Queer Representations in Motion: Documenting Identity through Animation

This article interrogates the intersection of queer diasporic identity, collective Socio-Political Identity, and the ‘algorithmic gaze’ through a critical Practice-Based Research (PBR) methodology. Situated within the sociopolitical rupture of post-2019 Hong Kong, the authors examine how collective culture and the homogenizing forces of generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) enact a dual erasure of local queer narratives. To address this, the study proposes a ‘Queer Social Ecology’ framework, adapting Bronfenbrenner’s model to map the coercive pressures exerted on the queer subject. Through the coproduction of the animated documentary Rhythms of Identity , based on the oral history of a Hong Kong migrant (‘YC’), this research demonstrates how animation functions as a ‘conditional space’ for articulating inarticulable trauma. Furthermore, the project employs Critical Technical Practice (CTP) by operationalizing GenAI not to refine but to perform bias—generating visual ‘glitches’ that expose the heteronormative exclusions of machine learning. The article argues that participatory animation serves as a vital counter-archive, preserving the texture of lived experience against the sanitizing forces of state power and technological standardization.