One of the most innovative and exciting elements to emerge from the Unchartered Territory festival is Clubscore’s Fantasy Museum of Trans Excellence and Portal to Other Dimensions.
The Fantasy Museum, located in the Kambri Gallery at ANU, is a free installation which acts as a portal, transporting guests to another dimension, in which openly trans and gender diverse people have always been included and celebrated in sport.
The museum allows guests to move through the space in their own time, and engage with the ‘artifacts’. These artifacts represent the sporting careers of imagined trans and gender diverse athletes from this fantasy universe of acceptance. The artifacts are historical, sensory and interactive, and at times funny. The installation invites viewers to “take a step back from the complexity of this reality” and focus on joy, inclusiveness and the possibilities of the future.
The Fantasy Museum is the brainchild of Clubscore, which is made up of Ketura Budd and Zev Aviv, two non-binary artists and sports fans. Clubscore, started in 2019, is a queer sports and art collective which aims to centre the experiences of trans and gender diverse people in sports, and the Fantasy Museum is the collective’s first public art work.
“But more importantly, we wanted to create something that is silly, and fun and joyful and imaginative, that invited people to use their own creativity to think about what the world would need to be like in order for trans and gender diverse people to actively participate in sport and be celebrated for that.”
And that’s precisely what the Fantasy Museum achieves. The space resembles a museum in the ways one might expect, but scattered throughout are careful and hidden elements of joy and creativity.
The installation leans strongly into the concepts of ‘other dimensions’ and portals, and this creativity oozes out of the installation – literally and metaphorically. The exhibition is interactive, inviting guests to choose from an array of items and insert their own trans fantasy historical figures into the museum.
“I don’t really enjoy making work that doesn’t have a conversational element to it. I always want to know what the response is and I want to know what it stirs or what it creates for the people who are interacting with it” says Katura.
The Fantasy Museum is free to visit and open 12:00 – 5:00 pm upstairs at the Kambri Gallery, every day until Sunday the 16th.
There are also free workshops on Saturday, one is ‘sporty’ and one is ‘crafty’. You can either register or just rock up.
On Sunday night there will also be an “Opening Ceremony for Queer Futures”, which Katura describes as an opening ceremony for “all of the queer futures”. This ceremony aims to celebrate the opening of the “portal” and call into being a world in which openly trans and gender diverse people are included and celebrated in sport.
The ceremony will include drag performances, fun playlists to boogie too, and be an overall “cute, daggy, fun event”.
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