Panel Statement

Panel: Embodiment: meat and machines

In games we can play with ideas of subjectivity through body options, weapons, various forms of representation and interaction with imaginary spaces. Gameplay, especially on the internet enables us to indulge in multiple personalities and explore strange shifts in our own subjectivity. However, the experience is still grounded in real life physical bodies sitting at terminals or fingering the cell phone in real space. Although gender bending in a disembodied space seems to create new paradigms outside patriarchal social structures, the physical body is still the most important political site for women.

• Josephine Starrs, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, Australia

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