zineproject

During my stay at the PAF Residency in October 2022, I was struck by the sheer infinite entanglements of queer ecological research and art. To find a way of communicating this, a way of mapping the landscape of research I am moving within, I decided to make one zine (small magazine) per day: aligning myself with the radical self-publishing tradition born within early feminist movements. This form allowed me to work imperfectly, fast, intuitively - leading to a never-finished project. I have made these zines out of a desire to trace entangled thoughts, to assemble and dissemble experience and theories, to weave a container of ideas to hold my relation to queer ecology. These texts are epistemologically rooted in my own experiences, and some of them are deeply personal: be gentle. You can view the seperate zines as chapters in a book - you don't have to read the whole thing, but it might make more sense if you do.

If you want to cite this work anywhere, please get in touch before at tonikritzer@gmail.com

QUEER ECOLOGY 01 - COMING ACROSS PLANTS

Ecological thought has been a way, a portal almost, to understand my queerness, my transness through many unexpected ways. Queer ecology is a way for me to heal from estrangement, to find power and agency in the cracks and crevices of classification and categorization.

QUEER ECOLOGY 02 - TOWARDS A RESILIENT QUEER ECOLOGY

It's cool that penguins are gay, but penguins are going extinct on a heating planet. I want to ask: what can queer ecology become? How might queer ecology become a survival strategy on a damaged planet? How can we, as queer humans, play a role in ensuring the survival (and thriving) of our more-than-human siblings? Queer ecology needs to become a verb. It needs to become resilient, active, attacking the technologies that kill us and others.

QUEER ECOLOGY 03 - LAVENDER STORIES

How could I tell my stories about queer ecology without letting the plants tell their stories, too? I’d like to turn to my teacher and companion in queer ecology: Lavender. Derek Jarman teaches us that “a sprig of lavender held in the hand or placed under the pillow enables you to see ghosts, travel to the land of the dead”. (Modern Nature). So let us at least travel back in time, the lavender scent transporting us to the realm of our queer ancestors.

QUEER ECOLOGY 04 - HYBRIDS, CHIMERAS, QUEERS

How do we, as queer and trans people, form our sense of self through relations with the more-than-human? In which ecosystems and landscapes do we connect to our identities, to our bodies, to our selves? If Lichen can melt rock, if nettles can clear lead-toxicated soils, if plants and bacteria make the hormones for queer folks’ HRT, then we might stand a chance in the mess we are in. Our identities are assemblages of attachments, longings, desires, traumas, and many other vectors of relating to one another.

QUEER ECOLOGY 05 - QUEER LANDSCAPES

I want to take a trip to queer landscapes, where coexistence flourishes in unexpected encounters, where more-than-humans engage with each other queerly. Queer landscapes can be a lense for thinking past destruction and desiring new connections into existence. Heterogenous, unruly landscapes that escape classification and order, and instead cave out many eco-social niches for people to find shelter in. In queer landscapes, disturbance, trauma, toxicity are no end points for life, but contamination and diversity rupture open microclimates, islands of alive-ness, "alterlifes".

QUEER ECOLOGY 06 - PRESENT FUTURES AND APOCALYPTIC UTOPIAS

How might we disrupt this timeline and make other futures/pasts/presents possible?
We are in need of radically different ways of conceiving futures than the detached yet imminent apocalypse that the hegemonial narrative of the Anthropocene has to offer. As these lines of flight open, cutting through the Anthropocene, those who refuse to keep on walking on a timeline steadily towards destruction, those who disrupt this hegemonial temporality in “fleeing, seek a weapon,” as Deleuze wrote. Without waiting for a better moment to arrive, these spatiotemporal lines of flight (towards an arsenal of new stories) are always already present.

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if you would like to have a physical copy, drop me a mail at tonikritzer@gmail.com!