Issue 06
/
From academia to ice swimming, from the city to the bush, come with us! Let’s head down the river to the sea and to the islands beyond. Whether surf fishing, grappling with the impact of lockdown or addressing racism in environmental movements, our contributors offer glimpses into their own moments and ongoing projects of connecting with outdoor spaces and places. The story of Issue 06 grows out of the interplays of internal/external, anticipation/reality, history/present, between what we want and what we feel able or allowed to do. Together, the pieces describe ways of moving towards being present in the outdoors.
If you enjoy Queer Out Here, please consider:
Sharing it with other folks you think might be interested
Letting us know (on Twitter, Facebook or by email) and letting our contributors know (find links to socials in the show notes)
Signing up to our (infrequent) newsletter
Leaving a smashing review on your Podcast app of choice
Or, you know, just keep listening!
Information about Issue 06
Length: 1:25:26
Transcript: Google Docs / PDF
High quality audio version: Google Drive (.wav file 1.26GB)
Content notes: The pieces in Queer Out Here talk about many things related to being queer and the outdoors. This issue contains: non-graphic references to racism and racist violence; non-graphic references to queerphobic, transphobic, transmisogynist violence; discussions of mental health issues including depression; swearing; wind distortion in a few pieces (Skye’s and Jade’s pieces in particular); mentions of unhappy relationships; discussion of fishing (no mention of animal harm); a colloquialism that has ableist connotations (“drives me insane”); a non-graphic reference to vomit (“threw up in my mouth”). If you have specific anxieties or triggers, check the transcript (linked above) or ask a trusted friend to listen and give you feedback. If there is something else you feel we should mention here, please let us know.
Running order:
So Much For - Berrak Nil Boya
Surf Fishing, Soul Searching Journey - Moxy
Lockdown Litter Picking - Mags
Excerpt from Breaking Green Ceilings - Isaias Hernandez and Sapna Mulki
Field Recordings - Emily
Back on Country - Skye Stewart
GEILT (a number of ways) - Rufus Isabel Elliot
My Science Journey: Black Botanist Week - Itumeleng Moroenyane
Thou Shalt Not Compare Queer People To Insects - Connor Butler
How Are You? - Jade Mutyora
The Stick - Martha Casey and Jonathan
Sounds of Ice Swimming - Corrie
Desire Lines - Ariana Martinez
Cover art: Our cover art is a piece titled “Self Portrait with Reflective Landscape” by Melbourne-based AI artist and researcher J Rosenbaum. J works with 3D modeling, artificial intelligence and extended reality technologies, exploring posthuman and postgender concepts using classical art combined with new media techniques and programming. J says:
This work is a collaborative piece drawn with a landscape producing AI. I drew a self portrait and the neural network rendered my sketch in with the landscape format in baroque styles. It weaves the lines in with what it understands of landscape elements to integrate the two. As a landscape AI it is not trained to handle faces, so the facial elements become tree-like, part of the sky, a reflection in the water. I walk a lot, my primary physical therapy is walking and I walk around parks and nature reserves as much as possible. This work shows some of the elements of my favourite park, with trees and a lake and observation points. It feels like part of me. A world where I can breathe and be part of nature, I can disconnect and recharge. Working with those elements in AI gives me a moment of calm in a world of chaos. AI is difficult to control, like nature you have to work with it, not against it.
J is a PhD candidate at RMIT University in Melbourne at the School of Art Computer Perceptions of Gender and the nature of AI generated art and the human hands behind the processes that engender bias, especially towards gender minorities. Their artwork highlights this bias through programmatic interactive artworks and traditional gallery displays. They speak at conferences worldwide about the use of artificial intelligence in art and have exhibited all over the world. J’s artwork has been supported by the City of Melbourne Covid-19 Arts Grants and has won the Midsumma Australia Post Art Prize.
Find J online at their website, on Instagram, on Facebook and on Twitter.
Show notes for Issue 06
Opener - all contributors
0:00:00
Short description: A mix of snippets from the pieces to follow
Introduction - Jonathan and Allysse
0:00:40
Short description: Welcome, thank yous and housekeeping with Allysse (she) and Jonathan (he/they). The sound of gentle waves raking over stones plays in the background.
Sweeper - Gears for Queers
0:03:30
So Much For - Berrak Nil Boya
0:04:11
Short description: Field recording, monologue. A internal monologue about anxiety, heartbreak and resentment, with a kayaking daytrip on the background.
Creator bio: Berrak Nil Boya (she) is a multi-disciplinary audio artist and a programmer based in Berlin. Her work consists of several different mediums, including but not limited to, sound design and composition, web-based generative/reactive art works, audio-reactive real-time visuals and narrative video games. With a formal education in music and more than a decade of experience in programming, she focuses on areas that enable her to merge her passion for technology and art. Capturing visual snapshots of acoustic properties of sound and the functional use cases for augmented reality are some of the current topics of her artistic research. As a former educator with more than a decade of experience, she puts emphasis on creating experiences that are easily accessible and navigable by newcomers to that specific genre or style of work.
