Nikolas Ryan
he/him
Transcendent Archives
'Transcendent Archives' is a collaborative, game-based counter-archive that reclaims trans memory through glitch, choice, and collective storytelling. It aims to re-contexualise memory from static preservation to participatory resistance.
This project aims to create a space where memory is protected, where experience matters and where your power cannot be ignored. Trans people are welcomed and prioritised here. Cis audiences are permitted to engage as witnesses but not spectators. Transphobic people are prohibited from entering the archive.
The first public output from this project is envisaged as an installation which includes the legal/medical documents collected throughout the transition of the artist’s collaborators. This juxtaposition of the rigidity of the conventional archival material to the fluidity of the projected gameplay affirms that while history cannot be erased, it can be used to help us navigate toward a better and more equitable future.