Queerness Onchain: An LGBTQIA+ Brunch in the Metaverse | Decentraland Pride 2022

David Cash hosts a weekend queer brunch for the fifth panel of Decentraland's Metaverse Pride 2022, with Gigi (Giovanna Graziosi Casimiro) of Decentraland, artists Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti of Operator, Chanel Verdult and Rebecca Lamis of UnicornDAO, and Kadine James of The Immersive KIND. They discuss Operator's artwork built on their own marriage certificate, how UnicornDAO funds women, non-binary, and LGBTQ+ creators, who the metaverse is being built for, and Pride Month in Decentraland.

Watch on YouTube

Chapters

1. 00:00 Welcome to the queer brunch
2. 01:27 Gigi on Decentraland and community
3. 02:08 Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti of Operator
4. 03:20 Chanel Verdult on UnicornDAO
5. 05:39 Kadine James on The Immersive KIND
6. 09:25 Operator on Let Me Check with the Wife
7. 14:59 Chanel Verdult on curation and activism
8. 19:35 Rebecca Lamis on building UnicornDAO
9. 23:05 Kadine James on whose metaverse we build
10. 31:32 Gigi on Pride Month in Decentraland
11. 35:49 Marriage, rights, and the metaverse
12. 48:39 Where to find the panelists

Speakers

• Gigi (Giovanna Graziosi Casimiro), Producer, Decentraland Foundation
• Ania Catherine, Artist, Operator
• Dejha Ti, Artist, Operator
• Chanel Verdult, Head of Curation, UnicornDAO
• Rebecca Lamis, Co-founder, UnicornDAO
• Kadine James, Founder, The Immersive KIND
• David Cash, Curator, Decentraland Foundation (host)

Key topics

• Let Me Check with the Wife, Operator's artwork built on their marriage certificate
• Privacy and transparency on the blockchain
• UnicornDAO's mission and how it supports creators
• Curation, activism, and coming out
• Queer venues and a rainbow runway in Spatial and Altspace
• Who decides what the metaverse becomes
• Weddings, kisses, and Pride floats in Decentraland
• What a marriage certificate means, legally and in virtual worlds

In their words

"what they're really buying is kind of a daily subversive performance of us inhabiting this old institution in a new and revolutionary and queer way." (Ania Catherine)

"whose metaverse are we building?" (Kadine James)

How to cite

APA: Cash, D. (2022). Queerness Onchain: An LGBTQIA+ Brunch in the Metaverse | Decentraland Pride 2022 [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/y_kmqK26r8g

Chicago: Cash, David. "Queerness Onchain: An LGBTQIA+ Brunch in the Metaverse | Decentraland Pride 2022." Recorded June 14, 2022; aired June 18, 2022, Decentraland. YouTube video, 51:02. https://youtu.be/y_kmqK26r8g.

Recording details

Recorded: June 14, 2022, Riverside.fm; aired June 18, 2022, Decentraland

Format: Panel recorded for Decentraland Metaverse Pride 2022

Length: 51:02 · Language: English

Curated and hosted by David Cash for the Decentraland Foundation

About the series

Decentraland Metaverse Pride 2022 was a month of programming in Decentraland in June 2022. David Cash, then Curator for the Decentraland Foundation, curated and hosted this panel series. The panels were pre-recorded and aired on the rooftop of the Cash Labs gallery in Decentraland. Five panels are archived here.

About this record

Presented as edited for the original 2022 broadcast, with captions added in 2026. Captions were machine-transcribed and reviewed by hand, with names checked against speaker introductions. Speaker roles are as of the recording date and may have changed since.

Shared for educational, research, and archival purposes. For corrections, name spellings, or removal requests: david@cashlabs.io

Transcript

Machine-transcribed and reviewed. Timestamps link to the moment in the video.

[0:06] Hello everybody, welcome back to the main stage of Decentraland's Metaverse Fashion Week. This is our fifth panel this month, it's crazy we've flown through them, but it's the fifth panels month and I'm really excited for this one because this is a really fun panel. We're here on the weekend. This is one of the two panels that we're calling Brunches. Specifically our topic today is going to be centered around celebrating women, celebrating femmes, celebrating non -binary people, anyone within the spectrum of femininity. And we're really excited to have this conversation with a bunch of amazing women, and myself a non -binary individual, you know, got to represent. And yeah, really excited to dive into what it means to be queer right now in the blockchain space, have a little kiki with some really amazing folks in the space, and yeah, just have a really open conversation this weekend. We're hanging out, I hope everybody has a

[0:52] drink, I hope everybody's relaxing on the weekend, hopefully you had something to eat, order your Uber Eats, pull this up. This is going to be streaming all day, so really appreciate everybody who's joining us here in the Metaverse, or if you're watching this after the fact, hopefully you have a great time with us over the course of the next 45 minutes or so, and yeah, excited to kick this off. So with all that being said, my name is David Cash, I'm here for the Decentraland Foundation, and I'm really excited to be hosting today's panel. I'm joined with such amazing ladies. I'm going to just give you a very quick run through of each of them and let them introduce themselves before we kick off today's conversation. So up first, as I see them before me, Ms. Gigi likes to be called Gigi, Giovanna Casimiro. How are you Gigi? Appreciate you joining us. Would you like to tell people a little bit about what

[1:34] you do at Decentraland? Hey, David, thank you everyone for having me here. I'm so happy to be part of this brunch, especially so we can't have so many talented people together. I'm Gigi and I'm producer at Decentraland Foundation. I have been working for the last many months with the community directly related to fashion projects, but overall community projects. And I'm super thrilled to be here and discuss a little bit more about how I can make this amazing ecosystem more diverse and inclusive to all creators. I'm glad to be here. Thank you. Up next, we have Ania and Dejha, two of my favorite NFT artists and artists in general, doing some really cool things in the blockchain space. Ania, Dejha, tell us a little bit about yourself for people who might not be familiar with you and let us know about some of the drops you have coming up this Pride Month.