Creator statement: The field recordings that build the foundation of “So Much For” were made on a kayaking daytrip to Brandenburg from Berlin, in September 2020, between two lockdowns. It was a spontaneous trip aimed at creating some sense of adventure and novelty, to help me escape from the city where I braved the first wave of the pandemic, only two months after moving there. And to also help ease my mind about a recent heartbreak and the ongoing process of stagnated healing, due to being talked into a friendship with the person who broke my heart in the first place. The internal monologue is recorded in one take and then layered in a way to imitate how I usually think, or at least how I think about my own thinking process. As someone who recently learned that some people think in other ways than “internal monologuing”, I decided to share what my brain sounds like to me while I am seemingly just going about my day.
Content note: Unhappy relationship/heartbreak.
Surf Fishing, Soul Searching Journey - Moxy
0:07:30
Short description: Moxy (he) talks about his experience surf fishing and how it helped restore faith in himself.
Creator bio: Moxy is a Trans Black personal trainer, musician, and van dweller! He enjoys traveling the Pacific North West in his van with his partner and fur babies. His goal is to help diversify the outdoors by empowering other Queer POC to go out and explore the outdoors.
Creator link: Instagram
Acknowledgement: Coast Salish, Including the Duwamish People.
Content note: Non-graphic references to racism and racist violence. Mention of mental health struggles.
Lockdown Litter Picking - Mags
0:13:37
Short description: Monologue, field recording. Dual purpose walks - wellbeing and cleaning up the environment.
Creator bio: Mags (she) resides in Northumberland and works for an educational charity.
Creator link: Blog
Creator statement: This recording was made during one of my regular walk in the local area. The walk took me along the edge of a housing estate and into an industrial park with the return walk taking me along the main road back to my home. It was a lovely sunny spring like afternoon with glorious blue skies. My walk of 6.64km took me 1.5 hours.
Content note: Mentions a funeral.
Sweeper - Travis Clough
0:18:37
Excerpt from Breaking Green Ceilings - Isaias Hernandez and Sapna Mulki
0:19:44
Short description: Interview. Excerpt from an interview with Isaias Hernandez on the Breaking Green Ceilings podcast - Episode 11: Making Space for Queer People of Color in the Environmental Movement. Find the full episode here.
Creator bio: Isaias Hernandez (he/they) is an Environmental Educator and creator of QueerBrownVegan where he creates introductory forms of environmentalism through colorful graphics, illustrations, and videos. He seeks to provide a safe space for like-minded environmentalists to advance the discourse around the climate crisis.
Creator bio: Sapna Mulki (she) is an expert in water education and policy, principal at Water Savvy Solutions and host of the podcast Breaking Green Ceilings. The podcast is a weekly interview series that amplifies the voices of environmentalists from historically underrepresented communities including Disabled, Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Color and our Accomplices.
Acknowledgements: The music (drawn from Breaking Green Ceilings) is "Lost Souls Music” by David Buco and Julian Virag.
Content note: Non-graphic references to racism and classism.
Sweeper - Dan
0:30:31
Field Recordings - Emily
0:33:12
Short description: Field recording. A layering of experiences in the bush and in the city.
Creator bio: Emily (she) spent her childhood roaming tea-tree forests in central Victoria, catching yabbies and getting gumboots stuck in clay mud. These days she's a conservationist-in-training, living in Melbourne and escaping on the weekends for epic hikes in the bush.
Creator statement: This piece represents almost every time in the last three years of I have paused with my ears perked up and felt driven to press record. Sometimes the sounds of birds, insects and amphibians have put on performances just as I'd hoped. Other times, recordings were interrupted by human voices, vehicles or wind. Overall, the piece reflects the accumulation of these moments that form my impressions of--and personal connections to--the wild creatures we share these spaces with.
Acknowledgements: I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I made these recordings. These include the Wurundjeri, Barengi Gadjin, Gunditj Mirring, Eastern Maar, Taungurung, Wadawurrung, Dja Dja Wurrung, Yorta Yorta, and Tasmanian First Nations people. I pay my respects to their elders - past, present and emerging. Their land was never ceded.
Back on Country - Skye Stewart
0:38:53
Short description: Monologue. Heartfelt musings on what it means to be a Queer Aboriginal non binary person who is connected to Country, culture and the world around them.
Creator bio: Skye (they) is a proud and Queer Wergaia and Wemba Wemba woman. They were born on Country and have been connected to their culture through their Mum, Nan, cousins and of course, the land. As a midwife, a student hot air balloon pilot, a transpersonal art therapist and a senior project leader of an entire states maternity service, Skyes life is embedded in connection, holding, advocacy and healing. Adventure and curiosity see Skye exploring the world around them. Appreciating the small details about the giant world around them enables Skye to gain perspective and understanding about their own identity and their place in the world.
