QUEER FEMINIST DECOLONIAL ECOLOGIES
DOSSIER Editors: Diana Georgiou, Katie Goss & Sofia Vranou i QUEER FEMINIST DECOLONIAL ECOLOGIES QUEER FEMINIST DECOLONIAL ECOLOGIES
DOSSIER Editors: Diana Georgiou, Katie Goss & Sofia Vranou iii Published in the UK in 2020 by Arts Feminism Queer / CUNTemporary
On the occasion of the festival
March – April 2019
Editors: Diana Georgiou, Katie Goss & Sofia Vranou Graphic Designer: Diana Georgiou Printing & Binding: London College of Fashion
Images © the artist(s) unless otherwise noted Texts © the authors
Cover Image: Helena Hunter, Holding the Herbarium, 2019. Courtesy of Natural History Museum Botany Collection.
This publication is typeset in Futura and Baskerville. Printed on Fedrigoni papers.
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iv CONTENTS
Diana Georgiou & Giulia Casalini 01 Preface
Diana Georgiou, Katie Goss & Sofia Vranou 09 Introduction
Anna Tokareva 13 Baba Yaga Myco Glitch
Amelia Goldberg 23 Between Kin and Ship: The Intersection of Feminism and Environmentalism aboard a Hudson River Sailboat
Amanda Monti 41 Weaving Weed-Kin
Graham Bell Tornado 53 The Participatory Rituals of Transgender Shaman Geyserbird
Alex Wilk 65 The Cyborg Body in Biohacking Cultures
Emma Pavans de Ceccatty 83 Becoming Plastic: Bio Art and the Uncertain Effects of Plasticisers on the Human Body Ecofutures Poster, 2019. Designed by Graphicalism. PREFACE Diana Georgiou & Giulia Casalini
Looking back to the (Eco)Future
[1] The exhibition It took over three months of full-time research to create the first draft showcased, among of what would become the EcoFutures programme – a festival that took others, artworks by Pinar Yoldas and Mary place between March to April 2019 which ambitiously collaborated Maggic who were with 10 partner organisations and brought together over 70 artists, part of the Ecofutures exhibition Staring at the activists and theorists from all over the world in 7 venues across East Sun. See more online at London. Our aim was to create what was very likely going to be one Ars Electronica Festival of the largest and most significant public programmes in Europe to (2017) Feminist Climate Change: Beyond the highlight intersectional, feminist and queer responses to urgent envi- Binary. Available at ronmental and ecological issues.
1 Raisa Kabir & Stitches in Time, Weaving Local Voices: Sustainability, Survival and Economies of Labour, 2019. Installation view at Staring at the Sun, The Art Pavilion, London. Back strap looms and recycled materials woven by workshop participants Jakia, Hasna, Jebin, Saleha Mitale, Nosira with the help of Anwara. Photo by Loredana Denicola.
2 fever. Her book Staying with the Trouble[5] started place before and during the festival. We got circulating in reading groups and art events, most of the grants that we applied for, but and the documentary Donna Haraway: Story we did not get a few that, with the expansion Telling for Earthly Survival premiered in London of the programme, would have made a sig- at Tate Modern in April of that year and nificant difference to our anxiety. We were then made its rounds to Whitechapel Gallery, determined to maintain the programme as we Royal College of Art, Central Saint Martin’s had initially imagined it, whether we had the [5] Donna Haraway, and Goldsmiths University. What was it about funding or not, and worry about the money Staying with the Trouble: Staying with the Trouble that spoke so strongly to later. Luckily, we had the good fortune of vol- Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham so many artists? unteers who stepped in last-minute and who and London: Duke This book and her pivotal essay ‘A Cyborg became invaluable to the production. We then University Press, 2016). Manifesto’ from 1985, were reference points had VISA complications for artists coming [6] Extinction Rebellion in many of the applications that we received to the UK following the new Brexit negotia- started its public protests following our open call for EcoFutures. We tions and without the help of our partners at in London in Autumn 2018, but it expanded knew that we were setting ourselves up for Artsadmin we would have been at a loss for on a global scale with a an immense amount of work by launching how to deal with this on time.[7] In the thick of number of coordinated the call, but it has always been part of our it, an Airbnb room ‘scam’ almost left two of actions on 15 April 2019 (coincidently, ethos to find ways to open up our organ- our artists without a roof and while dealing during the closing days isation to artists of all backgrounds and with all this, our personal relationship was of EcoFutures). For experience and to put them in dialogue with going through a crisis and an eventual break more information visit Extinction Rebellion a community of transnational and intergen- up before the festival was even over. Among (2020)
3 Beth Stephens, Annie Sprinkle & Butch. Still from video recording for their introduction to the screening of Water Makes Us Wet, An Ecosexual Adventure, 2019. Ecofutures programme, Genesis Cinema, London.
nobody was really expecting. We remember Looking back at EcoFutures, we remem- the film Fresh Kill (1994) by Shu Lea Chang ber how we often felt that the programme that we screened during the festival and how galvanised situations that we least expected, it had already contained the elements of a so much so, that we often joked that either a global contagion. We thought that it was curse or a spell of some sort had been cast. playful and surreal and unlikely to ever really For instance, we received an unexpected last happen. A year later, we find ourselves in the minute grant from the British Association midst of a global pandemic with ecological of American Studies which transported and political contradictions that we will only Silvia Federici from the US to Queen Mary start to make sense of in the next couple of University of London for a spellbinding [8] See: BBC (2020) years. For now, we are told that the levels of presentation on witch-hunting and capital- Climate change and [10] coronavirus: Five charts CO2 have drastically fallen, with a significant ist accumulation. During the installation about the biggest decrease in the demand of energy worldwide. of the exhibition our team worked wicked carbon crash. Available However positive these news might sound, and interminable hours for four consecutive at
4 Mary Maggic, Molecular Queering Agency, 2017. Installation view at Staring at the Sun, The Art Pavilion, London. Photo by Orlando Myxx.
[12] For Quimera Rosa’s SF Trans*Plant workshop the collective used lab materials such as: a microscope, petri dishes, fungal spores, vegetable collagen, agar agar, autoclave lab bottles, alcohol lamps, scalpels, syringes, pressure cooker, electric hot plates, incubator, bio-hazard waste container etc. These were provided with the help of Raphael Kim, at the time a PhD candi- date at Queen Mary University of London. Cuntemporary (2019) SF Trans*Plant.
5 Timebomb Theatre (Thierry Alexandre & Lara Buffard), 2019. Open day performance, Staring at the Sun, The Art Pavilion, London. Photo by Orlando Myxx.
6 applying for grants, getting appropriate training, liaising with venues, looking for sponsors, approaching press outlets and remembering to stop (if we ever did) to at least have a proper meal. Despite the chaos and uncertainties of the production period, the festival itself unrolled steadily and with relative calm. One of the most precious moments took place during the conference on a sunny Saturday afternoon. We asked all 140 participants to walk from the auditorium of Queen Mary University across Mile End park to the exhibition venue where we met Quimera Rosa and the Trans*Plant workshop participants for an impromptu installation. We all had a vegan lunch break whilst being charmed by a family of cygnets crossing the pond in front of the gallery’s glass façade, with the water casting its fragmented reflections onto the ceiling. EcoFutures is the last big project that we produced as CUNTemporary: a collective, an organisation, we once brazenly called it a ‘roving manifesto.’ The reality is that we were a bunch of lost queer and feminist kids that wanted to do things together in London that no one was daring to do at the time – and we wanted to have fun doing it. For all the sacrifices we made to keep the organisation running, everything we now know about queer and feminism in the arts, we have learnt from working through this organisation and by working with hundreds of artists, writers, activists and thinkers that share the desire to create something different and to make a difference in the arts. This dossier, distributed as an online, free and downloadable resource, hopes to contribute with both its format and its experimental queer-feminist contents to a different vision of ecology while becoming an archive of the Ecofutures project as well as an invocation for a much more sustainable future.
7 6 INTRO- DUCTION Diana Georgiou, Katie Goss, Sofia Vranou
‘To know is already to have negated.’ Patricia MacCormack, The Ahuman Manifesto, 2020[1]
Confronting the vast information on how and when our planet will perish is not an easy state to inhabit for a prolonged time. The data is infinite, sometimes it contradicts itself, often it is produced through a truly interdisciplinary effort to make sense of why we got to ‘the end of the world’ or ‘the end of time’. In our attempt to understand the effects of climate change, it became clear that those who are sexually, geographically, racially and economically better positioned than others, are less affected by this crisis. In fact, ecological disasters often remain invisible, even when they produce devastating effects only a few miles away from our doorstep. Through this dossier, we wanted to bring some of these matters and ideas to those doorsteps, but also to the growing transnational queer and feminist community of artists, theorists and activists involved in these debates. Artists have the ability to provide us with innovative, creative and distinct approaches to pressing issues, as well as generat- ing a sense of hope and new possibility which is sorely needed. In this collection you will find six texts that offer truly unique approaches to the study of the relationship between living organisms (and sometimes those that are no longer living) and their effect on the environment. These studies move beyond the fact that we live in a world on the brink of extinction, using this threshold as the means to reassess the vital connections between plants, humans, animals, waters and technologies of all sorts, to envision and create new imaginaries, while demarcating the effects of ecological disasters for specific bodies. As editors of this dossier, none of us can claim expertise in the expanding field of ecology and the diverse disciplines it has generated. [1] Patricia Rather, our respective interests were brought to the task of providing MacCormack, The a space for artists to furnish ecology with a dose of queer, feminist and Ahuman Manifesto: decolonial fermentation. After all, as our contributor Anna Tokareva Activism for the End of the Anthropocene demonstrates, fermentation is a strategy that has an ancient feminist (London: Bloomsbury history. Tokareva examines the figure of Baba Yaga who in Slavic folk- Academic, 2020), p. 27.
9 lore is often presented as an ugly and deformed After all, there are many parallelisms that can old crone who has a tooth for children and be drawn between the two: both are classified young women. Tokareva’s in-depth research and subjected to control, they are considered subverts this archetype into an ‘androgynous ‘unwanted’ and ‘invasive’, and they are pre- and anarchic witch’ who ‘rejects household disposed to wild desires that antagonise their labour, repurposes the mortar and pestle for surrounding ecosystem. Through a sensual high-speed transportation, uses her broom narrative that weaves analysis, personal expe- as an anti-tracking device, commands the rience and a love-story during a walk through undead and cannibalises.’ In other words, Ridgewood Reservoir in New York City, we Baba Yaga is in many senses, a ‘shape-shifting learn that this weed-invaded plot of land once and gender-ambiguous’ feminist archetype. belonged to the Lenape and Canarsie indige- We learn that her ‘drug of choice’ is what nous tribes. By asking us to think of weeds as we commonly refer to as the hallucino- a form of relation rather than plants that do genic magic mushroom. Tokareva takes us not have aesthetic or utilitarian value, Monti on a journey that examines the profuse and is able to offer a critique of western imperial- remarkable role of ergot (a hallucinogenic ist strategies of stratification, while weaving a fungus found on rye) in the most unlikely sit- much more complex story regarding ‘who is uations including national propaganda, the invading and who is being invaded.’ Salem witch trials, abortions and convulsions Insects can also be considered ‘the queers – it even wrecked Peter the Great’s military of the animal world’ as Graham Bell Tornado campaign against the Ottoman empire in demonstrates in their essay. Both queer people the 18th century. In this way, Tokareva’s text and insects have been ‘considered abject, dis- Baba Yaga Myco Glitch turns into a manifesto gusting, diseased’ and regarded ‘as pests, bugs, that moves from toxicity to intoxication in an annoyances to be eliminated by insecticides or attempt to create a future fungal network that simply squashed’. Yet, it is often forgotten that can bring about global de-anthropocentric insects are an essential part of our ecosystem, change. contributing to the pollination of blossoms Networks of many forms feature through- and facilitating the decomposition process by out this dossier, not only conceptually, but recycling nutrients back into the soil. In their in real community practices which enable work, Tornado outlines how their artistic alternative modes of living, such as those on practice becomes a means to explore gender, board a sailboat crossing the Hudson river, sexuality and new forms of spirituality at the whose crew is composed primarily of women service of ecological issues, through what they and queer people. In her autoethnographic term ‘ecotransfeminist participatory rituals.’ essay, Amelia Goldberg describes a process of To orchestrate these rituals across a range reciprocal care that creates synergies between of contexts and spaces, from interventions in humans, boat, river and environmental waste. public spaces to organised festivals, Tornado The crew take on fictive kinship relations that takes on the role of a ‘transgender shaman’ have specific roles, hierarchies and functions who mediates between the spiritual and the for the aim of clearing trash from the river. earthly. Ultimately, they assert that we must Goldberg details how these processes and ‘vindicate eccentricity as an act of rebellion,’ relations adhere to feminist environmentalist if we are to overturn stereotypes of gender principles and as such, transform the boat into and sexuality. ‘a site for enacting utopic political imaginaries In attempting to enact and embody a in opposition to the social, political, and eco- rebellion against the restrictive meanings nomic forces that had led to ecological crisis.’ imposed upon life, nature and being, it is Fictive kinship relations also play a part vital to stay attuned and respond to the in Amanda Monti’s work, where the author complexities of our late-capitalist context. reflects on the ties between queers and weeds. Situating the body interventions practiced
10 and performed by transfeminist collective Quimera Rosa as no-less than revolutionary, Alex Wilk’s essay carefully attends to the conditions and possibilities that make such queer-feminist biohacking possible and necessary. While the cyborg has long been established as a privileged queer-feminist archetype, Wilk confronts a renewed ambivalence sur- rounding the ‘double-edged potential’ of the cyborg’s ‘illegitimacy’ – an ambivalence initiated by the unprecedented expansion of digital and bio-technologies in the twenty-first century, which brings the body under the extensive controls of health and self-improvement cultures. In interrogating the counter-cultural potential of the cyborg and asking ‘what kind of offspring can we nurture in its stead?’, Wilk uses Quimera Rosa’s mode of biohacking in their piece Trans*Plant, to elevate ‘becoming-animal/plant/nature’ over mechanistic par- adigms. For Wilk, Quimera Rosa’s practice powerfully demonstrates viable philosophical-political-artistic strategies for uncovering the chimerical nature of our body and being – that which allows for trans- formation – while redeploying the technological possibilities generated by late-capitalist production against the system itself. The permeable boundaries of the human body are similarly at the core of Emma Pavans De Ceccatty’s final article of this dossier. Her focus, however, shifts to the toxic pollution of plasticisers, which have not only heavily affected the ecosystem but, unbeknownst to us, have also infiltrated our bodies with damaging health consequences. Occupying a middle ground between scientific research, biotech- nology and art practice, Bio art serves for Pavans De Ceccatty as ‘a playful laboratory’ where the endless speculative and experimental possibilities of an uncertain future are creatively explored. Her article engages with Pinar Yoldas’ art project An Ecosystem of Excess and Sonja Bäumel’s installation Being Encounter, examining the ways in which their distinctive practices address – explicitly or not – the complexities of plastic toxicity and its catastrophic impact on life and the environment by envisioning hybrid becomings and unlikely encounters. The crea- tive response to the existential thread posed by the bioaccumulation of plastic, whether manifested through Yoldas’ speculative biology or Bäumel’s imaginative visual language, illustrates the urgency of respon- sibility, adaptation, and collective action against prevailing, harmful anthropocentric perspectives. What we understood through these texts, is that our primary chal- lenge in a world on the brink of extinction, is to think beyond the available data and solutions. Our analytic skills will have to take the form of excesses and exaggerations. They will, dare we say, go beyond the brink, into a world that might seem too depressive to contemplate, but that we must necessarily think of, if we are to imagine an alterna- tive future for our current ecological time.
11
Baba Yaga Myco Glitch Anna Tokareva 14 Who is Baba Yaga?
Baba Yaga is a formidable character of Russian folklore. The female characters of most Russian folk tales are generally quiet, docile, and in need of saving by blonde, blue-eyed heroes named Ivan. Unlike these dutiful maidens, Baba Yaga is an androgynous anarchic witch. She embodies the archetype of the cranky crone. She lives alone in the woods, rejects household labour, repurposes the mortar and pestle for high-speed transportation, uses her broom as an anti-tracking device, commands the undead and cannibalises. Baba Yaga is shape-shifting and gender-ambiguous. She is by turn gatekeeper, helper, or child eater. She is an amalgamation of many.[1] Baba Yaga intimidates hapless young men and unformed heroes, taunting, tormenting, or testing them. Sometimes she uses them as transport to carry her across the dark forest, their backs heaving, legs aching. She wields power over the dragon Chudo Yudo, commands Koschei the Deathless, and controls the three horse riders, the white Day, the red Sun, and the black Night. At times, she turns into a beau- tiful youthful figure, misleading and deceiving. Baba Yaga straddles the border between life and death, the ultimate polarities of existence. Her fence of fiery Skulls is a reminder of lurking death and everlasting non-life. Gatekeepers of the liminal realm, the skulls chase away un- qualified transgressors. They guard Baba Yaga’s domain, marking the perimeter of enchantment, mapping the borders of her realm, where the rules of daily life and societal conformity no longer apply. Inside, sits the house on chicken feet: formed from the fallen bodies of the forest’s trees that have merged with the reanimated body parts of a do- [1] Sibelan Forrester, Helena Goscilo, and mesticated bird. An architectural Frankenstein arisen from discarded Martin Skoro, Baba tree-carcass supports. Yaga: The Wild Witch Baba Yaga’s mortar and pestle is an ancient tool for grinding of the East in Russian Fairy Tales (Jackson: substances down to powder, turning plants into sustenance and med- University of Mississippi ication to feed and heal, or to poison, the human body. Baba Yaga’s Press, 2013). drug of choice is fly agaric, a fungi that has been used for its hallucino- [2] Alexander Ch. genic properties for thousands of years. The Koryaks of northeastern Elert, ‘Alcohol and Siberia consumed these mind-shifting mushrooms directly; some drank Hallucinogens in the Life [2] of Siberian Aborigines’, the urine of intoxicated shamans for the same experience. The psy- Science First Hand, 18, chedelic state was passed from fungi to body, then from body to body, no. 6 (25 December in a chain of hallucinogenic effects. Baba Yaga is frequently depict- 2007)
15 Black Bread Mythology in Russia
[4] ‘The Etymology of Bread has been a staple food throughout the ages. It is dubbed the the Word ‘Bread’’, bon- appetit (2 August 2013) ‘staff of life’ in the Bible; earning your “bread and butter” is equated
16 Anna Tokareva, Baba Yaga Myco Glitch, 2018. Image courtesy the Artist.
no more. They claim that the GOST 171-81 In the 1850s, Louis Pasteur discovered that standard commercial yeast in store-bought microbes are responsible for the fermentation bread is a toxic ‘thermophilic killer yeast,’ of bread starter and alcohol. Soon after, the cultivated on human and animal bones, and Fleischmann brothers began selling commer- designed in WWII by the Nazis as a weapon cial baker’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, against the Russian people. It allegedly causes which has become default in both large scale [13] Kormina, ‘Killer cancer, blood fermentation, ‘yeast AIDS,’ and and home baking. Though the Fleishmann Yeast’, pp. 201–29. slowly erodes the body from the inside. Mis- brothers accuse it of unreliability, sourdough [14] Yeast is a type of [13] fungus that grows in trust of bread equals mistrust of the state. [15] makes few demands. The starter is made clusters of cells, instead One alternative offered by the propagators simply by mixing flour and water and waiting of long filaments like of this conspiracy theory is a return to home- for the mixture to attract wild yeasts from most fungi. baked sourdough bread. the environment. Within a week, wild yeasts [15] ‘History of Fleischmann’s® Yeast’, begin the process of fermentation – extract- Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Bread World
17 Historic Disruption via Rye Fungus
Rye bread has a mythology beyond stirring patriotism. The “staff of life” is also responsible for delivering some deadly effects. It has been suggested that sourdough rye bread caused the infamous Salem witch [18] Linnda R. Caporael, trials, which took place in the eponymous Massachusetts town between ‘Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem?’, 1692 and 1693. The symptoms of the ‘cursed’ girls were akin to con- Science, 192, no. 4234 vulsive ergotism, caused by a mycotoxic parasitic fungus that thrives (2 April 1976), pp. 21–26. on rye: ergot, or claviceps purpurea. If stored in damp conditions, [19] Ibid. which can result after a long cold winter and wet spring, rye grains can [20] Nicholas P. develop ergot. When ingested, the fungal growth can cause symptoms Spanos, ‘Ergotism and like epileptic seizures, muscle convulsions, hallucinations, and gan- the Salem witch panic: A Critical Analysis grene. Many of these symptoms were demonstrated by three girls in and an Alternative Salem and ascribed to a witch’s curse. The climate conditions of this Conceptualization’, time also confirm this possibility.[18] Journal of the history of the behavioral It is possible that a mere fungus may have caused 19 people con- sciences, 19 (1983), victed as witches to be hanged, one to be crushed by rocks, and one pp. 358–69
18 small community in France. Over 250 people became ill with bouts of hallucination, insomnia, and delirium[29] after buying bread from the town’s best bakery.[30] The event coincided with the CIA’s investigations into mind altering properties of LSD, part of Cold War era para- noia-induced research. Hank P. Albarelli, an independent investigative journalist from the US, digs deep into the history of these experiments in a 900-page book.[31] Albarelli argues that the widespread delirium [29] Gabbai et al. was an experiment – the CIA sprayed LSD into the air to test its bio- ‘Ergot Poisoning at Pont St. Esprit’, British chemical behavioural influence. He further suggests that, after trying [35] Ivan Valencic, Medical Journal, 2, the method on the French, the CIA took their experiment to New ‘Has the Mystery of the 4732 (1951), pp. 650-1 [32] Eleusinian Mysteries York, where they attached hallucinogenic aerosols to subway cars.
