Queer life has formed in the margins, often taking shape in hostile landscapes. While there have been moments of optimism and progress for the rights of queer communities, right now we need to grasp the gifts of our ancestors, gifts of defiance, joyous resistance, community power and rage.
Join us for the publication launch of WE WERE ALWAYS HERE, a pamphlet developed by artist Ailie Rutherford and writer Tam Omond during an artists’ residency at Forgan Arts Centre.
Tam and Ailie have been working together in search of queer ancestry, in the knowledge that queer lives have always existed throughout history and prehistory. Drawing on Ailie's participatory visual mapping methods, and printing techniques as a means to visualise kin and other(ed) networks and Tam's work creating constellations of chosen ancestry, queer rituals and temporary shrines to queer and trans ancestors, together they have created text, printed maps, somatic practices and meditative journeying as methodologies for unbounding our imaginations. Their work invites us to experience more freely pre-colonial histories, asking what queer feminist networks had existed before the witch-trials, imagining how Neolithic communities might have related to one another and what was co-existing before the white-cis-hetero-patriarchal order created hierarchies of power. Through imagining untold pasts they hope to open up space for different – otherwise - visions of our future.
We can't wait to share some of this work with you.
A ticket for this event costs £3 and includes the price of the publication, WE WERE ALWAYS HERE, which you can pick up on the night from the event. All money raised will be donated to Trans Harm Reduction.
Acknowledgements:
Our practice has been informed and inspired by the ecosexual work of Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens, Shaking The Habitual performances by The Knife and the writings of Judy Grahn, Audre Lourde, Lola Olufemi and Melissa K. Nelson.
Our meditations and exercises draw on queer and trans ritual making, which in turn have been developed from Indigenous and other non-white and non-western wisdom systems. During the AIDs crisis, erotic breath-work became a collective practice that allowed safe sexual connection, this was developed - often without acknowledgement from Tantra. There is complexity and history surrounding the queer communities' use and transmission of Indigenous and South Asian spiritual traditions. As stupid white people we acknowledge the debt we owe these cultures, we hope to fail differently from our ancestors.
Read more about our residency here.