[2:24] Yeah, thank you for having us, David. Always a pleasure. Thank you. My name is Ania Catherine. My name is Dejha Ti. And together, Dejha and I have a collaborative art practice in an art house called Operator, where we're merging creative technology, environments and performance art. And this month, actually specifically around Pride as part of their show, Icons and SuperTrans currently in their gallery in New York. Dejha and I released a new piece, a conceptual artwork called Let Me Check with the Wife. This is very specifically around kind of our experience of queerness. Well, very relevant to today's conversation. Amazing. I love it. Short and sweet. There's so much to delve into with both of you and your practice worth mentioning that you are a queer couple working together this Pride Month. And I think that's amazing and great to see both of you working and thriving in the NFT space and very excited

[3:14] about your upcoming drop. And yeah, hopefully we get to discuss that in a little bit more detail in this conversation. Up next, Chanel. Miss Chanel from UnicornDAO. Very much appreciate you taking the time to join us here today. For anybody who might not be familiar with you and your incredible work, would you like to introduce yourself and let people know a little bit about UnicornDAO and all the exciting things that you're all doing this Pride? Yes, it would be such a pleasure. Thank you so much for the lovely intro and having me today at the queer branch. My name is Si, aka Chanel Verdult, and I'm the head of curation at UnicornDAO, which is probably one of the most exciting DAOs that I've ever joined just because it's so aligned with all of us in the space, especially on this podcast right now. And UnicornDAO was co -founded by Pussy Riot's Nadya and her network of crypto, OGs, artists,

[4:05] builders and allies. And with Nadya's voice and everyone that's contributing as a part of the DAO, what's unique and well known is that she's also an activist fighting for human, women, LGBTIQ plus rights and especially right now reproductive rights. And for the first time, we're using these economic tools as our paints and brushes. So UnicornDAO is actually redistributing wealth and visibility in order to create equality for women identified and non -binary folks in the space. And in general, we really need to diversify and close the gap because we're extremely underrepresented and so as the head of curation, this is my goal is to really have a bridge, not only for us in the space, but also the contemporary art world, really entering Web3 and making it, you know, just a natural synergy to coalesce.

[5:03] Beautiful. I love the work that you do in the space and I absolutely love you and I'm so happy to have you here for today's conversation and excited to dive deeper into what's happening now and as always, what we can do better. And I think that, you know, organizations like UnicornDAO are the types of organizations that other people will pattern themselves afterwards. So I really think that you are definitely leading the charge as queer women tend to do, you know, every year at Pride Month. You know, it's the it's the queer women leading the charge. So I think it's really incredible to see UnicornDAO doing the same thing and excited to have you here, Chanel. Appreciate it. Thank you for the sweet words, David. It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. Last but certainly not least, we have another one of my favorites. She's been here before this Pride Month, but we had to have her back, Miss Kadine James.

[5:49] For anybody who may have missed the last panel, Kadine, do you want to introduce yourself very briefly and just let people know some of the exciting things that you and The Immersive KIND are doing in Decentraland and abroad this Pride Month? Yes, thank you, David. Such an honor to be here in such incredible company and such a fan of everybody's work and love being a part of Metaverse Pride, where I built a ruby red slipper and I'm bringing in the George Michael disco and the drag king, Don Juan, to perform on our stage inside Decentraland's Metaverse Pride. I'm also the founder of The Immersive KIND, which is a crypto art and digital fashion collective. I've also just opened up a 60 ,000 square foot venue inside Spatial's Metaverse.

[6:42] And tomorrow we're going to be launching a series of NFT drops with some of the fashion artists that are part of Maison d 'Al, which I'm also a part of. And on top of that, I'm opening. I have opened an NFT bar and venue inside Altspace's Metaverse. We've got a virtual reality bar and venue where we're bringing in DJ Hell to perform for our after party in celebration of queerness at Pride. And as a queer woman, I want to amplify and big up my people during Pride Month and always. Amen. Absolutely. Always worth mentioning that, yes, this is our month. This is the month that we want to be celebrated, that we are being celebrated.

[7:32] But, you know, we are queer 365 days of the year. So I think it's really important to always remember that. Awesome. So happy to have all these incredible ladies with us. And in the interest of opening with our strength, something I always like to do with these panels, if you've been with us for one before, you already know what I'm about to say. But what I like to do is open with our accomplishments and then mention for anybody who is comfortable how you identify and your pronouns. So I'll go first. My name is David Cash. I am a queer, gender nonconforming person. And I take all pronouns, but principally they, them or he, him. Ania and Dejha, would you like to introduce yourselves in terms of how you identify for the people watching? Yes, Ania Catherine, she, her. Also she, her. Awesome. And KD. I'm KD and I'm she and her. Amazing.

