HyperSext City

Exhibition dates: Thursday 4 March - Friday 9 April 2021

Extending Monash University XYX Lab’s ongoing local and international applied research, HyperSext City* draws attention to the experiences of women, girls andLGBTQI+ communities by representing data and intersectional narratives of gender that affect how places are accessed and occupied.

By drawing together the polemics of inclusion/exclusion in urban spaces, the exhibition invites the audience/participant to contribute their own solutions and suggestions for possible futures that might mitigate spatial inequality.

The exhibition is a framework that is both a receptacle and a host for conversations about, and actions for, under-represented communities. The accumulative interventions and events provide multiple ways for audiences to contribute their lived experience and/or to develop understanding and empathy.

Making gender data visible, and generating new narratives based on evidence-based research and lived experience are important tools in developing gender-sensitive approaches to design, architecture and urbanism.

This exhibition reveals existing data sources globally and locally to spectacular effect. Through the multi-modal tools of crowd-sourcing, co-creation and material making, HyperSext City surfaces, activates and amplifies the voices and experiences of a diverse range of people who are not often heard.

The HyperSext Repository consists of an online, bespoke website built for and launched at this exhibition. The webpage interactively collates, documents and references data and research on gendered experiences of cities.

XYX Lab: 

• Gene Bawden: Creative Director
• Nicole Kalms: Research Director
• Isabella Webb: Exhibition Design and Coordination
• Jess Berry: Researcher and Publication Manager
• Gill Matthewson: Researcher
• Timothy Moore: Researcher 

Collaborators:

• Ella Mitchel: Videography
• Hayden Doward: Website

*The term women and by extension girls, is used as inclusive of all women, including cis-women, trans-women and intersex women. Similarly, diverse sexual and gender identities are used to recognise the experience of people who do not necessarily identify as male or female. Sexual orientation and identity are also complex designations and we recognise that the LGBTQI+ designation does not necessarily capture the diversity of experiences, interests and perspectives of individual people or communities.

Photos by Maja Baska ©2021