MUTABILITY & MUTUALISM

SESSION I

Institute of Queer Ecology

Speaking on behalf of the Institute of Queer Ecology, co-directors Lee Pivnik and Nicolas Baird will present a brief history of the institute and share how their current research has led them to a focus on mutability and mutualism as foundational themes of Queer Ecology. They will identify how these themes can be embodied as a transformative strategy both for individual and planetary adaptation. Lee is a Miami-based artist whose current work is focused on the history of the built environment in South Florida, and looks towards local organisms and living systems to identify regenerative solutions to continue living in a city marked by precarity. Nicolas is an artist, evolutionary biologist, writer, and dancer currently living in Oracle, Arizona, whose scientific research and art practice are concerned with the evolutionary relationships between bodies and their landscapes, multispecies adaptation, and the transmutation of memory and dreams.

SESSION II

Institute for Postnatural Studies 

After a brief introduction to the postnatural framework, this session will focus on new modes of overcoming the human/animal binomial. We will explore how humans have interacted with animals in western culture and contrast it with other approaches to multi-species coexistence. Collectively we will also exercise different ways of embodying an expanded notion of the human-animal through vocal activations and roleplaying through hybrid bodies. Case studies of wild children, the phonocene, contemporary artistic practices, and different cultural and popular subgenres of identity and sexuality will provide a horizontal and fertile platform to discuss and learn from each other.

SESSION III

Rian Ciela Hammond

In this session Rian Ciela Hammond will share some of their research and interventions into hegemonic hormone production, regulation, and codification systems. Together participants will co-create a web of interspecies hormonal relations, mapping molecular semiotic kinship, and unwinding entrenched western mythologies about these shapeshifting guides so often narrowly understood as “human” essences of “masculinity” and “femininity”.

SESSION IV

Institute of Queer Ecology

Film Screening: Metamorphosis is a 4-stage film by the Institute of Queer Ecology, modeled after the life cycles of holometabolous insects: bugs who undergo a “complete metamorphosis” where the organism fully restructures itself to adapt to its changing needs and ensure its survival. Relying on this metaphorical transformation, IQECO aims to help catalyze a planet-wide transformation from the prevailing extractive relationship with the earth to one characterized by regeneration and care.

SESSION V

Mary Maggic

How do bodies queer at the molecular level? How is this queering inextricably tied to industrial capitalism? Combining body and gender politics and environmental toxicity, we begin to unpack the concept of “open source estrogen,” the underlying premise that hormonal molecules are ubiquitously all around us - available for us to hack, mutate, and become-with. Through this process of unboxing their molecular mystique, we see that even in our toxic sea of industrial molecules, it is still a sublime sea of co-mattering.

SESSION VI
Noam Youngrak Son

The workshop series ‘Chimera Gastronomy’ was developed by the Belgium-based queer communication designer Noam Youngrak Son supported by the Institute of Queer Ecology. In the workshop, the participants contributed to a collaborative process to turn edible ingredients from daily grocery stores into an imaginative hybrid creature.

In the session, Noam will share their thoughts about the aftermath of the workshop, about how context-dependent the workshop is, and what the practice that involves edible matters should orientate in the era of heightened global insecurity of food influenced by the pandemic, climate change and the war.

SESSION VII

Houston R. Cypress 

Houston R. Cypress grew up in the swamps of the Florida Everglades, blazing trails through the bush. The endangered beauty of the natural environment made such an impression on him during his childhood – being a refuge for his ancestors and the source of traditional plant medicines – that he grew to find ways to articulate strategies for preserving this World Heritage Site. Through his organization, Love the Everglades Movement, Cypress has become a major force within Miccosukee society as an advocate for cultural preservation, environmental protection, business development, and sovereignty.