Dr Zoyander Street is a neuroqueer trans man (they/them preferred, he/him accepted) living in South Yorkshire, in the country currently known as the United Kingdom.
Dr Zoyander Street is a neurodivergent, genderqueer artist-researcher making work about cultural fissures, toxic feelings, and tech garbage. Their practice involves an innovative approach to social enquiry, focusing on using videogame design patterns to materialise ethnographic research, but also involving other forms of media art and (mis)uses of technology. They like to cross disciplinary boundaries, such as making live theatre with game-like interaction, or videogames for gallery spaces. They have a PhD by practice in Sociology at Lancaster University, creating original videogames alongside a traditional dissertation.
Qualifications
2010 MA, Japanese Studies
Cambridge University
2012 MA, History of Design and Material Culture Studies
Royal College of Art and Victoria & Albert Museum
2023 PhD, Sociology
Lancaster University
Artist statement
Zoyander has been incorporating LGBTQ+ oral histories into videogame-like interactive pieces since 2018, when they carried out a residency in Tokyo funded by the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs, interviewing transgender people and turning the material into Tamagotchi-like characters. They further developed this method in the 2019-2020 Platform Residency at Site Gallery Sheffield, by developing Cis Penance, a large project based on 45 interviews with trans people in the UK. The resulting works have been exhibited around the world, including Tokyo, Berlin, Chicago, Vancouver, and London.
Since 2021 they have been developing a practice in interactive theatre. With the support of the New Conversations programme (British Council, Canadian Council for the Arts), they developed new interactive theatre methods in collaboration with Canadian videogame artist Dietrich "Squinky" Squinkifer, building a tool to allow the audience to cast votes determining what the performers will do. The resulting interactive online performance was produced by queer theatre company Andro & Eve with the title ‘Video Call Calamity’.
In 2022 Zoyander was selected for the Bank Cohort programme with Sheffield Theatres, and assisted Sheffield Theatres Young Company as a games consultant to create interactive play 'Maybe I Will'. In 2023, Zoyander received one of Arts Council England’s highly competitive Developing Your Creative Practice grants to learn accessible design and adapt their practice following a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis, and assisted VR theatre company Megaverse to create a UKRI-funded interactive online play about climate change called Game Changers.
Zoyander is currently developing an ambitious multi-year project called Intrapology, an interactive online neuroqueer sci-fi series about alien anthropologists; the first episode, ‘Assigned Earth at Birth’, has been performed at Theatre Delicatessen Sheffield and Arizona State University’s state of the art MIX center.
