#is this me just projecting my queerness onto my kins | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

batsarebetterthanpeople · 2 years

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omg i felt weird abt sending that ask but i was hoping it would inspire some dumping of thoughts, hell yeah i relate a lot actually being autistic/adhd and a trans guy. which is honestly why i’m caught off guard by my recent izzy fascination. i think i’d be less fascinated if i was involved in the fandom and had been bogged down by discourse lol. like i fully HATED him on my first watch when the show came out a few months ago and prayed on his downfall but then i set the show aside for a while and rewatched it last month and since then i can’t stop thinking abt him. i think it’s bc i’m at a place rn where i find it rlly hard to connect to ppl, have to shove down my feelings to get by on the daily, i’ve have a bunch of very emotional ppl around me my whole life who i’ve had to manage things for, and bc of my autistic interest with character tropes starting from a super young age i sometimes have to work to see other ppl as archetypes of themselves rather than fully fledged nuanced ppl. so i’m interested in psychoanalysing him but not excusing his stuff bc he’s fr the most unhealthily coping person in the show which is saying something. but tbh i think if i let my walls down i’d relate to ed more? but the walls existing makes me relate a lot to izzy rn i think. but not that much bc like hey sucks and i’m gay. i will say i never got the repressed sexuality stuff from him but that’s just me. i read it more as him being completely repulsed by romance and emotion bc it stirs something in him he rlly doesn’t want to confront. idk i’m in my izzy hands blorbo era rn and trying to avoid talking to the wrong ppl abt it dbsnbd sorry if it’s annoying

Dude you're so valid. I hope you get better at letting people in and keep working on your empathy. I usually see Izzy kinning as a red flag but it sounds like you're relating to the fact that he's the only character on the boat who isn't in the found family and to the fact that he projects things onto people which you seem to be self aware of so ill let it slide. Onto Blorbo from my shows.

I suppose one doesn't have to read him as repressed. Although I don't think that him being a repressed gay guy and him being completely repulsed by romance and emotion because it stirs in him something he doesn't want to confront are necessarily so different. Either way the vibe is that he's scared or resentful of his own feelings for Ed. I've never thought that he was necessarily pretending to be straight or anything. This is all head canon at this point but to me I think he's probably willing to admit his sexual attraction to some men. (He knows he's attracted to Ed and would probably admit it if the right person asked him in the right way but he'd never even let himself form the thought "I want to fuck Lucius" much less say it out loud despite it being objectively true) But I that being said I think a repulsion to gay love, which we know he has because of the whole "He's done something to my boss's brain" bit (and all of the baggage that implying queer love is a corrupting influence carries), is still repression. I suppose if he's aromantic (I have seen that head canon floating since Con said that he isn't interested in a romantic relationship at the C2E2 panel) maybe not but Aro people don't choose not to love, they just don't experience romantic attraction. Izzy Hands seems to actively choose not to love, romantic or otherwise, because he thinks love makes you weak (if the way he treats a love sick Edward is any indication anyway). So IDK how comfortable I am with putting him in the aromantic category, just because there are so few aro characters and one of them being a man who despises love and is the villain in a rom-com trying to keep the alloromantic main couple apart isn't a great look, but that's a whole other thing.

But yeah avoiding certain people is a good plan because you really have to avoid certain takes. Because it's not like Izzy is Kylo Ren, right, he's not utterly deplorable in that sort of way (I know Kylo got a redemption arc but it was a shitty one that failed to actually redeem him and he was still a space fascist don't at me). He's just a fucked up guy on a pirate ship, if there was ever a place to be a fucked up guy it would be on a pirate ship. But if we're gonna sympathize with him we have to avoid certain takes and certain people. Like we just can't be pretending that he's not motivated by homophobia, we can't be pretending that Ed's abusing him somehow, we can't pretend that there's nothing to the reading of him doing some racist things, we can't pretend that he's some hypercompetent babysitter who is the only one getting things done on the ship (even if that's how he sees himself it's not true, it's proven wrong by the events of the show).

All that to say I guess he's a fun blorbo as long as you're not vilifying Ed or missing the point of the character. Probably keep avoiding Izzy stans tbh.

#izzy critical #ofmd #our flag means death

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nightly-ruse · 1 year

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barley for the ask game please

sexuality headcanon

Pretty usual but I like gay barley

gender/pronouns headcanon

Okay unusual one but trans masc Barley using he/him pronouns. Idk he’s a queer cowboy to me

rate them out of ten

Solid 6/10. Not like a favorite or disliked at all. A little more positive then neutral

favorite thing about them

He’s a gay cowboy cat what’s not to like about that? He also has massive like gay uncle vibes to me and helps a lot of cats find themselves.

least favorite thing about them

Not a fan of how he worrisome he’s portrayed because of my vision of him being this laid back, figured out life kinda guy. I mean it’s not horrible it’s just not how I view him.

why i first started liking/disliking them

This past year I’ve started liking him more. Honestly never thought about him before but I do enjoy him as a character. Love his sister a lot she’s amazing Violet for the win

do i relate/project onto/kin them?

Nope not really

favorite quote/moment

“Every day, every heartbeat. But it’s easier now, I know my times is near and whatever path Ravenpaw’s spirit is also soon will I be beside him”

-Barley to Graystripe in Graystripe’s Vow

my fav ship

I mean RavenBarley lol that’s the only one I think of for him. Tho he does seem to type to have a few platonic partners as well

my fav platonic friendship

None that I can think of

a ship i hate

I don’t think there are any ships outside of RavenBarley for him so no

do i prefer canon or fanon?

Hmm it’s hard bc I like some fanon and some canon. He’s a laid back gay cowboy cat to me who helped Raven see who he was himself and cares for any cat who needs it. He’s just a cool dude

random headcanon

Has ate a cigar. He found it and ate it, did not taste that good but not necessarily horrible

what color do i picture them as

Such a yellow orange color. Sorta like the inside of a orange

cat breed headcanon

Main coon Barley always sits in my mind. That or British shorthair Barley

unpopular opinion

I don’t care for angsty barley very much at all. Just can’t picture him like that though he does have a bit of trauma in his past from Bloodclan.

things i associate with them

Ravenpaw lol. And wheat he’s just a wheat field

song i associate with them

That’s Okay by the Hush Sound or Who are you, Really? By Mikky Ekko

favorite MAP/PMV/AMV with them

I don’t think there are any? Oh I guess Ocean Breathes Salty does feature him and I liked him in that. I’ll take pirate Barley as well

#barley wc #wc barley #barley warrior cats #he’s just a chill dude #anthro him would smoke cigars tho and be a huge rum drinker #I bet he could make his own bourbon. and maple syrup #he helps to steer the cattle much like a cattle dog #has that farmland cat status and the family there cares for him a lot. they quickly accepted Raven in as well #asks #honest wc ask game

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artsyturtle16 · 3 years

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Random Genshin headcannon time:

According to her voice lines, Sucrose tries to hide her ears in her hair bcuz they’re different from everyone else’s. I could see her secretly wanting to use some sort of plant-related neopronouns but not telling anyone because she doesn’t want to stand out/draw unwanted attention.

