SAMI: Augmented Reality and Social Justice

We acknowledge the traditional owners and people of the lands that made this work possible- the Sami people, the Turrbal and Yuggera people and the ancestors of everyone present. We pay our respects to Elders–past, present, and emerging–and commit to standing with our First Nations people. Sami is t...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Gonsalves, Kavita, Sheikh, Hira
Format: Other/Unknown Material
Language:unknown
Published: 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.qut.edu.au/208765/
Description
Summary:We acknowledge the traditional owners and people of the lands that made this work possible- the Sami people, the Turrbal and Yuggera people and the ancestors of everyone present. We pay our respects to Elders–past, present, and emerging–and commit to standing with our First Nations people. Sami is the pseudonym of one of the 120 refugees who are in a detention centre in either Kangaroo Point or BITA (Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation) in Brisbane Australia. When you point your phone to the marker, you will be greeted with 120 rotating cubes of different colours representing the refugees trapped in the detention centres. Sami, along with the other 119, have been locked up for over 7 years simply because they arrived at the shores of Australia on a boat in an effort to escape war and poverty. We, as brown female bodies, cannot take to the streets in Brisbane to protest these atrocities due to associated risks of adhering to colonial law. This AR/VR piece in Helsinki City Museum enables us to exceed the limits imposed on our brown bodies in space and time. During the development of this piece, we realised that we had unintentionally used the colour scheme of the flag of the Sami people, the Indigenous people across Scandinavia. Nothing is by accident: we see this as our act of solidarity with all those who have been displaced, oppressed and marginalised in the faraway place of Helsinki. This WebAR artwork emerged from the AR workshop with Jonas Johansson | Aavistus Festival 2020 from 28 Sept –2 Oct 2020. In Helsingin kaupunginmuseo/Helsinki City Museum, you find a virtual protest in solidarity with the #FreeTheKP120 movement. Instructions on how to experience all the works of the workshop participants from the comfort of your home or at Helsinki City Museum are here: https://aavistus.glitch.me/