Enter the 1,500 animal species that practice same-sex coupling- from insects to fish, birds, and mammals. Enter the asexual fungi and the gender-shifting one too. Enter the bisexual dolphin, the red squirrel, the birth-giving male seahorse, and the snake orgy. Enter a school of clownfish, always built into a hierarchy with a female fish at the top. When she dies, the most dominant male changes sex and takes her place long after being born. Nature is as queer and multidimensional as it gets.
Let us remember that we live on a round 3-D circle, and it won't be boxed in! There are no straight lines in nature, so let us queer the linear thought and uphold the stories that will help us to re- spect (in its etymology to see again) life all around us.
Queering our ecological and cultural landscapes teaches us about multiplicitous thinking; it helps us expand beyond the single story, the binary view, the only solution. It reweaves us back into the intrinsic nature of life as we move through the heart of the 6th mass extinction. It recalibrates us as we embark on our generational task to dismantle systems of oppression and create post-capitalist futures if we are to keep participating in the miracle.
A Public Event - Recording Collection
Expanding Possibilities of Love: Queer Ecology & Reimagining Belonging
Join us to challenge the way we think about love, relationship and belonging in the human and more-than-human world.
In this event collection...
We are "risking new shapes" (Sophie Strand) and exploring the as-yet-unimagined, new hybrid and unexpected ways of experiencing ourselves, each other —and the world that emerge from what defies the categories of the 'normal' and evokes fantastical new shapes and configurations in nature (and in us).**
But what is Queer Ecology?
Queer Ecology posits that nature is inherently queer, and challenges the heteronormativity placed upon the more-than-human world.
It also challenges dualistic thinking found in the sciences that create separation between mind and body, human and animal/non-human, human and nature, as well as naturalized ideas of heterosexuality as the "norm". It agitates our ideas of a human supremacy (human beings as 'special', above and beyond a separate 'natural world'), and it opens us up to a re-imagination of how relationship could be experienced if we were to embrace a world that, in so many ways, spills out from the neat categories of the 'normal' imposed by a Euro-American cultural paradigm. This has implications for us both personally and collectively.
And it excites and inspires new possible configurations of relationship and LOVE.
Our guests for this event will encourage us to engage in the work/play of recovering and re-imagining relationship to ourselves, each other, and the world. We invite you to join us to in-spire ('animate, breathe new life into') how we think about relationship.
It also challenges dualistic thinking found in the sciences that create separation between mind and body, human and animal/non-human, human and nature, as well as naturalized ideas of heterosexuality as the "norm". It agitates our ideas of a human supremacy (human beings as 'special', above and beyond a separate 'natural world'), and it opens us up to a re-imagination of how relationship could be experienced if we were to embrace a world that, in so many ways, spills out from the neat categories of the 'normal' imposed by a Euro-American cultural paradigm. This has implications for us both personally and collectively.
And it excites and inspires new possible configurations of relationship and LOVE.
Our guests for this event will encourage us to engage in the work/play of recovering and re-imagining relationship to ourselves, each other, and the world. We invite you to join us to in-spire ('animate, breathe new life into') how we think about relationship.
What possibilities of love could it unfurl within and between us?
How could queer ecology undermine the very foundation on which white body supremacy and heteronormativity rest?
How could queering our understanding of relationship, with the human and non-human worlds, open portals to future(s) we've not yet been able to imagine?
At this one day event we explored...
What it means to "risk new shapes" (Sophie Strand). We're interested in the yet-unimagined — hybrid and unexpected ways of experiencing ourselves, each other, and the world that emerge from what defies the categories of the 'normal', and evokes fantastical new shapes and configurations in nature (and in us).
When you donate (any amount!) you will receive the following video and audio and transcripts from the Live-Event to keep forever.
When you donate (any amount!) you will receive the following video and audio and transcripts from the Live-Event to keep forever.
Alixa Garcia
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You will receive the edited and annonomized audio, video, and transcript from this event.
Enter Imagination & the Queering of Lines
You will receive the edited and annonomized audio, video, and transcript from this event.
We Must Risk New Shapes: Queer Ecology & Symbiotic Embodiment
Advances in evolutionary science have revealed that biological novelty is created by horizontal fusions between species and between bodies. Resilient ecosystems and species emerge from places of physical overlap. In a culture that prizes the individual, what health and resilience have we denied ourselves? Is it possible that there are better futures visible only from the vantage point of symbiotic collaboration?
Symbiosis is always fraught. You leave behind a recognizable shape. But, in a moment of mass extinction and climate collapse, we need to escape the shipwreck of the singular. I want to offer that becoming new is never safe. Survival is never safe. It is always a breach. A break in the skin. It is a leap across the abyss. It is the moment you leap into another body.
Sophie Strand
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Ionah M. Elaine Scully
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You will receive the edited and annonomized audio, video, and transcript from this event.
Love Notes with the Land: Two Spirit Teachings of Other-Than-Human relationships
Drawing on Nehiyaw (Cree) language and epistemology/teachings (such as land pedagogy among others), this talk is informed by Scully’s experience as an avid hiker/medicine-gathering Two Spirit, and early academic research in their PhD program, and conversations with their community.
Soundscapes created by:
Tamara Montenegro
Tamara Montenegro, aka NAOBA, creates spaces of deep resonance that facilitate the connection to inner world, each other and the Planet through intentionally crafted music journeys and theatrical therapy.
She innerstands the urgency of human belonging and the psychospiritual connection to grief, breakthroughs, pain and estrangement.
She serves to create spaces of safe exploration of our bodies and minds through somatic dance and psychoacoustic/neuroacoustic work.
Whenever she is in her homelands of Central America, she seeks endangered species to record their songs so that we can remember them.
She innerstands the urgency of human belonging and the psychospiritual connection to grief, breakthroughs, pain and estrangement.
She serves to create spaces of safe exploration of our bodies and minds through somatic dance and psychoacoustic/neuroacoustic work.
Whenever she is in her homelands of Central America, she seeks endangered species to record their songs so that we can remember them.
If you would like to have this collection to keep...
This event was free and open to the public. However, if you are able, we welcome donations that will go toward the labor and organization behind such events, and paying our guest speakers, tech support, and assistants a fair living wage and one that honors their contributions.
We suggest $5-20, but please pay what you can and we will share, as our gift (this allows us time to edit and prepare the collection). Thank you for your support!
We suggest $5-20, but please pay what you can and we will share, as our gift (this allows us time to edit and prepare the collection). Thank you for your support!