#is this me just projecting my queerness onto my kins? possibly #am I gonna do it anyways? absolutely #genshin impact #genshin impact headcanons #sucrose #griffins headcanons

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celestialflights · 2 years

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(media hyperfixation ask game!! also sry for accidentally unfollowing u :(( ) 🍀? 📃?📌 ? and the hcs one :)

don't worry! sorry for taking a while to answer this

🍀 do you have any kins or comfort characters from your hyperfixation?

i love so many of the characters, but lucy, annie, max and dennis are probably my biggest comfort characters. i also project onto lucy and annie a lot - they are my beloveds!

📃 what is the plot of your hyperfixation? and is it a movie, game, show, etc?

it's three plays and a show, and the basic plot is: an amateur group of actors' plays always go horribly wrong, chaos and hilarity ensues.

📌 how did you find your hyperfixation?

i saw ppgw and accgw when they first aired, but that was before i was into any fandom stuff. then, a few months ago, i saw @starship-ranger-bug posting about mischief and, realising i recognised what they were talking about, decided to watch the goes wrong show!

🏳‍🌈 do you have any headcanons (lgbt, race, neuro, etc) that are important to you?

i have a lot of sexuality hcs for the characters, which i'd love to share! i really like all of the ones i've seen other people post, so if i put something different or don't mention a character, it doesn't mean i disagree with that hc, it's just not as close to my heart as the others, i guess

chris: i really like the hc that he's asexual, and i can also see him being gay or bi

max: he's bi! i included this one in my fic because i like it so much. he just has such bi vibes

sandra: to begin with, i mainly viewed her as being straight but a big ally, but now i'm beginning to think that she's bisexual, but hasn't necessarily realised it yet. she played a canon lesbian in 90 degrees, so i feel as if getting into the headspace of her character made her begin to realise, "oh, wait, maybe i do like women." before that, i think she had kissed women and viewed herself as bicurious but didn't realise she liked women more than straight women tend to

annie: she's queer! i don't think she labels herself but she's sapphic and she has a girlfriend who i will hopefully introduce in a fic i write!

dennis: aroace icon! i strongly hc that when he thought vanessa was proposing to him, he interpreted it in a platonic way and basically thought she was asking to be in a qpr with him, although he might not have known the term. i am also currently planning to write a fic about this because it's a concept that means so much to me

vanessa: demiromantic asexual lesbian. i just get a lot of a-spec and sapphic vibes from her, and want her and dennis to be a-spec solidarity

trevor: either gay or unlabelled, but yeah he's queer

lucy: she's panromantic asexual because i am projecting! also i want to give her a nonbinary partner, and believe it or not, i also want to write a fic about that!

#ask #moon tag (sugar and spice)#mischief comedy #mischief theatre

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sapphicdib · 2 years

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I’m going through your blog so apologies on how late this is but 🎥💕🏳️‍🌈 for hyperfixations asks!

AHH TY!! this is a super nice thing to open tumblr to after class!!

🎥 do you have any favorite scenes from your hyperfixation?

🌲- all of sock opera i have that damn episode memorized 😭 getting specific it would probably be the scene where bipper goes “who would sacrifice everything they’ve worked for just for their dumb sibling” and mabel goes “dipper would” and ruins her play

🛸 - literally all of dark harvest 😭 okay but specifically the ending where zim is chasing dib through the hall and all you can hear is the stupid pigeon cooing and dib is basically having a panic attack LMFAO the suspense in that scene is REAL

🍂 - adelaide parade on the boat. wirt laugh. need i say more?

💕 tell us about one of your favorite characters and why you like them!

🌲 - bill. look before you come for me he’s just sO INTERESTING. he’s literally just tormenting the pines family for fun. he switches all the functions of the holes in pacificas dads face when he’s a capitalist shill. dude does not give a fuck about ANYTHING except partying and dicking around and i can respect that. also i might be influenced by the tumblr sexymen phenomena bc i’m obsessed w studying them and i also lived through that era of the gf fandom so he’s nostalgic 😭

🛸 - DIB. DIB DIB DIBBY DIB DIB!!!!!!!!!! i could rant forever about him but listen. this little fucker was the first character i looked at and was like “shit. i kin him and i’m actually acknowledging it.” he’s just so??? RRGH. idk he’s a dumbass and he just makes me happy and i can project all of my mento illnesses onto him

🍂 - wow wonder who /s LMFAO it’s wirt!! i was instantly charmed by him just because he is simply so Shaped, but after the show oh my GOSH. he is preshush and i love him and i’m proud of him for his character growth!! i rotate him in my mind at speeds unseen by mankind i s2g

🏳️‍🌈 do you have any headcanons (lgbt, race, neuro, etc) that are important to you?

oh god this is gonna be a long one

🌲:

Dipper: bi, jewish, autism

Mabel: bi, jewish, adhd

(the pines twins have so much bisexual swag it’s off the charts 😎)

🛸:

Dib: gay demiboy (projection much?), mexican, adhd

Zim: gay, NB (“what are your pronouns” “STOP SWEARING AT ME” type deal)

Gaz: LESBIAAAANNNNN. BIG OL LESBIAN. mexican, obv, also GAZ IS FAT!!! SHE IS FAT AND U CANNOT TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME!! also shes got anger issues n depression

Tak: Lesbian, “girl” (same deal as zim and doesn’t really get the whole “gender” thing)

🍂:

Wirt: Queer and Agender! He literally just said “fuck all that noise i don’t really like labels” and then never thought about it again. also neurodivergent

Greg: When he grows up i definitely feel like he would be nonbinary and use any pronouns! also autistic u can’t stop me every one of my blorbos is autistic i’m joining the war on autism on the side of autism

Sara: bisexual!! she/they

Those are all my headcanons that i can think of rn!! Thank u for the ask aaaaa!!! This was super fun to do after i finished my classes for the day!!

#otgw #gravity falls #iz #thank u!!! hyperfixation asks are still open if u scroll down my blog!!

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moth--blood · 3 years

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Rewatching IT Chapter One and this is what i wrote down in that time

• George's last word was him calling out to bill :(

• "is that how you wanna spend your summer? inside an arcade?" "beats spending it with your mother" i love them

• stan: *is reading from the book* "put the book back in my office, obviously ur not using it" bruh huh

• "hey eddie? are these your birth control pills?" "yeah, and im saving them for your sister -_-"

• "do you want one from me too mrs k? :D"

• DUDE THE LIBRARIAN JUST STARING AT BEN WITH THE BOOK SCENE MY GOD.