[37] French village of Pont- Catholic Encyclopedia people for generations to come. Later, Jesus Christ multiplied five Saint-Esprit’, Voltaire
19 that ‘young wenches’ of the time would for infinite diversity, the flour and water mix [42] Aubrey, pp. 43–5. practice the ‘wonton sport’ of ‘moulding of attracts similar base strands of bacteria and [43] Graber, et al., Cocklebread.’ They would get on the table, fungi all over the world.[43] ‘Secrets of Sourdough’. hitch up their skirts, and rock back and forth, Yeast and other fungi provide nourish- [44] Katie Field, pretending to knead bread with their buttocks ment to the body, not only of people, but ‘Introduction’, in The Significance of while reciting the poem: also plants. Underground networks of myc- Mycorrhizal Networks in orrhizal fungi live in symbiosis with 80% of Ecosystem Structure and My granny is sick, and now is dead, land plants, communicating with each other Functioning’, Functional Ecology (British And we’ll go mould some cockle bread. through a kind of underground fungal inter- Ecological Society, Up with my heels and down with my net. They exchange nutrients with the plants’ 2014)
20 the carbon dioxide that suffocates us. Starters of porousness. We knead incantations into our sourdough capacitive sensors to transmit kneading signals to the network. This is a symbolic act and a spell casting, a kneading out of binary kinks, of the physical manifes- tations of our perceived separation. As the dough rises and ferments overnight, it metabolises the words kneaded in. We bake Yagic sigils and share the loaves with sympathisers, friends, lovers, opponents, saboteurs. We distribute our starter through forums, slumber parties, in passing, hen dos, through fleeting collisions, on Tinder dates, at open plan work kitchens, neighbourly letterboxes, anniversary parties, baby showers. We infect its ingesters with powerful hallucinogenic visions of alternative futures: soft power convulsions, corporeal kindness conden- sations, microbial meditations. The bread is consumed, then excreted, in an act of metabolism / digestion / refiguring. Harmful mimetic processes are halted and regurgitated into transformed multiplicities. We call for a Yagic Yeast colonisation of the human microbiota, to glitch / to rupture extractive relations between human and other living creatures, to propagate kinship and form integrative symbiotic relations with non / sentient beings.
A Step-by-step Process:
We develop a wild yeast rye starter. (Perform the ritual, attract the myco-glitch yeasts from the air)
We mix in flour and knead the dough. (Hook in sensory distribution devices, tap into the global Baba Yagic glitch network, conjure communication via micro fungal single cell aether waves)
We proof the dough, fermenting deeper, bubbling softer. (Process binaries and regurgitate, metabolise into power source; hallucinogenic weirding of remote browsers via fungal malware)
We mark the dough with sigilsteamslashes, a release. (Embed intent)
We bake the bread, heat pixel-fusing molecular bonds. (Fuse yeast strands to futures)
We break the bread, release sacred steam, offer it up. (Distribute, ingest, transform, consciousness-fungal-fusion)
21
Between Kin & Ship: The Intersection of Feminism & Environmen- talism aboard a Hudson River Sailboat Amelia Goldberg
23 24 [1] Here and throughout The Navigator, as well this essay, names have as old copies of the cap- been changed to protect tain’s logs, first mate’s the anonymity of my Gathered with the crew over breakfast in the main cabin of the logs, educators’ logs, interlocutors. I have kept Clearwater, Captain Kit entrusted the boat to our care.[1] ‘There’s a lot and various other mate- pronouns consistent with of really small things that I care a lot about, things that really don’t rials including the 2018 crew’s preferences. crew manual and the matter – like coiling dock lines and raising the flags at exactly the right 1982 Hudson Slooper’s [2] Between May time’, they began. Kit was leaving for vacation and it would be a month Handy Guide. This re- and August 2018, I until they handled Clearwater’s lines again. Asking us to continue with search was unfortunately spent ten weeks living scattershot given the im- onboard Clearwater, such apparently pointless tasks in the interim, they explained: mense amount of written including all three Youth material that Clearwater Empowerment Programs We do them because in doing so we’re taking care of the has accumulated over (YEPs), four weeks of the years, but it provided regular educational boat… if I’m not feeling great, I go coil and recoil all the critical insights into the programs in May-June, lines, and the reason is that it means I’m taking care of the history of the organisa- and three weeks of more boat. And the boat has always taken care of me...It’s partly tion. I also conducted varied programming archival research in including summer camps, to look pretty, but really, it’s mostly about showing that the American Folklife homeschool groups, you’re thinking about your checklist of things you have to Center at the Library of charters, and public sails do, and you’re taking care of your shipmates and the boat… Congress, which gener- in July-August. I also ously gave me access participated as a volun- if you see something that could be made better, do it. Make to David Dunaway’s teer at the Revival. As it better. collection of interviews one longtime sailor told with Pete Seeger. I sup- me, ‘The two most impor- plemented my research tant things you can say ‘Take care’ and ‘make it better’ are two of the primary motives with Clearwater’s online on a boat are ‘I don’t of life onboard the Clearwater, a Hudson River sailboat dedicated to presence, including understand’ and ‘How environmental education and advocacy. These twin projects, which Facebook, Instagram, can I help?’ In addition and the official web- to constantly asking apply to both the boat and the river itself, also make up the focus of site. Finally, I analysed questions, therefore, this essay. Drawing on 12 weeks of ethnographic research conducted Clearwater’s starboard I participated in work over the summer of 2018, I contend that the reciprocal care Captain head journals, com- onboard as much as pos- bination guest books sible. Over the course of Kit described gestures towards a productive space at the intersection and ship’s logs kept my research I conducted of feminist and environmentalist politics.[2] As I will review, Clearwater in a bathroom (head) both semi-structured crew represent their work onboard in the idiom of reproduction, onboard. These journals, and informal interviews which remain on the with current and former invoking a network of reciprocal care that connects humans, boat, river, bookshelf in the head crew as able. I also and environment. Extending Donna Haraway’s notion of ‘companion for pleasure reading spent two weeks of July species’ – species bound together by mutual care across difference – the or writing, date back in Clearwater’s Beacon to 1982 and include office, where I sat in relations of support and dependence enacted onboard reveal a resig- entries for nearly each on meetings, learned nification of reproduction, liberating the process to include meanings fall, summer, and spring about the organisation’s beyond heterosexual relations. I conclude that Clearwater realises pre- week up to the present, finances, and dug into making them excellent archived copies of viously theorised synergies between environmentalism and feminism, references for the history Clearwater’s newsletter pointing to promising ways forward. of life onboard.
25 Clearwater Under Sail son-the-fight-to-save-the- General Electric carried [7] Deckhand is a crew [8] Jane Pacht Brickman, outside Cold Spring, river/>; Chris Rahm and out a dredging opera- position typically respon- ‘Recruitment and 2018. Photo by Amelia Devin Pickering, ‘PCBs: tion required under the sible for more sailing Retention of Women Goldberg. A Toxic Legacy’, Hudson Superfund Act to remove and less teaching work, in the Maritime River Stories: Hudson PCB it had released into while educator-deckhand Industry’, in Expanding River at Risk (2017) the river. Today, many is a 10-week crew posi- frontiers: challenges
26 A 108-foot traditionally-rigged sailboat, economic forces that had led to ecological Imbalance in the Maritime Industry: Clearwater has navigated the Hudson since crisis along the Hudson and most American Impediments, Initiatives 1969. Pete Seeger, a folk singer and veteran waters. Indeed, Clearwater enacts resistance and Recommendations’, Australian Journal of of the civil rights, communist, and anti-war to hegemonic power on a river that runs from Maritime & Ocean movements, conceived of Clearwater with the center of United States military power at Affairs 9, no. 1 (January a simple purpose: build a boat to save a river.[3] West Point to the center of global economic 2, 2017), 42-55; Chia-Ling Wu et al., At the time, the Hudson River was an open power on Wall Street. Against the historical- ‘Career Development sewer as well as a dumping-ground for paint, ly and presently male-dominated maritime for Women in Maritime oil, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and industry, Clearwater is crewed primarily by Industry: Organisation [4] [8] and Socialisation other industrial waste. Seeger and his fellows women and queer people. The communi- Perspectives’, Maritime hoped that a boat would bring people to the ty’s queer and feminist culture also continue Policy & Management river, where they would see its ‘murky waters’ to be rarities in environmentalist politics, 44, no. 7 (October 3, 2017), 882-98. and be inspired to care for it.[5] The organ- as I will discuss shortly. Finally, unlike com- isation raised funds through waterfront folk parable sites of political resistance, such as [9] Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1st picnics (hootenannies) and commissioned Occupy Wall Street, it has endured for 50 edn (New York: Knopf, the Harvey Gamage shipyard in Maine to years. Taking these oppositions as a point of 1953); Shulamith build a replica of the single-masted Hudson departure, I consider how Clearwater enacts Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for River sloops that were common in the 17th its environmentalism and feminism, as well as Feminist Revolution, 1st through 19th centuries.[6] Launched in 1969, what this reveals about the possibilities and edn (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, the boat remains central to the organisation limitations of resistance politics. In particular, 2003); see also: Sarah that Seeger founded, now also called Hudson this essay considers the gendered significations Franklin, ‘Revisiting River Sloop Clearwater. of Clearwater’s ‘take care, make it better’ en- Reprotech: Firestone and the Question of Clearwater runs three-hour education- vironmentalist ethic as it manifests in crew’s Technology’, in Further al sails for elementary through high school constant work to care for each other, the boat, Adventures of the students, three-hour public sails for paying and the Hudson. Dialectic of Sex: Critical Essays on Shulamith guests, and three-day Youth Empowerment Firestone, eds. Mandy Programs (YEPs) for teens. This work is sup- The possibility of a feminist environmen- Merck and Stella ported by approximately 4,800 members and talism has long been theorised with regard Sandford (New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, managed by about a dozen staff based in a to the contested relation between women 2010), 29-60. central office in Beacon that, along with an and nature. Beginning in the mid-20th [10] Carolyn Merchant, elected board, oversee everyday operations, century, anti-essentialist feminists have placed Earthcare: Women and run environmental advocacy, and organise the women’s psychological, social, and cultural the Environment (New annual Great Hudson River Revival music identification with motherhood and nature York: Routledge, 1995); Greta Claire Gaard, festival. Clearwater’s crew lives onboard and at the root of their oppression. Therefore, ‘Ecofeminism Revisited: is composed of two captains and two educa- these feminists argued, women should enlist Rejecting Essentialism and Re-Placing Species tion coordinators, a first mate, an engineer, technologies such as birth control to liberate in a Material Feminist a second mate, a bosun, three to four edu- themselves from their naturalising reproduc- Environmentalism’, cator-deckhands, a deckhand, a cook, a sail tive roles.[9] Against this anti-essentialist and Feminist Formations [7] 23, no. 2 (2011), 26- trainee, and up to six volunteers each week. admittedly non-environmentalist framework 53; Christina Holmes, By the summer of 2018, when I conducted of employing culture to overcome tyrannical Ecological Borderlands: my fieldwork, the crew was a mix of ages, pri- nature, the cultural ecofeminist movement Body, Nature, and Spirit in Chicana Feminism, marily white, and majority women and queer in the 1970’s sought to build a feminist envi- (Urbana: University of people. ronmentalism by embracing women’s natural Illinois Press, 2016). As these demographics suggest, Clearwater and reproductive qualities as a source of For a political history of ecofeminism, see also is an unusual site whose dislocation along power best discovered in communion with Greta Claire Gaard, several axes allows it to open up the political ‘Mother’ nature.[10] While environmental- Ecological Politics: imagination. Seeger understood the boat as ist, this movement was neither critical nor Ecofeminists and the Greens (Philadelphia: a site for enacting utopic political imaginar- progressive, but often reproduced the hetero- Temple University Press, ies in opposition to the social, political, and sexist assumption that women were primarily 1998).
27 mothers and deserving of political protection only in virtue of their maternity.[11] Meanwhile, Marxist ecofeminists sought to unite environ- mentalism with feminism by framing women and nature as subjugated under analogical structures of capitalism: both perform unpaid repro- ductive labor that seems to lie outside capitalist processes, but actually is a fundamental ingredient of production.[12] In this respect, the unpaid work of making and socialising new members of society is ‘social re- productive labor’ and lies at the root of women’s oppression.[13] Yet while Marxist ecofeminists rightly criticise the injustice produced by capital’s exploitation of natural and social reproductive labor, they fail to interrogate the fundamental category of woman and her association [11] Noel Sturgeon, with reproduction or nature. ‘Penguin Family Values: The Nature of Finally, in a newer synthesis, post-gender feminists aim to simulta- Planetary Environmental neously deconstruct the categories of both Woman (as essentialised to Reproductive Justice’, her reproductive functions) and Nature (as separate from and subservi- in Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, ent to Humanity) via affective relations and what Catriona Sandilands Desire, eds. by Catriona calls ‘performative affinity’ across species.[14] Extending this discus- Mortimer-Sandilands sion, Haraway’s concept of ‘companion species’ provides a useful lens and Bruce Erickson (Bloomington: Indiana through which to understand the meaning of work onboard Clearwater. University Press, 2010); While most of the debates over women’s relationships with nature em- Catriona Sandilands, The phasise the category of Woman, Haraway instead demonstrates the Good-Natured Feminist: Ecofeminism and the instability of gender by highlighting its volatile relation to reproduc- Quest for Democracy tion. In particular, the co-evolution of human and non-human species, (Minneapolis: University which Haraway calls ‘companion species’, shows that heterosexuality of Minnesota Press, 1999); Stacy Alaimo, is but one mode of the reproductive universe. In her Companion Species ‘Cyborg and Ecofeminist Manifesto, Haraway examines the relationship between humans and Interventions: Challenges [14] Donna Haraway, dogs as one example, writing: for an Environmental Manifestly Haraway Feminism’, Feminist (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Studies 20, no. 1 I resist being called the ‘mom’ to my dogs because I fear 2016); Donna Haraway, (1994), 133-52; Sherilyn ‘Anthropocene, Capitalo- infantilisation of the adult canines and misidentification of MacGregor, ‘From Care cene, Plantationocene, the important fact that I wanted dogs, not babies...we need to Citizenship: Calling Chthulucene: Making Ecofeminism Back to other nouns and pronouns for the kin genres of compan- Kin’, Environmental Politics’, Ethics and the Humanities 6, no. 1 ion species, just as we did (and still do) for the spectrum of Environment; Greenwich (2015), 159-65; Alaimo, genders... but perhaps I worry about words too much... the 9, no. 1 (2004), 56-84 ‘Cyborg and Ecofeminist point is companion species-making… This is a family made Interventions’; [12] Silvia Federici, up in the belly of the monster of inherited histories that have Revolution at Point Sandilands, The Good- [15] Zero: Housework, Natured Feminist; Nicole to be inhabited to be transformed. Reproduction, and Seymour, Strange Natures: Futurity, Feminist Struggle Ironically repeating many of the linguistic tropes associated with (Oakland: PM Press, Empathy, and the Queer 2012); Alyssa Battistoni, Ecological Imagination, the heteronormative Judeo-Christian family, from Christian marriage ‘Bringing in the Work of 1st edn (Urbana: University of Illinois vows to the idea that ‘it’s all in the family’, Haraway enacts her Nature: From Natural [16] Press, 2013). argument for giving ‘inherited histories’ new meanings. Her ‘made Capital to Hybrid Labor’, Political Theory [15] Haraway, up’ family of humans and dogs may be described in patriarchal terms, 45, no. 1 (February Manifestly Haraway, but for Haraway language is secondary to her material relationships 2017), 5-31. p. 188. in themselves. By forming relationships of ‘significant otherness’, or [13] Nancy Fraser, [16] Moira Weigel, kinship across categorical boundaries such as human/animal, com- ‘Behind Marx’s Hidden A Cyborg Manifesto panion species shape each other and hopefully for the better. Abode’, New Left (Harvard University, Review 2, no. 86 (2014), Cambridge, MA, Companion species relationships are reciprocal, but reflecting the p. 61. November 11, 2018). differences at their core, they are not symmetrical. Rather, they are
28 ‘made possible by the hierarchal discipline of companion animal train- [17] Haraway, Manifestly Haraway, [17] ing’. Haraway suggests that the anti-essentialist dream of women p. 142. reaching their full potentials by dominating their natural reproductive [18] Beauvoir, The [18] functions actually reproduces the masculine dream of dominating Second Sex; Sherry nature: by managing heterosexual relations, ‘man makes himself.’[19] B. Ortner, ‘Is Female In contrast, the hierarchies between companion species represent in- to Male as Nature Is to Culture?’, Feminist ter-species kinship ties constituted through training rather than sex. Studies 1, no. 2 Hierarchies of command and obedience facilitate communication (1972),
29 [27] Emily S. Apter, that Clearwater offers a complementary approach from the ground up. Unexceptional Politics: On Obstruction, Following theorist Emily Apter, I aim to move beyond ‘retreated forms Impasse, and the of the Political’, and to engage with the muddiness of everyday politics Impolitic (New York: [27] Verso, 2018), p. 10. as a fertile site for developing theories of feminist environmentalism. As Sandilands demonstrates in her study of ecological lesbian separatist [28] Catriona Sandilands, ‘Lesbian communities in rural Oregon, politics often take shape in the muddy Separatist Communities dynamic between a ‘utopian ideology and an everyday practice… and the Experience of located in a particular place’.[28] In this essay, then, I trace reproduction Nature’, Organization & Environment; Thousand as an unstable process that on Clearwater takes place across relation- Oaks 15, no. 2 (June ships of significant otherness encompassing boat, river and crew. As 2002), p. 140. between Haraway’s companion species, these relationships are co-con- [29] Haraway, stitutive, reciprocal, and hierarchical. Also, like companion species Manifestly Haraway, relationships, they effect a resignification of reproduction that eman- p. 67. cipates it from the ‘reproductive matrix’ of heterosexual relations.[29] [30] Four crew are re- In this way, the care labor central to Clearwater’s environmentalism quired for this ritual, but everyone present is in- also liberates its laborers to embrace forms of reproduction beyond the cluded. All crew must be gender binary. present for the first meal when new volunteers arrive, typically Sunday Reciprocal care describes nearly all aspects of life on Clearwater. For lunch. During the week, Kindreds: Parenthood example, reciprocity grounds the distribution of most resources. Food however, eating begins and Personal Kindreds as crew trickle in. Among Urban Blacks’, is an element of pay onboard; as the crew sometimes joke, ‘the more Journal of Comparative you eat, the more you make’, and a complex ritual governs mealtimes. [31] The practice of the Family Studies 3, captain eating last was, no. 2 (Fall 1972), To begin, crew members join hands for a moment of silence, a practice by crew’s accounts, 194-206; Valerie that encourages slowing down and thinking about one’s shipmates.[30] common to other tall Francisco-Menchavez, Then, before digging in, each sailor is responsible for mentally dividing ships. One captain, how- The Labor of Care: ever, described sailing in Filipina Migrants and each dish into equal portions and taking no more than one such Hawaii, where out of re- Transnational Families serving. Only after everyone has served themselves do the crew call spect the crew would not in the Digital Age ‘Seconds!’ at which point the remaining food is free for all. If someone eat until she had served (University of Illinois herself. Thus, mealtime Press, 2018); Anna is missing at mealtime, seconds can only proceed after a bowl is put rituals are culturally Muraco, ‘Intentional aside for them. Officers of the ship enforce this system by explaining contingent. They are also Families: Fictive Kin it to new members of the crew, and to ensure the equal distribution of historically contingent, Ties Between Cross- as on many historical tall Gender, Different Sexual food the captain serves themselves last, meaning that crew must leave ships the captain and of- Orientation Friends’, enough food for everyone if their leader is to eat.[31] Beer is bought with ficers ate separately and Journal of Marriage and donations from crew and friends of the boat to the ‘fund for thirsty had better food than the Family; Minneapolis 68, rank and file. no. 5 (December 2006), sailors’, a mason jar kept in the main cabin; once purchased, it too is a 1313-25. [32] Many scholars have collective resource. It was a welcome surprise, then, when Jen, a former documented the forma- [33] For example, crew crew member, brought a bunch of cold beer and ice cream to the boat tion of ‘fictive kinship’ read poems by Shel one hot summer night. Waving aside our thanks, she said, ‘I’m just through practices of Silverstein or selections care beyond the limits of from Winnie the Pooh. balancing out the karma.’ the bourgeoise patriar- One crew member ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. chal family, as in Black told me that the real Leaning back against the rail, she explained, ‘This boat has taken communities in America, difference between migrant communities, Clearwater and other care of me so many times…and you’re all taking care of each other and queer communi- boats he had worked and of the boat.’ As Jen’s language of karmic balancing implied, giving ties. See for example on was being woken ice cream and beer was a moral act similar to crew caring for the boat Patricia Hill Collins, ‘The up gently with song or Meaning of Motherhood poetry. Thus, it appears and the boat caring for people. Thus, distributive acts are one way in Black Culture and that the relations of care of participating in Clearwater’s institution of reciprocal care. These Black Mother-Daughter between crewmates on acts are usually voluntary; however, the importance of volunteering Relationships, Sage 4, Clearwater are some- no. 2 (Fall 1987), 3-10; what unique within the is communicated and enforced when necessary through relations of Carol B. Stack, ‘Black tall ships industry. command.
