Moments of Drag

Queer people are experiencing temporal drag constantly through both physical and mental manifestations, whether they are aware of it or not. I created this time(piece) as a way to make this experience more explicit, so that queer people could explore various aspects of their identity and lived experience through their relation to queer time. I knew that the best way to do this was to create a tangible experience where users would physically join hands with someone “from the past” and hear their story. When approaching the time(piece), users reflect upon six different themes (belonging, prejudice, gender norms, sex, joy, and music) inscribed on the cards just to the side of the piece. They select the cards that move them, then pass through the curtain, at which point a (real!) person joins hands with them. They listen to an audio clip from a queer ancestor, taking in their words while connecting across the ages.

This was my first major making project at Stanford. I sewed the curtain and interaction space, designed and laser-cut the cards, built the audio archive, and composed the parts as a single physical experience. The most important experiential choice was the least tech-driven: a real hand on the other side of the curtain.

Sometimes it was gloved, sometimes rigid, sometimes playful. That variability made each encounter intimate and impossible to reproduce exactly. People would walk away and compare experiences, just to find that theirs was completely unique.