• "WOAH- henry!" the one redeeming character in Henry's lil possy and even then not that redeeming

• "not every fucking plant is poison ivy, Stanley"

• "have you ever heard of a staff infection? >:(" "*holding a stick* oh I'll show you a staff infection >:D"

• "..im fine. whats wrong with you?" "none of your business-" "theres a kid outside and he looks like someone killed him ;;-;;"

• god the first scene with Bev's dad is so fucking uncomfortable

• bev: *jumps off the cliff into the water* richie: "whAT THE FUCK-"

• ben: "cool, huh?" richie: "no :D"

• i think it would be interesting if they included the "*number of cents* for a blowjob" conversation Eddie has with the "homeless man" in the book into the movie, because that could lead a bit more into his character when we eventually get the confession in the second movie but i digress

• "wowowowowoah! what if her dad comes back?!" "do what you always do! start. talking. >:("

• oh my fucking god do i kin Ben.

• Eddie: "shut up richie" Stan: "yeah, shut up richie" Richie: "oOoooh, trash the trashmouth! >:("

• "wait- can only virgins see this stuff? ..is that why im not seein' this shit?" Richie Trashmouth Tozier my beloved

• "ROCK WAR! *gets it in the head with a rock*"

• and, of course, "go blow your dad you mullet wearing asshole!"

• i love the details of richie fighting the guy with the tuba ("fuck off dude! >:(") and then eddie giving him ice cream

• again: details man. eddie starts using his inhaler and Richie immediately looks over at him; when the slideshow starts going and shows IT richie reaches out to eddie and they're clinging onto each other until it "comes out of the projection"

• richie: "you guys are lucky we aren't measuring dicks" eddie: "shut up, richie."

• "beep beep richie :))"

• "dont let him get away" bill what the fuck.

• fuck u too Mrs K

• mike my dearly beloved

• okay Cinema Sins made this point before but this is such a good use of "Dear, God". its only the first verse but it portrays the emotion so well

• henry you leave that fucking cat alone you bitch. i hate you so much but i can admit your dads more of a dick than you are

• god i fucking hate her dad

• YEAAH KILL THE DICK

• "what sickness, ma?" YEAH EDDIE BABY YOU GOT THIS ILY

• i love how Mike brought the gun for the sheep with him. smart kid.

• i love the detail of Eddie going down the rope just like Bill did; it really shows his admiration for the guy, even if that admiration is limited because here its portrayed in film

• oh my god this scene the fucking dancing scene in the sewer this shit is so finny to me

• i love how mike basically just fucking murdered Henry

• oh my god stan honey nO BBY I SWEAR THEY STILL CARE ABOUT U

• "why isn't she waking up?!" ben honey

• .....i kin ben god fucking damnit

• "and now? im gonna have to kill this fucking clown. WELCOME TO THE LOSERS CLUB, ASSHOLE!"

• "i know what I'm doing for my summer experience essay." richie u little queer-coded mf i love you so much

• richie being the first to hug bill when he starts crying over georgies jacket :((

• oh god the dream/pact scene. ow. my heart. im already mourning for Eds and Stan ;-;

• the shot of the loser/lover cast im sobbing

• "I gotta go. ..i hate you. (smiles)" STANNNN

• not the kiss please bev ur getting blood on his face

#IT #it chapter one #bill denbrough #bev marsh #it richie #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #it eddie #horror #why did i take notes on a movie #stephen king

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crypdoezoology · 2 years

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You're literally the one terminally online losing your mind over some weird fandom battling kin shit that literally isn't even a thing to contend with offline. Just so bizarre to me, good reminder for people to join some in person queer communities and like really talk to people if they can. Touch grass. Also weird trans male singling out there, not surprised more terminally online crap.

yup i'm terminally online, the way my life has gone i can't quite help it. and i think everyone has a few pet peeves. people projecting gayness and transness onto characters that imbody bigotry hatred and inhuman cruelty is one of them. i'm gay. i'm trans. and i hate my LOVE for myself and others being perverted into something like this

so yeah. it bothers me. it just bothers me

and i don't owe anyone jokes or smiles

this is my blog, you don't like my takes, block me. if you think what i have to say is that dumb, block me.

#crypdoe asks

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mod-kyoko · 3 years

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heya, mod kyoko here! as a trans gay person who uses many labels and identities and whatnot, i like making identity headcanons for the dra characters. that's what this post is about, i wanted to share with you some of my ideas. remember, these are opinions! and if these types of things annoy you or you are just homophobic, please go away :) this is not for you unless you are an ally or a member of the lgbt community! now, without further ado, here are a few miscellaneous characters i headcanon as lgbt+.

caution, the picture below may strain your eyes!

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♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧

lgbt headcanons for miscellaneous dra characters!

i headcanon kiibo as agender

considering the fact that he is a robot, it just makes sense doesn't it!

agender means: genderless or lacking gender

it also makes sense to me that he would be aroace, (asexual- lacking sexual attraction, aromantic- lacking romantic attraction, aroace- aromantic and asexual

kiibo is an avid supporter of every other lgbt and mogai identity too!

he frequently goes to pride parades, carrying a rainbow flag, and he will use his photo-printing feature to take free photos for everyone :)

i headcanon komaeda as genderfluid because i identify as genderfluid myself, and komaeda is my all time favorite sdra2 character

i kin nagito as well, it helps me maintain a sense of identity

i also headcanon him as gay :)

genderfluid: a gender that varies over time

nagito would definitely go to pride parades with the rainbow flag, and paint rainbows on his cheeks

you know that picture of the nice person at the pride parade with a shirt that says free hugs? nagito would take advantage of that and he would cry bittersweet tears since he finally feels accepted

he would take hajime and chiaki too <3

i headcanon peko as nonbinary!

nonbinary: a gender outside the male and female binary

i am nonbinary myself, and i love and admire peko so much so i guess this is me projecting myself onto her

also i want a strong badass nonbinary character

peko would definitely be the parent type

like all the young gay and trans kids would look up to her

WOw peko supremacy

but yeah if she had trans and/or gay kids she would promise to take them to their first parade, buy binders, flags, anything they need

i headcanon mahiru as lesbian, and ship her with sato and hiyoko, hiyoko more

i think mahiru would be quite active in activism and she would work really hard for gay/trans kids everywhere

she absolutely loves pride parades, and she loves making lgbtqiaphobic people angry/uncomfortable

hehehe chaotic mahiru

mahiru also stands up for the mogai community, they don't deserve the hate they get at all (p.s. if you are in the mogai community ily you are so valid)

mahiru would go to the parades with hiyoko and buy lesbian flags for each of them

also also also, mahiru absolutely destroys annoying stereotypes

i headcanon gundham as aroace because i rarely see asexual/aromantic representation in media and i am personally also on the asexual spectrum

also i really want to see a strong, cool male character who is asexual and aromantic

gundham doesn't desire any romantic and/or sexual relationship and he is comfortable in his body (p.s. if you are an asexual or aromantic who does desire a sexual or romantic relationship you're just as valid)

gundham is like the lgbtqia+ dad?? like he loves helping gay kids figure out their sexualities and he loves teaching them labels, he knows so much

he struggled with his identity for a long time and when he finally realized he isn't "broken" or "alien" he was so happy!

i headcanon sakura as queer!

queer: an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender.

i love seeing independent strong queer women, they are so beautiful and it's very empowering

i say queer instead of lesbian because i feel that lesbian doesn't cover her sexuality

sakura doesn't fuss with labels too much, she thinks queer fits her just perfectly and it perfectly gets across what she is

she definitely attends a lot of pride parades with aoi and she sure is active in them

she would carry aoi on her shoulders and have aoi wave around a poster that says love is love

i love her so much ahh

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that concludes the headcanons! remember, these are purely headcanons and i am not suggesting these are even remotely canon okay? just my opinion.

thank you for reading this far, have a great day !