30 Crew often represent reciprocal care between shipmates in [34] The dumping of pol- ychlorinated biphenyls gendered terms of mothering and reproduction. For instance, when (PCBs) into the Hudson Jen’s child, volunteering alongside her, complained of too much River by General Electric, between the fussing over a bruise, Jen told me she responded, ‘Hey, sorry, you’re a years 1937 and 1977, shipmate now, and that means you have, like, 12 moms.’ Significantly, caused toxic build-ups all the crew became mothers in this construction not because they in the fatty tissues of many Hudson River fish were shipmates with Jen, but because they were shipmates with the that are typically edible. child. Thus, shipmate relations also carried fictive kinship relations.[32] While PCBs have many Accordingly, crew often ‘mothered’ each other. For instance, one sailor toxic effects, its harms are often constructed was responsible for ‘wake-ups’ each morning: waking their shipmates, primarily in terms of its usually with a story, song, or poem written for children.[33] Departing impact on fetal devel- crew frequently performed wake-ups on one of their last days as a opment. For instance, in an attempt to defuse parting gesture of care. At times captains filled the role of parents; concerns about a PCB whenever they left the boat unsupervised, a rare occurrence, crew leak in a Binghamton began chanting ‘No parents, no rules!’ and occasionally segued into office building in 1981, Governor Carey a dance party. Simultaneously with mothering each other, then, crew declared that he would often performed childishness. Public displays of sexuality, for example, drink a glass of the were vanishingly rare. It was not uncommon for crew to conceal their substance: ‘You’ve got to take PCB’s in quantities, sexual or romantic relationships, allowing them to participate in the deadly, over a long peri- more diffuse network of care until they disembarked. Thus, despite od of time and probably the use of gendered terms like ‘mom’, the positions of caregiver and be pregnant, which I don’t intend to become recipient of care on Clearwater are distributed through reciprocal re- [in order to suffer harm]’ lations between shipmates. Unmoored from ascribed gender identities, (Robin Herman, ‘Carey the responsibilities of and benefits of care circulate among crew. Would Sip a Glass of PCBs’, The New York The Hudson River also participates in these relations of reciprocal Times, March 5, 1981, care. ‘We deliver for the river’ is a main Clearwater slogan, emblazoned
31 Clearwater crew with trash parodying trophy- hunting photos, 2018. The author can be seen in this photo in a black and white floral shirt. Instagram photo by @sloopclearwater.
32 wood to slow its rotting and replacing it when that determines crew’s experience. More necessary is part of daily life onboard. The likely, however, the co-constitution and co-re- twice-daily ritual of washing the deck with production of boat and crew are ‘emergent salt water to preserve the wood is a particu- effects of encounters’ between human and larly significant act of care, in which nearly non-human beings that make a mockery of the entire crew participates. The bosun, such linear historical narratives.[36] In this way, who is primarily responsible for maintaining Clearwater and the Hudson manifest the the organic elements of the boat, similarly ‘material, meaningful, processual, heteroge- referred to the boats she had taken care of neous, emergent, and constitutive’ histories as ‘my babies’. Coiling down the lines, furling of companion species.[37] sails, and putting everything in its place was While the boat figures as a caregiv- called ‘putting the boat to bed’, and crew er, however, the gendered meaning of this sometimes joked about singing it a lullaby.[35] position remains open to negotiation. This Repair, then is a form of reproduction of the ambivalence is particularly evident in the use boat, often described in terms that position of pronouns. Boats have long been referred crew as its mothers, while daily labor onboard to as ‘she’, reflecting their history as -femi is described as caring for the boat like a child. nised technologies employed primarily by [35] One element of putting the boat to bed is In a regenerative process, these relations men; thus, ‘she’ with relation to boats derives furling (rolling and fold- of reciprocal care co-constitute boat, river, from the same analogy with male domina- ing) the jib (a smaller and crew. Most obviously, the Clearwater tion as ‘Mother Nature’ and her alternately sail carried forward of [38] the mast). To accomplish community made the sloop and is constant- ‘barren’ or ‘virgin’ lands. In an interview, this job, one crew mem- ly re-making it. Each spring the crew puts one crew member from the 1980’s suggest- ber straddles and lifts the boat together, attaching the parts of the ed that calling Clearwater ‘she’ was a habit the rolled-up sail while their shipmate pushes a sail, rolling the brine barrel and trash barrel more common among crew who had worked fold of the sail through onboard, and restocking it with supplies. After on other boats, where such sexist assump- their legs; this is called periodic maintenance during the summer, in tions were more intact. Yet crew that called “birthing the baby” and inspired the joke - ‘it’s a the fall they take the boat out of the water, Clearwater ‘she’ typically cited the boat’s furl!’ punning on ‘it’s a pull it apart, and work all winter on more role in care and reproduction. To call the girl!’ in another instance complicated repairs. Despite these efforts to boat ‘she’ because you put a lot of work into of reproductive meta- keep the boat relatively constant over time, it taking care of ‘her’, and ‘she’ takes care of phors. is also changed by its sailors. One knot, for you in return, as one crew member explained [36] Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at instance, is used because it is the captain’s their language choice to me, clearly essen- the End of the World: favorite. Meanwhile, the boat shapes both in- tialises women as both the dependent of the On the Possibility of dividuals and the community onboard. One’s household and the caretaker or mother figure. Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton: Princeton body adapts to the physical space of the boat, However, some crew avoided pronouns in de- University Press, 2015), reaching for corners in the correct places and scribing Clearwater altogether (as I have done p. 23. gaining the strength to haul on lines. I realised in this essay), instead referring to it as ‘the [37] Haraway, that I had learned to navigate Clearwater boat’ or ‘Clearwater.’ Alongside Haraway, I Manifestly Haraway, when, after a few weeks of living onboard, see the resulting ambivalence as productive. p. 294. I looked down to see that the patchwork of Crew often make sense of their relations with [38] Davis and bruises had largely vanished from my arms the boat and river through a gendered vocab- Nadel-Klein, ‘Gender, Culture, and the Sea’; and legs. Crew often described this process as ulary of reproduction that mimics hegemonic Misse Wester and a form of mothering; as one former sailor told discourse. Nevertheless, the real processes of Britta Eklund, ‘“My me, ‘[Clearwater’s] children are all over this reciprocal care onboard Clearwater call Husband Usually Makes Those Decisions”: country’. As the crew reproduced the boat, for new language and new pronouns. Like Gender, Behavior, and then, the boat also reproduced the commu- Haraway ‘mothering’ her dogs, the inclu- Attitudes Toward the nity. Reflecting this reciprocal relationship, sion of these cross-species relationships in the Marine Environment’, Environmental crew disagreed as to whether ‘it’s really the language of patriarchy inhabits the twin mas- Management 48, no. 1 people that make the boat’ or the boat itself culinist histories of environmentalism and (May 1, 2011), p. 70.
33 [39] Haraway, sailing in order to transform them.[39] perform well. For instance, crew described Manifestly Haraway, p. 188. Finally, as Haraway anticipates, these with wonderment and awe the incredible [40] David Graeber, heterogenous relationships are managed weight of the sail, which you particularly ex- Fragments of an through hierarchies of command. While hi- perienced when lowering it – a one-person Anarchist Anthropology erarchy is often analysed as constitutive of job – and feeling the strain of 3,000 pounds (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004); hegemonic power and therefore antithetical on the line in your hands. In this sense, boat Pierre Clastres, Society to resistance,[40] it is a fundamental aspect of and crew participate in reciprocal care across against the State: the reciprocal relationships onboard. The difference through orders of command and Essays in Political Anthropology (New captains are at the top of the hierarchy of obedience. York & Cambridge: Zone command among humans, followed by the The river also enters into relations of Books, 1987). first mate and education coordinator; the command and obedience, but it commands [41] However, they second mate, engineer, bosun, and cook; the crew. It is the particular responsibility might ask questions and finally, the crew. The captains -deter of the captain to interpret and respond to about commands at a muster. Such questions mine nearly everything that the boat does, the commands of the environment. As one were formulated so as either by issuing rules or by commanding crew member described, life on Clearwater not to explicitly chal- the first mate to make it happen; the mate is ‘subject to different forces than those of lenge a captain’s leader- ship: ‘Did you know that then gives commands to crew. Sailors receive everyday life – the forces of wind and weather.’ something dangerous commands by repeating them (‘calling back’) Consistent with Haraway’s description of might happen?’ rather and carrying them out. Call-backs both companion species, human beings forming than, ‘Why did you put us in danger?’ More assure the person issuing the command that relationships with such forces must learn to frequently, however, they have been heard correctly and give the communicate across difference, recognising crew that disagreed recipient an opportunity to process the infor- the existence of other agencies in their worlds. with a captain’s manner of caring for the boat mation. Crew almost never failed to carry out In the words of a former captain, recognition merely grumbled and commands.[41] Captains bear ultimate re- often dawns in magical moments: ‘you’re went about their work. sponsibility for boat and crew, and sailors trying to catch the tide, you’re living with those Suggesting commands is also encouraged, but look to them for guidance, usually preferring natural rhythms. And you know that the wind the mate or captain must rules and orders over the delegation of deci- and the tide, they’re your enemy or your friend affirm the command before sailors complete sion-making. As I have discussed, the captain or whatever, but you’re submitting to nature.’ it; thus, individual initi- also instructs crew in the methods and sig- Getting up at odd hours to catch a tide rather ative is filtered through nificance of reciprocal care. In this regard, than run the engine, Clearwater crew enter hierarchy. hierarchy is not inimical to the social system into cooperative communication with the [42] Crew also practiced onboard, but a central component of it. river and the environment.[42] Through such the Dutch folk tradition of slowing the boat This hierarchy of command and obedi- rituals, Clearwater positions itself as subject and offering a tribute ence also extends to the boat and the river. to, interpreting and responding to the desires to the Dunderberg Because the first mate, education coordi- of the Hudson. As the captain expressed, at Goblin when entering and leaving the Hudson nator, and captain rarely touch lines, the stake in this relationship is an inversion of the Highlands, in hopes of crew is responsible for interacting with and domination of nature by culture. Hence, as fair weather and safe commanding the boat itself. As Haraway the- with Haraway’s companion species, hierarchy passage. According to this tradition, the orises, hierarchy facilitates communication onboard is a method of communication that Dunderberg Goblin lives across difference: feeling the force on a line enables ‘cross-species achievement’ rather on Dunderberg mountain and hauling or easing to make the boat do than domination.[43] Whether by reading at the South end of the Hudson Highlands, the what the captain plans. Nevertheless, captains tides, feeling the drift of the tiller, or repeating windiest part of the river, warned crew against fantasies of domina- a verbal command, hierarchy among sailors and throws down storms tion: ‘Respect the forces of this world.’ These and between crew, boat, and river involve on boats that fail to pay tribute as they pass. warnings were often backed up with stories each actor communicating to the collective Traditionally, sloops of fingers lost to Clearwater. To succeed, end: ecological protection. would dip (lower and one must learn how this particular boat sails, Relationships on Clearwater, then, realise raise) the peak of the sail upon entering and figure out its tricky idiosyncrasies, and learn to several critical aspects of Haraway’s theori- leaving the highlands, respect them so that both boat and crew can sation of companion species. Work onboard
34 generates relations of ‘significant otherness’ and ‘positive bondage’ that but an easier modern Clearwater version of call upon humans to attempt communication with their non-human tribute involves slingshot- companions.[44] Haraway imagines such relationships taking shape ‘in ting organic materials vulnerable, on-the-ground work that cobbles together nonharmonious into the river. Savannah recalled a ‘moment of agencies and ways of living that are accountable both to their disparate total transformation’ inherited histories and to their barely possible but absolutely necessary during Clearwater’s first joint futures.’[45] Thus, the boat, river, and crew are companion species passage through the Hudson Highlands of the co-constituted through historical and ongoing processes. Hierarchies 2018 season. Passing of command and obedience effect communication across significant through Windgate, a otherness as crew, river and boat work together for environmental funnel of wind between Storm King Mountain progress. This mutual constitution also generates an obligation of re- and Bear Mountain at ciprocal care. As the boat and river care for the crew, crew perform the northern end of the care for river and boat through rituals of work onboard, which are also Highlands, Captain Kit asked the crew to make acts of environmentalism. sacrifices to the goblin While Haraway neglects to focus on the relationships between for safe passage for members of the communities that sustain companion species for- the rest of the season – something personal, of ‘emergent ontologies’ mations, it is evident that on Clearwater, such relationships between meaningful, and of in ‘Yoruba- and English- humans take a form analogous to relationships across kinds. I of course course biodegradable. speaking mathematics As Savannah recalled, elementary school do not suggest that Clearwater crew are more animal-like than other they suddenly went from classrooms in post-inde- human beings. In fact, although Haraway emphasises human-dog re- talking about the prac- pendence Nigeria’ and lationships in her manifesto, she also describes ‘significant otherness’ tical realities of life on- ‘Australian Aboriginal board, to talking about projects in math teaching developing across other categorical boundaries, including between a metaphorical pres- and environmental [46] humans. Rather, these analogous relationships strengthen Haraway’s ence. This is ‘conscious policy’. See Haraway, , symbolism’ that does not Manifestly Haraway claim that companion species generate new forms of kinship which work 137. Haraway also preclude other, techni- describes companion to resignify the usually patriarchal matter of reproduction. Gendered cal actions to the same species relationships language of mothering anthropomorphises boat and river. It also fem- ends – consulting radar as encompassing to check the weather, for inises boat work regardless of the worker’s gender or sex. At the same cyborgean (human-ma- instance – but never- chine) relationships. time, the linguistic ambivalence surrounding descriptions of this work theless allows crew to effects a resignification of reproduction itself, thereby ‘emancipating’ experience some control [47] Butler, ‘Contingent the concept to new meanings.[47] Clearwater therefore highlights the over their environment Foundations’, p. 50. (for a similar analysis potential of companion species to resignify reproduction into some- see Godfrey Lienhardt, [48] Virginia Held, thing more like regeneration and which is less dependent upon the Divinity and Experience: The Ethics of Care as The Religion of the Moral Theory (Oxford reproductive matrix. This resignification reveals an important synthe- University Press, 2005). sis between environmentalism and feminism, as Clearwater’s kinship Dinka (United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, [49] Greta Claire forms are also fundamental to its efforts to care for the Hudson. 1987), p. 285. Thus Gaard, ‘Women, Many ecofeminist theorists and activists have previously adapted when storms hit, crew Water, Energy: An the feminist ‘ethics of care’ framework to environmentalism.[48] Greta would not say that the Ecofeminist Approach,’ Goblin did not exist, but Organization & Gaard, for instance, calls for ‘partnership cultures’ of interdependence rather that it had disliked Environment 14, no. 2 and care between all people and the environment.[49] Similarly, Carolyn their sacrifices – and (June 2001), 157-72. they would try again Merchant advocates a ‘partnership ethic’ of non-gendered mutual care next time. [50] Merchant, rooted in feminine mythologies.[50] An important critique of this frame- Earthcare. [43] Haraway, work is that it depoliticises environmentalism by equating it to domestic Manifestly Haraway, [51] Alaimo, ‘Cyborg labor.[51] Appropriating Hannah Arendt’s account of the specificity of p. 142. and Ecofeminist Interventions’. political action as distinct from private life, this critique argues that [44] Ibid., p. 137. ‘motherhood environmentalism’ merely reconstitutes domestic gender [52] Sandilands, The [45] Ibid., p. 100. Good-Natured Feminist, relations in another realm and extends the ‘retreat of the political p. 167. [from environmentalism] more broadly.’[52] It also reproduces essential- [46] Haraway bases her definition of significant [53] MacGregor, ‘From ised gender categories; thus, Sherilyn MacGregor asks ecofeminists ‘to otherness on Helen Care to Citizenship’, look at why women tend to have little choice but to be caring.’[53] This Verran’s description p. 63.
