Queer Ecology
& Silvio Severino
By Geoff Spiers
Queer Ecology seeks to re-evaluate how we understand the natural world, and what is considered natural, by looking at the relationship between all living beings and their environments through a Queer Lens. Queerness is about diversity, mutualism and symbiosis. By imagining and advocating for a world where there is a sense of community and cooperation between all species, we may understand the natural world and our place in it better in order to find creative solutions to our current environmental, social and political challenges. The term was popularised by Canadian Professor of Environmental Studies, Catriona Sandilands in her 2010 book, “Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire”, which challenges conventional scientific wisdom in order to encourage innovative ways of thinking about ecology. In particular, the book aims to disrupt the heteronormative ideas that have invaded our view of nature. During the so-called Enlightenment Period in the 18th century, philosophers began to objectify “Nature,” placing humans outside of it. As such, Nature was seen as something to be controlled and exploited. Backed up by science, restrictive colonial ways of thinking became established around racial and sexual identity which devalued and sought to suppress anything outside the mainstream. Another current writer on ecological matters, Timothy Morton (whose books include Being Ecological in 2018), points out that cells reproduce asexually, lots of plants and animals switch genders, homosexual relationships are common, and bees evolved together through “mutually beneficial deviations.” When we look a little closer at nature, it’s clear: queerness, creativity, and fascinating evolutionary quirks are everywhere. Morton believes that we need to free ourselves of the notion that we can control the natural world nor the vast man-made things we have added to it. We have to realise that we are part of an all-pervading, surprising, and mysterious world and reshape how we value and relate to all life forms. Throughout history it has been outliers who have challenged conventional wisdom and pushed the boundaries to create new and innovative ways forward. In 1986, way before Queer Ecology was given a label, filmmaker, artist and activist Derek Jarman, known for his radical portrayals of queer stories and aesthetics in films like Sebastiane, Jubilee and Caravaggio, was diagnosed HIV positive. His illness prompted him to move to a small coastal cottage in Dungeness on a barren stretch of the south coast of England next to a nuclear power station
(still in operation at the time). Here, in a spirit of defiance and rebellion against death and Thatcherite Britain, in the last 6 years of his life he cultivated a remarkable queer garden.
With the humble Prospect cottage as the central feature, Jarman filled this apparently inhospitable wasteland with drought resistant native plants, rusted and weathered debris found around the shingle beach, and traditional English flora. Artists have always been at the forefront of exploring new ideas and those that have recently embraced Queer Ecology are exploring such topics as • eco-sustainable modes of living • non-exploitative interactions with ecosystems • speculative scenarios for imagined futures that are free from anthropocentrism (the belief that human beings are the central or most important entity on the planet), racism, xenophobia and heteronormativity. • ideas that play with biotech evolutions, hybridisation, mutation and eco spirituality. Pride in the Wild Lee Pivnik, artist and Director of the Institute of Queer Ecology (IQECO), taking inspiration from living systems, uses various media to imagine a future based on mutualistic relationships instead of extractive economies, permeated by the idea of entanglement of relationships between species and landscapes. The Queer Ecology Hanky Project (QEHP) is an ongoing travelling exhibition with over one hundred and twenty artists from across North America. Based on the original gay hanky code which emerged in the United States in the early 1970s, as a means for gay men to subtly communicate sexual desires, this show continues a queer communication of flagging, finding affinity with plants, animals, mycelia, and each other. Indigenous non-binary performance artist Uýra Sodoma travels through the Amazon Forest on a journey of self-discovery using performance art and ancestral messages to teach Indigenous youth and confront racism and transphobia in Brazil. Plastic waste in the ocean is one of the biggest challenges of our time. Pınar Yoldaş, a Turkish American architect and artist, explores whether plastic in the ocean can be something life affirming and queer. In her exhibition An Ecosystem of Excess, she imagines a future where marine life has adapted to plastic waste in the ocean and now incorporates and feeds from it.
Nature Beyond the Binary
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