-mod kyoko

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basically-i-write-shit · 4 years

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for the ask prompt; 2. who is the easiest character for you to write? and 16. How much of your personal life do you put into fics? and 5. Do you tell the people in your life that you write fics? Thank you, I love your prompts and delinquent yama fic. I often go back an re-read your stuff when I need it!

Thanks for putting the actual questions in the ask anon! That makes it a lot easier to reply on mobile.

2. Definitely Yamaguchi Tadashi, from Haikyuu!! I always say, if I were into kinning I would kin him bc I vibe so hard with him and project a lot onto him and other side/small characters in particular. Which brings me to....

16. I'd say a healthy amount of my life is in my works. I project a lot of my own insecurities onto my favorite characters, as well as giving them my likes/dislikes just bc I don't wanna be creative enough to find new ones lol. The situations aren't always my own experiences, obviously, but I try to make each fic have a part of me in it.

5. I used to, but I got targeted as "weird" and "that gay fanfiction kid" in high school when in reality I was just a queer neurodivergent kid that didn't know when to shut up. I never told my parents about it bc I was ~closeted~ and also didn't need them scolding me on internet privacy or whatever bc "people you don't know can see and comment on it" lmao

#admin #ask memes

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alloaro · 4 years

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monster prom is good dude so I’m guessing you got into it bc you’re exploring what kinds of relationships you want to have in the future? and also you love monsters, and maybe the competitive/strategy aspect of it as well as the art? it’s a cute game & in the early days of our relationship my bf and I highkey projected onto Brian & Scott tbh, it’s just a really nice open ended game for edgy queer folks?

Actually I ended up getting into it because my friend has it and she hyperfixated on it, and then had me play a game with her admittedly a little reluctantly at first and I just, instantly fell in love with the game, the characters, the art and just, it was an enjoyable and fun experience and so fucking fun to play! And yeah i like monsters, I'm not really into the competitive aspect of it tbh, I'm normally pretty cooperative with it, and yeee! It's a really cute game and that projection is a completely valid thing yo, I just uh, ended up kinning Oz instead of projecting, and yeah I love how, casual the game is with its romance options and I love the fact it doesnt use lgbt+ as the punchline but instead as a base of a joke, like with damien's dads have a number one blue and red dad cups! Also I really like romantic stuff in a fictional context, as well as how fun the secret endings can be, like the first time I played I got Scott's king of the furries ending.

And yea, it's got edgy humor but it never goes to far, and always punches up with it and never down

#ask #princely disaster #also i drew a non kin sona for the game

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chpinthestacks · 5 years

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In the Stacks with Lara Mimosa Montes: Darrel Ellis

This past March, I visited OSMOS at 50 East 1st Street in Manhattan’s East Village to see some works by the Bronx-born painter and photographer Darrel Ellis. As far as I know, the last time any of Ellis’s works have been shown in New York was over fourteen years ago, in 2005, so it’s something of a big deal to see his work in the real world once again.

When I first began looking a bit more thoughtfully into Ellis’s biography upon recalling that he had been included in the exhibition Urban Mythologies: The Bronx Represented Since the 1960’s, a basic internet search yielded very few results, especially in comparison to Ellis’s peer group, which includes artists like Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Hujar, and David Wojnarowicz. Apart from a short entry about Ellis on Visual AIDS and an exhibition catalog from 1996 published by Art in General to celebrate the posthumous, traveling exhibition which featured seventy of the artist’s works from his estate, there remains very little in print on the subject of Darrel Ellis. Given the works of his that I was able to view online and the little bits that I had been able to glean from his bio, this just didn’t sit right with me. This is an artist whose work needs to be known.

Self-portrait based on Peter Hujar photograph, c. 1990, painting on canvas, 22” × 24”. Courtesy of OSMOS. ⓒ Estate of Darrel Ellis.

Darrel Ellis was born December 5th, 1958. He died April 3rd, 1992, a couple of months before David Wojnarowicz, whose full-scale retrospective at the Whitney Museum, History Keeps Me Awake at Night, I saw last fall. Having encountered Wojnarowicz’s presence as a teenager through the fairly obscene underground films of Richard Kern [ie. “Stray Dogs” (1985) and “You Killed Me First” (1985)], it was definitely a trip seeing his work at the Whitney—it was packed to the point that I kind of didn’t want to be there. People love David now, I thought, a little moody.

As I moved through the museum’s galleries, I had to wonder what an artist like Wojnarowicz would think of all this posthumous looking and snapping. I had to ask myself: Why does the art world want to stage its appreciation for an artist like David Wojnarowicz now? Because the fucked up political future he had been observing finally came to pass? And if we are looking at David and the ambitious body of work he assembled during his lifetime and encountering it as emblematic of a certain downtown New York countercultural moment, or an idealized version of some queer, punk sensibility we associate with the ’80s and ’90s, then what else—and who else—in our historicization of that particular time drops out as a result?

I am not exempt from the “we” I speak of here; next to my bed currently sits a newly purchased copy of Weight of the Earth: The Tape Journals of David Wojnarowicz, published by Semiotext(e) just last year. My attention is turned towards David, too, and I suspect, unlike many of the tourists at the Whitney that day who might have been seeing his work for the first time, I had the luxury of living in New York City and participating in the art world in ways that allowed me to encounter his work IRL many times over the years and in several different contexts with varying degrees of politicization. I’ve even been lucky enough during my brief time working at a private arts college to teach and share his work with others. If I have a lot to say about David Wojnarowicz, it’s because I have had years of looking and thinking about his work alongside the many documented accounts of his critics, friends, admirers, and biographers, some of whom were fortunate enough to know him, and live to tell of their experiences (among my favorites of these accounts are those by artist Zoe Leonard, with thanks to Sarah Schulman).

The same, however, cannot be said of Darrel Ellis, so it is still something of an experiment: learning to look at and speak about his work, the impression it leaves on me. As of now, I cannot speculate as to how his art and reputation will fare in the wake of this strangely belated and renewed interest in the art historical ongoings and culture wars of the 1980s and ’90s. [1]

Poster for Day Without Art, designed by Danny Tisdale Studio, 1994, offset lithograph on paper; 35” × 25 ⅝”. Courtesy of Visual AIDS. Background image features Darrel Ellis’s Self-Portrait After Photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1989.

When he died in the spring of 1992 of AIDS, Darrel Ellis was the same age as his father, Thomas Ellis: 33 years old. In 1958, Thomas, a postal clerk and aspiring photographer who briefly ran a portrait studio in Harlem with his wife, was killed by the police following an argument with two plainclothes detectives who had blocked his parked car. The injuries sustained from the altercation proved fatal. At the time of Thomas’s death, his wife was pregnant with Darrel. [2] Justice was never served.