[8:22] And last but certainly not least, Chanel. Perfect. Yes, she, they. Fabulous. Thank you so much. So, yeah, the reason I do that is I always like to open with our accomplishments. You know, I think the queer community is is often, you know, kind of segregated to simply how we identify. But I like to open with what we've done, who we are, what we are thinking about, what we're doing right now, because we are all such, you know, accomplished people. I believe the queer people kind of leading the charge here within the Web3 space. So I always like to open up with what we're currently working on in our accomplishments and then chat a little bit about how we identify and that, you know, our pronouns mainly for the just so we can be respectful, you know, amongst each other during this conversation. So anyway, moving on to today's chat, I'm really excited to be joined with all these lovely people.

[9:04] They're all working on so many things. I would love to open up the conversation with just a specific prompt to each of these groups of people, because I have a pretty good idea what each of them are doing. And then we can open things up from there. I'm sure that many of the lovely ladies here have thoughts on things that others are doing. And if not, I have a bunch of prompts as well. So so we're ready and we're prepared. So with all of that in mind, the first thing I wanted to kick off with is actually Ania and Dejha. I know that you have a really beautiful practice. You do so many things. If people go back to fashion week, they can find it a little bit more about some of the work you've done in past months. You know, you've exhibited in Decentraland before. You currently have workup on a number of different platforms. But most recently, you just launched a piece on SuperRare. And I do believe it's really poignant to be

[9:47] talking about your piece this Pride Month, because I think you you reflect something that a lot of people strive towards, which is a long term, successful queer relationship. And I think you you reflected that. You also did a bunch of really interesting things, including like reverse utility and a whole bunch of things that I've never heard of before prior to this specific drop. But yeah, I would love to hear you talk a little bit more about your current drop and yeah, what you're aiming to do with it and what the reception has been, especially centered around Pride Month. Wonderful. Yes. So where do we start? So Ania and I, in addition to having a full time collaborative art practice, we also are married. So this is a very interesting and immersive container, just like our practice as immersive and experiential artists. Our life together is also quite immersive because we travel together, we work together and

[10:46] have a pretty intense and demanding practice. And so we met in 2015 on Instagram, which is very ironic, because most of our work is about surveillance, capitalism, extractive technologies and data privacy. So and now we're looking, we used to really dive into those aspects within a Web2 context and and have a critical sort of discourse through our work with audience participants who come up against our work. But now we are looking about how we are now we're looking at how privacy and transparency work within a Web3 context and specifically the tension between hiding between transparency and privacy on the blockchain and hiding within transparent systems and the attempt to be anonymous or the attempt to remain private, the attempt to be someone who you might not feel that you identify physically, but in your digital self, there are different possibilities.

[11:58] There's also different limitations. And so these are all aspects that we are investigating. Now, the project that really relates to this is the Privacy Collection, which the first release was the Privacy Key 00. This was on Brereville. Tezos released at the Vertical Crypto Art show back at Frieze LA. We released nine Privacy Keys, and once those had sold out, we moved on to the attempts which released in May. So it's worth noting this is the first time Ania and I have ever sold any of our work in our six year collaborative practice as we're experiential artists. So we don't have flat art and we don't have the typical things that you would, you know, sell.

[12:44] So this was something that we wanted to enter into this space in a very intentional way. And that's true to us as experiential artists. So our most recent piece is called Let Me Check with the Wife. And this was a piece created specifically for SuperRare's Icons and SuperTrans show, which is celebrating queer NFT artists. And I think one thing that we wanted to kind of bring to that exploration is to represent, I think, an aspect of queerness that maybe doesn't seem exciting to explore through art or even it has to do with kind of traditional values almost or traditional systems. And sometimes I feel like maybe a peer is not queer. But basically the piece is called Let Me Check with the Wife. And it entails the purchasing of Dejha and my original marriage certificate, the physical one, as well as a digital copy of the certificate.

[13:37] And so basically the collector is buying our marriage as an art object. And our framing is essentially that we're at the very beginning in history of women marrying each other. So it was basically within the first five years that women can marry each other federally, like across all states in the U .S. So thinking about that occasion and kind of the chance to inhabit this old traditional institution in a queer way and to rewrite what that means, to rewrite like can marriage be a container where women can thrive and love each other and support each other instead of in a tool for their oppression, which it has been for thousands of years. And so I kind of think that's the approach we're taking with this, is they're buying the marriage certificate, but what they're really buying is kind of a daily subversive performance of us inhabiting this old institution in a new and revolutionary and queer way.

[14:27] I love that. I think it's super beautiful. And I love how how simple but effective and evocative this can be. And I think it's really I think it's really reflective of your practice and the way that both of you work in a very conceptual manner. So hopefully people can see it live in New York. And if people are interested, I think it's still live right now. If you want to check it out and support some lovely queer artists, a couple of lovely queer artists this Pride Month. Fabulous. Very happy to have you here and excited to delve in more. And speaking of delving in more, I actually want to pass the mic over to Chanel. This is a bit of a conversation in Chanel. I know you're very aware of Ania and Dejha's work. You've known each other for quite a while, both in relation to maybe if you have a response to them, but more so in your practice. I'm curious when it comes to curation.

