ABSTRACT
In this interview with Tammy Rae Matthews, artist Tessa Ratuszynska (they/them) explores how their own work, as well as that by other artists, can offer audiences agency inside work and the tensions that underscore such projects – the move from VR as an empathy machine to its being implicated in another’s lack of agency. Working at the intersection of Queer Theory, disability studies, and Crip Theory, they argue that the oft-times inherent nonlinear structure of the i-doc allows for multitudes of meaning constructing an environment for viewers to engage in awareness and personal responsibility. At the same time, the essential demands of the medium, for example, the VR headset, may be fraught with structural bias so as to inhibit accountability.
