Voiceworks
Queering Out of Religion
In this interactive essay featuring text, audio, and illustrations, Lauren Shelley recounts the process of growing up in and queering out of the Christian faith in which she was raised.
My childhood was spent sitting in the sanctuary hall listening to murmurs over microphones and the endless turn of thin, paper pages; crouched on the carpet in Sunday school watching re-enactments of Bible stories; going to lunches and picnics with quiches, casseroles and family or visiting far away cousins and their congregations where my uncles were pastors. Religion and faith community were wrapped around me so entirely, pressed tight and warm, safe and insular.
Gothic Body
We grew fat while she grew no thinner. Some days I’d return home from school to find her wearing a garbage bag like an ersatz pair of pants she had punctured holes in, cycling on the second-hand stationary bicycle my father bought her, trying to sweat the fat off her body. Other days, when my sister was a teen and I a tween, she took us to the pharmacy to buy my sister laxatives for her sudden weight gain.
How to Be Located
In this interactive piece by Tiia Kelly, the vanishing line between body and ghost, everything and nothing, is made apparent/apparitional.
J’ai perdu mon corps follows a disembodied hand after it is severed from the rest of its body in a woodworking incident. The hand gains sentience inside a medical fridge, before embarking on a journey back to the body it has just lost.