Queer Feminist Decolonial Ecologies
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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. A PDF of this publication can be downloaded for free at www.cuntemporary.org/shop/dossier-ecofutures All links in publication accessed on 30th May 2020. No article in this dossier may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means without permission in writing from the author(s). All opinions expressed in the material contained within this publication are those of the artists and authors and not necessarily those of the editors, publishers or the publisher’s partners. The editors and publishers have endeavoured to source accurate information about reproductions and image copyrights. In the case of incomplete or inaccurate information in image captions, upon request the editors will make every effort to correct subsequent editions where possible. 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. <https://ars.elec- tronica.art/aeblog/ While information on ecology is limitless, the intersection between en/2017/09/05/femi- ecology and feminism is largely underemphasised across environ- nist-climate-change/> mental policies and, for what concerns us here, the arts. During our [2] Artists Tabita Rezaire curatorial research we became aware that there were very few festivals, and micha cárdenas programmes or exhibitions that could account for how pressing issues who also participated [4] A few publications at in our exhibition Staring such as climate change, deforestation and pollution are in fact dispro- the specific intersections at the Sun were also portionately affecting some bodies more than others. Among the most of performance studies, part of the program. relevant projects in Europe in the last few years are the short-term visual cultures, queer, See more online at HeK feminist and ecological (2018) Future Love: exhibition and panel discussion Feminist Climate Change: Beyond the Binary, discourses are: Annie Desire and Kinship in hosted by the Ars Electronica Festival (Linz, 2017), which reinvigor- Sprinkle and Beth Hypernature. Available ated ecofeminism beyond the binary mindsets.[1] The foundation Haus Stephens, The Explorer’s at <https://www.hek.ch/ Guide to Planet Orgasm en/program/events-en/ der elektronischen Künste (Basel, 2018), which is dedicated to elec- (Emeryville: Greenery event/future-love-be- tronic and media arts, curated a group exhibition with 14 artists that Press, 2017), explor- gehren-und-verbund- examined the relationship between biotechnology and desire.[2] Over ing orgasms through enheit-im-zeitalter-ge- their ‘sexecology’ lens; formter-natur.html> a two-day summit, the festival Under Her Eye (London, 2018) coalesced Macarena Gómez- [3] The festival was female politicians, writers, artists and activists to discuss how they are Barris, The Extractive headlined by writer tackling climate change across a range of fields. Most significantly, the Zone: Social Ecologies Margaret Atwood and and Decolonial commissioned artists festival funded three artistic commissions, which in the domain of art Perspectives (Durham Kasia Molga, Margaret and feminism is extremely rare.[3] and London: Duke Salmon and Gayle Research at the intersections of feminism and ecology has a history University Press, 2017), Chong Kwan to produce tracing artistic-political public artworks. See too long for us to be able to cover in this preface, but when we add the practices that oppose more at Invisible Dust, arts in that intersection, the output is slender in comparison.[4] As envi- extractivism; Lindsay Under Her Eye: Women Kelley, Bioart Kitchen: and Climate Change. ronmental violence grows each year, so do the proliferation of theories Art, Feminism and Available at <https:// and activisms to counteract the numerous injustices that sever the inter- Technoscience (London: invisibledust.com/ dependent relationships between humans, animals, technologies and Bloomsbury, 2016), projects/under-her-eye- spanning from feminist 2018-women-and-climate- organisms (both organic and inorganic). For us, as it has been for many home economics to change> other researchers and artists, 2017 instigated the Donna Haraway bioart. 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) <https:// erational queer-feminists. The majority of the many unexpected factors, there was also extinctionrebellion.uk>. Since 2016, Standing the applications were not only interesting, this dossier, that you are currently reading, Rock Sioux Tribe has but also innovative in their approach, and and which sustained our relationship to been in continuous they inevitably expanded the programme each other and to the project for over a year. legal tensions with the US government to stop beyond its initial breadth. We believed that ‘Staying with the trouble’ had come to define the construction of an some of the ideas in the applications that we our relationality in remarkable ways. environmentally dan- received were too important not to be seen As the quality of the submissions we had gerous pipeline crossing their Native lands. For and this dossier became just one instance of for the conference Queer-Feminist Ecocriticism more information: The creating more space than the initial project in Live Art and Visual Cultures far exceeded our New York Times (2020) and funding allowed for. Whilst shortlisting expectations, we were left with a number Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Wins a Victory in these applications in late January, the climate of proposals that we felt should have been Dakota Access Pipeline crisis was actually making the front pages of included somehow in the programme.