The ideas of a ‘queer ecology’ seen in the name of IQECO form a fundamental pillar in the ways in which they understand and critique our present world systems. It marks a departure from the more traditional ideas of Darwinism which are rooted in competition and heterosexual reproduction and instead turns towards examples of queerness found in the natural world allowing for “queer individuals to find kin with any oppressed species, many of which are queerer than we imagined.” (Pivnik, 2017) as Lee Pivnik, who founded IQECO in 2017 (Lee, 2020/21) states in an IQECO curated issue of ECOCORE. This departure from traditional views of the environment, which are so heavily coloured by conservative ideas around race, class, sexuality and gender (Mortimer-Sandilands, 2005) as explored by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands in an essay for Invisible Culture, allows for a reinterpretation of the historical politics around both environment, sexuality and gender.
“The term “queer ecology” refers to a loose, interdisciplinary constellation of practices that aim, in different ways, to disrupt prevailing heterosexist discursive and institutional articulations of sexuality and nature, and also to reimagine evolutionary processes, ecological interactions, and environmental politics in light of queer theory.” (Sandilands, 2016)
In disrupting the conservative norms of environmental, sexual and gender politics and by reframing these relationships as a natural part of Earth’s wide and varied ecosystem, the Institute for Queer Ecologies aims to align itself with the maligned and neglected parts of our environment, the parts of nature that have been othered by our current heterosexist, capitalist hegemony. This alignment allows them to make compelling arguments for a radical rethinking of our current way of life and our readings of the natural world, and to find community in the non-human components of it, forging a kinship and sense of respect that is so often lacking in mainstream environmentalism. The relationship portrayed between humans and nature by the mainstream environmentalist discourse, though well-meaning, is often coated in the same narratives of human exceptionalism that are responsible for our current ecological crisis.
The first work I will discuss, Grub Economics, was part of a series of videos, titled Metamorphosis, made for the edutainment streaming platform dis.art (Lee, 2020/21). Grub Economics is the second video in a series of four, and it uses caterpillars as a metaphor for the ravenous appetite of extractive capitalist industries, and of fossil fuel corporations in particular. The video opens with a scene of caterpillars climbing over what appears to be a miniature version of some kind of military jet before a documentary-style narration begins, introducing us first to ecology as a science and the idea of vast interrelated ecosystems (Pivnik & The Institute for Queer Ecology, 2021). The narrator, Mykki Blanco, proceeds to discuss how the theory of Natural Equilibrium and how the myth of nature correcting itself has been used to dismiss the fact that the natural world is in a constant state of flux, impacted by the relationships organisms have with each other. The video then discusses the voracious, sometimes cannibalistic appetites of larval caterpillars and draws a comparison between their need for a constant source of food and the extractive industries that fuel our present economy, whose unquenchable need for profit and growth has led to a continued extraction of fossil fuels despite our knowledge of the damage it causes to our wider environment, and the ever more extreme measures necessary to extract depleting resources (ibid.). The image of capitalism as some kind of insatiable larvae is a compelling one, already enormously wealthy industries are so desperate to continually extract more profit that they not only knowingly wreak environmental destruction but resist any attempts at regulation, be they for environmental or human safety. These corporations also hoover up the competition, cannibalising their own to prevent anyone else from threatening their source of profit. Blanco then introduces the idea of “petromodernity, an age catalysed by global dependence on oil and gas and marked by the proliferation of extreme economic stratification and plastic waste” (Pivnik & The Institute for Queer Ecology, 2021). In this era of petromodernity, our society has deliberately been designed to make us reliant on industries that are not only killing us but also destroying the rest of the planet. By locking in a dependency on fossil fuels into the way society functions those same fossil fuel corporations have found a method of a guaranteed continual increase in the profits they make off of goods that consumers have no choice but to rely upon (ibid.).
The capitalist ideology that has fuelled petromodernity also fuels the next topic of discussion in the piece, geoengineering. Geoengineering proposals, which suggest worldwide, experimental interventions in the earth’s atmosphere to reduce or counteract the effects of global heating, rather than rethinking current ways of living and consuming (Pivnik & The Institute for Queer Ecology, 2021), rely on the same kind of ignorance that is discussed at the start of the video. It's a lack of ability to see the ways in which earth’s ecosystems are interrelated, as well as a lack of respect for the non-human components of the complex system that makes up earth’s ecosystem that leads to the prevalence of these ideas. They also rely on the kind of outdated views of the natural world that Mortimer-Sandilands discusses, whereby a select group of wealthy and white men define nature as something that is under man’s control, something that can be owned a preserved by restricting access to it or managing it (Mortimer-Sandilands, 2005) rather than viewing it as a complex web of interconnecting systems where interventions in one area can have vast, sometimes unknowable, reverberations. This idea, of humanity and nature as separate from each other, with humans, as the superior and therefore able to influence nature without the reverse being true is something that queer ecological theory questions. IQECO and the academic theories that they draw on present humanity as a part of nature, interlinked by relationships and shared characteristics that are fluid and ever-changing with all parts of the system constantly influencing the others.