[15:16] And this is my question specifically for you. When it comes to curation and your queer identity, how much interplay do you find there is between those two things? Obviously, UnicornDAO is primarily focused around similar to the topic of this conversation, empowering female artists, femme artists, non -binary artists, queer artists. So I'm curious from your perspective, as somebody who curates within that frame, how much of your curation is based around, let's say, maybe activism or representation? And how much of it is based around, let's say, in terms of the art? I'm curious from your perspective. That's a really good question. I think that naturally I have a pull and gravitation towards this type of curation without pinpointing it as non -binary or queer artists. And usually a lot of the art that I do choose has an underlying tone of activism and fighting for something within the subliminal messaging.

[16:13] As a queer curator, I came out at 17, 18, or maybe younger, actually. And I came out around the same time as Ania. We grew up in kind of a conservative area as two really rebellious artists in our city. And it wasn't easy. So it's really cool to see, you know, a couple decades later, fluidity and acceptance and us building a space for the next generation or people that are still struggling to come out to be more comfortable in their skin and pride, whether they're in the metaverse, that's a safe space, or physically existing in the art and Web3 world in person. And so, you know, my mission is to really make artists and appreciators of art, collectors, anyone that wants to join UnicornDAO, to onboard them with trust that they're in a new microcosm that is protected and safe and that we're building a new initiative to really just make sure that we're all taken care of.

[17:19] And this is a new ecosystem that I really believe that hasn't been done. I mean, we're raising thousands of ETH in order to find emerging artists or artists that are a bit hesitant or fearful to move into the Web3 world and to start minting their work on the blockchain, really holding their hand and, you know, showing them that there is a new frontier and that it's more supportive than anything that they've ever been a part of. It just really takes the first step of coming into the cryptosphere. And so naturally, I think with my curation, a lot of my research is with physical experiences of meeting these artists, of meeting fellow curators or, you know, anyone in the arts and Web3 space that I have an intimate connection with that is linked to a memory or a narrative.

[18:14] And, you know, like my previous exhibitions that I curated at Kraftwerk, I knew every single artist. And if I didn't, I was introduced via operator or a good friend. And I could feel this new type of chemistry and way that I can give an artist statement if the artist is not perhaps there. And so I know that I'm only one person and that's why we have a DAO and we have several curators. And one of my missions with actually Rebecca Lamis who is focal and central to developing UnicornDAO from absolute scratch from ground zero is that we're looking for other people to join us so that the visibility just becomes, you know, 300 % more than anything that we've ever expected. And so right now we've developed a framework that just begun a month ago.

[19:01] We started fantasizing and, you know, creating this radical decentralized new concept like six to eight months ago, all together meeting each other for the first time in the space under a year ago. And then it came to life three months ago. And so we're, you know, developing something that is in its womb and it's going to develop more and more publicly as we, you know, work on it together. But maybe Rebecca, you can make your intro and brush upon what we're doing together to make this happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hi, everyone. I'm happy to join, apologize for being late. Got some meetings pushed back today. But yeah, I am one of the co -founders of UnicornDAO. I definitely came in from more of the operational standpoint. So I've been in the Web3 space since about 2017, 2018 now, have been focusing since day one on DAOs previously and I still do the work.

[20:03] I did a lot of work within unions, organizing work, nonprofits, activism, et cetera. And so I fell in love with the model of DAOs from day one because it's a way for collective organizing and action in a way that we don't traditionally see as able in corporate structures today. And so, you know, I was able to do a lot of kind of consulting contracting work from 2019 onwards. And then I met Nadya who is one of our co -founders at the end of 2021. And, you know, I was introduced to her because she was looking to bring the Pussy Riot ethos into Web3 within an organization in our DAO. And so that's kind of how UnicornDAO was born is I helped support her and how we actually build this framework of the organization and how we work as a collective in organizing and, you know, really as she likes to say, creating a feminist revolution within Web3.

[21:01] And so, you know, we kinda, I met Nadya first in November and we hit the ground running in January, started pitching around this idea to creatives, artists, leaders, whales, crypto leaders, et cetera. And it was really, really wonderful seeing that kind of from day one, everybody was like, yes, this is needed in this space. It is by no means equitable currently and especially towards women non -binary and queer creators. And so it was almost, I would joke to my mother that it was the easiest thing to pitch at the beginning of 2022 because everyone we talked to just understood the deep, deep need and the deep, deep gap currently in this space. And that if we don't start to do work now to fix it, it's just going to end up being like the dot -com bubble all over again.

[21:49] And so, yeah, we, you know, brought the community together, raised about 5 million in funds for the first couple of months and then officially launched into February, beginning of March. And that's when Chanel joined us among really wonderful other community members. And yeah, since then we've really been focusing on how we can support women non -binary and LGBTQ+ creators within the space right now by really giving them finances, resources, you know, purchasing their work, pushing them on a larger platform. And, you know, that's definitely just the beginning. I think we're starting with a niche focus within investing in what three organizations and the NFT community. But I think there's a lot of other ways that we're going to grow. But yeah, really thrilled to see how it's all come together so quickly and the overwhelming support we've had for it. Awesome, thanks Rebecca and thanks Chanel.

