up as a Trans woman in a hostile religious environment, and re contextualizes them into a new experimental safe haven for myself and other Queer individuals.This work seeks to provide a sanctuary free from judgment, a space where trans people can authentically express themselves without fear. Environments like these are quickly disappearing due to political fire, leaving people like me with no community to turn to. I’ve had the fortune of existing in these spaces within my communities and I aim to recreate the feelings of comfort and acceptance I've encountered there, extending them to those who might not have experienced them before.The piece also serves as a platform for personal reconciliation. Through the incorporation of religious imagery and symbolism, I am confronting the religious trauma brought on by my upbringing, reclaiming and re-contextualizing the symbols hammered into my brain as child into a queer context. This act of rejection and reclamation is both an aesthetic choice and a therapeutic practice of rejecting what I was taught in favour of being truly myself.The whole piece also symbolizes an interconnected network of machines that mirrors the complexities of nature. Everything within this space is interdependent and in sync, creating a multisensory experience that invites viewers to explore their individual connection to nature and the animalistic aspects of being human, represented by the recurring deer symbolism as well as depictions of the natural environment in my home town.”