Consumer / Producer Relationships in Queer Cultural Ecology
David Namhon Kim, Lee Pivnik, and Greta Skagerlind for The Institute of Queer Ecology.
Installation Views in 'DANGEROUS TOGETHER' a group show at Prairie
June 23 - July 30, 2017
Wheatgrass, Soil, Transparent Iron On Image Transfers, Embroidery Floss, Wood frame
2017
Typically unseen, our roots give rise to emotional and creative labor. They are where/how queers work, organize, rally, instigate, subvert, nourish, map, infiltrate, create. They are underfoot at all times.
Our roots aggregate into the rhizomatic network that originates creative capital exploited by the megafauna of the sociological food chain. These most privileged (straight/cis/white/male) apex predators ultimately trace their sustenance back to the grassroots modes of production of queer microflora and marginalized microfauna. Their empires are built with/upon the raw materials (photo)synthesized by us.
Through the cultivation and presentation of our roots, we draw connections between sociological and ecological hierarchies, food chains, and privileges. We produce although our efforts are consumed by the white supremacist heteronormative patriarchy. We produce because we must. We (re)produce. Our invisible labor is indispensable: without us, ecologies and economies collapse. Queers are the krill that feed the blue whale, the prairie that sustains the bison, the mycorrhizae that nourish the redwoods. We are a vast unseen network producing beauty and breathable air, clinging to dirt and each other for life.
— The Institute of Queer Ecology