[22:41] You know, this is of course a brunch so sometimes we have some people join us partway through. It's very casual, but very happy to have you here. And yeah, as Chanel always says, queer utopia now. And I love the sentiments that, you know, UnicornDAO push forwards. I hope to see a lot more of it. And as I mentioned before, I think you guys are really leading the charge in terms of what organizations can do in this space for good and for the good of us all. Thanks for that, both of you. Would love to pass the mic over to Kadine. Kadine, so much that you're doing this month, obviously. We've had a couple conversations around the realm of what it means to, you know, create safe spaces in the metaverse and how you are facilitating on so many different levels, mainly in the fashion community, but in so many different communities, how you are, you know, going about creating safe spaces in the metaverse. But I'm curious if we can push it further,

[23:27] you know, from your perspective, we have had some chats around that. But from the work that you're doing, and I always think that the work you're doing is always very much on the bleeding edge. Obviously you're doing work with Accenture, you were doing some work with Yahoo. You're working, you know, always on the bleeding edge of the creative side of this. And I'm curious from your perspective, you know, obviously the metaverse gives us a lot of potential in terms of spaces where we can all gather. And, you know, as we've talked about in most of these conversations, you know, as queer people, the internet and the metaverse and virtual space is really important to us in the way that we can kind of identify and self -identify. So from your perspective, being someone who's, you know, very involved in the technology and very involved in the creative side of things, I'm curious if there's anything that you're really

[24:04] excited about in terms of what's next, whether it's something to do with an avatar, metaverse solution, or just anything that you're working on right now. Kadine, passing it over to you. Thank you so much, David. And thank you for bringing us together for this amazing conversation with such incredible people. So inspired by the work that everybody is doing. So I think to your point in terms of these spaces and how we build them, as a queer woman, I wanted to build my own spaces and I wanted to be using my activism and the opportunity to connect the next generation of queer artists and queer fashion designers and bring them into the spaces that I've been building in all space where we've just built a virtual reality NFT bar and venue where we're bringing in queer artists and queer musicians and queer fashion designers to showcase and amplify the voices of the queer community.

[25:04] In addition to that, I've also just opened up a 60 ,000 square foot working with the architects, Studio Multi here in London, where we've designed this virtual space and venue with a rainbow runway it had to be a rainbow runway for me. And we're working with Ready Player Me who've partnered with us and the Maison DAO guys and Polygon to bring together the community during Pride. So we're gonna be hosting this runway show with Ready Player Me avatars and we're also gonna be bringing together some of the up and coming talent and I wanna throw a spotlight on the amazing young artists and creators and queer voices in our community and cultivate these opportunities.

[26:03] And that was always one of my big aims. I spoke to Gigi about this way, way back when we were in production and it's now come to life Gigi and I'm so delighted that I'm here today to say that we did it and I'm part of the Maison DAO crew. So I've been working with artists and bringing our community together through the DOW, looking at kind of virtual wardrobes and showcasing digital fashion and fashion skins and becoming other as well in the metaverse is something that we've been doing a lot on an expression and self -expression. Fashion in the metaverse is a big part of my practice as you know, David and this is something that I've been doing a lot of and really wanna kind of use the voice that I have and also as somebody that teaches digital fashion at London College of Fashion and at Condé Nast and also at NYU now, I really wanna use that insight and that expertise that I've got to kind of foster and

[27:05] support the opportunities for the next generation of talent and the queer voices that are coming up in the space. You know, I'm really interested in the gaming applications as well and a building, you know, I've got space in Decentraland, I've got space in Somnium. I've also built this world in Spatial and also in Altspace. I'm really interested in, you know, creating NFT drops. We're doing a drop tomorrow with the Maison DAO and Jessica James and Jesse Aravaro who's an incredible artist and creator. We're gonna bring over a thousand people together. We're going to attempt to bring that many people onto our runway tomorrow. We'll probably end up crashing the site but, you know, I'm just really excited by everything that's happening in the space and I really wanna act as a champion and as a voice for all the creativity that is taking place within the communities at the moment but also really wanting to lift the voices

[28:15] of the next generation of artists and talent. And I also wanna, you know, be mindful of the fact that gay relationships are still criminalized in 72 countries. Eight of them, you know, you can still be sent to death for. And I'm really aware of that and I'm aware of our rights being taken away. I'm aware of the fact that I've been in a relationship, you know, for the last 17 years with my partner and, you know, I wanna use the fact that I'm a proud queer woman to really be visible and to be seen and to be heard and to support our community at a time where, you know, we need to be visible. We need to keep kicking down the door and we need to keep being real and honest and having these conversations and being at the front of the table and around the table and making the decisions around the technology and how it's being built and who gets to use it and whose metaverse.

[29:19] You know, this is something that I think a lot about, you know, whose metaverse are we building? Are we just gonna rehash what already exists? Or is this really gonna be an opportunity to cultivate and bring about change? So those are my thoughts. Beautiful and very well said, Kadine. And so happy to have you here. And yeah, yes to everything that you said there. Yes to creating, you know, more spaces and creating more representation, especially within the Web3 space. I think that's the importance of, you know, stages such as this. So again, I really appreciate all of you taking times out of our very busy schedules this June. This is a really crazy June. I don't know who decided to schedule NFT NYC during and Basel and all these events during London Tech Week. I believe this is South by South, you know, sorry, consensus. I mean, everything happened this month.