These events and the life that preceded them, as documented by the senior Ellis in the many family photographs taken before Darrel was born in parts of the Bronx and Harlem during the 1950s, eventually made their way into Darrel’s work. In 1981, when Ellis was living in the Lower East Side with his then-lover and “unofficially” participating in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program, the artist, writer, and independent curator Allen Frame recalls that Ellis had recently acquired some of his father’s black and white photographs from the 1950s which he was reinterpreting with ink on paper at the time. [3]

In 1983, BOMB magazine published some works from this period. [4]

Left: Darrel Ellis, My Mother and My Sister from My Father’s Photograph, 1982. Right: Thomas Ellis, Picnic NYC, 1953.

The diptych featuring Thomas Ellis’s photograph alongside his son’s interpretation published thirty years later is uncanny. In Darrel’s version, there are outlines, blurs, shadows, and contours. Certain details, like the density of the grass or the striped pattern on the young girl’s shorts fall away in favor of other, more plain facts, like “here’s a family.” The position of the subjects in relation to one another would suggest even without our knowing that these folks are kin. Their togetherness in time is an indisputable fact. Prior to Darrel’s being-in-the-world, Thomas’s photograph establishes the family as existing within a shared visual field: they had a life and their being together—whether it was in a park or at home—appears as a notably carefree aspect of that life.

Ellis continued experimenting with his father’s photographs: the layers of technique and reinterpretation that would distinguish his images from the ones taken by his father would become more pronounced. Allen Frame observes, “Between 1984 and 1986, [Ellis] made a series of photographs of his mother, brother, and sisters, from which he produced a new body of work evolving from screenprint to experimental photograph to painting. The screenprints, made while he was living at his mother’s apartment after breaking up with his boyfriend and coming out to his family, were compiled into a book at the Lower East Side Printshop, with the help of Susan Spencer Crowe.” [5] The book, published by Appearances Press in 1986, reveals various domestic scenes and interior living spaces depicting relatives sitting in the kitchen, around the family table, doing each other’s hair, laying in bed. They are sparse in terms of detail, and resemble studies of the generic and the sublime as they depict the taken for granted scenes from a life. Again, what stands out are not the faces of the individuals pictured, but their relation to one another as suggested by their body language, particularly the casual nature of their closeness. [6]

At some point, while looking at the drawings alongside the later photographs, I remember saying to my new friend, Kyle, who had accompanied me to see the show at OSMOS, “I don’t see how the artist who made these drawings also made these photographs. Or rather, I can’t see that the photographs were made by someone who primarily identified as a painter. . .” Kyle responded, “I can see it. . . Maybe it has to do more with understanding Darrel’s relationship as a painter to the photograph as a surface.”

Kyle was onto something. In an interview, Ellis said of his process, “The idea of putting a photo on any surface other than photo paper gives you a lot of freedom. The process became [one] about animating the photo, about revivification.” [7] Perhaps what was painterly about Ellis’s photographs, particularly those that reinterpreted his father’s negatives, was that he treated the original images as content rather than object. In other words, by projecting the negatives on a wall and then experimenting with both his position as the photographer in relation to the projected image and the dimensionality of the surface onto which the image was projected by creating sculptural forms onto which the projections would appear, Ellis transformed his father’s negatives into surface. The resulting images that we are left with therefore are not really appropriations; they’re the being-with of a trace of a lost object—the trace being the negative, and the lost object, the father. As Ellis reflected of his father’s images, “When I look at those photographs sometimes, all I see is holes.” [8] I will never fail to be moved by those words.

Left: Untitled (Aunt Connie and Uncle Richard), c. 1990, silver gelatin RC Print, 15 ¾” × 19 ¼”. Right: Untitled (Aunt Connie and Uncle Richard), c. 1990, crayon and ink on paper, 10” × 12”. Courtesy of OSMOS. ⓒ Estate of Darrel Ellis.

When Ellis was discovered in a coma by his friends Susan Spencer Crowe and Bruce Dow in the spring of 1992 at his apartment off Franklin Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, “his last self-portrait was sitting on his easel beside his bed, eerily depicting him as he was found: eyes closed, lying on his bed in deep repose.” [9] After spending some time with Ellis’s work at OSMOS, I felt better able to appreciate how complicated the idea of the self-portrait must have been for Ellis if he was so compelled to return to it as a generative mode of inquiry. By adopting different mediums such as drawing, painting, and photography, while sometimes blending all three in the process to create an individual work, I imagine he must have felt provoked, if not also a bit estranged, by all the selves he had discovered through his practice.

Among Ellis’s self-portraits, perhaps the most recognized one is Self-Portrait After Photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe which was featured in the now infamous Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing exhibition at Artists Space in 1989, curated by Nan Goldin. For the show, Ellis contributed two self-portraits, both of which were based on photographs taken of him by Peter Hujar and Robert Mapplethorpe. The caption in the exhibition catalogue that accompanies Self-Portrait After Photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe reads: “I struggle to resist the frozen images of myself taken by Robert Mapplethorpe and Peter Hujar.” I’ve never seen either of the photographs Mapplethorpe or Hujar took of Ellis, but I remain haunted by the decision Ellis made to take back his own image. [10] I suspect that if during this time period, Ellis became that much more aware of his mortality following the discovery of his HIV status, then “the struggle to resist the frozen images” through the creation of the self-portrait forms part of the process by which the artist is able to reassert his right to his body as well as his right to explore acts of self-representation. I imagine then for Ellis: the self-portrait is not a luxury, but a vital necessity.

[1] Thank you to Tiona Nekkia McClodden who, through her continued work, conversations, and writing on Essex Hemphill, Julius Eastman, and Brad Johnson, helped me think the most deeply about some of the contradictions inherent in this renewed interest in queer art from the 1980s and ’90s, and so much more.

[2] Allen Frame, “Our Family Legacy: Variations in Black and White,” Darrel Ellis (New York: Art in General, 1996), p.13.

[3] Ibid., 14.

[4] Darrel Ellis and Thomas Ellis, "Darrel Ellis, Thomas Ellis" in BOMB, no. 5 (1983): 44. Also see “Two Drawings by Darrel Ellis” in BOMB, No. 8, (1983/1984): 37.

[5] Allen Frame, “Our Family Legacy,” p. 17.

[6] Thank you to Ricardo Montez who, upon learning about my interest in Darrel, gifted me his copy of the aforementioned book.

[7] David Hirsh, “Darrel Ellis: On the Border of Family and Tribe,” in Disrupted Borders: An Intervention in Definitions of Boundaries, ed. Sunil Gupta (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1993), p.125.

[8] Ibid., 124.

[9] Allen Frame, “Our Family Legacy,” p.21.

[10] See Kobena Mercer, “Reading Racial Fetishism: The Photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe” (1986) for a more in-depth discussion of the artist’s use of black male bodies.

