Starry Earth Bodies: Queer Resistencía Terrenal
Ongoing Project
Film, Performance, Poetry, Research, Textile
Starry Earth Bodies is a feature-length film, in progress, connected to my PhD in visual Anthropology located at Goldsmiths, University of London, currently titled, Queer Worlding: Exploring Practices of Co-creation in Queer and Trans Eco-Communities in Rural Spain and Portugal. Read more about my PhD here. Starry Earth Bodies proposes to combine documentary and ethnographic approaches to filmmaking with a queer, transfeminist, and decolonial framework, to capture the what is, or what is already taking place in the queer and trans eco-communities I have been working with, with the what could be. For the what could be, I am creating a collection of costumes, weaving textiles using primarily using both raw wool that I am handwashing and hand-dying along with processed plant and animal fibers, found organic materials (ie; wood, stones, plants, fungi, kombucha scoby, and found feathers and bone) and rope, fabric, chain, chicken wire, and bells, and creating sculptures and an installation called Queer Resistencía Terrenal.
Costume Fabrication + Fittings Documentation:
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The intention here was to develop a collection of biodegradable, recycled, and/or recyclable costume pieces, to be worn by queer and trans performers for the speculatively fabulated scenes of the film. Through practices of worlding/SF, poetry, scriptwriting, weaving, costume-making, film, and performance, Starry Earth Bodies aims to illuminate a multiplicity of queer and trans eco-worlds that are, could have been, and could or will be.
This project considers the importance of visibilizing and celebrating queer and trans people’s existence, coming together, and co-creating community and projects in rural spaces, especially as an alternative to the urban as a point of meeting, gathering, and connecting. Additionally, the film asks questions about how to return to one’s own ancestral knowledges and roots by both bloodline and kinship kind (queer and trans ancestors); it asks us to consider the relationships our ancestors had with working with the land and their contact with the more-than-human-world. In this project, I aim to acknowledge the knowledge, labor, histories, lands, and stories of indigenous and marginalized people, whose voices have only very recently and very sparingly begun to be illuminated, yet remain people and communities who have been historically invisibilized, silenced, erased, violated, attacked, made homeless, and killed. Therefore, the film uses language like future-past-present as a way of thinking through the need to go both backwards (towards ways of living and being with the more-than-human-realms of our ancestral kin/oddkin) as well as forwards, simultaneously. Poetic writings and materials like raw wool with highly processed and brightly colored, dyed wool and synthetic fabric have formed the basis of my current language to describe this backwards-forwards movement in queer time/space.
The week of December 1st 2023, the SF filming and performances began. For one week, 8 queer and trans performers came together at the artist residency, Can Serrat, to produce several co-imagined, speculatively fabulated scenes, while wearing the costumes in Montserrat national park.
Costume Fabrication + Fittings Documentation:
The intention here was to develop a collection of biodegradable, recycled, and/or recyclable costume pieces, to be worn by queer and trans performers for the speculatively fabulated scenes of the film. Through practices of worlding/SF, poetry, scriptwriting, weaving, costume-making, film, and performance, Starry Earth Bodies aims to illuminate a multiplicity of queer and trans eco-worlds that are, could have been, and could or will be.
This project considers the importance of visibilizing and celebrating queer and trans people’s existence, coming together, and co-creating community and projects in rural spaces, especially as an alternative to the urban as a point of meeting, gathering, and connecting. Additionally, the film asks questions about how to return to one’s own ancestral knowledges and roots by both bloodline and kinship kind (queer and trans ancestors); it asks us to consider the relationships our ancestors had with working with the land and their contact with the more-than-human-world. In this project, I aim to acknowledge the knowledge, labor, histories, lands, and stories of indigenous and marginalized people, whose voices have only very recently and very sparingly begun to be illuminated, yet remain people and communities who have been historically invisibilized, silenced, erased, violated, attacked, made homeless, and killed. Therefore, the film uses language like future-past-present as a way of thinking through the need to go both backwards (towards ways of living and being with the more-than-human-realms of our ancestral kin/oddkin) as well as forwards, simultaneously. Poetic writings and materials like raw wool with highly processed and brightly colored, dyed wool and synthetic fabric have formed the basis of my current language to describe this backwards-forwards movement in queer time/space.
The week of December 1st 2023, the SF filming and performances began. For one week, 8 queer and trans performers came together at the artist residency, Can Serrat, to produce several co-imagined, speculatively fabulated scenes, while wearing the costumes in Montserrat national park.
This film will eventually also form part of an installation, which is currently in progress, called, Queer Resistencía Terrenal. This installation will be comprised of various elements including the film, Starry Earth Bodies, as well as sculptures, texts, costumes, and textiles. As a central aspect of the installation, I am working on creating a landscape of felt and wool mountains, which creates a map using imaginary and queer temporalities and spatialities that attempt to recount and illustrate some of my research experiences moving between and living within rural eco-queer and trans communities in the Iberian Peninsula. I am also working on other sculptural pieces, including a circular braid of multispecies fibers: more-than-human hair, humans, plants, and fungi. I am currently in the process of developing this installation and experimenting with different materials, felting, dyeing, sculpting, and weaving techniques. The intention is that the film, research, and installation serveas an exploration and a call toward other possibilities of living with more-than-human worlds and to learn how to express emotions such as rage, grief, and joy collectively, to arrive at processes of healing and contemplation that will lead to action.
Project News
This film is being edited. An installation called, Queer Resistencia Terrenal, comprised of sculptures, texts, costumes, textiles, and a soundtrack are also being produced as well, to house the film when it is completed. If you want to follow any updates please check back here or on instagram: @raesartworld.