[30:06] I think it's quite homophobic, I'm being perfectly honest, but, you know, it's the busiest month ever, but we're all making time to be here. And I do think it's really important that, you know, platforms like Decentraland are taking the time to make space and, you know, create stages like this and give them a platform so that people can, you know, have some positive representation across the board from very powerful women, from powerful non -binary people, from powerful trans people, from people of color, from people from all over the world. I think one of the most exciting things from my perspective is that we get pretty much a full range of perspectives, including, I think, potentially for the first time, we have a panel specifically highlighting queer artists living and working in Africa. Just because, you know, there's a ton of information about, you know, African artists, but, you know,

[30:49] a lot of African countries, as KD mentioned, homosexuality is either illegal or very, very frowned upon. So since they can't sell within their local communities, I think it's really important to create more of a stage and a platform, especially for queer African artists, since they are so marginalized, even within their own communities, especially this month, but all the time. So that's why we wanna have as many conversations, as many intersectional conversations as possible. But, yeah, this is our chance to just speak about it a little bit more broadly. I think it's important for people to get this on a bunch of different levels, and hopefully some people can join us this weekend, you know, have a little bit of a kiki, join us, learn some information, find out about some cool new organizations and people like UnicornDAO, like Maison DAO, like Operator, and like what we're doing here in Decentraland, and find some more resources and some safe

[31:29] spaces, some safe virtual spaces to explore. And with that in mind, I wanna pass it to our final, and again, one of my favorites, Gigi from Decentraland. I mean, thank you to you and the whole Decentraland team for creating such a beautiful platform. This Pride Month, always worth mentioning any time we're here in DCL, that Decentraland was one of the first, I'm gonna take that again, Decentraland was one of the first Web3 platforms actually presenting a Pride Week, and they've been doing it now for, I believe, four years. So I think it's really exciting considering where the space was in terms of Dude Bronus four years ago. I think that it was insanely progressive that Decentraland was already there creating a Pride Parade for its users. So with that in mind, and with everything that's going on this month, we have so much happening. Gigi, please let us know what you're really excited about happening in Decentraland this month,

[32:15] because there's a lot. I mean, I think that let's start with the beautiful news that it started as Pride Week, and then in 2022, we have an entire month of activities. What really excites me a lot is to see how this event is growing through the community and gives an opportunity to make it visible, like so many talented individuals in our community inside Decentraland. So it's beautiful to see the work that has been done. And I would even kudos to Iara Dias, which is our producer that is also supporting and leading this big event. So I think it was a beautiful initiative. And one of the main points that excites me is really to see the engagement of the communities, to see how they really unfold this event. That generally happens in Decentraland ecosystem in any event. But I think Pride Month is giving an opportunity for different languages to come to the surface, for different identities, and to everybody to discuss

[33:13] that in a fun, but also serious way. I do feel with my background in multimedia arts, and that was my start of my career, that using art to express ourselves is super important, but also bringing difficult topics that sometimes we try to avoid, or they create tension, or we need to bring them through art. And I feel that the Pride Month is becoming this beautiful surface of self -expression, safe space, and diversity. And the community is embracing that. So if you look into my Twitter, I'm obsessively posting about the Pride Month all the time, because it was such a beautiful aesthetic result also. And I don't know if you had the chance to see the float cars, but I think they bring that diversity of self -expression, the different aesthetics, the different communities within the LGBTQ+ community.

[34:06] And I think that's the most special thing about extending this discourse. And hopefully, we'll be able to bridge more and more that in between the worlds. I know that that's one thing I really look forward to see the metaverse exploding outside the screen. So let's see how much of that we can do for this and many other events to come. Fabulous. I love what's going on in Decentraland. And there's so many activations happening, both from the foundation and from a ton of different communities, things ranging from, I believe, there was a way that Iara mentioned that you can get married now in the metaverse. You can now kiss in the metaverse. They now have a kiss. There's all of these new things that are being implemented to create more tangibility within virtual space. I think it's really exciting. And I love, love, love what you're doing, Gigi. And absolutely, I think that Decentraland is becoming this place where I think that marriage is a big

[34:55] thing. Like wedding, we had so many weddings and now it's so funny. Like we had so many different kinds of weddings and Closeup actually, created a venue for weddings. Anyone, any avatar that comes can just get married inside Decentraland in their space. So it's so funny to see how the concept of love identity and how all those possibilities to love somebody can be extended and rediscussed also inside the metaverse and so many layers of emotional engagement. So it's beautiful. I really feel totally in love for what is going on and how we are building this space together and loving in this space together. Super exciting. Thank you so much Gigi. Unfortunately, we only have a few minutes left of this conversation, but since it is a conversation, I wanted to do one very special thing which we haven't done in our other panels that I'd like to do today in our brunch. I'd actually like to go to each of our

