Virtual Reality Experience
Against Racism

Exhibited at

Experience DEBUG at
Places Festival

Days
Hours
Minutes
Seconds

Places Festival

Bochumer Str. 156

45886 Gelsenkirchen

Free entry

Experience Racial
Microaggressions in Virtual Reality

DEBUG is a VR installation that allows you to virtually experience the discomfort, dissonance, and disturbance of racial microaggressions.
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Your System
Requires an Update

What does Happyland mean? What are microaggressions? And why mosquitoes?
Find out about the key concepts of DEBUG and get ready for updating your system.

Microaggressions

Microaggressions

Where are you really from? Wow your German is so good. You look so exotic! Racial microaggressions are frequent verbal or behavioural attacks, whether intentional or unintentional. They communicate derogatory attitudes towards stigmatized groups.

Mosquitoes

Mosquitoes

Imagine the feeling of 20 mosquito bites a day, everyday, even beyond generations. Chances are that you would feel stressed, uncomfortable, and ill. This is how racial microaggressions feel. Moreover, they impact the health, behaviour, and experiences of stigmatized people.

Happyland

Happyland

Happyland is defined by the anti-racism advocate, Tupoka Ogette, as our state of mind before we actively and self-critically reflect about systemic racism. In this place of ignorant bliss, white fragility rules supreme. Happylanders refuse to debug microaggressions from their system.

VRansit Zone

VRansit Zone

The long journey out of Happyland starts as one enters the VRansit zone — a vast deserted landscape. Its discomfort will make you want to go back into Happyland. As you look into the distance, does a safer reality await?

which lens will
you choose?

The VR experience is staged on two levels — the audience’s and the participant’s perspective. While the participant enters the uncomfortable experience of microaggressions, the audience stays in Happyland. Your system can only be debugged with the proper lens.

Audience

Participant

Why DEBUG?

Racism is part of a malfunctioning societal system that is in need of a debug — a process also known for finding and resolving malfunctions in a computer system. Through this analogy, microaggressions are essentially bugs that plague our interpersonal relationships and interactions.

Partner up. Deconstruct Racism.

Racism is deeply entrenched in our society, our institutions, our beliefs, and values. Each one of us is part of the racist system we live in. It’s about time to debug this system from racism. But how?

You’re right, it isn’t easy to change a system that has been part of us for centuries. And yes, it’s a fight that will take generations. You will most likely not experience the victory anymore. But you have the power to set the foundation for it. Anti-racism is not an attitude. It’s an action. And our lifetime responsibility.

Get in touch to find out how you can support DEBUG.

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