35 Hierarchies of command and obedience on Clearwater, 2018. Diagram by Amelia Goldberg.
36 emphasis on choice is significant with regard prompted to reconsider the environmental to Clearwater because, as crew often empha- politics of their own homes and families. This sised, the boat is a voluntary community made juxtaposition of spaces reveals normative up of people who had chosen to participate in orders that often go not only unchallenged, environmental care labor onboard. but also unseen. Rather than making the Yet rather than depoliticising environ- home into a metaphor for nature, Clearwater mentalism, Clearwater demonstrates that challenges the very distinction between certain arrangements of care destabilise the home and environment. One participant in categories of man/woman, nature/culture, a youth empowerment program, reflecting human/machine, and home/environment. on what he had learned over the course of Clearwater precludes a clear division between three days onboard, summarised this lesson the home (usually the site of domestic labor) well: ‘Imagine if someone came into your and the workplace (usually the site of paid house and left a huge mess and didn’t clean labor). It is a home, but it is the home of a it up. You’d be pretty mad. But also, you volunteer and paid workforce rather than a have to clean it up. It’s good for young men patriarchal family. It is a home almost entirely to be out there cleaning up the river.’ The without privacy, and it is a home explicitly crew’s performance of an environmentalist designed as the site for politics. When crew lifestyle onboard invites passengers both to refer to the boat as their home, they take it as view the river as a home in their care – as one a whole and eliminate any boundary between Clearwater elder said, to get to know ‘their the apparently domestic spaces of the galley neighbors in the river’ – and to see the en- (kitchen) or cabins and the sails, rigging, deck, vironmental politics of their own ostensibly or other working elements. Indeed, on warm private lives. With its odd juxtaposition of summer nights crew frequently pull mattress- life and politics, home and river, Clearwater es up to sleep on deck, string up hammocks reveals the ‘operating table’ of thought on in the rigging, or sleep cocooned in the main which we are used to arbitrarily separating sail. As one former crew member said, pithily, such things.[54] Further, as the young man’s Clearwater is ‘a large boat but a small house.’ statement revealed, the domestic labor of It is therefore both a house, and not a house. Clearwater is not consigned to any gender. Unlike most houses, it is open to the public. Instead, Clearwater’s environmentalism aims The main cabin, where the majority of the to extend the position of caregiver and at- crew sleep, is open to all people who visit the tendant labors as widely as possible in the boat and is the site of a portion of the educa- surrounding communities, rendering it no tion program focusing on life onboard and the woman-shaped hole but an empty and open history of the Hudson. Bunks, as any volun- signifier. Relations onboard take small steps teer learns on their first day onboard, should towards enacting this ambition. always be shipshape and decent for public In sum, daily life onboard Clearwater viewing; thus, even one’s bunk is subject to concretises feminist debates about the re- external scrutiny and is not really private. In lationship between gender, reproduction, this regard, Clearwater’s oppositional politics, labor, and nature. Extending Butler’s and which rest upon welcoming the public to Haraway’s optimism regarding the emanci- witness an alternative lifestyle onboard, locate patory possibilities of resignification, I have the home square in the public sphere. argued that Clearwater turns reproduction By making the boat a site of politics, against gender itself. Work onboard resig- Clearwater also highlights the permeabil- nifies reproduction, mothering, and care ity between two other received categories: to mean something closer to the idea of re- home and environment. Passengers witness- generation. Relationships onboard manifest [54] Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, ing the enactment of environmentalism in a Haraway’s notion of companionship, marked (Taylor and Francis, dramatically different floating household are by both hierarchy and reciprocal care across 2001).
37 Clearwater crew near the end of summer, 2018. Photo by Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc.
38 significant otherness. Therefore, I take Clearwater’s enactment ofa feminist environmentalism seriously on its own terms: while reproduc- tion has long been a common thread in feminist and environmentalist debates, reconfiguring it can simultaneously give meaning to ecological care labor and open up new gender possibilities. As such, Clearwater challenges feminists to explore the instability of gendered terms within environmentalism. Reproduction is often gendered, but only due to its construction in society; such constructions can be subverted. ‘Nature’ and its gender are socially constructed as well; relations with nature, then, might provide a particularly fertile location for the resignification of gender. As often happens, the congruence of concepts like environmental- ism and feminism could not be understood prior to or separately from the muddiness that developed in their enactments onboard. Instead, the forms of reproduction reviewed in this essay open new possibilities that, as both scholars and political actors, we must seriously engage. This is not to say that such retreated theories of the political should be abandoned. Instead, as Apter argues, ‘we should think of [the event of liberation not] in terms of…revolution…but as myriad micropolitical effects that might or might not adduce the advent of an emancipa- tory truth that historically rearranges worlds.’[55] Clearwater has yet to rearrange the world. Nevertheless, confronting the serious realities of human and non-human oppression and facing what Seeger called the ‘economic, social, and environmental crisis’ of today,[56] we would do well to practice pragmatic politics while tracking the philosophies they develop. Like the ship of Theseus, or like Clearwater itself, we may rebuild ecofeminist politics to fit our specifications, plank by plank, on our way downriver. To quote Seeger one final time:
Sailing down my dirty stream Still I love it and I’ll keep the dream That some day, though maybe not this year My Hudson River will once again run clear.
[55] Apter, Unexceptional Politics, p. 27. [56] McLean, Songs and Sketches of the First Clearwater Crew.
39
Weaving Weed-Kin Amanda Monti 42 Ridgewood, NY 2019
This is a story overgrown by weeds. It is also an encounter with a site. But one cannot simply decide to write about weeds. One has to be taken, devoured and become weed-like, too.
*
In my adoption of the term ‘weed’ I refer to that which western botany describes as unwanted plants.[1] There are many ways in which a plant can become unwanted. It might antagonise us by overpowering its surrounding ecosystem. It might spread quick, fast, vast, now, now and now, before a little heaving human can catch up. It might not be ‘pretty’ or ‘useful’, whatever both of these terms mean in their cultural contexts. Writing on the intersection of queer theory and horticultural studies, author Joe Crowdy writes that ‘[…] weeds generally represent an absence of control.’[2] Perhaps a ‘weed’ refers less to a plant than is does to a relation. A plant is only a weed if it appears, for example, un- expectedly amidst a pod of strawberries that a human wants to grow. In this scenario there is already an archive of knowledge ready to be harvested. What, for example, is the history of that weed? Why is its [1] Catherine desire to grow in the pod clashing with the desire of a strawberry? Boeckmann, ‘Common Garden Weeds’, Whose garden are we in? And what is the human going to do with the Almanac
43 I am not a horticulturist but a storyteller, those who enter it and something intangible so my encounters with weeds will most likely within touching distance. ‘Hello,’ I say to that be flawed, will contain holes in knowledge, which I cannot see. It is most clearly there in failures and lack of empiricisms. Any botanist the moss that has gathered on the trunks of will chase me out of their garden in my weed the oaks and maples, hinting at timescales so desire, and rightly so. But I do know about very different to my own. If I grew moss, I sensing, about pausing, about inquiring, and wonder, where on my body would it gather? that has always been the prime activity of sto- The inside of my elbows perhaps, where it is rytelling for me. This story is an argument, soft and tender. I wonder what this reservoir’s not for a way of doing horticulture, but an ar- relationship is to humans, those dedicated to gument for a story. And it is a good story that the art of gardening and those like me, the is needed for this moment in time, as weed- odd encounter. The spillage of trees over con- kin shall tell. crete feels unkempt, violent and soft and I go in deeper. * * The faux leather seat is rubbing up against my sweaty thighs and my thoughts are looking for I spot one of the only weeds I have ever my love, they weave through wonky lines into learned to identify, gracefully winding its her blue room and disperse along the six-hour way around a birch: the Japanese Porcelain time difference that stretches so incomprehen- Berry. I know it will form thick mats through sibly between our bodies. It is summer in what its climbing vine, will shade out any shrubs is now called New York City. I am a human on to essentially suffocate the tree from above. a bike riding through the boroughs of Brook- I hold my breath. The erotics of the Berry’s lyn and Queens. The clouds look like steaks thin green vine and its dark blue pearls tightly and the horizon does the wavey-thing with hugged against the sturdy wood have me the hot concrete. I have gone outside to write transfixed and confused. about the deserted water site in my neighbor- If the Porcelain Berry were to keep hood but I am overcome by the desire to find growing unhindered it would devour this res- a soft nook in the city to crawl into, something ervoir. And so the Porcelain Berry is called a unruly to hide within. Here, everything is rec- weed because it presents a disruption of an tangular. Here, I have the privilege of being a agreed-upon future (in this case, the future of stranger on a 3-Year-Visa. Glue curves faces the Reservoir as it stands now). Making kin on billboards into wrinkly cardboard and the with weeds can mean to renegotiate our re- lettering tries to re-word my fuzzy desire into lationship with time, or more specifically, our a purchasable thing. I would like to tell a story acceptance of a given future. Whose future of my being here but where to even begin, is being disrupted? What are we preserving? and what ending would it have? Weeds can be our queer kin because there is something inherently radical about this weedy * entanglement of calculated and disruptive growth. Something else might open up in this My hike begins as I lock my bike on a lamp- renegotiation of what future we want. Lee post, leave the highway and follow a trail Edelman locates a liberation of the death- into the green shade. It is the first time I’ve drive in desire that is not procreative, namely, [4] Lee Edelman, come here, a strange pulsing urban forest on queer desire. ‘Queer desire’ argues Edelman, No Future: Queer the border of Brooklyn-Queens and trees ‘refuses future, in its refusal to reproduce Theory and the Death are spilling out of a ginormous steep con- hetero-futurity.’[4] Why choose to grow straw- Drive (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), crete basin like they have been waiting for us berries in a garden when we haven’t chosen p. 30. to meet. A forest is a meeting place between the garden? ‘Choose, instead, not to choose,’
44 Edelman continues to suggest.[5] But who can listening to music even, just staring at the sea. afford (not) to choose? ‘I feel most part of this earth,’ she’d say, ‘when The Porcelain Berry presents a disruption I see myself reflected in water.’ to an imagined future. This is an opportunity This feels like it is the Reservoir’s heart: to reflect what this future can mean and who like all the rhythms of the forest reverber- it is for. But to make kin with weeds we must ate through this very spot, the water and its dig deeper into the story: the Porcelain Berry’s surrounding plants charged with thicker air, choice not to choose a future comes with listening for words as they are spoken. A field manifold implications for itself, its histories, of tall, yellow-ish plants enclose the pond, its surrounding trees and humans transfixed nodding their heads to the rhythm of the by its embrace. The great feminist and an- wind as if engaged in mystical conversation. thropologist Anna Tsing speaks of ‘tools of I am taken by weed desire to climb, itch and noticing’.[6] This is the field of storytelling, scratch to get closer. There are fences, and too. As weeds might help us notice refusal locks, and layers of growth and I can only get while we entangle, her absence entwined in to a look-out point above. my body I wonder, how will we web care in weed desire? *
* When our group gets to the pond, I see that the plants are untouched by autumn, still yel- I let oxygen flood my veins and hear a sudden lowish, still dancing to the wind. Now that I flash of Robyn’s Dancing on my Own through a am right next to them, I see that they really jogger’s headphones, as they run by, ‘why can’t are tall. I am a tall person and people are not you see me ooh,’ she says, ‘I keep dancing on usually as tall as me. I feel a secret thrill to my own’ she says, and I keep walking. be met by plants that are the same height as myself. * ‘It seems like they carry the water,’ I say. This is Ridgewood Reservoir. Rusty pipes ‘It’s because they do,’ says Matt. peek out behind a carpet of moss that hints at its liquid past. The trail leads me deeper Matt is not as tall as me and is part of to the Reservoir’s core, where I find a pond NYCH20, a group of volunteers who care for sparkling in the summer sun like a disco parts of the reservoir. I learn that the plants ball flattened out on earth. A familiar wash are called Phragmites, that they too are con- of adrenalin shoots through my body like it sidered weeds.[7] Each season NYCH20 meets always does at the sight of water. There is to cut back the Phragmites as they would a theory that our need to stay hydrated has otherwise choke the pond out of existence. kept humans in anticipation for shimmering Their roots grow thick and thirsty underneath streams and has therefore left us with innate the water. In search for a way to be closer to excitement for shiny things. I don’t know how the Phragmites I have joined them for their true this is but I do know that waters make outing today. [5] Edelman, No Future, me think of mother, not as in ‘Mother Earth,’ p. 31. because who knows what pronouns the earth * [6] Anna Lowenhaupt uses. ‘Mother’ as in the person who birthed Tsing, The Mushroom me, and single-handedly raised me and my I am given a long rubber suit that goes up at the End of the World (Princeton: Princeton brother. I don’t know how she did it to be to my chest. I have borrowed boots from University Press, 2015), honest. She would always take us to the beach someone I desired briefly and I in-cooperate p. 17. close by and spend the whole afternoon just her masculine physicality into my own like a [7] NYCH20
45 behind certain gender traits, depending on its into the land is the displacement of bodies, and circumstance. I am materially entangled in this movement. I walk on top of the Phragmites, the Through my visa I am in negotiation with the ground spongey and soft. I am like Moses but settler-state and am therefore a settler myself. in latex and finally I begin to submerge. The As a white European my presence on this land cold water does not like my layers, it wants me is not without violence. As a storyteller it is bare in its embrace, sends cold shivers up my then my responsibility to tell not only of what throat to let me know; I am given big gloves is present, but also of what is absent. Not to and a pair of long scissors to pull and cut at resolve, but to complicate the conditions of the roots of the Phragmites. I start pulling at our co-existence, do we tell stories. Reading roots and almost slip but not yet – I centre, a site through its weeds might provide a space gather my strength, invoke my inner domme to encounter our desires responsibly: the story through deep breathing and begin again: pull of undergrowth is the story of entanglements, and pull, pull, pull and cut, find a rhythm, pull making us complicit in the cast of characters. and cut, pull and cut. ‘Patience,’ I remember, pull and cut, some roots slimy, others tough. * Hot sweat gathering in the inside of my suit. Someone measuring something, someone The basins in which we are cutting back sawing. Phragmites used to gather reserves of fresh We are seven humans, led into the pond water from the Catskills for a full century, from by its weeds. Some of us are probably in love. 1859 to 1959. The water provided by Ridge- All of us are wet. The weeds want water but wood Reservoir allowed the City of Brooklyn the humans want a pond, because someone to grow from ninety-thousand to a million. might gaze at the pond someday and feel Brooklyn expanded so much that by 1960 the themselves part of the planet. Overlapping demands of the people outgrew the capacity projects of desires and thirsts have excavated of the reservoir to supply water. The reservoir this pond and entangled us into its water. was officially ‘decommissioned’. On the inter- net I find someone’s proposal to build a soccer * field instead of the reservoir. Some dude always wants to build a soccer field. In this I do research on the reservoir’s history as a case the forest was like, well, that’s just stupid site of thirst. I hope for empirical data to add and it grew thick vegetation, which attracted another layer of information to my embod- volunteers, gardeners and my new friends ied encounter with the reservoir. To make kin from the Phragmites, NYCH20, who helped with weeds we must grow spectacularly entan- to defend the site. Ridgewood Reservoir is gled web of knowledges, bodily and factual now part of Highland park, an ‘unprotected and all that is growing in-between. historical site.’ Matt tends to the pond and This is New York. Research into land that invites schools to the Reservoir, so that young exists inside a settler-colonial-nation project kids can learn about the histories of its plants. such as the US must remain cautious of ‘facts’ ‘I thought I was allergic to Nature,’ said a [8] ‘Highland Park’, as these are often insidiously promoting the young kid to Matt once, after she had fallen in NYC Government logic of the colonial-structure. love with the Reservoir, hands covered in soil. Parks
46 water gets its way to my skin. It floods my Babies.’[11] To insist on the stories of weeds, is boots, licks my legs, my belly, my chest, kisses to recognise kinship. To care for a pond and me, I shiver all over. I pull this feeble mamma- respond to its histories is to cultivate questions: lian body back out onto the tender ground, What is the work that we, as a society, have to interwoven with roots upon roots upon roots. do in order to stretch and recompose our idea I am consumed by their bewildering embrace, of kinship and responsibility? What does it enveloped in wet moss, organs cannot hold mean to meet one another, to respond, to care me like these grounds can hold me. for one another in these days of precarious and complex interaction and intra-action? * Where does care and co-existence turn into consumption and control? Where do they ‘Invasive species’ is the somewhat drastic term overlap? When weeds and humans are kin- that Western botany gives to plants whose knitting in a pond, we must keep asking, in desires override their surrounding ecosystem. whose interests do we care, cut, grow? They choke, clog, confuse. But to ask who is The Porcelain Berry shows how weed-kin invading and who is being invaded opens up a links us to the violence of imperialism while more complex set of relations than the simple its disruption in ‘our’ garden asks us, what is it binary that the invasive/native species termi- that ‘we’ want to preserve? nology suggests. Meeting weed-kin allows for a non-linear I learn from NYCH20 that an invasive reading of the entangled histories that have species was usually made invasive by human brought us together. Weed-kin on indigenous intervention. An invasive plant harks back to land is continuously showing accountabilities: a story of displacement, in which it has been who gets to decide what a weed is, means who imported for a human project of desire. Such is in control of the land. In this, weed-kin can was the journey of the Porcelain Berry. In the provide a space to dismantle the prevailing 19th century, during the growing consumer power-structure of a site. lust for the new and the exotic, an American This is why I walk before I write, why my man named Thomas Hogg saw the Porcelain mother gazes at the sea. Finding the tools Berry in Japan and thought ‘Well isn’t that a for noticing these stories is a task of utmost beautiful vine!’ In a gesture reminiscent of the urgency. Bodies who have come to this ecosys- kleptomania so typical of the ‘white fathers’, tem are implicated into its stories. Therefore, he too felt the irrepressible urge to take this we need stories that make legible a relational [10] Adrian Higgins, in The Washington Post, plant, which he knew nothing about, and ship embodiment that feminist philosopher Gail (2017)
47 48 Amanda Monti, Ridgewood Reservoir, 2018. Photo by Ryan Struck.
49 because weed-kin is radically earthbound. So unquenchable like capital itself, leaving the how then, can weed-kin weave us a story of site as just one example of a civilisation in hope? collapse, unable to recuperate from shocks to its system. But admitting to devastation is not * an excuse for further human damage. Rather, it is a call for collaborative survival. Scranton I calculate that it has been thirty years since concludes: the discontinuation of Ridgewood Reservoir as an industrial water site. This means that it We can continue acting as if to- only took thirty years for this forest to flour- morrow will be just like yesterday, ish inside these basins, deforming their rigid growing less and less prepared for geometrical arrangement into an image of each new disaster as it comes, and green breath. more and more desperately invest- Thirty years was the age of a woman I ed in a life we can’t sustain. Or we once loved. I was younger than her, and taller. can learn to see each day as the Time feels thin in tender moments. The patch- death of what came before, freeing work of this earth and its pulses of growth are ourselves to deal with whatever difficult to comprehend in a body when it sits problems the present offers without on a square table, wearing strange trousers attachment or fear. [14] and a buttoned-up shirt. The sheer resilience of this forest growing in a mere thirty years Ridgewood Reservoir could not provide leaves me in awe of the great power the world for the thirsts of the Future. But the site has to correct the effects of human hubris and remains committed to the thirst of its weeds. stupidities. In their resilience and presence, weed-kin can And yet, the hum of road is never far. I guide us through possibilities of coexistence only need to turn my head twice to see pieces within environmental disturbance, and our of processed cellulose acetate, also known as role in it. cigarette filters, sprinkled in-between some I did not expect to respond to the Reservoir fragrant Mugwort. No matter how lush and with an essay. Its stories sink deeper than my alive this forest feels to me, the signs of a city questions, they unfold beyond my control. and its orgies of excess have coated the world Its ways of making knowledges escape my to a point beyond return. This point beyond reach, knowledges that are difficult to hold return is what is now being called the Anthro- within this essay, because they are difficult to pocene: a term that represents the idea that we hold within this body. But to allow for stories have entered a new epoch in Earth’s geologi- to emerge, without a bottom line, to accept cal history, one characterised by the arrival of and invite more and more openings might be the human species as a geological force. The a way into ‘staying with the trouble’[15] that is story of the Anthropocene goes further than the Anthropocene. Edelman’s refusal of Future. Whereas with Weeds don’t let us look away. This is why [13] Roy Scranton, Edelman we get to choose, the story of the writing stories within the Anthropocene for ‘Learning how to die in the Anthropocene’ in Anthropocene does not leave us with much of me is a practice in entanglement. The New York Times, 11 a Future to choose from. (2013),
50 phragmites, ponds, and lovers, are woven together intimately by the weeds, and the body who invokes them, which in this case is my own. It is this kind of plant intelligence that we need to continue to build our networks of kinship. And the accountabilities are extensive and permanently unfinished. The idea of Fractals is that the micro reflects the macro and vice versa. The Fibonacci pattern appears in cauliflower and space. To practice relation within a local context might reverberate through to the largest scale: to responsibly weave weed-kin here might mean that we will be overgrown by a world we want to see, before too long.