#lara mimosa montes #chpinthestacks #in the stacks #artist residency #darrel ellis #OSMOS

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gabriellisse · 3 years

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01/01/2020

When I think about 2020, it’s hard not to think about grief, anger/rage, and loss, especially for Black, Indigenous, racialized, queer, disabled, mad, and other targeted communities. To be clear, the pandemic exacerbated pre-existing issues that those in these communities already knew all too well, but I think having to navigate and experience those issues in the context of a new virus that was/is literally killing our loved ones, kin, community members and others around us in ways that are intimately tied to these issues, and doing all that in isolation or strained relational circumstances made those issues feel heavier than usual. I don’t want to make light of the situation, I don’t want to play to the idea of the resiliency of marginalized communities because the root cause(s) of that resiliency is often left out of the narrative; but if there’s something I can appreciate from these past months I think it’s that I can confidently say I am not the same person that I was beforehand. It’s a really small feat, and I still have a lot of work to do and I need to do better, but as someone who like so many others, is constantly at war with myself about my sense of self and security, knowing that I grew and grew for the better gives me some hope and peace of mind. And a big piece of what helped me grow over these past months are my relationships with people, community, the land, those around me (human and non-human), and those to come. I think 2020 really taught me and solidified the reality that I am connected to all these people and things, which all carry different, ongoing responsibilities. I’m still/will always be learning, but these past months just really underscored the idea of love, and how radical and necessary it is, especially in light of the way things are - building and actualizing alternative futures in which we all thrive is so rooted in love or the idea of really caring for each other in patient, thoughtful, loving ways from how we engage in our interpersonal relationships to how we do things with an eye to how our actions and intentions will impact others more systemically. Going into 2021, I hope to be more intentional, thoughtful, cognizant and alive to these relations and the lessons. and responsibilities they carry; and to really live out this idea of always moving with and in unison with others. As 2020 pushed me to nurture my relationships and to be more appreciative of my different connections, it also made me check my relationship with myself. Pre-covid and during covid, there were relationships I had that took so much from me. I think I was looking for certain forms of connection and love in places they just didn’t exist in, and when I vocalized certain concerns, I would often be gaslighted or just ignored altogether so it was really easy for me to internalize that in ways that made me question my self-worth and whether I was deserving of love and respect. My first questions/thoughts would often be about what I did wrong, why/how I wasn’t enough, and/or why I didn’t deserve more. And this isn’t to say that I’m perfect. I think there were definitely ways that I could have honoured my responsibilities to these people better, I can take accountability for the fact that there were definitely ways that I unfairly projected my insecurities onto them. I think where I draw the line though - which I really just realized/didn’t understand until now - is being in spaces or relationships that make you feel undeserving of love, and where there is a significant lack of reciprocity and mutual respect. This sounds like a really trivial realization, but I think why I cling to it so much is because relationships - particularly non-platonic and/or ‘romantic’ ones - are really hard for me for a number of different reasons including gender norms, upbringing and cultural norms, etc. So in thinking more and differently about relationships or what it means to be in relation with other people or things over this past year, I really had to re-think how I understood the relationships and treatment I thought I deserved or didn’t deserve. Again, I’m not perfect and definitely have my own faults, but 2020 helped me recognize my tendency to cling to people and relationships that really make me feel less than, and I don’t think anyone should have to do that (but ofc that’s easier said than done). It not only takes away from you, but it can just really run you dry in ways that can hurt your other relationships and the responsibilities they carry. All that to say that 2020 really pushed me to honour my own griefs, losses, and trauma in relationships by not only establishing boundaries, but also allowing myself to be careful or thoughtful about who I let into my circle and how. Those connections don’t have to or shouldn’t be ones that burn you and take away from your other connections and relationships.

I don’t like making resolutions for the new year, at least not consciously, because it’s hard not to get overwhelmed or frustrated by set backs (which are only natural and part of the process), but I really hope something I carry into 2021 is this deeper understanding of my relations and connections and to deepen and live out that understanding. I also really hope I can continue to allow myself to honour my own needs, grief, trauma, etc by again, being more mindful of surrounding myself with people and things who don’t make me feel empty; and I wish this for any others who feel the same.

That self-love is a fundamental piece of community care, self-care puts you in a better position to extend care to others.

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rayj-drash · 4 years

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Berlin Sketches pt. 2

By T. Frank

On week three, I looked up two friends I know from Berkeley, Heidi and Asa, who’ve lived for six months in Berlin. They proposed a trip to Cologne to join the protests at Hambacher Forest, where coal companies were threatening to level the trees and mine for coal. We would take the six-hour train ride overnight, then head to Hambacher for a Sunday forest walk.

Green flags printed with the iconic Hambacher tree waved in the air over a dry dirt field. “Hambie Bleibt”--the Hambacher forest stays! Polizei allowed us to enter one area of the forest, but they blocked off the main path. We saw broken glass, ropes tied to beech trees. These woods were sparsely populated, so we re-entered Hambacher around the cops, and greeted the site anew. There was a central tree-sit atop a very tall tree and protesters everywhere hauled logs for a barricade. Heidi jumped right in, Asa went to rest, and I gathered a few branches before deciding, I'll paint instead. Several pairs of feet stopped to watch, and someone asked in German, "Can I take a photo of your palette?" With my head down, focused on my watercolors, I heard a brass band playing, "The Saints Go Marching In". The rest of the day was a mix of sun, shade, apples and communal efforts.

My two companions and I reached Hambacher's edge to emerge into a scene we dreaded. We climbed a mound of sand before the vast swath of barren land, the 'digger' machines looming like an invasive species. Security forces trotted in on horseback; a neon-vested journalist snapped dozens of shots. Soon, we heard an amplified voice, emphasizing that no one was to leave the limits of Hambacher. Asa remarked, that's just a display of power. And we are each reminded by the 'harsh' intonations of German, what a set of negative-sounding instructions can become.

~~~~~

Each week, the residency screened a film. The first was Tarnation (2003), featuring the documentarian who highlighted his mother's struggles with mental illness. The second was called A Film Unfinished (2010), a riveting, intense documentary in multiple languages, which we watched with malfunctioning subtitles. The Israeli director took found footage from Nazi propaganda stored underground for fifty years. When the footage was restored, it's shown to Jewish Holocaust survivors, who are filmed watching the horrific storylines, primarily depicting the wealthy at extreme odds with the hordes dying in controlled poverty, then corralled and dumped into open graves.

When the lights went up, my studiomates shared their reactions. One of the ladies expressed sympathy towards me as the only Jew in the room. Without thinking, I shrugged it off, refraining from the spotlight. After, I ran outside over a bridge and looked down at the river below. I ran until I felt my heart beating, and then I walked back in order to shake off the shock. Here I was, in Germany, a Jewish descendant of Eastern Europeans who immigrated to America thirty years before the unforgivable Holocaust. I saw the people of Berlin as similar to Americans, immigrants and settlers alike. I did not wish to blame a country's people for it's government's atrocities. Instead, I wanted to process. That would take time.