It is in the last section of the video that the reason for using the grub metaphor starts to crystalize. Blanco explains how caterpillars either die or undergo a complete metamorphosis, a “holometabolism” (Pivnik & The Institute for Queer Ecology, 2021), completely transforming their bodies until they emerge as butterflies and proceeds to call for that same metamorphosis to occur within our own society, turning away from the larval (capitalist) tendency for endless consumption and towards a complete revolution for a more equitable, interconnected and coevolutionary society (ibid.). The video not only lays bare how a push for endless economic growth by colonialist and capitalist interests is at odds with the well-being and continued survival of humans and other species but contains a pressing call for a revolutionary new way of both viewing the world and structuring our society, a call for society to undergo its very own holometabolism. In Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook, Lucy R. Lippard discusses art “as a framing device for visual and/or social experience” (Lippard, 2006) and how “artists can be good at slipping between the institutional walls to expose the layers of emotional and aesthetic resonance in our relationships to the world.”(ibid.). This exposing of the layers in our relationship to the world (or here, the environment) is precisely what occurs in Grub Economics; a queer critical analysis of our current systems of ecology and government are combined with succinct metaphors and compelling visuals to create not only a sharp indictment of our present relationship with the environment but also a call to action and collective revolution. The driving idea, that human society is just as capable of metamorphosis as the caterpillar is, is a compelling one, framing our relationship with economic growth and capitalist consumption not as a natural and inherent way of being but rather as simply one stage in societal evolution, a stage that we have the power to move on from if we can muster enough conviction and collective willpower.
If Grub Economics was a call for a move away from capitalism, endless economic growth and expansionism towards a queerer, more interdependent and more equitable future then H.O.R.I.Z.O.N. attempts to present one potential version of that future. H.O.R.I.Z.O.N. standing for Habitat One: Regenerative Interconnected Zone of Nurture is a project commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum that takes the form of a social simulation game where users can participate by exploring a virtual environment and by sharing information or artwork posted by other users or by posting their own (Institute of Queer Ecology, n.d.). This participatory nature of this work brings into action the ideas expressed in Grub Economics, of a community-focused society where all organisms can cohabitate with each other and humans can learn from the interdependent and cooperative practices of other organisms. Stephanie Smith speaks to the importance of collectivist and interactive ways of working, and the growing movement towards this way of working in the introduction to Beyond Green:
“by forming collectives and thereby contesting or sidestepping traditional notions of authorship while also pooling resources. Equally important has been the spread of conversational and relational ways of working that derive their meaning in part from interactive processes.” (Smith, 2005)
This collective and relational way of working not only aligns itself naturally with the ethos of IQECO, who prefer to be referred to as an organism rather than an artist collective or organisation (Lee, 2020/21), but was also a process that was practical for the development of H.O.R.I.Z.O.N. as a project, as the sheer volume of work in game development means it is almost never a solitary process. The collectivist nature of the work also extends into the game itself, as rather than inviting participants to compete with each other or accumulate resources, they are instead invited to explore the area and offer up knowledge, artwork or resources to share with others and archive for communal use (Institute of Queer Ecology, n.d.). The work, inspired by the queer commune movement (Lee, 2020/21), invites participants to imagine a new way of treating both their community and their environment, to find kinship with other forms of life and imagine a future beyond the capitalist system in which we currently exist.
The call to imagine a new future for the world, as seen here in both Grub Economics and H.O.R.I.Z.O.N., is central to IQECO’s work. In the introduction to H.O.R.I.Z.O.N. given on their website, the Institute describe the video series Metamorphosis as a sort of manifesto or founding document upon which the world of H.O.R.I.Z.O.N. is built, as a prototype for this new future (Institute of Queer Ecology, n.d.). The ability of IQECO to not only call for a revolution but imagine a utopian future is a show of remarkable optimism in a field all too often clouded with warnings of doom, disaster and societal collapse. Speaking to 2020, the global coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns the institute says,
“It was in this moment that a network of empathic artists, scientists, curators, and writers known as the Institute of Queer Ecology, IQECO for short, imagined the dawn of a new era. The Institute recognized that effective change to save the Earth would be fractal, adaptive, interdependent, decentralized, non-linear, iterative, resilient, and aimed toward transformative justice with the goal of creating more possibilities.” (Institute of Queer Ecology, n.d.).
This multicellular approach to economic justice allows IQECO to move away from the doom and gloom of climate justice and towards using our learnings from the natural world, which is often much more diverse and multifaceted than we are initially led to believe, to create new ideas around how to move forward. It is ultimately built on a hopeful and optimistic view of the future, one made possible by finding kinship with others, particularly those who have been left behind in our current petromodernist system, whether they be humans, insects or some other kind of organism. This sense of kinship and community is a foundational part of both of the works discussed here as well as of IQECO as a whole and will play a key role if we want to make the utopia of an equitable, green future a true possibility.
In summary, The Institute of Queer Ecology has used their work to bring together understandings of nature, the environment, economics, gender, sexuality and community to both critique our current hegemonic power structures as well as to imagine possible futures beyond that hegemony. Through various collaborative and interactive processes seen in Grub Economics and H.O.R.I.Z.O.N., they encourage a critical analysis of the present and a questioning of the status quo around our environmental and social systems in addition to paying closer mind to the collaborative and interactive relationships that exist in nature. These analyses are then used to help form a new vision for our understanding of ecology, nature and the environment, an understanding that prioritises community, equity, exploration and acceptance of multifaceted ways of living. These utopian ideals for the future are presented as a real possibility in H.O.R.I.Z.O.N., where IQECO have prototyped just one version of these ideals put into action while also encouraging the wider community to participate in that same reimagining. They have simultaneously used a very queer strategy of subversion, in turning the usually competitive nature of a video game on its head by instead forming an interactive and community-focused space. This optimistic and utopian view for the future is both a galvanizing call for revolution as well as a balm to the soul of an area of discussion that is so often clouded with dystopian visions and impending catastrophe. It presents a hopeful outlook without any foolish naivete around engineering a solution from silicon-valley capitalism and emerging technology, instead calling for the scientific understandings we already have to be detached from the architectures of capitalism and extractivism to forge a new future.
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