Runway Journal acknowledges the custodians of the nations our digital platform reaches. We extend this acknowledgement to all First Nations artists, writers and audiences.
Guest Editor: Riana Head-Toussaint
Co-Chair: Mariam Ella Arcilla
Co-Chair: Sarah Hibbs
Deputy Chair: Laura Pike
Treasurer: Akil Ahamat
Secretary: Yuna Lee
Editors: Yuna Lee, Akil Ahamat, Bea Rubio-Gabriel, Georgia Hayward
Digital Producers: Julie Ha, Yuanyu Li, Sam Soh, Claude Moelan, Mike Spiteri
Issue 47: MMORPGPublished November 2023
To dazzle: to both evade and disrupt, conceal and confuse.
Brave traveller! We are so happy to have found you!
An object will be entrusted to you. Guide it gently through its journey.
We can say this much: it is a thing and not a thing, information folded into waves, waves flattened into hope. An object made and re-made to evade the danger of being known and seen by those who would seek dominion.
Will you take the object into care and escort it to its destination?
Dazzle is a mixed work of gameplay and live performance art journey for one. Through the journey of escorting an object through a labyrinth of uneasy instructions, the player is encouraged to question the curatorial impulses of being online and instead foster a sense of custodianship, all while helping the object evade the surveillance of the machine. The journey of Dazzle considers the errant object, and curation as an individuated, collection-based, transactional practice.
Please note that this work is best viewed on desktop.
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker is a Nyungar technologist, writer, and digital rights activist currently living on Whadjuk Noongar boodjar. Always grounded in protocols of Caring for Country and Kin, Kat’s creative practice explores the intersection of activism, futurism, and our relationship with machines. Their work has appeared in Cordite, Red Room Poetry, Running Dog, and the blak speculative fiction anthology This All Come Back Now, published by UQP in 2022.
Vidya Rajan is a writer & performer currently based in Australia working across screenwriting, theatre, comedy, and digital space. A former writer-in-residence at the Malthouse Theatre, graduate of the VCA, and a recipient of Screen Australia’s Developer Program, her work has often been described as surreal, inventive, darkly funny, and probing of the contemporary moment. Recently, her sketch writing as part of the The Feed (SBS) won the 2022 AWGIE award for Best Comedy Writing, and her digital interactive experience In Search of Lost Scroll took home Best Experimental Artwork at the 2022 Melbourne Fringe awards.