*
Ubiquitous queer weed-kin cracks through concrete we might let ourselves be taken by weed desire, be devoured, swallowed up whole, and have weed-kin all over, communicate through unruly networks of desirous, liquid path ways, touch, and cultivate within us the tender tools for noticing one another. ‘the experience of being embodied is never a private affair,’[16] writes Gail Weiss. and this perhaps is what weed-kin has been trying to tell us all along: we are not alone in this story
*
No Robyn, you are not dancing on your own, because the weeds are never far.
*
I want to sit with the phragmites for longer, even if I don’t know their name yet. I drop my rucksack onto the crushed blue stone and lean over the fence. My body lessens its grip to whatever it holds onto in the city. As I am watching the silent choreography of water, wind and grass I let my mind go from translucent to luminous, the usual stream of thoughts polished into a shape that lets the world in with a tender- ness I haven’t felt since coming to this city. The leaves of honey gum trees smell of fresh cotton candy if rubbed between index and thumb. I finger a close-by tree and let my mind wander back to her, sweet sugar fragrance rising up my nose.
[16] Gail Weiss, Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality (New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 5.
51
The Participatory Rituals of Transgender Shaman Geyserbird Graham Bell Tornado
53 54 In this article I will discuss my artistic practice as a transgender shaman and the ecotransfeminist rituals I have been carrying out for a period of years in which I have invited the public to participate.[1] But when reading a story it is important to know where that story comes from. I am a transgender artist who grew up on the outskirts of a small town in rural Aberdeenshire in the north east of Scotland and I currently work mainly in Valencia, a city on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. Although I have a strong connection to the country I grew up in, I do not see myself as belonging to any geographical nation. From an early age I was discriminated against as a poof, a jessie, a gender dis- sident and I have never fitted in or conformed to the dominant social mores anywhere I have lived. The closest identification I feel is with the transnational queer and transgender community and since I do not find manifestations of transgender practices in the history of my own culture I identify more with traditions from other cultures. I do not idealise them but use them as an inspiration to create contemporary trans symbologies and new narratives of visibility and resistance. This is similar to the philosophy of Gloria Anzaldúa who states:
We come from all colors, all classes, all races, all time periods. Our role is to link people with each other... The mestizo and the queer exist at this time and point on the evolutionary continuum for a purpose. We are a blending that proves that all blood is intricately woven together, and that we are spawned out of similar souls.[2] [1] This text is adapted Despite a long and enriching history of feminist thought which has from my PhD thesis Natural Hysteria: A shown how the exploitation of nature and women is at the base of the Queer Response to current economic system, the connections between queer theory and Ecocide (2018). ecology/ecofeminism have been under explored until recently. This is [2] Gloria E. Anzaldúa, probably in part due to the mythology which grew up around the mis- Borderlands, La Frontera understood LGTBQ youth “escaping” their sad small-town existence (San Francisco: Aunt to find fulfilment in the city, as if the existence of gender dissidence in Lute, 1987), p. 106. rural contexts was impossible. This identification of many LGTBQI [3] Diana J. Torres, ‘Eco BDSM and extreme people with the urban context has robbed many of their connection practices with nature’, with nature. As Diana J. Torres (aka La Pornoterrorista), a post porn in Ecogender X ed. by writer and performer says, ‘Maybe there’s something broken in me, Graham Bell Tornado (Valencia: La Erreria like all the people who grew up in an urban environment – we have a [House of Bent], 2019), series of breakages in communication with nature.’[3] p. 119.
55 But at a time in which existence depends in 2012, when I began working on the How on the actions we take it is equally vital for the to Heal the World Bank series of performances, environmental movement to become aware of that I felt ready to continue this work. the importance of gender in its struggle, as it I felt a need to develop a special alter ego is for the LGTBQ movement to join the fight to carry out these performances. I wanted to against the exploitation of natural resources. involve the public in a similar way to that in We must rebuild our connection to nature, a which members of a community are involved connection which was stolen from us. Let’s not in ceremonies and rituals. The persona of a forget that homosexual behaviour, along with transgender shaman seemed the perfect way hermaphroditism, asexuality and transsexu- to do that. ality are widespread in the animal kingdom. In many cultures worldwide, individuals This information has been withheld by the who did not fit the gender binary contribut- scientific establishment which has supported ed to the social life of their community by the homophobic values of hetero-patriarchy. following a spiritual path. Evidence of their As Joan Roughgarden writes: existence has been found in cultures from all over the Americas, in India and Siberia. It is Scientists are professionally re- believed that the combination of feminine sponsible for refuting claims that and masculine characteristics is what gave homosexuality is unnatural. The these transgender shamans a special ability to dereliction of this responsibility has act as a bridge between the spiritual and the caused homosexual people to suffer terrestrial planes. persecution as a result of a false One of the principal roles of the shaman premise of “unnaturalness,” and to in many societies is to carry out rituals of suffer low self-worth and personal physical and psychic healing and to resolve dignity. Suppressing the full story of conflicts between members of their commu- gender and sexuality denies diverse nity. I believe that art can carry out a similar people their right to feel at one with function in the symbolic realm, helping nature and relegates conservation to resolve social conflict through the use to a niche movement – the politics [4] of metaphor. There are many similarities of a privileged identity. between shamans and performance artists, as pointed out by Chicano performer Guillermo Transgender Shamanism and Gómez-Peña, ‘my shaman friends say that I Geyserbird am a “shaman who lost his way”. I like that definition of performance art.’[5] I have had a long-standing engagement with With Geyserbird I wanted to explore the the figure of the transgender shaman and in role of the transgender shaman through [4] Joan Roughgarden, performance. Since I began performing, Evolution’s Rainbow: 1998 I carried out my first public ritual in the Diversity, Gender and Orchardton artist’s community titled Akaraten: the transgression of gender binary roles has Sexuality in Nature The Dreaming… It was a collaboration with been central in my practice. However, with and People (Berkeley: University of California three other artists who were working with Geyserbird, this transgression expanded to Press, 2004), p. 128. their bodies to explore gender, sexuality and the realm of other artificial binaries such as [5] Guillermo Gómez- new forms of spirituality, and were influenced human/animal, nature/culture and reason/ Peña, ‘In defense of by the work of artists like Fakir Musafar and emotion. performance art’, Ron Athey. In my art practice, the spiritual calling of essay first published 2004,
56 Schechner, author of many influential texts director Alejandro Jodorowsky described his Graham Bell Tornado, on performance, points out: relationship with shamanism in intellectual Geyserbird Feathers/ Amulets, 2014. Video terms, explaining that due to his upbringing still courtesy of Davis Becoming an artist, even in the in a rational materialist culture he could not Museum. West, is not unlike becoming a inhabit the magical world of the Mexican shaman. The techniques and am- shamans he studied. Nevertheless, magic bivalent social status of artist and influenced his art practice and he has used its shaman approximate each other. In symbolism to heal people and transform their modern Western cultures it might reality.[8] be said that the impulses from Borrowing from my Celtic roots, which art is made – the experiences Geyserbird combines the tradition of the of the artist (the shaman’s ‘call’, the transgender shaman, with the figure of the artist’s ‘raw material’) – originate witch. These women, with their knowledge in difficult confrontations between of medicinal and contraceptive plants, had daily life and the unconscious.[6] a special role in society until the Renaissance In referencing the figure of the shaman, it period when their knowledge became the is important not to fall into a simplistic ideal- domain of the newly founded universities in which only men were allowed admittance. As isation of the societies which they were part [6] Richard Schechner, of. As Pat Califia notes, ‘there is very little evi- patriarchal capitalist society developed across The Future of Ritual Europe, they were hunted and persecuted (London: Routledge, dence to suggest that women in most of these 1993), p. 238. societies had true social, political or religious for daring to protect women’s right to decide [7] Pat Califia, Sex [7] over their own bodies. Because they defied the equality.’ Changes: The Politics of It is important that we learn from these subservient role they were assigned under the Transgenderism (Jersey cultures, but we need to develop modern new regime, they were vilified and punished City: Cleiss Press, 1997), rituals that overturn stereotypes and celebrate with death. In the How to Heal the World Bank p. 128. gender and sexual diversity. Furthermore, it rituals participants are invited to connect with [8] Alejandro Jodorowsky, Psicomagia, is impossible to exist outside of one’s socio- their inner witch during one part of the cycle (Madrid: Siruela, 2007), political context. The Chilean artist and film which is dedicated to them. p. 136.
57 Graham Bell Tornado, How to Heal the World Bank, 2012. Valencia. Photo by Jordi Ferrer.
58 Rituals should carry out our functions unquestioning- ly, fulfilling roles that are pre-determined by Rituals and ceremonies exist in all cultures our sex, social class or sexuality. responding to an essential human need for I invite participation in queer rituals that symbolic representations of processes of have contemporary relevance. I think it’s im- change: birth, death, changing of the seasons, portant that as queers, feminists and ecologists and so forth. They provide for an atavis- we configure new rituals and ceremonies to tic human need to sublimate our fears and act as a complement to our political actions. desires. They also represent changes in our- These participatory events have a strong selves and mark transformative moments in ethical content, replacing the worn-out tradi- our lives, affecting how we see ourselves and tions which uphold the values of a state-run others, bringing communities together in cel- religion backed by the forces of capital. ebrations which mark their identity. The rituals contribute to building transi- In our secular societies, the state and re- tory communities where we can experiment ligious powers continue to carry out rituals with new ways of relating to each other and which have, for the main part, lost their signif- that offer the possibility to imagine other pos- icance and serve only to uphold their power. sible futures. They function as an alternative Many of the Christian holidays have usurped way to strengthen the bonds of those who take previous traditions, so the original pagan part, creating a sense of community based on significance of these ceremonies and rituals the equality of all its members. which marked the natural cycles of nature has been lost. For this reason, it is important to How To Heal the World Bank create new rituals that keep us in touch with our environment. How To Heal the World Bank is a ritual of pos- Rituals are ways to incorporate symbol- session, based on the idea that our leaders ic acts in our lives and can provide us with a (heads of banks and multinationals) have lost meaning beyond that of a passive consumer- awareness of themselves as organic beings ist society and I believe that rituals have the and imagine that within their bodies there lies power to transform those who take part in a scared and defenseless animal in danger of them. My contention borrows from Gómez- becoming extinct. The action follows a simple Peña’s practice, who explicates how with his structure which begins with the drawing of troupe they ‘embarked on a search for per- the World Bank logo on the ground. This is formance rituals that inspire our audience to followed by a call to the public and a short make decisions on site and reconquer their introductory speech after which they are civic voice, ritual formats that invite them to invited to participate in the ritual taking their participate actively in the act of co-creating places within the circle. The action proceeds the artwork.’ [9] in a repetitive structure which involves a sung We are living in an era of cynicism where invocation of extinct species after which the it seems almost impossible to fight against public joins in a chorus inviting them into the the forces that shape our lives. Fatalism is the circle. Each of the four sectors of the circle is product of the relentless hypertrophy of the dedicated to a figure normally excluded from [9] Guillermo Gómez- Peña, ‘Two veteran consumer society. It is essential to fight con- official histories and the presence of this figure performance artists formity and banality (two of the evils most is evoked by a collective scream. The ritual swap stories of flying prevalent in contemporary societies) and ends with the scream of a newborn child and in times of war,’ in Art and Activism in the Age vindicate eccentricity as an act of rebellion. our hopes for a change in society. of Globalisation ed. Dressing up, imagining ourselves in other In the process of the ritual, extinct species by Lieven de Cuatrer, bodies, carrying out other roles in society are are invited to take over and possess world Ruben de Roo and Karle Vanhaesebrouck ways to challenge the roles imposed on us by leaders. In the Christian tradition, possessions (Rotterdam: NAi a society which demands that, as adults, we are associated with the devil and demonic Publishers, 2011), p. 211.
59 Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle, Ecosexual Black Wedding to the Coal, 2011. Gijon. Video still by Alejandro de Antonio.
60 powers taking over innocent souls. I wanted configuration of theHow to Heal... ritual is the to invert the usual Christian symbology and creation of a symbolic space so that whatev- carry out a benign act of possession, invit- er context it is carried out in, the participants ing the spirits of innocent, extinct species to enter a special area that represents the ritual take over the bodies of the diabolic charac- phase of transition. The logo of the World ters whose machinations keep the exploitative Bank, a circle divided into four sectors with processes of late capitalism going. two bisecting arcs, seemed the perfect symbol These characters include corrupt bankers to delineate this space. who engineered the “crisis,” heads of mul- With the How to Heal... cycle I wanted tinationals whose practices enslave workers to combine the symbolism of a ritual with in countries outside the westernised bubble, political and activist participatory practices. I arms dealers, heads of pharmaceutical com- had experienced this possibility through the panies, politicians, and so on. Being possessed work of Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle by the animals representing that part of our and their seven year cycle of ecosexual being, which is connected to the physical, I weddings where they married each other hoped that these characters would realise that and a natural element (such as the ocean, they are part of an ecosystem on the verge of the sky or the earth) to draw attention to a meltdown and begin to make decisions and environmental degradation and LGTB civil laws to protect the planet and the diversity of rights. I officiated as Anti Pope in one of the cultures and species it holds. final weddings of the cycle theBlack Wedding to With the How to Heal... rituals the spirits the Coal (Gijon, 2013) which was the result of invoked were those of extinct insects, as in their week-long ecofeminist workshop. Paul many ways they are the queers of the animal Preciado described their cycle of weddings as: world. For the most part, insects are consid- ered abject, disgusting, diseased – adjectives collectively produced social ex- which have often also been used in associa- periences, in which the popular tion with homosexuals. Normally seen as traditions of circus, carnival, pests, bugs, annoyances to be eliminated by freak-show and pornography are insecticides or simply squashed, the fact that mixed with the political prac- many insects carry out vital work in polli- tice of demonstrations and mass nation and decomposing organic material meetings. Provoking an encoun- is often forgotten. For this reason, I feel that ter between conceptual art and insects are a powerful metaphor for all those happening culture, trade union who are excluded from dominant histories. tradition and the sex workers move- Furthermore, the metamorphosis that their ment... inventing other ways to bodies undergo is highly symbolic, proving produce “commons” and to enjoy that nothing is fixed and immutable. They collectively.[10] have adapted to fill niches in almost all the ecosystems on the Earth becoming amongst Of course, everyone knows the procedure the most numerous organisms on the planet. of a wedding ceremony and the ecosexual I researched and compiled a list of Latin weddings subvert this structure. Generally, names of extinct insects and consulted on shamans and priests officiate ceremonies and their pronunciation with a teacher of the lan- rituals that form part of their communities’ [10] Paul Preciado, from guage, transcribing the names phonetically. traditions, therefore participants already the pamphlet published on occasion of the The insects were incorporated into the ritual know what their role in the event consists festival: La internacional framework by evoking their presence through of. However, with the How to Heal… cycle I cuir. Transfeminism, the process of singing their scientific names created an unorthodox queer ritual with no sexual micropolitics and guerrilla video (Madrid: aloud. precedent. For this reason, I also had to take MNCARS, 2011). One of the most important elements in the on a pedagogical role, explaining the steps of Translation of the author.
61 the ritual and their meaning. speech in which I explain the ecotransfemi- How to Heal... is my longest running series nist philosophy that motivates the event. After of participatory rituals and was concep- this I invite participation and am often pleas- tualised in response to the United Nations antly surprised by the reaction of the public Conference on Sustainable Development who, after the first volunteers take their places held in Rio in 2012 during dates which coin- (the ritual requires seventeen volunteers), lose cided with the summer solstice. The decisions their inhibitions and join in. taken in this conference would affect a large I thought it was necessary to incorporate part of humanity in a very direct way, with an element of abandonment, hysteria and the possibility of implementing protocols that excess into the ritual as a counterpoint to the would protect environmental rights and stop rationality of my introductory speech. The land grabbing, the imposition of transgenic act of screaming involves entering a different crops and so forth. energy state and I was interested in exploring The cycle is an expression of my desire to the possibilities this expression would create do something symbolic that might influence and whether it would prompt people to think world events. It is an ongoing investigation or experience strong emotions. We scream for that has been adapted to widely different help, to express anger, grief or even ecstasy, sociopolitical contexts and remits in urban all extreme emotions that society discourag- and rural environments in Spain, Holland and es us from expressing. The scream represents the UK. It has ranged from occupying public the irrational part of our being and is a highly spaces without permission where passersbys gendered form of behaviour (normally associ- were invited to take part, in open air arts ated more with women or screaming queens). festivals or in fully organised arts events in Loss of control is associated with feminine theatre spaces. There is a great difference incapacity and lack of rationality. Men are between presenting work to an invited supposed to keep their emotions under strict audience which, most likely, shares similar control; therefore, it is less acceptable for them beliefs and political aims and an audience to draw attention to themselves in such a way. that simply comes across the performance as Although screaming can be highly cathartic they go about their daily routine. In public for all participants, I believe it can be even space there is the opportunity to present more so for the males who take part. I chose ideas to people who may not otherwise come four different screams to express and explore into contact with them. This is an exciting the strong emotions linked to the most impor- and risky challenge. Attitudes to the public tant moments in the cycle of life: birth and manifestation of drag or transgenderism in death. Spain are generally relaxed. Even outside Like an alchemist who mixes chemicals cities, drag queens are popular entertainers in an experiment, I mix elements of in restaurants and cabarets. I personally have theatricality, political experimentation and been in many local fiestas where heterosexual playfulness in all of the rituals. Each time men dress up as women. Of course, these men the results are quite different depending do not renounce their masculine privilege, on outside influences such as the energy of normally adopting a stereotypical version of the public, the space and the context. The women which provides them with a humorous outcome of each ritual is unpredictable change from their normal day to day life. because it depends on so many variables, but Geyserbird’s transgender presence and the experience is also very rewarding as the political message troubles these usual re- rituals change all the time and provide many sponses as the serious nature of the rituals is unexpected situations. This is one of the main in direct contrast with expectations that the reasons why I have felt motivated to continue performance will merely be a comical en- this line of investigation and why this cycle of tertainment. The rituals begin with a short rituals has been so fruitful and enduring. It is
62 an open-ended process which has developed from its origins in public space and expanded into a more experiential and durational series of actions followed and preceded by workshops. Working in these more controlled environments has also made it possible to gather feedback from the participants afterwards and give them an opportunity to discuss how they felt during the ritual. The How to Heal... cycle has opened up temporary spaces where artistic enjoyment and creativity go hand in hand with a social com- mitment. These collective experiences which fuse humour, passion and commitment create a symbolic imaginary for social and personal trans- formation. In this process, the concept of the ritual, an action which is performed repeatedly but can be slightly different each time, was highly useful. This fusion between avant-garde and tradition acted as a counterbalance to the romantic tendency to think of art as something which must be complex and highly original. Art is a social practice and perhaps this direct approach is a more effective way to bring about a transformation in society. Sometimes we forget that performance can construct alternative realities, particularly when carried out outside of institutions. Actions in streets and even on remote beaches are witnessed and in turn they affect those who witness them. These small acts of micro-politics con- stitute one of the strengths of performance art, since the connections made in those moments are becoming less and less common in a world that is increasingly mediated through technologies that distance us, not only from one another but also from our environment, encouraging us to believe that massive ecological destruction is inevitable. It is against this pessimism and the corporate interests that foment this apathy that the art of performance must stand, creating temporary spaces of freedom where we still have the power to say no, to challenge and create alternatives.
