The Emoji Project
12th – 14th August 7.30pm £12
Distracted Rat present The Emoji Project
The Emoji Project is an intergenerational, participatory anthology of new writing responding to emojis as an ever-evolving, nuanced language.
From their birth in 90’s Japan to their far-reaching, institutionalised use in the present, emojis are a trademark of how we connect.
We’ve assembled a team of creatives to consider our use of digitised communication and to imagine what emojis we’d still like to see.
Each writer will investigate and play with the meaning of a different emoji, translating its possibility into poetry, participatory work or short plays.
We use emojis to befriend; show love; make laugh; describe ourselves. They make people feel seen, they’re a mark of progress, they’re political, they spark real world debate and are altered in response to real world events. The crying-laughing-face emoji was the 2015 Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year and in 2020, as words grew wearied, Apple developed a range of bespoke pandemic emojis to reflect our “new normal”.
Emojis allow us to creatively share our experience, but what words in this collaborative, living language are still missing?
Content Warning: Verbal references to transphobia, death, and suicide. Discussions of racism. Described body dysmorphia, loss and death. Description of violence, suggestion of violence.