Memory is not just something we store; it is something we perform, invent, and transform. This exhibition invites you to explore how personal and collective memories— especially those of trans, inter, and nonbinary people, shaped by trauma and resilience—can become playful, imaginative, and healing. These works use video game aesthetics, installations, zines, and interactive stories to invite movement, imagination, and new ways of remembering.
Conceptual Overview
We do not only remember individually; we remember together. As Aleida and Jan Assmann suggest, memories live within cultures, passed through rituals, stories, and symbols. Here, remembering is not about storing the past—it is about inventing new possibilities.
These works turn difficult memories into spaces for compassion, play, and reflection. A past that was painful can be transformed, allowing us to honor our younger selves and approach the present with curiosity and confidence.
What happens when guilt and fear, past and future, dance together? Perhaps we find self-compassion—and the confidence to move freely in the present.
Video games and interactive installations become tools of “performative memory”—spaces where movement, imagination, and participation reshape our experience of the self. Through play, we remember that we are not limited by past trauma: we are spirit, we are resilient, we are free to move in new ways.
Works
The Workshop, 2025
Web-art and Twine branch narrative
An invitation for the inner child to imagine compassionate new memories.
Displayed on a Disney Princess Pink LCD TV (19”, 2008)
Collective archive work from the Embodied Liberation Workshop Series, 2025.
Participants—trans, intersex, and non-binary—reimagined moments of fear or survival into affirmative, surreal and myth stories, transforming fear into authentic collages, and later digital zines.
Hypertext Fiction is a form of digital media that uses clickable links to create a non-linear, navigable structure. The nervous system can reorganise through repeated, attentive experience. The Workshop, 2025 explore new pathways while old trauma responses weaken.
Participants: Donnatella, Essi Laveux, Felicia, RAW, DanDara, Glauconar Yue, Rita, Quinn, Miguel
Facilitators: Kelly Calvacanti, Arden Osthof, Felipe Gonzalez
Concept: Kamalanetra Hung
This Is the End of the Internet, 2025
Interactive Kinect installation with sound and HTML branch narrative (~10 min) Visitors enter a digital dance game, exploring chakras through movement and sound. The work asks: can we remember ourselves as light, rather than a reflection of mind and body?
The work replaces high-dopamine digital scrolling with slow interaction. The medium is primarily text, often allowing for deep, narrative-driven experiences, the nervous system can reorganise through repeated, attentive experience: new pathways strengthen while old trauma responses weaken.
Creative coding mentoring, Flor Alonso, KoLab
Tender Pixels, 2025
Knitted football scarf in acrylic yarn (145 × 17 cm)
Bright, playful scarves merge e-sports aesthetics with traditional fandom. Inventing a fictional sport culture around mental health, the artist reclaims collective rituals of belonging.
I am LED Light Series, 2025
(Lotus, The Blue One, Photon)
three-panel triptych, 3 GIF animations on LED display (26 × 26 cm)
Pixelated images recall early video games while reflecting on post-traumatic memory. A game that never existed becomes an invitation for the inner child to imagine compassionate new memories.
Duck Walk, 2025
Vogue Femming in a 3D-rendered dance video on CRT television (25”, 2005)
Ballroom personality and Vogue femme Essi Revlon Laveaux vogues through a looping virtual world. Kamalanetra, reimagines a chessboard game with stadium-like screens. The music blends vogue-femme–inspired electronic beats with elements of Vienna’s waltz tradition.
Performance, Dancing Through Guilt and Fear (29.11.2025 at CO3)
Femme Voguing, Essi Revlon Laveaux
Coded music and 3D/AV, Kamalanetra
Exhibition Fotos
DANCING THROUGH GUILT AND FEAR An exhibition by Kamalanetra Hung
CO3 Offspace, Cologne, 26.11.–02.12.2025
Foto Documentation, Martin Plüddemann
Credits Funded by:
● KulturAmt Köln
● Landeskoordination Trans* NRW
Special Thanks:
● Camila Arango—for encouragement
● Flor Alonso, Koproduktions Labor Dortmund
● Performer Essi Revlon Laveaux
● Emilio Holguín Möller and Leila Cheraghi at CO3
● Foto Documentation, Martin Plüddemann
● Video documentation, InHaus-Media
● Children Table Courtesy of Celeste Palacios
● Martin Gamper, Artist Talk Moderator
● With gratitude to all participants and facilitators of "The Workshop"