63
The Cyborg Body in Biohacking Cultures Alex Wilk
65 66 ‘A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction.’ Donna Haraway, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, 1985[1]
A body lies supine on a bed of earth. Various clinical objects are scattered over a metal surface. Steel dishes, needles in plastic wrappers, bottled liquids, distillations. A needle connects a vein to a plastic tube, extending upwards as liquid is pulled down. Seeping in, finding space, fluids mixing. At first glance, the liquid’s dark hue might resemble blood, yet this transfusion transects species. Chlorophyll, a pigment that sits at the base of all but a fraction of life’s ecosystems, mediator between the sun and the vital, enters in. The body absorbs it and green and red blend into a muddy brown that spreads throughout the network of vessels. This is Trans*Plant by transfeminist collective Quimera Rosa: a series of interventions for a transition towards plant. The collective’s other experiments include chlorophyll tattoos, a wearable device that amplifies the noise of body electricity BodyNoise( Amp), and the insertion of a microchip under the skin that stores small amounts of data which can be read by a mobile phone. One might ask, what are the values behind these strange bodily interven- tions? Why undergo such corporeal mutations that may even pose an element of risk? An answer lies in Donna Haraway’s 1985 influential essay ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, which the collective often cite as a primary reference in their practice.[2] In this text, Haraway describes the figure of the cyborg as a feminist ontology that ‘gives us our politics’ and it is [1] Donna Haraway, ‘A [3] Cyborg Manifesto’, in this cyborg that the collective aspire to embody. Simians, Cyborgs, and The cyborg envisaged in Haraway’s manifesto is a chimeric being Woman: The Reinvention that challenges patriarchal conventions that code women as nature and of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), men as culture. Instead, the cyborg occupies a tertiary zone, existing pp. 149-181 (p. 149). beyond, or rather before, identity categories. Being a figure without gender, race or class, Haraway’s cyborg calls for a new ‘affinity politics’ [2] Ibid. over the prevailing identity politics, which were a source of divisions [3] Ibid., p. 150. within the feminist movement at the time.[4] At the heart of the cyborg [4] Ibid., p. 155. lies a dissolving of the dominant binaries of western culture: human [5] Feminist Research and machine; human and animal; natural and cultural; self and other; Institute UC Davis, ‘What material and immaterial. These hybrid qualities make the cyborg, for is Feminist Research Series with Quimera Haraway, a subject fit for a post-human vision of the future. Rosa’, online video In line with Haraway’s vision, Quimera Rosa take the notion of recording, YouTube, 21 the cyborg as a paradigm with which they can deconstruct not only June 2018,
67 Chlorophyll ink made by Quimera Rosa and used in their tattoo performances as part of the project Trans*Plant. Photo by Quimera Rosa.
68 claim that ‘the second part of the binary is always associated with nature, so this colonialist way of thinking about nature as a resource is applied to all of the second categories. It is the foundational dualism [6] UC Davis, ‘What of western thought – nature/culture – that justifies, after this, many is Feminist Research’, [6] online video recording, other oppressions.’ YouTube, 21 June 2018. The collective thus aim to practice a becoming-cyborg as a means [7] Haraway, ‘Cyborg of active resistance to hegemonic definitions and categorisations of the Manifesto’, p. 151. human. However, whilst the cyborg can offer this visionary paradigm, [8] ‘For the master’s in the original manifesto Haraway acknowledges that there is a dou- tools will never dis- ble-edged potential to the cyborg, being, after all, the ‘illegitimate mantle the master’s offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state house. They may allow [7] us temporarily to beat socialism’. Indeed, Haraway asserts that it is precisely these origins him at his own game, of the cyborg that allow for its revolutionary capacity. In other words, but they will never en- contrary to Audre Lorde’s frequently cited statement, the master’s tools able us to bring about genuine change.’ This can, and should, be used to dismantle the master’s house, since only statement can be found those tools are capable of seeing each potential endpoint of the political in Audre Lorde ‘The struggle: the course of history as it runs unchallenged, or an alterna- Master’s Tools Will [8] Never Dismantle the tive future re-imagined. The cyborg is thus, according to Haraway, Master’s House’, in [9] both a ‘creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction’. It is Sister Outsider: Essays a mapping of existing social and bodily relations, but also ‘an imagina- and Speeches by Audre Lorde (Berkeley: tive resource’ that allows the cyborg to be open to new configurations Crossing Press, 2007), [10] and appropriations. pp. 110-114 (p. 112). Yet, thirty-four years on from the first publication of the manifesto, [9] Haraway, ‘Cyborg bio and digital technologies have expanded greatly and continue to Manifesto’, p. 149. percolate into life. They contribute to an ever-tighter intertwining of [10] Ibid. p. 150. medicine, health and self-improvement practices with the neoliberal [11] María Fernández. desires of efficiency, productivity and human capital appreciation. In ‘The Cyborg: Sweet light of this context, it is pertinent to ask whether the balance between Sixteen (and Never Been these two entangled states of the cyborg (its fictional ideal vs. its Cloned)’, in Proud to be Flesh: A Mute Magazine social reality) has shifted. If, as art historian María Fernández notes, Anthology of Cultural ‘the original radicality of Haraway’s cyborg lay in its illegitimacy, the Politics after the Net, ubiquity of digital, ex-military, and genetic technologies suggest that ed. by Josephine Berry & Pauline van Mourik the cyborg is now a recognised legal citizen, much more a creature of Broekman (London: [11] social reality than of fiction.’ How then does the cyborg, as a radical Mute Publishing, 2009), agent of social change, differentiate itself against the backdrop of our pp. 136-137, (p. 137). contemporary word? Can we still appropriate the master’s tools, or [12] The scope of this have we entered a phase in which cyborgs can no longer be illegitimate? article does not permit an in-depth exploration One such example of this tighter relationship between technology of subcultural biohack- and biological life is the growing culture of biohacking. The practice ing, which includes can broadly be defined as the manipulation of bodily functions or capa- cyberpunk, biopunk and grinder cultures, body bilities (usually one’s own) through technological devices or chemicals. modification practices as As the name implies, biohacking frequently takes a DIY, or hacker well as those collectives culture approach. Indeed, the culture is inspired by IT hacking, only with a strong hacker the cybernetic system to be hacked is replaced by the biological body. ethic that aim to provide open-source pharma- In its embryonic stage, biohacking was situated primarily within the ceuticals. It would be realm of subculture.[12] Yet, today, ever-expanding health and wellbeing valuable for further practices have brought it into the mainstream by including biohack- research to understand how these subcultural ing as a form of self-improvement. Some advocates of the movement practices might relate to conceptualise biohacking as a step towards the idealised cyborg future Haraway’s cyborg.
69 Quimera Rosa & Transnoise, BodyNoise Amp, 2014. Created during the workshop ‘The Body as a Post- gendered Sound Instrument’, Eastern Bloc, Montreal. Photo by Quimera Rosa & Transnoise.
of humanity, working towards the control and Following a brief overview of the relevant optimisation of the human body for the sake theory, the essay begins with an analysis of increased productivity, fertility, cognitive of mainstream biohacking discourse. I ability and longevity. argue that at the base of this discourse lies This essay explores the practice of an age-old cultural binary: the transcend- biohacking as a means of analysing and dif- ence/immanence binary. This binary has ferentiating examples of the cyborg body been understood by Simone de Beauvoir as within two diverse contexts. Firstly, in main- creating a hierarchical separation between a stream biohacking practices related to health transcendent self and an immanent Other. and self-improvement cultures. Secondly, in Yet, in mainstream biohacking, we see this the biohacking art performances of Quimera hierarchical distinction reproduced within the Rosa. As Haraway points out in the manifesto, subject themselves through a mind-body split: the cyborg is a malleable creature, able to take the body becomes the immanent Other to be on various guises and values. It is therefore mastered in order to achieve transcendence. important to clarify and differentiate these This, I argue, exemplifies part of a biopoliti- diverse cyborgs and the ideals they embody. cal process of subjectivation, in which subjects The focus, therefore, will be on the discursive are turned into, or indeed turn themselves, values and meanings produced by each prac- into biological objects that are manageable, tice’s particular configuration of the human controllable and governable. as cyborg – specifically, through the ways The essay then revisits Quimera Rosa’s in which the discourses position the human biohacking performances in order to consider body in relation to nature. the question: what kind of configuration
70 should a contemporary feminist cyborg format: day-to-day survival and reproduction take in order to assert itself as a countercul- represent the maximum potential for those tural force? Or indeed, if that moment has positioned within immanence. Production is been surpassed, what kind of offspring can the privilege of the transcendent group, that is we nurture in its stead? Here I argue that to say culture that is seen as separate from and Quimera Rosa’s cyborg challenges the tran- beyond nature, whereas a life of immanence scendence/immanence binary, providing may only re-produce. Repetition of the same, a mode of resistance against biopolitical without the freedom to create and invent, processes, by revealing and reclaiming the therefore characterises Beauvoir’s description prerogatives of immanence in a number of of a life confined to immanence. different ways. Whilst she maintains that humans always have the capacity for both transcendence and immanence, oppression is understood Transcendence/Immanence; to function though the denial of the capacity for transcendence of the Other, and by Bios/Zoē extension, this denies them of their freedom. In her pivotal work, The Second Sex, Simone de By the same token, the oppressor denies their Beauvoir argues that concepts of transcend- own immanence by asserting their superiority. ence and immanence have been fundamental As she states in The Ethics of Ambiguity: to the structure of patriarchal society, indeed, all forms of oppression.[13] Beauvoir argues Oppression divides the world into that the domination of the Other requires the two clans: those who enlighten differentiation of humanity into two groups mankind by thrusting it ahead of that are assigned to distinct domains, each itself and those who are condemned domain dictating the extent of the group’s to mark time hopelessly in order members perceived potential and capabilities. merely to support the collectivity; Those of the dominant group are perceived their life is a pure repetition of as capable of transcending life as mere mechanical gestures; their leisure survival through a mastery of nature as well is just about sufficient for them to as their own ‘human nature’. For Beauvoir, regain their strength; the oppressor transcendence allows for, not for not only the feeds himself on their transcend- shaping and mastery of nature which may ence and refuses to extend it by a otherwise create limiting or life-threatening free recognition.[14] conditions, but furthermore, the pursuit of ‘human projects’ – for example, creative acts, Every man [sic.] transcends himself. intellectual work and the pursuit of morality. But it happens that this transcend- Freedom is thus proper to the domain of tran- ence is condemned to fall uselessly scendence, since it represents an existence back upon itself because it is cut off beyond what nature would otherwise dictate. from its goals. That is what defines Transcendence, for Beauvoir, is an entirely a situation of oppression.[15] unnatural way of being in the world. [13] Simone de In the second group, Beauvoir includes Whilst Beauvoir’s work has been criticised Beauvoir, The Second women as well as colonial subjects who, in her for its continued privileging of transcendence Sex (London: Vintage analysis, are understood as oppressed through over immanence, the theory does elucidate Classics, 1997). their assignment to the domain of immanence. how the binary is formulated through a par- [14] Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Immanence represents an entirely natural way ticular construction of the human subject in Ambiguity (New York: of being in the world and, as a result, the relation to nature – as either within or beyond Citadel Press, 1977), subjects of this group are deemed capable nature – which is played out in systems of pp. 83. of only maintaining life in its more basic oppression. As Iris Marion Young explains: [15] Ibid. p. 81.
71 Defining humanity as transcend- level of necessity – a ‘sphere from which ence requires setting a human slaves, women and children were excluded, being in opposition to nonhuman as they were part of life as zoē’.[19] An analogy objects and in particular nature. here can be drawn with Beauvoir’s transcend- Fully human, free subjectivity tran- ence/immanence binary. Zoē – life positioned scends mere life, the processes of within the realm of nature – represents the nature that repeat in an eternal state of immanence, whereas bios – life capable cycle without individuality or of shaping the conditions in which it dwells – history. Thus, risking life and is a life that transcends natural processes to being willing to kill are cardinal participate in the ‘higher’ orders of human marks of humanity for Beauvoir activities. as for Hegel. Taking control of Agamben argues that during the Ancient one’s needs and fashioning objects Greek and Roman epochs, and indeed to satisfy them, confronting and throughout history up until the French mastering the forces of nature Revolution, these two categories of life were that threaten one’s life or comfort distinct and separate. However, modern – these are the aims of human democracy, he maintains, has been char- projects. Humanity achieves its acterised by an increasingly ‘irreducible greater freedom, however, in the indistinction’ between the two.[20] This is new creation of moral ideals and works kind of life, that is both zoē and bios, is what of art, for these express a wholly Agamben terms ‘bare life’. Zoē, that was [16] Iris Marion Young, new and unnatural way of being in once excluded from the polis, existing solely Throwing Like a Girl [16] and Other Essays the world. within the realms of nature and domestic- (Bloomington: Indiana ity (immanence), is now included within the University Press, 1990), In this essay I argue that mainstream bio- polis – it is politicised. Through this inclusion, p. 77. hacking culture exemplifies how, today, the zoē is granted with rights and sovereignty, [17] Giorgio Agamben, human subject is increasingly positioned as achieving a transcendent status, yet never Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life simultaneously within and beyond nature, and loses its original status as the mere fact of life, (Stanford: Stanford that this can be understood as contribut- natural life. ‘Bare life’ is a life that can always University Press, 1998). ing to biopolitical subjectivation. Here it is, be stripped of its granted rights and therefore [18] Ibid. therefore, useful to turn to Giorgio Agamben’s returned to its naked state of a life that is [19] John Lecht, Fifty biopolitical theory, in order to better under- purely biological, malleable and governable in Key Contemporary stand this phenomenon. these terms, and, as he argues is evidenced in Thinkers: From Structuralism to Post- In Homo Sacer, Agamben argues that the extreme examples of history’s holocausts, Humanism, 2nd edn biopower – power that acts upon the biologi- essentially disposable under sovereign power. (Oxon & New York: cal processes of life itself – functions through Bare life, in its essence, is life as mere corpus. Routledge, 2008), p. [17] 208. the creation of what he calls ‘bare life’. ‘Bare life’, is thus a life that is both within Agamben arrives at this term through his and beyond the polis and by the same token, [20] Lecht, Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers, observation that the Ancient Greeks had two both within and beyond nature. It is epito- p. 9. terms for the word ‘life’: zoē and bios. Zoē was mised by the paradox found in the etymology [21] Lecht, Fifty Key ‘natural life’, a life common to all living beings of the new ‘sovereign subject’, born of the Contemporary Thinkers, including animals and nature. In reference French Revolution: ‘subiectus superaneus, what p. 124. to humans, zoē is life confined to the repro- is below [subiciō – to throw under] and, at [22] Agamben himself is ductive and domestic spheres, to the oikos the same time, most elevated [superaneus – a notably silent on the gen- dered aspect of this and – ‘home’. Bios, on the other hand, was under- position above/over]’. The subject of ‘bare fails to address the issue stood by the Greeks as ‘political life’ proper to life’, is thus ‘a two-faced being, the bearer that some lives may be those living within the polis (society or state).[18] both of subjection to sovereign power and of more quickly and easily [21] returned to the realm of Bios is the ‘sphere of freedom and creation of individual liberties’. zoē than others. a form of life’, extending beyond the animal In both Beauvoir and Agamben, we see how
72 the binaries of transcendence/immanence risk of dying’.[24] The use of stimulants such as and zoē/bios are historically gendered catego- coffee, as well as other pharmaceuticals, such [22] ries. Whilst it might be arguable that these as ‘smart-drugs’ (nootropics), is also embraced [23] Tim Lewis, binaries and their gendering are conceptions as an efficient means to improve cognitive and ‘Bulletproof Coffee’s [25] Dave Asprey: why of the past – after all, today women are con- physical performance: healthy eating and sidered capable of transcendent projects exercise aren’t (creative acts, intellectual work etc.) and are The main thing that separates enough’, The Guardian (2017)
73 relation to nature. baby that says the world is unsafe The body as a machine is an analogy and there’s not enough food and that appears throughout the sciences and it’s not gonna be a nice life, you medicine. As argued by Haraway, since the turn those off.[32] First World War, biology has undergone a shift from ‘a science centered on the Fertility and what Asprey refers to as organism, understood in functionalist terms, ‘multigenerational health’ are key sites for to a science studying automated technologi- improvement in biohacking. In the above cal devices understood in terms of cybernetic statement, the new-born child is described systems’.[29] Haraway asserts that this transfor- like a computer program (which ‘mode’ will mation occurred in conjunction with ‘changes it be in?) and the mother is described as a in the nature and technology of power, within key determinant of the epigenetic settings a continuing dynamic of capitalist reproduc- that control the expression of the genes (the tion’.[30] A notable example of the synthesis phenotype) through nutrition and maternal between the biological and the cybernetic stress.[33] Stress and worry, described as an is sociobiology which extends evolutionary inevitable fact of pregnancy, tied to bodily theory to social processes. In 1976, sociobiol- function, can be ‘turned off’ using learnt bio- ogist Richard Dawkins described the body hacking techniques – an example of how the as ‘really a machine blindly programmed ‘irrationality’ of the body can be overcome by its selfish genes’ – a ‘survival machine.’[31] through the application of reason. The body’s Biohacking practices are in line with this nature can be altered and manipulated; the conception of the body. Indeed, the body as irrational or the random can be controlled a survival machine that can be optimised for through reason. Asprey, therefore, under- the reproduction of genes is made an explicit stands irrationality and emotionality to be the goal by David Asprey: default ‘mode’ expressed by the body (stress/ worry/anxiety), yet maintains that reason can …the diet that produces the best overcome those modalities. fertility, the one that produces the Importantly, the way this control is best cognitive function and the best achieved is through a conceptualisation of hormonal response in men and the mind that is distinct and autonomous [29] Donna Haraway, women is about 70% of calories from the body. For example, the mother ‘The Biological from healthy fats and half of that (if taught) can control her maternal stress. Enterprise: Sex, Mind, and Profit from from saturated fat. But having the Likewise, Asprey states that access to scientific Human Engineering data [...] [means] you can pass that data means that the body’s genetic expression to Sociobiology’, in on to your children and to your can be determined, at least in part, thereby Simians, Cyborgs, and grandchildren. [...] there’s what we allowing control over the usually highly Woman: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: call the four horsemen of epige- uncontrollable phenomenon of genetic Routledge, 1991), netics. [...] that control, really, the reproduction. This Cartesian split whereby pp. 43-68 (p. 45). genetic expression for your child. an agential, rational mind is able to control a [30] Ibid. Will it be in expansion mode when passive, non-rational, or highly random, body, [31] Richard Dawkins, it’s born? Or will it be in [...] pro- is what allows for a transcendent mastery over The Selfish Gene, 3rd tection mode? [...] The final step the immanent body. The differentiation of ed. (New York: Oxford is you teach the mother to control the body as a distinct substance to the mind University Press, 2006), p. 146. maternal stress. As soon as you get can be seen most clearly in Asprey’s use of pregnant you start feeling stress, anthropomorphism: [32] Beyond Food, dir. by Tomas Reyes because you’re worried. If you can (Gravitas Ventures, turn that off using biohacking tech- Your brain desperately wants to 2017). niques [...] all of a sudden, the four improve its function even if you [33] Ibid. big things that send a signal to your don’t really want it to consciously.
