Abstract:
Queer subjectivity is varied, inexhaustible and mutable. At the outset of this project I was of the mind that there are as many queer art practices and subjectivities as there are people. However, I no longer believe this to be exactly true. Over time and as a result of myriad factors, subjectivity can change and transmute into infinite forms, none of which belong completely to singular individuals (Baker, 06). I would alter my previous notion by adding that subjectivity, as with gender and other categories of identity, exists in the realm of discourse, and can be produced through forms of creative expression (Baker, 19). When viewed, read, or experienced in whatever way is appropriate to the form of address, this expression can affect audiences in such a way that it can incite new ways of seeing the world, and through this, other ways of being. This process of self-making is especially important for queer people who are marginalised by heteronormative configurations of gender and sexuality (Escalante, par. 4). However, it is this decentred position which grants queer people agency to explore identity and subjectivity at its most flexible capacity (Halberstam, 89). The political value of this understanding of identity is that it helps to dissolve borders. When we understand our ‘selves’ to be mutable and unfixed to discursive strongholds, such as gender and sexuality, we become more present to ourselves and to others; we come to inhabit weaker, or rather, less rigid identities as individuals, but we become stronger as communities (Butler, 150). I began this project intending to produce a suite of photographic installations which would reflect a queer ecological sensibility (Mortimer-Sandilands, 03). This led me on a research-course which focussed on queer theory and the ways it can be deployed in the world, especially in art practice. From this I became cognisant of how it is not only subjectivity which produces artwork, but artwork which produces subjectivity. I found that creative writing was the most useful process for negotiating this dynamic, and it became a central part of my practice. In the interest of articulating a ‘self’ which could be helpful in producing alternative queer subjectivities, I began writing about personal experiences which came about or were influenced by my being queer. Due to this shift in my practice, adaptations emerged in my use of photography. The challenge became to consider how photography and writing could sit alongside one another in such a way that they wouldn’t negate each other, or function as illustrations or descriptions of one another. My strategy was to consider how best to use each medium in a way that would individually hold a viewer in my subjectivity. This became the driving methodology of the late stages of the project; sink, lock, hold the viewer in something; a forcefield (Stewart, 452). To do this I found I needed to simplify my photographic installations, to distil their affects. The continual engagement with a queer ecological sensibility was central to this methodology, as it helped me to perceive the ways subjects/images can resonate with ideas and atmospheres that are not immediately obvious, or connected. This writing will introduce and analyse the various sources which informed my project along the way and which helped me to answer my research question: How can queer subjectivity, shown through a lens and text-based investigation of space, produce new and alternative ways of being in the world, and what political or sensory value is there to be yielded from the resulting research outputs? It will also include excerpts from the short stories I have written as part of my studio practice. I have placed these snippets of creative writing in areas of this text where I think there is a conceptual overlap between the theory/artists discussed and my practice-based research.