[35:51] amazing panelists and quickly ask if there was something that another panelist said that you'd like to respond to or react to and if there's nothing, you can totally just mention something else that you're doing this month. But if it's okay, I'd love to pass it over to Ania and Dejha first. Sorry to position your question. You're more than welcome to piggyback into something else. But I'm curious with the concept, especially considering your current project around a marriage certificate, I'm curious if you have any thoughts on what Gigi just talked about in terms of the ability now to get married or at least have a virtual marriage in the metaverse and get some kind of a certificate even if it isn't like an official U .S. State marriage certificate. So curious on your thoughts on that and if you had anything else you wanted to piggyback off on from this conversation today. Sure. Well, specifically it's interesting how you ended that

[36:40] question which is what are your thoughts even if it's not an official marriage certificate. And I think, of course, there is value in it being official in terms of how it plays out in a practical sense. For instance, there's 1 ,138 rights that you receive in the U .S. if you're married. And so, for instance, you know, if my wife was in the hospital you know, and we're not married legally, you know, there are things that I don't have any say if you're in a position where, you know, someone needs to step in. And so, I think that's one practical example. This is also why our reserve price is 11 .38 ETH for the 1 ,138 rights that you receive.

[37:36] And I think, you know, while that is true that there are practical benefits to an official marriage, I also feel that, you know, for us it was really also a subversive performance in a way to kind of redefine what that container is. It's a convention that people, you can meet people where they are to communicate, you know, what it is that you are with someone else that you love, but also in order to fill that container with anything, this is something that we think a lot about. So, I think the idea of how marriage would translate in a metaverse context is quite interesting and changes also, you know, the needs of like, what would be the practical need of that?

[38:35] What would the sort of fantastical need of that be as well and kind of to invent new structures that serve us better than the sort of, you know, physical world version of a marriage certificate and a marriage in general? Yeah. I'm just conscious of time, but I agree with what you just said. I second all those things. I love it. I love it. Thank you guys so much. Gigi, I know that we just chatted about the marriage certificate, so I'm curious if you want to respond to Ania and Dejha, or if not, you can totally respond to one of the other lovely ladies that we have in this panel if you have any other topics that you're interested in. I know Kadine was talking about XR in the metaverse, obviously things that you know so much about being a PhD yourself, but yeah, we'd love to hear some of your thoughts.

[39:23] Well, first, I think I just would like to make a point that I think that discussing topics like marriage, I think this is such an important point using the art to really go on those, because those are so conventional beliefs we carry through generations. They're part of our social construction and those beliefs, they are made to be changed, right? I think those beliefs, they exist because one day they were assigned values to, we assigned values to them, but they are here to be questioned. So I love to see the use of the art as an instrument to make those questions as part of the art history. This is so many artists doing that job, but it's beautiful to see that and how we can interject that discussion in the Web3. And I invite everybody, we should talk about the art week at some point.

[40:11] That's a different discussion, but let's keep going on that. And to be very fast and going into what Kadine said, I think her points about XR, definitely that's a topic we should keep stretching because I do feel the metaverse is here to stay and was created to actually be expanded. Every 10 years we see the metaverse or the cyberspace or virtual world stretching the boundaries and I think the XR solutions are more real now for us and hopefully we'll see our virtual identities overlapping our physical identities. And also then the discussion of metaverse love, metaverse marriage, all those things are entangled for us to understand how they will unfold. So I don't have questions. I'm just very excited to what is coming. Many questions will come and we'll keep discussing within the community.

[41:00] And thank you so much for having me here today. It's a pleasure and I'm honored to be here with all of you. Always a pleasure having you, Gigi. Thanks so much for coming and always representing Decentraland so flawlessly. So appreciate you joining us today and no worries if you have to drop out. I will. I want to pass the mic over to Kadine before we close with UnicornDAO as I want to allow them to end with some final statements. Ooh, a whole bunch of things just happened there. I don't even know what. Kadine, do you have any thoughts that you'd like to share with us? Anybody you'd like to respond to in terms of some of the lovely ladies who've shared some ideas with us today? Anything you want to leave us with in terms of a response? I just want to say how much I've enjoyed being a part of this conversation, David. And it's always so well put together and thought about the people that you assemble and bring together to

[41:52] explore these topics. And I'm so inspired by the work that Unicorn are doing and also the work of Operator and Gigi, I'm a massive fan of too. So I think we need to celebrate. We need to amplify. We need to continue to build. And we also need to make sure that the next 50 years of the internet has as much diversity and inclusion from all representation. And I loved your point on bringing more Black voices into the conversation. I've just done a big project working with artists from Brixton in southeast London creating their 2D works into NFTs and bringing them on board into the NFT space.

[42:51] It's something that I'm immensely proud of and was a major project that I got to exact produce. I'm going to share a link in the chat so that you can see. But yeah, really keen to bring more amplification of different voices in different communities and break down the gatekeepers that often guard those spaces in order to reimagine what they could be. Awesome. Thank you so much for that, Kadine. So appreciate your time and having you here today. Would love to pass it back over to UnicornDAO to close us out. Rebecca, we did it the other way around last time so I'll pass it to you first. Anything that was mentioned in today's conversation that struck you or anything you'd like to respond to before we close out today's conversation.