74 It still will do that automatically, the realm of zoē, was understood as a direct ’cause that’s what the brain does.[34] expression of bodily emotions without filter The problem is the brain can see or control – or ‘as Euripides puts it, “For it is the whole world around us. It can woman’s inborn pleasure always to have her smell and sense. It has no nerves current emotions coming up to her mouth pointing inside it, except a nerve and out through her tongue.”’[37] The female hooked up to your back teeth that voice was deemed incapable of logos, for isn’t that useful. Other than that, which a mastery of the body was required. the brain is blind to itself, so as This capacity was described by the primarily soon as it gets these sounds, it goes, masculine virtue of sophrosyne which can be “wait, those sounds are me.” And defined as ‘prudence, soundness of mind, it starts optimising. It realises, “oh, moderation, temperance, self-control’.[38] A this part of me is turned off. This fundamental characteristic, therefore, of part’s overactive.”[35] those positioned within the realm of zoe is that they are described as emitting sound and Through anthropomorphising the brain emotion, whereas bios emits ‘rationally articu- by granting it desire (‘Your brain desperately lated speech: logos’.[39] wants to improve...’) and self-recognition (‘wait, In biohacking discourse the separate being those sounds are me’), Asprey transforms it into a that is created through the anthropomor- separate being whose sole aim is optimisation. phic metaphor lacks logos of its own right. It As a result of this metamorphosis, fulfilling is technology and the application of reason the brain’s desire of optimisation becomes that allows it to communicate rationally. The a logical imperative – a rhetorical trick that body is therefore constructed as the subordi- Asprey uses to persuade people that his diet is nate, immanent Other – as zoē – whereas the the right one. mind, the direct producer of language, can This Cartesian split between body and determine, shape and transcend the condi- mind is a pervasive trope across main- tions in which it dwells – the mind has bios. stream biohacking discourse. It can be seen Language is therefore key to this split between particularly in regard to biofeedback tech- immanent body and transcendent mind. niques whereby bodily functions are tracked Since it lacks logos of its own right, the body is and recorded, or even experienced through tied to nature and to immanence, to survival real-time translations into sound or visuals. As and natural life, to change and to decay, to [34] Beyond Food, dir. by Tomas Reyes Steven Fowkes, a key blogger within the bio- fate and inevitability. In other words, it lacks (Gravitas Ventures, hacking movement states, ‘We’re allowing the freedom. 2017). brain to talk to us. We’re allowing the heart Biohacking projects that aim to progress [35] Ibid. to talk to us. We’re allowing the urine pH humans towards a cyborg future by bringing [36] Ibid. to talk to us.’[36] Organs or substances of the the body under the control of reason can thus body, that are normally considered mute, are be seen as a manifestation of a desire for a [37] Anne Carson, Glass, Irony and God, again anthropomorphised and able to ‘talk’ transcendent notion of freedom – to achieve (New York: New by decoding through reason. the ‘full’ humanity that throughout western Directions, 1995), p. 126. This ‘allowing’ of the body to talk – history has been part of the discourse of [38] Carson, Glass, translating noise into language through the masculinity. Indeed, it is perhaps no coinci- Irony and God, p. 126. According to Carson, application of reason – is indeed a telling dence that the movement is male dominated. when the term was phenomenon. If we return to the Ancient Furthermore, this project of transcendent applied to women it Greek zoē/bios split, we can understand the freedom sees its most idealised form in the was only in reference to ‘female obedience important role that language plays in the pro- apparent control of the most inevitable, bodily to male direction and duction of this binary. Classicist Anne Carson fate: death. Within biohacking practices, rarely means more than describes how, in Ancient Greek culture, longevity is often cited as the ultimate goal of chastity’. the female self and voice, positioned within these cyborg transitions (Asprey, for example, [39] Ibid., p. 128.
75 76 Quimera Rosa, The Violinist aka Sexus 3, 2015. Sonoscopia, Porto. Photo by Riu Pinheiro
77 Quimera Rosa, May the estimates he will live to be 180).[40] This quest Life as Resistance: Chlorophyll be With/in You, 2017. Performance for longevity can be understood as related to The prerogatives of immanence as part of the project transcendence, since it is a freedom that is Trans*Plant, Kapelica sought not through liberation in the romantic Gallery, Ljubljana. Photo Let us return now to the work of Quimera by Miha Fras. sense – a letting-go. Rather, it is a freedom Rosa in order to understand how their sought through the mechanisms of control, biohacking practice might produce an alter- and in particular, the control of such things native configuration of the cyborg with its that would otherwise remain in the immanent realm of nature with its inevitable tendency own diverse set of values. Needless to say, towards decay. being an art performance practice, their bio- The project of transcendence can thus be hacking interventions differ in numerous ways to the mainstream biohacking of health and [40] Rachel Monroe, seen in mainstream biohacking practices, not The Bulletproof Coffee so much in a desire to master external nature self-improvement cultures. However, in this Founder Has Spent $1 (the Other), but more intensely in a desire to section I will unpack their work in relation Million in His Quest to the previous discussion, focussing in par- to Live to 180, Men’s master one’s own body as nature – as Other Health (2019)
78 of the cyborg we might want to nurture and made open, made porous, made vulnerable. emphasise if it is to fulfil Haraway’s vision as The ‘natural defences’ between the self and a revolutionary force. the Other are dismantled to create a cyborg The first and most obvious difference who, in Haraway’s terms, embodies both a is the fact that Quimera Rosa’s biohacking ‘collective and personal self ’.[41] This vulnera- experiments serve no obvious function in a bility and permeability is the first step towards utilitarian sense. A chlorophyll transfusion, the rejection of transcendence as the defining a tiny, almost useless microchip under the quality of ‘full’ humanity, towards the skin, or the transformation of body electrical embrace of a state of immanence where life activity into sound – these bodily interven- is surrendered, not to be lost, but rather, to be tions do not serve any optimising purpose, a shared with others. The body of this cyborg is feature that is so central to mainstream bio- not the site of attempts to control life, as are hacking practices. Rather, they pursue a kind the bodies of mainstream biohacking, rather, of utilitarian futility, existing for a purpose its life is open to being shaped and carried by that is outside capitalist logic. The cyborg of external forces. Quimera Rosa is not an optimised body – a This challenge to the contained, fortified body improved in order to escape death or and integral self also brings into question ‘do’ more in life. It is, on the contrary, a body the unfailing and unquestionable pursuit of made vulnerable. In the chlorophyll transfu- future-time that is found in mainstream bio- sion, which is perhaps the collective’s most hacking discourse, as well as the optimisation risky performance, the body on the receiving of such time for the sake of productivity. In end lies on an elevated bed of earth. This vulnerability, the present moment, mani- aesthetic choice is not superfluous, rather, fested within the body itself, takes precedent the soft absorbent mass that holds the body over future self-imaginings, over the persis- contributes to the visceral feeling of the tent march of progression towards a ‘better’ merging of boundaries. As gravity draws the self that can achieve ever more. This is also fluid down into the body, one cannot help but a practice of immanence: the release of the empathetically feel the weight of the body productive value of time produced by capi- pressing down and sinking into the earth. The talism to embrace a value that is relative to external is accepted into the body just as the the body as it exists only within the present external accepts the body. moment. Generally speaking, the inclusion of the But perhaps most importantly, Quimera external into the body would be consid- Rosa’s cyborg is primarily a becoming-animal/ ered something to avoid unless it served a plant/nature over the becoming-machine life-aiding function, such as food, medicine of mainstream biohacking practices. They or immunisation. It is not by chance that explore deeply what Haraway describes as we speak of medical practices or biological the first ‘crucial boundary breakdown’ that phenomena in military metaphors when they engenders the cyborg – where ‘the boundary involve the internalisation of the external: we between human and animal is thoroughly speak of ‘invasive’ surgery and the immune breached’.[42] Even in their more technological system is usually conceptualised as ‘defending’ interventions, such as the microchip implan- the body from corruption by pathogens. Yet, tation, the collective remind us that: for Quimera Rosa, the acceptance of the external Other, is not to strengthen the self, The first RFID chips [were] tested to reinforce its existence as a singular unit, on a mouse about twenty years ago but rather, brings with it the disintegration and their use became widespread of the boundaries of the self – its identity as for the identification of livestock [41] Haraway, ‘Cyborg purely human, along with all its sub-identi- and companion species […] The Manifesto’, p. 163. ties. The cyborg of Quimera Rosa is a body first cyborg was a mouse developed [42] Ibid., p. 151
79 in a laboratory in the 1960s in is experienced and celebrated for all its com- the context of the space race. plexity, for the constant overlapping ripples of The becoming cyborg is first and interference and feedback. The non-rational foremost an animal becoming.[43] and non-linear become the utterances of a creative voice and root of a meaning that is In their configuration of the cyborg as autonomous from logos. a becoming-animal/plant/nature, I would In giving precedence to the body and its like to suggest lies a challenge to biopolitical vital processes, Quimera Rosa relinquish the processes. Before unpacking this, let us first usual status of the artist that understands the return briefly to mainstream biohacking for body as the means to physically express the comparison. In this essay, I argue that the inventions of the mind. Instead, the body transcendence/immanence binary is repro- itself becomes the author – the original source duced within the discourse of this practice, of the creative act. In the amplification of the exemplifying how a transcendent notion of noise of the body, we can read the rejection freedom is valued and strived for through of the superiority given to language and a spilt and separation of the mind from the meaning as the products of the mind alone. body. The mind transcends and masters the The noise of the body is understood not as body that is positioned within the natural mere noise, but rather, as voice. realm of zoē and immanence. Through this Perhaps this simple shift, despite its sim- process, the body loses its prerogatives and plicity, can give rise to a powerful mode of can indeed be any body. It is conceptualised resistance against the biopolitical processes as a biological machine to be understood that enable the creation of ‘bare life’, since, and managed through reason. Parts are as discussed, language marks the boundary upgradable (or in idealised futures, replacea- between bios and zoē. As Agamben explains: ble). This is the subject of ‘bare life’: a split ‘The question “In what way does the living subject that is simultaneously both within being have language?” corresponds exactly to and beyond nature. It is a paradoxical subject the question “In what way does bare life dwell that is entirely governable and yet acquires in the polis?” […] There is politics because sovereignty through the processes that neces- man is the living being who, in language, sitate this very subjection. In other words, the separates and opposes himself to his own bare subject’s freedom and ability to achieve tran- life and, at the same time, maintains himself scendence is conditioned upon the control in relation to that bare life in an inclusive and oppression of their body. exclusion’.[44] As we saw in mainstream bio- Contrary to these processes, in Quimera hacking practices, the subject of ‘bare life’ is Rosa’s practice, zoē, as natural, bodily life is a subject positioned as body (animal/zoē) plus not governed and mastered to achieve tran- language – the subject separates and masters scendence. Rather, in their configuration of their body through the defining element of [43] Laura Benitez the cyborg, the qualities and prerogatives language that belongs only to the mind. Yet, Valero, ‘SF Trans*Plant. of immanence are revealed and reclaimed. in Quimera Rosa’s practice, the capacity to Theoretical-practical introduction to bio-hack- Whereas in mainstream biohacking the generate meaning, once the sole prerogative ing through the chimeric body produces only irrational noise to be of bios, is now understood as manifest in the mirror’, (2018),
80 As the body lies on the bed of earth and absorbs the chlorophyll, we catch a glimpse of a life that, in its undivided state, in its pure immanence, is revealed and reclaimed as the seat of resistance against the constant capture and splitting of life by biopower. Is there, then, still scope for the revolutionary potential of Haraway’s cyborg? Given the increasing ubiquity of bio and digital technologies and their ever-deeper incorporation into our biological and social lives, the concern is whether the figure of the cyborg may well have been too assimilated to be effective as a countercultural force. In light of this context, the biohacking practice of Quimera Rosa, I argue, provides an example of the kind of cyborg that should be nurtured. Their per- formances claim a freedom found beyond the mechanisms of control, a temporality outside of capitalist values, and an extended self, made permeable and open to the Other. Meaning is unbound from logos, to be found within the voice of the body. As our lives become increasingly entangled in technology, what Quimera Rosa’s practice makes clear is that what must be emphasised and held onto within that creature of fiction that is the cyborg, is first and foremost a becoming-animal/ plant/nature. For, when life, particularly non-human life, becomes mere corpus, we must continue to reveal and reclaim the prerogatives of immanence, of zoē, in and of itself.
81
Becoming Plastic: bio art & the uncertain effects of plasticisers on the human body Emma Pavans De Ceccatty 83 84 Plastic has become the most ubiquitous material of the 21st century. With its visible accumulation in waterways and oceans around the world, people are now waking up to the fact that what seemed like a miracle material has a serious downside. This is triggering an urgent global reaction to make our planet plastic-free. Yet our society has mainly been focusing on visible plastic pollution, considering the issue solved if it is ‘cleaned out of sight’, or removed from production. The reality is that there is another aspect which nets are not catching: invis- ible, toxic plastic chemicals. This toxic pollution has not only affected the oceans and creatures ‘out there’, but very much infiltrated a much more uncomfortable space, our very own bodies. And our scientific community has not been able to concretely determine the extent to which these chemicals are leaching and accumulating in our bodies. They are struggling to grapple with the boundlessness of the issue, integrated and embedded into practically all of life on Earth, with considerable effects for gen- erations to come. It presents itself on a scale so vast that uncertainty and opacity surround it. A situation cannot change without the general public being a part of it, yet how can we engage with something so difficult to pin down and so difficult to face? Where science alone cannot create a coherent picture, perhaps art can help. Bio art uses scientific methods as a basis to then move towards the realm of the imagined and the speculative. This type of art acts as a playful laboratory, where the complex scientific process is transformed into an accessible and engaging art experience. So how can this help with the plastic chemical issue? Through the works of bio artists Pinar Yoldas and Sonja Bäumel, I explore what particular methods can be used to tackle the invisible and the complex. What does accepting the reality of our embodied toxicity look like?
85 On Plastic Chemicals in our Bodies
[1] Susan Smillie, ‘From Recent research has revealed that plastic fibres are being ingested by Sea to Plate: How Plastic Got into Our plankton, and particles from photodegraded plastic have also been Fish’, The Guardian found in sea salt. It is clear that plastic has entered the food chain and (2017)
86 exposure, and toxicity, the problem is not from which to develop, creating alternative necessarily with what we know, but with all scenarios based on the latest scientific find- that remains unknown.’[11] We have no real ings. Art practice theorists Gough, Dunn and precedent to inform our understanding of De Berigny suggest that this artwork can act how these plastic contaminants will affect our as a bridge, or ‘boundary object’, which bodies in the long term, and little attention has been given to the issue in general. empowers the audience, even There is a danger in ignoring this invisi- when scientific research may seem ble reality, but how can we tackle an issue obscure or esoteric to the general that cannot be mapped, tracked or seemingly population. Through transdis- stopped? Plasticisers shatter the visions of a ciplinary collaboration art can utopian world all ‘cleaned up’ and break away democratise scientific knowledge from the widespread dystopian scenarios of by creating new sites of engage- apocalyptic planetary collapse. They offer ment for the general population only uncomfortable uncertainty – that we’re while maintaining the integrity of just not quite sure how plasticisers will impact scientific process.[13] our bodies and our ways of life over time. But how can we come to terms with this uncertain- Bio art can make visible and intelligible ty? And what could it look like if we were to the invisible and incoherent realms of plasti- accept this reality? cisers, as it is a space of interplay between that which is material and perceptual in our world. Bio Art: Exploring Invisible The complexities of the plastic chemical can Relationships be explored through artists envisioning hybrid realities and alternative scenarios. This type How are we meant to face something and of bio art provides a means to face this uncer- come to terms with what it might do, without tainty, a framework in which to explore the even being able to see it? In this article, I effects of the chemical ‘hyperobject’ without suggest that art practices that are based on sci- trying to pin down these findings as ‘cer- entific discoveries and technologies, otherwise tainties’. However, it would be an incredibly known as bio art, can help materialise spec- difficult and lengthy process to determine ulative ‘blueprints’ of invisible uncertainties. which chemical cocktail is in a body at a given As the art historian William Myers explains, time, and what this was doing or would do to it. What we are trying to come to terms with is …visualisation continues to be the an existential malaise around the reality that [11] Roberts and we cannot control this situation. Practicing Langston, ‘Toxic Bodies/ most direct and dramatic form Toxic Environments’, p. of translation. Powerful images and experiencing bio art becomes more of an 630. exercise in which to explore this relinquishing broaden our understanding of [12] William Myers, Bio existence by making plain that of control, beyond the fears, the pain and the Art: Altered Realities which we can’t expect to experi- resistance; an opportunity to suspend judge- (London: Thames & ence otherwise. This [...] takes on ment, and to inhabit a space full of potential Hudson, 2015), p. 130. new potential with advances in and possibilities to encounter the chemicals [13] Phillip Gough, Kate Dunn and Caitilin such areas as microscopy, genetic within us. de Bérigny, ‘Climate analysis and synthesis, biological So now that we have identified that bio Change Education modelling, astronomical analysis, art can help to face our malaise, what prac- through Art and [12] Science Collaborations’, and algorithmic rendering. tices have actually managed to create this in Promoting Climate level of encounter and connection? Whilst, Change Awareness These practices retain their imaginative to my knowledge, there are few artists direct- through Environmental Education (Hershey: freedom, not being bound by the same rules ly engaging with plastic chemicals and their IGI Global, 2016), pp. as science, whilst having a grounded basis uncertain bodily effects, the respective work 16–36 (p. 22).
