PARENTAL GUIDANCE ADVISED

Click the image above to play the game.

Having lost all our history, we needed a way to bring it back. So we resurrected our Black Trans ancestors using the most advanced technology we had.  Those that were resurrected now live out their second life in a digital environment built to sustain them. However when this environment begins to be appropriated for trans tourism, a group of Black Trans people decide to form a team to prevent the exploitation of the archive.

Resurrection Lands is a new online game by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley about the effects of Trans Tourism and how to protect those who are most at risk of being erased by history. Here speculative fiction is used to re-imagine those from the past that we have lost. The act of crafting Pro Black and Trans environments can help us visualise futures that seek to appreciate Black-Trans existence. A world that is healthy for Black Trans people to live in. Challenging the idea of what an archive can be and how they are accessed, Resurrections Lands offers an alternative look into what it means to archive someone that history once erased.

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is an artist working predominantly in animation, sound, performance and Video Games to communicate the experiences of being a Black Trans person. Their practice focuses on recording the lives of Black Trans people, intertwining lived experience with fiction to imaginatively retell Trans stories. Spurred on by a desire to record of “History of Trans people both living and past” their work can often be seen as a Trans archive where Black Trans people are stored for the future. Throughout history, Black queer and Trans people have been erased from the archives. Because of this it is necessary not only to archive our existence, but also the many creative narratives we have used and continue to use to share our experiences. Danielle’s work has been shown in Science Gallery, Barbican, Tate, Les Urbains as well as being part of the BBZ Alternative Graduate Show at the Copeland Gallery. An online component of their work can often be found at daniellebrathwaiteshirley.com