[43:43] Yeah, I really appreciated how much Decentraland I think was brought up in the large scale inclusionary work you guys are doing. I think it's very unique in the Web3 space and as you were saying like the numerous pride events throughout this month is just a small example. But I really do love how there's so much activation and organizing going across the board of Decentraland as everyone brought up throughout this call. And I think in my opinion that's how metaverses should be run. I think metaverses at their true decentralized for are run when you have communities of all shapes and sizes having the opportunity to build within the metavers. So I think that really is showcased and not only the activations that are coming from your community for this month of pride but also at large the endless moving projects and opportunities and parts of Decentraland I think that's very exciting overall and just really kind

[44:43] of showcases the long -term goals and building of a true decentralized community that you don't necessarily see in a lot of other metaverses currently. Absolutely. Great, great points and I really appreciate that in terms of Decentraland. That's also why I love working with Decentraland because I think that they're really one of the leading open metaverses pushing for the right things across the board being both a foundation, a charity and a DAO at the same time I feel like just makes them kind of a very righteous organization in a lot of ways. So really, really enjoy working with them and yeah, thank you so much for that and very happy to have you here as a part of it. Last but most certainly not least I want to pass the mic over to Chanel. Chanel, I know you know a lot of the people in this conversation. We've worked together before you've worked with Ania and Dejha but wondering if there's anything

[45:27] that was brought up today that you'd like to touch on or respond to before we end today's chat. Yes, actually the telepathy of how you introduce that question kind of is my question and comment but first David Cash Labs it's an honor and thrill to meet new faces in the space and also have familiar friends in this queer brunch with us so that we can all connect and amplify our visions and see how we can work together. We've definitely gotten to know Decentraland in the past couple of months even more and I personally found out that it is a foundation and a DAO and a metaverse an entire operation to make sure that you have many different avenues of how it's structured and I think that's quite fascinating connecting with Marja and your team at Decentraland and seeing so many different pride activations like Rebecca said is all inspiring and that you've been doing it for so long and you're truly

[46:22] vanguards in the space and you know we're a new organization so we're definitely curious of how we activate our metaverse our IRL permanent collection in the future and so you know just taking it with a grain of salt like listening to what you're up to being architects of the metaverse and how you're pushing it past the concept of what we see it as today just structurally like what does it physically look like and how it's going to surpass our expectations is my current curiosity because you know we have so many different ways of curation and passions within our organization but the metaverse is definitely a hot topic so with that being said you know I think the metaverse connects us all and especially you know people like you that are spending such avid time to curate an all queer panel and also have galleries in the metaverse and you know parades all this different programming that really

[47:21] activates the space and brings inclusion and visibility and I just can't wait to see how it progresses each year and each month that goes by so thank you for having us Thank you so much Chanel you know that's always like what I like to think about you know last year I had the pleasure of being involved in Decentraland's Art Week I curated just one of the days for an organization and this year you know I'm helping curate the whole event through Decentraland and it's amazing to see how each event grows you know last week we started last you know a couple months ago we started Fashion Week and now it's next year I don't even know what it's going to be but I think Pride is the one that we've actually seen progressively you know each year get bigger and bigger and you know as Gigi mentioned this year it's a whole month so yeah I mean the programming this year I think was great but you know there's always learnings and

[48:07] there's always things that we can do better and I think that's the goal is constant improvement and seeing what we can continuously do to push things forward and also push Pride beyond just Pride Month so I just want to say I really appreciate everybody joining I know some people have to hop I am running a couple minutes late to a meeting too but I really appreciate everybody taking time both on this panel and watching us right now out of your time to hang out with us I hope everybody's had an enjoyable last hour of their day I hope you've had something to eat I hope you've had a drink I hope you had a lovely queer brunch here with us in Decentraland and we hope you can join us on the next one just before we end actually it's opportune who's left with us here today both for Immersive KIND and for UnicornDAO can you please quickly just tell the people who are watching where they might be able to find you online if anybody

[48:49] wants to follow up this lovely brunch with some research yes of course thank you David so you can find The Immersive KIND on our website at theimmersivekind .com you can also find us on the usual social channels on Twitter at Immersive KIND and also on Instagram and then we've also got the venues in Spatial and in Decentraland we've got a float in Decentraland and I've got a venue in DCL thanks again David for bringing us together and for all that you do for our community it's such an honor to be here a part of this amazing conversation during Pride Month thank you It's a pleasure thanks so much for joining us Kadine and last but finally not least I think Rebecca is having some issues joining us back again but Chanel you want to end us off with letting people know where they can find UnicornDAO on the internet yes you can find us across many socials to start off we are unicorndao .com you can get to know the mission the team how you can

[49:54] organize with us different ways to join have a seat in the DAO and perhaps vote on governance and all these different proposals that we have together as an organization to make decisions that you see publicly you can follow us follow us on Instagram which is at unicorndao and then on Twitter it's unicorndao underscore xxx and those are our socials and our website but personally you can send us a DM on Twitter or Instagram and we're more than happy to reach out to you and see different ways that we can work with you or showcase your artwork in the space Fabulous thanks so much to Chanel and Rebecca and all the fabulous work you do through UnicornDAO and once again thank you to everybody who's watching if you made it all the way to the end as always my name is David Cash here for the Decentraland Foundation as we've talked about in this chat there's a difference but very much appreciate you all once again and we'll

[50:49] see you in the next chat next week thank you all happy pride and we'll see you later take care thank you