87 of the two artists I have chosen to analyse lution. She imagines a turtle whose shell is engages with a similar invisible ‘hyperobject’. made of balloons, and birds whose feathers Analysing their practices can give us an insight have taken on corporate-branding Pantone into a framework from which to approach the colours, explaining that, ‘speculative biology plastic chemical issue. is [her] way to tackle this world.’[15] Her meth- Pinar Yoldas’ work, An Ecosystem of Excess, odology is to make visible a complex causality, deals with the effects of plastic waste on the the ‘imperceptibility of the consequences of creatures of the ocean, exploring a future our actions.’[16] This approach allows Yoldas where hybrid, plastic-embedded lifeforms to explore the ways in which life could evolve have evolved and humans have died out. She beyond us, whilst bearing the marks of our asks, ‘if life started today in our plastic debris passage. She suggests a world fundamentally filled oceans, what kind of life forms would reframed by a human introduction of plastic emerge out of this contemporary primordial into the environment. In this, we can defi- ooze?’.[14] Sonja Bäumel, in her installation nitely read a critique of a consumerist society Being Encounter, explores the recent findings and the excessive disposability of decidedly that humans are made up of fifty percent non-biodegradable materials. bacteria. Her practice facilitates an encounter On another level, I find the installation sus- between the audience and these bacteria, our pends the viewer from reality, putting us into microbiome, highlighting the porous nature this speculative futurity where life managed to of our skin and bodies. What can we learn evolve. While much of the conversation about from the methods employed in their practices the Anthropocene projects a bleak future that can help us face our chemically-embodied of apocalypse and societal collapse, in An malaise? Ecosystem of Excess, Yoldas shifts the focus away from humanity’s potential fate to a timescale Pinar Yoldas – An Ecosystem of where humans are extinct. Viewers are led Excess away from reflecting on human demise and pain, and redirected into a playful ecosystem, An Ecosystem of Excess consists of a series of an expansive space of beginnings and possi- artefacts found in a speculative future timeline bilities. They walk around the jars of organs where humans are long-gone. As with many and mysterious creatures, an uncanny space bio art practices, she borrows the science which disorients away from the everyday into a speculative state of mind. Yoldas refers to [14] Pinar Yoldas, aesthetic of mysterious specimens preserved ‘Ecocystem of Excess’, in jars and the pared-down atmosphere of an entire “ecosystem”, yet only presents a few 2014
88 catalyst for thinking about how or as philosopher Jane Bennett asserts, the we might be in the world in other, ‘strange ability of ordinary, man-made items hitherto unthought ways. Future to exceed their status as objects and to mani- imaginings can thus be thought of fest traces of independence or aliveness.’[21] as a process for developing adaptive So how can the viewer relate to this? capacities and emotional resilience Heather Davis suggests a relationship between within changed environments.[17] plastic and humans which allows for plastic’s feral agency and the viewer’s sense of respon- Yoldas’ piece An Ecosystem of Excess is a sibility to coexist – understanding plastic as ‘a ‘neutral’ blueprint which allows the viewers non-filial human progeny, a bastard child that to emotionally engage with the complex and will most certainly outlive us.’[22] In this sense, difficult subject that is plastic pollution. Yoldas’ installation allows for an encounter to [17] Kathryn Yusoff So where does Yoldas’ critique of con- take place between the audience-parent-an- and Jennifer Gabrys, sumption come into play, and how does she cestors and their plastic descendants. The ‘Climate change and the imagination’, Wiley make this connection between plastic and audience members meet their uncanny Interdisciplinary humans visible? By imagining the distant progeny, leading them to a deeper level of Reviews: Climate Change 2:4 (2011), future, Yoldas confronts the viewer with the understanding, where reflection and respon- pp. 516–534 (p. 522). insignificance of the human condition on a ge- sibility occur. [18] Oberin, ological level. She explains that ‘[a]s we learn I think it is consequently also a humbling ‘Infradisciplinary Artist from Carl Sagan’s cosmic calendar, if the uni- encounter for the viewer, as they are confront- Pinar Yoldas’, 2018. verse is 12 months, humanity represents just ed with the complex situation that has arisen [19] E.L. Venrick et al. the last hours of its last day. So we’re just a from their lifestyle habits. By creating these quoted in Stacy Alaimo, blip in the history of the universe known to mutants, Yoldas fast-fowards to an imagined ‘Oceanic Origins, Plastic [18] Activism, and New us.’ Yet, this notion creates a paradox when future where these impacts can be perceived, Materialism at Sea’, in one considers that plastic, this human-created yet also reveals that the plastic crisis is beyond Material Ecocriticism, substance, can endure on a geological scale. a simple fix. The viewer grasps the scale of ed. by Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann How can humanity take responsibility for this the impact, and even, that life could go on (Bloomington: Indiana substance that is creating effects beyond the without them. In an interview, Yoldas shares University Press, 2014), human time-frame? After all, did we really her views on humanity: pp. 186–203 (p. 194). plan for these effects? [20] Stacy Alaimo, ‘Oceanic Origins, Plastic A study from 1973 claimed that the effects There are so many things we do not Activism, and New of plastic pollution were ‘chiefly aesthetic’ as understand about how life works Materialism at Sea’, in the ‘inert nature of plastic’ meant that it was and it is – in my humble opinion Material Ecocriticism, ed. by Serenella Iovino ‘unlikely to enter the food chain and threat- – too problematic to even believe and Serpil Oppermann en human welfare.’[19] This study presented that we can control all life and that (Bloomington: Indiana plastic as an artificial object, separate and iso- we could become the master [...] University Press, 2014), pp. 186–203 (p. 200). lated from nature. Plastic, however, has clearly This is something that I think we turned out to behave in a completely unan- may be forgetting more and more [21] Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A [23] ticipated way, finding its way into the very lately: to be humble. Political Ecology of structure of biological life, transgressing the Things (Durham: Duke boundaries of ‘artificial’ and ‘nature’. Yoldas’ An Ecosystem of Excess highlights the University, 2009), p. xvi. practice allows her to time-travel, journey- complex relationship humans and plastic [22] Heather Davis, ‘Toxic Progeny: The ing into speculative distant futurities to bring have. Yoldas’ speculative biology ‘methodol- Plastisphere and back these hybrid creature samples, explor- ogy’ allows for viewers to face some difficult Other Queer Futures’, ing and making visible the true scale of the realities, and to consider the responsibility PhiloSOPHIA 5:2 (New York Press, 2015), impact of plastic. In doing so, she highlights and their place within consumer society in the 231–50 (p. 232). the extent to which plastic is not an inert and plasticisation of the world. Yet, her mutants [23] Oberin, inoffensive substance, but an unpredictable equally remind the viewer of their geological ‘Infradisciplinary Artist and ‘feral’ agent[20] of bio-geological change, insignificance, highlighting that we cannot Pinar Yoldas’, 2018.
89 90 Pinar Yoldas, Ecosystem of Excess, 2014. The Schering Stiftung, Berlin. Photo courtesy the artist.
91 Sonja Bäumel, Being fix things on this scale, but face the current recent scientific discovery that only 43% of Encounter, 2017. The Nordic Biennial of situation and change our own societal habits. the human body is made of human cells, with Contemporary Art, It is this complex balancing of emotions and the remaining majority being composed of Galleri F15, Moss. Photo courtesy the artist. the ability to hold the seemingly paradoxical bacteria, viruses, fungi and other microscop- truths at once which allows for uncertainty. ic organisms.[24] Together, these make up the Yoldas’ work reveals how to make the issue human microbiome, our inner ecosystems, of plastic pollution visible and emotionally without which we could not function.[25] The engaging, whilst maintaining the uncertain aspect which I’m particularly interested in and unpredictable qualities that surrounds its highlighting is Bäumel’s attempt to translate unfolding. and transform this information into an acces- [24] James Gallagher, sible and engaging experience. ‘How Bacteria are Changing your Mood’, Sonja Bäumel – Being Encounter In this installation, the bacteria depart BBC (2018)
92 tative creations, she reveals that she seeks to thing, and through that experience, […] to share ‘an artistic truth of how [she] think[s] create a space where questioning can happen these relations are done,’[27] transcending the [by] taking this materiality out of the lab boundaries of disciplines and the opacity and trying to let people understand through of jargon. She claims this information for touch.’[30] With the installation came the herself, translating it into an artistic language. written invitation for the audience to interact This relates to my previous suggestion that with the ‘bacteria’ and to ‘explore, touch, lie bio art practices can offer ‘sites of experi- down, listen carefully and see yourself reflect- mentation’ that go beyond the boundaries of ed into infinity as one being among billions of science and allow for a cross-pollinated imagi- other beings, microbes, those very beings that nation. Indeed, Bäumel is looking to create an co-habit our body.’[31] So more than just trans- ‘in-between’ space to facilitate an embodied lating information, through her imaginative reflection on this new hybrid reality – that our reworking, Bäumel allows for an encoun- bodies are collaborations. As she explains: ter to take place between microbial life and humans. She invites people to ‘imagine and […] you need to have a connection explore other ways of being.’[32] to your collaborator – whether it’s Bäumel’s installation encourages the audi- someone in science or someone ence to question and interpret for themselves, in a completely different field. thus imagining an open space which addresses And, while I think this language ‘uncertainties, ambiguities, and imagination is important, I also understand linked to the microbial paradigm shift both on how important visual language is, an aesthetic and an epistemological level.’[33] because visual language, or materi- She creates a new visual language allowing al texture, allows the other person for encounter and connection to take place, also to imagine, even though where the audience is able to envision an in- they’re from another discipline.[28] visible reality in a playful and expansive way. Her work, however, goes further than Collaboration and dissemination clearly this. Just like Yoldas’ piece, the installation permeate her practice in her attempt to leads the audience to another level of expe- [27] Interview with develop an open visual language. Researchers rience, from playful exploration to deeper Sonja Bäumel, email to the author, 16 July 2018. Gough et al. posit that ‘creative work, as realisation. In this case, Bäumel is seeking to a result of direct or indirect collaboration not only encourage her audience to envision [28] Ibid. between creative practitioners and scientists, these bacteria, but to grasp that these bacte- [29] Gough, Dunn and Bérigny, ‘Climate can also act as a boundary object, crossing a ria are not separate from us, but components Change Education border between the knowledge of the collab- of our biological makeup. She explains that through Art and Science orators and their audience.’[29] This has a dual ‘we are these entangled bodies, it’s not “us Collaborations’, p. 21. effect of making intelligible often abstract and and them”, but it’s “we” […] they actually [30] Interview with complex information, and, in turn, creates cohabit us.’[34] In other words, Bäumel goes Sonja Bäumel, email to an accessible and tangible experience for beyond the dynamic of encounter which the author, 16 July 2018. people from all backgrounds to engage with. occurs between two separate entities, inviting [31] Ibid. I suggest, therefore, that Bäumel’s artworks us to fundamentally reconsider how we think [32] Ibid. act as connective opportunities, a ‘boundary of ourselves as humans. She presents a view [33] Sonja Bäumel, object’ between scientist, artist, public and which turns away from the Enlightenment’s ‘Fifty Percent Human’ (2015)
93 Bäumel underlines both the fact that we are allows for the viewer to reflect and question made up of a microbiome, and that we have on the deeper implications of this seemingly porous bodies that are constantly exchanging light-hearted experience. Bäumel’s invitation and receiving bacteria from our environment for the viewer to handle the bacteria, to and entities around us. Bäumel explains that connect with them whilst looking back at their ‘when we touch a surface our skin picks up own reflection allows for an encounter to take many new microbes and leaves others behind. place. The viewer realises that they are made Being in the world as an individual really up from these beings, that their bodies are in means being a multi-being community in a constant exchange with their environment. vital process of permanent exchange.’[36] Her Bäumel creates a state of curiosity and humil- work seems to subscribe to Rosi Braidotti’s ity in her viewers, the perfect combination to critical posthumanist view of the world, where face uncertainty. humans are inextricable from their environ- ment,[37] and as Cary Wolfe continues, where Encountering Plasticisers ‘the other-than-human resides at the very core of the human’, deeply entangled in their What have these practices taught us about very substance.[38] Bäumel allows the public to how to tackle uncertain and invisible issues? reflect upon the extent to which we are con- Let’s come back to the uncertainty sur- stantly being shaped by our environment and rounding plastic chemicals’ effects on human the different microorganisms that we come bodies. To focus on ‘bodies’ more specifically [36] Interview with Sonja Bäumel, email to into contact with – highlighting the extent to in this situation is to explore our entanglement the author, 16 July 2018. which our bodies are permeable, boundaries with plastic on a micro-level, and as Jennifer [37] Rosi Braidotti, The dissolving into a ‘viscous porosity’, allowing Gabrys, Gay Hawkins and Mike Michael Posthuman (Cambridge: for our multi-being humanity.[39] detail, in a space of ‘mutual interminglings in Polity Press, 2013). Consequently, I find that Bäumel’s instal- which humans (and non-humans) find them- [38] Cary Wolfe, Animal lation reframes our relationship to the world selves becoming with plastic, whether they like Rites: American Culture, as it disorients how we think of ourselves as [42] the Discourse of Species, it or not.’ Human bodies are being shaped and Posthumanist Theory ‘human’ by highlighting the porous bound- by plastics as they bioaccumulate, just as exte- (Chicago: University of aries of our skin. Rosi Braidotti argues that rior environments are, and ‘the very chemical Chicago Press, 2003), p. 17. ‘the posthuman condition urges us to think composition of our bodies is being altered in critically and creatively about who and what ways that reflect the transformations of our [39] Nancy Tuana, [40] [43] ‘Viscous Porosity: we are actually in the process of becoming.’ everyday environments.’ Witnessing Katrina’, in I think that this reframing helps disman- Whilst neither Yoldas nor Bäumel specif- Material Feminisms, ed. tle human hubris as viewers encounter and ically cover the subject of plasticisers in the Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman, (Bloomington: make kin with a part of themselves, giving body, I found that their practices are focussed Indiana University Press, a ‘cultivated, patient, sensory attentiveness on related, or ‘delineating’ issues that I am 2008), pp. 188–213. to nonhuman forces operating outside and concerned with. Yoldas explores imagined [40] Braidotti, The inside the human body’, to use Jane Bennett’s future effects of our addiction to plastic on Posthuman, p. 12. words.[41] There is humility in realising we are marine creatures. She makes use of spec- [41] Bennett, Vibrant porous, entangled bodies, and by giving atten- ulative biology to make visible the reality Matter, p. xiv. tion to those forces co-emerging with us, we that this substance could, and in many ways [42] Jennifer Gabrys, can be more open to the various possibilities already is, changing life on a biological level. Gay Hawkins and Mike Michael, Accumulation: of our uncertain becoming. Bäumel looks to disseminate the scientific fact The Material Politics Bäumel shows how bio art can effective- that we are porous creatures, using an imagi- of Plastic (Abingdon: ly translate complex scientific knowledge native visual language to translate the extent Routledge, 2013), p. 8. into an engaging and playful space. Using a to which we are constantly being shaped by [43] Roberts and creative visual language, she is able to make the bacteria around and inside of us. Langston, ‘Toxic Bodies/ Toxic Environments’, visible and intelligible the previously hidden Both Yoldas and Bäumel allow for viewers p. 629. reality of our microbiome. In turn, this space to actually encounter, see and reflect upon
94 these previously opaque realities, bridging complexities through the use of speculative biology and an imaginative visual language, respectively. By setting up a playful space, the artists reframe pre- viously guilt and fear laden issues, allowing the viewer to simply be curious, ready to explore in an open-minded manner. These prac- tices engage with scientific methods in order to dissolve boundaries in favour of creatively revealing hybrid realities. Viewers can go beyond their existential malaise, into the experience to truly en- counter – meet the ‘other’ (whether this may be new conceptions of themselves, or their uncanny progeny) with humility and in equality. My final suggestion is that these artists’ approaches can be applied, and act as a bridge, to the complexity of plastic pollution. These plastics are passing on their identity-defining chemicals and, in doing so, they warp our very own identities, forcing us to face the uncomfortable truth that we are vulnerable, dependant creatures, susceptible to external forces like any other entity on this planet, even a ‘thing’ of our own creation. Yoldas and Bäumel’s practices show us that we need more hu- mility in the face of our uncertain futures, and to move away from the distracting narratives of apocalypse or utopia. By using their methods of speculation and a creative visual language, we can perhaps begin to see the issue, and accept that we are ‘part of the world in its differential becoming.’[44] Our becoming is uncertain and entwined with novel, toxic substances; we have to learn to live with the tension of our powerlessness and our duty to act in the face of this existential threat. I believe we need more of these kinds of art practices to help us become plastic, adaptable, and creatively face the unknown challenges that our collective becoming plastic, toxic, will bring about.
[44] Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), p. 185.
95 96 Exhibition opening, Staring at the Sun, 2019. The Art Pavilion, London. Photo by Orlando Myxx.
97 Acknowledgments
EcoFutures Team Artists Curators: Giulia Casalini & Diana Georgiou Adelita Husni-Bey / Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle Events Production Assistant: Aleksandra Wojt / Eca Eps / Feral Theatre / Helena Hunter / Inés Press: Natalia Damigou Papoti Moldavsky / Isabel Burr Raty / Ivy Monteiro & Marketing: Anna Thornton, Angelika May Javier Stell-Frésquez / Kyrahm & Julius Kaiser / Liz Installation Technicians: Lia Foukis, Mattie LaQuiff Rosenfeld / Mary Maggic / micha cárdenas / Moa Griffiths, Mihàlis Intzièyanni Johansson / Nadja Verena Marcin / Pinar Yoldas Installation & Events Assistants: Katie Goss, Lauren / Quimera Rosa / Raisa Kabir / Rita Natálio / Angelkov Cummings, Becky O’Brien, Andrea Toro Rocío Boliver / Shu Lea Cheang / Tabita Rezaire Conference Assistants: Kassiani Kappelos, Lucia / Timebomb Theatre (Thierry Alexandre & Lara Pazzini, Roosa Herranen, Sarah Brown Buffard) / Wangechi Mutu / Xavier de Sousa & Andre Workshop Assistants: Seana Wilson, Lia Foukis Neely / Zheng Bo Videography: Lauren Angelkov Cummings, Lidia Ravviso Contributors Photography: Orlando MYXX, Loredana Denicola Ama Josephine Budge / Ashley Chang / Farzana Post-Documentation & Trailers: Gisou Golshani Khan / Gaia Giuliani / João Florencio / Kate Interns: Céleste Combes and Bianca Darkwoods Metcalf (Women’s Environmental Network) / Laura Bar Management: Andrea Toro Plant (Platform London) / Martabel Wasserman / Silvia Federici / Stitches in Time (Jakia, Hasna, Jebin, Deep Trash: Eco Trash Team Saleha, Mitale, Nosira, with help from Anwara) / Stage Manager: Mattie LaQuiff Griffiths Susan Buckingham / Suzanne Dhaliwal (UK Tar Stage Lighting Coordinator: Mihàlis Intzièyanni Sands Network) Stage AV Coordinator: Lia Foukis Sound Technician: Nicol Parkinson Deep Trash: Eco Trash Artists Artist Liaison: Becky O’Brien Live: Arise Amazons! / Danielle Imara / Eunjung Set Design: Jordan Nicholai Kim & Burong (曾不容) / Fallon Mayanja / intimate Installation & Invigilation: Roosa Herranen, Katie animals / Joseph Morgan Schofield / Miss HerNia Goss, Angelika May, Natalia Damigou Papoti, Lucia / Niya B / Tom Coates / Veneration (Victoria W & Pazzini, Lidia Ravviso. Nicole B) Door Staff: Stephen Eyre, Lucia Pazzini, Angelika May Artworks: Adam Seid Tahir / Anna Nolda Nagele Videography & Trailer: Kassandra Powell / Barbara Gamper / Cecilia Cavalieri / Craestor / Videography: Lauren Angelkov Cummings Dakota Gearhart / Eliana Otta / Erik Thörnqvist / Photography: Thomas Hensher, Orlando MYXX Francisco Navarrete Sitja / Helena Cardow / Intimate Cashier: Victoria Palazzo Jelly / Izzy Bravo / Jo Pester / Julia Oldham / Karl Munstedt / Karine Bonneval / Landon Newton / Funding María Papi / Meghan Moe Beitiks / Nonhuman Arts Council England, British Association for Nonsense / Nuoran Zhang / Romily Alice Walden / American Studies, Tower Hamlets Events Fund, Shvemy Sewing Cooperative / Zaneta Zukalova European Cultural Foundation, Compagnia di San Music: Karen Wilkins (Opulence) / Moonbow (Siren/ Paolo, Queen Mary University of London NTS Radio) / Smaragda
Support Raphael Kim (Biohackspace), ArtsAdmin, Live Art Development Agency, Women’s Environmental Network, Stitches in Time, Chisenhale Dance Space, Genesis Cinema, Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, Platform London, D B Solution Scaffolding, Triffids Plants, London College of Fashion
Stalls Club Cultured, Cooper’s Coffee Bar, Ingrid Kraftchenko, Inaurem, Vegan Toys, Violet Vega
98 99 Published on the occasion of the festival
March - April 2019
100