~~~~~~

About halfway through the residency, my hostess Amelia set me up with her friend Ivan, an American graduate student. Amelia meant well, but sometimes I felt like I gave her the wrong impression. She assumed that I was a traveling psychologist with a dark and troubled Jewish past, and she lamented her religious Christian upbringing often. She was overly hospitable, leaving money for groceries and even gave me her room for the majority of my visit; but the times that she came home, we talked from our mattresses about romance.

At dusk, Ivan and I started our tour at the iconic Brandenberg Gate, which divided West and East Germany through the Cold War. We then went inside three public memorials in the Tiergarten. First, a testament to the Roma Gypsies targeted during Hitler's regime. The space contained a shallow reflecting pool. Haunting string music played from secret speakers in the secluded square. Next, we viewed the Queer memorial, a pyramid with a small window through which we saw a looped video. Footage of gays and lesbians embraced, kissed, and held hands, spliced with shots of police tormenting lovers.

Finally, we went through the Holocaust Memorial, where tall, symmetrical granite planks rose higher and higher the farther in you walked, until you're completely enveloped in darkness and solid walls. I grew afraid in the middle of the labyrinth. Ivan’s solid grasp was there. We discussed the importance of history in this very place, where a few blocks away was a parking lot, the former bunker where Hitler spent his last moments with family and comrades before they all consumed poison. Ivan and I said goodbye, and boarded different trains as I reflect on the solemnity of the memorials.

~~~~~~

For the residency project, I wished to experiment with one of my favorite pastimes, origami or the art of Japanese paper folding. I asked Daniel, who displays his origami creations hung from tree branches by the Canal, for a quick tutorial. At the studio, I made a mockup of two round paper forms connected by a strip of felt rope. The forms hung next to each other, supported only by a strand of invisible plastic wire threaded through the base. With a stiff piece of construction paper, the result was about the size of a grapefruit. I tied four knots in the rope to represent the tumors found in Annika’s breast.

Concurrently, I play around with paper cutouts of words. I've had a vision inspired by a window display: a thick hardcover book, folded and carved as to resemble a woman. When I brought my drafts to my mentor, he latched onto the origami prototype, but discouraged my cut-outs. The work felt exciting, but without my mentor's approval, I grew dejected. We had one week left to finish our projects before the exhibition.

On Monday morning, I took a walk to Tempelhof Field, sitting in one of the community gardens to stress-out to my journal. I still felt stuck, but I walked to a new path amongst a grove of yellow-leafed trees. It was here, suddenly, that I recognized I had something. When I arrived in the studio, I constructed two remaining pairs of inflated paper-orbs. The first, with the knots, will represent the cancer invading; the second, at a larger size, will represent the breast implants; and the third, shown with red silk paper, will represent the final stage when the foreign breasts become aligned with her body.

~~~~~

Three pairs of paper orbs hung from the ceiling. In this room, Jasmine has pulled all-nighters to construct her powerful body of work with poetry, mirror fragments, and dance captured on video. Gwen’s paintings were layered with transcriptions of reflections on grief, and Linda sewed fabric in Victorian mourning colors over paving stones, emblematic of feeling like a stranger in a strange land. Sara’s installation covered the room with hospital visitor passes, recreating an experience she faced as a teenager when she lost her best friend. Sarah has a collection of satirical, solemn ruminations. At ten to six, we were still installing the show, and Aleksandar locked out potential guests. I ran over to the cafè for a bundle of sandwiches to save us. When I return, I’m able to take in the show as if I was a guest to the process. Are we processing a collective grief, or are we still locked in our own worlds?

~~~~~~

The residents and I go our separate ways shortly after the exhibition. I tried to hawk my bicycle by Hermannplatz station, but at the Canal I met Tash, who sold polymer-clay jewelry depicting vulvas. She was delightful to be around, taking pride and joy in her work with a loud belly laugh. Presently, her friends Jen and Ezra arrived. Ezra shares his sack of unshelled walnuts from the Turkish farmer’s market. Try as I might, I only crack one or two by the next morning. Jen realizes she needs a bike, and we arrange to meet at the gallery that weekend for the trade-off. I'm relieved, inspired, and happy to meet these lovely people.

I took the S-bahn to see Annika one last time. Over tea and cappuccino, I shared photos from the exhibition, which she missed because her friends threw her an end-of-radiation party. This is wonderful news, and Annika was as radiant as ever. She left me a good deal of wisdom for the subject matter I chose to study: “Grief is a thing inside of you. It doesn’t leave, but you find a place for it until you heal”.

When I walked back to Neukölln, I ran into the origami master by the Canal. He gave me a warm hug and mentioned he's flying to Mexico for the winter--migrating like the colorful parrots he folds. Presently, Ezra arrives for an origami lesson. While the master was called away, I sat down on the bench and taught Ezra what Daniel taught me. I made him a tiny blue crane, and he gave me his tiny red dragon in thanks.

"We're good friends already," Ezra remarked.

"It's called kinship,” I respond. “Relating to people who you feel warm about, like your family, your ‘kin’. Will I find people like you guys when I return home?"

"Wherever there are similar vibrations that you feel initially, you'll find them again."

~~~~~~

As I prepared my suitcase that night, I saw some horrifying news reach my inbox. Back in the States, a mass murder has just been committed at a Pittsburg synagogue. The shooter killed eleven senior citizens and wounded six Jewish congregants. I lowered myself onto the kitchen couch, and called everyone I knew from Pennsylvania; no one answered, but I called my brother in San Francisco. He heard the news, but sounds calm. Reaching my “kin” was reasurring in that heartbreaking time.

The next morning, I awoke early to make the connecting flight to France. I took in the boulevards of Paris from a chilly city park, with an endless parade of joggers in tight sportswear. I felt very different here, and I don’t speak the language--but I did know the language of bus transfers, and I rode a crowded shuttle back to the airport. When I reached San Francisco thirteen hours later, my father and brother were there to take me home. Looking out the window at the night, everything seemed familiar, yet I have already changed so much. My roots are strong, and the wanderlust has begun.

Talia Frank lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She contributes to the Donut Club, an East Bay writer’s group. Visiting Berlin in 2018 inspired a love of community gardens and allowed her to re-examine Judiasm within a global context.

Reach the author: [email protected]

Visual art: www.cargocollective.com/taliafrank

Blog: https://wanderlustblumen.wordpress.com

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gaybombparadise · 5 years

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notes on what follows

The idea for this speculative archive began with Paul B. Preciado’s, Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era (New York, NY: Feminist Press CUNY, 2011): with a short, paragraph-length story that seemed to catch its barbs on me, in a book replete with the looped and looping history of pharmaceuticals (including their means of production and testing, as well as application), the technologically mediated (often contradictory) productions of gender, and some rather steamy erotica. This speculation begins with a (supposedly) defunct plan of the US military to develop a non lethal chemical weapon, now colloquially known as the “gay bomb,” which would turn its victims—is that the right word?—targets, perhaps, gay. As I understand the intended effect of this proposed weapon, upon exposure to the released pheromone fumes, the enemy army would become so intoxicated with one another—would be so filled with lustiness for their band of brothers—that they would suddenly lay down their weapons and pick up another…

My intent was to start there, with the explosion of this so-called gay bomb, and then to speculate an out-of-control, queer future in the aftermath of its nuclear explosions; and to some extent that is what I wrote—what is below compiled. But, to a significant measure, this blog never arrives at speculating on the potential queer worlds that might cohere in the chaos that follows the destruction of this heterosexist world. In researching the political and social climate in which this bomb was first proposed, I found myself being led here and there, astray from my intended goal—which is perhaps a rather queer deviation, if we follow Sara Ahmed and think queer as an orientation. “People deviate from the paths they are supposed to follow”—even, sometimes, the paths we mark out for ourselves—writes Ahmed, but “deviation leaves its own marks on the ground, which can even help generate alternative lines, which cross the ground in unexpected ways” (Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others [Durham, NC: Duke, 2006], 20).

I found that I was interested in what was going on around the time that the bomb was proposed (including, an emerging feud between military officials and the government executive; the very present crisis of the AIDS epidemic; and a delicious mix of music, literature, and film). And so, instead of speculating on what a queer world might look, smell, feel, taste, and touch—because the world touches back!—like, I found myself stringing together a rather patchy archive. I, as its author, strayed here and there, forwards and backwards in time, gathering (apparently) necessary elements from a decidedly anti-chronological digital and sumptuously perverse—and FUN!—archive. [1]

So, here is what I want to say about this project’s relation to “Dude, where’s my body?”: while Preciado may have been a thorny beginning, Alexis Pauline Gumbs’, M Archive: After the End of the World (Durham, NC: Duke, 2018) gave form and shape to this project. I wanted to think about the archive as a genre with its own specific conventions. Because, what else is an archive other than a collection, a corpus, or a body of things that matter?

In Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), Jacques Derrida charts the etymological connections of “archive” to the Greek arkheion, as the residence of the magistrates, the archons, the ones who commanded:

The citizens who thus held and signified political power were considered to possess the right to make or to represent the law. On account of their publicly recognized authority, it is at their home, in that place which is their house . . . that official documents are filed. The archons are first of all the documents' guardians. They do not only ensure the physical security of what is deposited . . . They [also] have the power to interpret the archives (2).

For Derrida, then, it’s important that the archive is understood as connected to ones who hold power, who command, as well as that the archive is situated in a place. This makes explicit that the archive is not a neutral entity, but is instead shaped by politically-inflected collecting practices, institutional and directorial values, the confines of material spaces, or meagre limits of city budgets (for institutions like libraries, for example) as well as the political, social, and world-making motivations of those who are charged with or take up the responsibility of interpreting. Gumbs’ archive, I think, not only challenges the power given to the interpreters of a history of the West as a history of the world, but says, too, that the gathering together of objects (including histories, violences, intimacies, as well as places, occasions, peoples, and their situated practices and doings) is profoundly political.

As a body of things that matter, I mean to say that an archive hums with the interests, pains, pleasures, thinkings, and laughters of another’s body—the one doing the gathering, doing the weaving (to use Gumbs’ word). And, this is what this speculative archive, “after the gay bomb,” also is: it’s at once a collection of things that I found doing the thing we call “research”—which might simply be another word for that desire (or motivation) which causes each of us to walk down one aisle of books and not the next, or to follow one series of Wikipedia links rather than another. But, it’s also a collection of references (movie clips and quotations from favourite books and poems) that matter to me. In other words, I follow Jack Halberstam’s methodology in The Queer Art of Failure (Durham, NC: Duke, 2011) by grafting “high” to “low” theories, across a range of (maybe silly) references, to create something that doesn’t necessarily succeed in doing what it set out to accomplish. There is no queer utopia at the end of this archive.

But, I take that absence at the end, the “not there,” as another way to read this archive as an unfolding of a (present?) queer utopia already here... What I mean to say is that by not arriving, by deflecting or detouring, I’m left with the possibility of what might already be around in this mess of things. I’m left with the possibilities of turning a page over and upside down, to read the words backwards and in reflection so as to see what’s here, hiding. And, this is the charge (I think) that Gumbs leaves us with: to see things anew and in that fleeting moment, in, what Michelle Murphy calls “alterlife” (“What Can’t a Body Do?,” 2017), to grab hold and imagine other worlds into being. Because those moments are openings into something different.

What I find so energizing about Murphy’s conceptualization of “alterlife” is the way in which the concept catches you up, brings you in. Because definitionally, the alter of altered life (damaged life) shares meaning with the alter of alterity (or difference) and the alter of alternative worlds. One of the most challenging aspects of “imagining otherwise” is doing just that, imagining otherwise. How do we do it? What does it look, feel, taste, smell, touch like? But, when I think about the connections across alter (when I think about everything as already damaged), it becomes less difficult (but maybe that’s the wrong word again). Anyway, I can feel the concept in my body when I think about it as tripping when you’re running. Sometimes, if I’m feeling really good and I come to the top of a hill, I’ll run down and let my legs spin out below me—running faster than my brain wants but letting my legs do the thinking-doing. If suddenly I trip, almost wipe out, but recover I find myself caught up now in a pace that seems impossible: I’m still, to riff off Kate Bush, “running [down] that hill,” I’m still in my body, but everything is different, faster, wilder. And that’s the moment, the chance to grab onto something different (and maybe, if just for a moment) to bring it into being. It’s what Dionne Brand might call, “another place, not here” (Toronto, ON: Vintage, 1996).

Gumbs’ archive weaves new worlds into being in the aftermath of “this” one, repurposing (détourning) the scraps of western intellectual traditions and their systems of ordering into something else, less violent (Brand, again). The periodic table of elements, without archons to give and assign meaning, instead, becomes the strands that might weave together other possible futures. And, by holding on to the table, not for the table itself, but because the table exists, Gumbs’ does two things. Firstly, she insists on, what Donna Haraway calls, “staying with the trouble,” by attending to the artifacts of human life, including their/our legacies of ruin, and their/our agencies of care, while staying attuned to the possibility of somehow getting on together in a multispecies world (Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, [Durham, NC: Duke, 2016]). [2]

Secondly, and here’s what I’m really interested in, Gumbs makes-possible interventions into “the Archive” as a collection of objects, values, practices that can be contested and reworked. This is not dissimilar to what some call “queering the archive,” but I think her aim (and mine in "after the gay bomb”) is to do something slightly different than identify instances of queer life. I want to listen to and tell other stories that unravel the violent frameworks that we’ve inherited. And I want to make interventions into the archive not so that those who were overlooked or excluded suddenly come into focus, but so that the very terms of reference which assigned value within such a genre are, themselves, rewoven. Because, if we can weave the very conventions of this common world into something else, some other kind of basket, then we might find that the things we put into that basket (including “us”) change, too.

Endnotes

1. If there is an ordering to this archive, it is in the speculated months that follow the dropping of the bomb. But, even those are composed of elements from the “real world” that are given new times and thus new meanings.

2. Elsewhere, I have written on compost as a world-making practice of “staying with the trouble,” see Mathew Arthur and Reuben Jentink, “Composting Settler Nationalisms,” Capacious, 2018.

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