Creator link: Instagram
Creator statement: I'm moving back to the Mallee after 20 years being away from it, being in the city. Even though I always visited back home, I have the call now to return. I was sitting on my back porch and you can hear the wind blowing between the trees. The sun was setting and it was beautiful. The Mallee is flat, so the sky is huge and the sunsets are magnificent. I didn't prepare anything, I just spoke from the heart once I pressed record. I acknowledge my Nan and my Mum, two people who helped shape who I am today.
Content note: Wind distortion.
GEILT (a number of ways) - Rufus Isabel Elliot
0:43:49
Short description: Music, field recording. A series of short, abstracted pieces performed by string instruments with a background of bleating sheep.
Creator bio: Rufus Isabel Elliot (it) is a trans composer and musician, based in Port Henderson in the North West Highlands of Scotland. Its work is concerned with honesty, giving testimony, and the conditions in which one can speak out. Rufus has been lucky, in the course of the last couple of years, to work with the likes of Magnetic North, Red Note Ensemble, Lammermuir Festival, The Night With, and many others. Its work is highly collaborative, and it loves to learn from the people it works with. Making a new piece involves learning everything possible about it, and new collaborations and working relationships leave a permanent mark on its practice. Rufus also produce a trans, non-binary, and gender-minority music-making ‘world’ called OVER / AT, which includes new commissions, recording projects, workshops, and touring projects, all by/with/for the Folk. Its aim is to reimagine the trans voice, whether singing, speaking, or howling.
Creator link: Website
Creator statement: ‘Geilt’ is an Early Gaelic word used to refer to the character Sweeney, and other wanderers and outsiders. Sweeney, the cursed king of Dál Araide, experiencing PTSD-like symptoms following a battle, transforms into a bird or a bird-like creature, and flits around the wilds of Ireland as an outcast, telling in verse of the places he drifts through. GEILT is a collection of tunes made for some special places, places which, when I lived in them, brought with them an ephemeral life of moving on. It calls out to both the lived intimacy of the place, and its abstract brutality – of being rooted, and of being astray. The piece has been seen as being 'about' hitchhiking, the frantic, start-stop journeys that we made around the North West, in blazing sunshine and love. For clarity, the actual hitchhiking was:
a Freudian repetition
a game of tag with Death himself
a seduction technique
an escape attempt
a practical way of getting to and from work
not always fun
also, at times, not really hitchhiking
In this version, recorded on The Street, in the remote St Kilda archipelago, you will hear wild Soay sheep, the wind battering your ears, and musical evocations of feral places. This was something I used to help introduce the piece to players (Google Doc).
Acknowledgement: The Nevis Ensemble
Sweeper - Gabriel
0:47:31
My Science Journey: Black Botanist Week - Itumeleng Moroenyane
0:48:58
Short description: Monologue. A talk given as part of the “Bodies” event organised by Broad Science in partnership with Confabulation. Find the full piece here.
Creator bio: Itumeleng Moroenyane (he) is a plant biologist focusing on how interactions between microbes and their plant host are acted upon by evolutionary processes. Itumeleng has a firm background and deep understanding of Mediterranean ecosystems and ecological theory. Itumeleng’s current work focuses on understanding which assembly processes are delimiting the plant microbiome, as well as the evolutionary history of niche shifts and stability. This work will contribute to our understanding of how plant microbiomes are assembled and maintained, and more importantly, offer a new perspective on the hologenome theory of evolution. Itumeleng is also passionate about science communication and contribute to online discussions regarding advances and challenges in microbiome research. Itumeleng is an openly gay South African. As part of a growing network of Black scholars, Itumeleng assists in building students and community capacity in science. Itumeleng is passionate about science communication and contributes to online discussions regarding advances and challenges in plant microbiome research
Creator links: Itumeleng: Twitter / Website - Broad Science: Website - Confabulation: Facebook
Acknowledgements: Thank you very much to Itumeleng and Broad Science (particularly Rackeb Tesfaye) for allowing us to edit and play this piece as part of this issue. Thanks also to Broad Science and Confabulation for organising the event at which Itumeleng spoke.
Content note: Non graphic references to racism and apartheid in South Africa.
Thou Shalt Not Compare Queer People To Insects - Connor Butler
1:00:30
Short description: Monologue. Butterflies, a volcano and coming out.
Creator bio: Connor (he) is an Ecologist researching the impact of environmental change on the amphibians and insects of our planet’s tropical rainforests.
Creator statement: As an Ecologist, I spend my time studying the fluctuations and cycles within the natural world. Change is an inherent part of being, but the active choice to make a change can be a difficult one. This piece is about butterflies, a volcano, and how I came out to my parents. It includes field recordings of my garden in Oxford, England. As well as recordings from the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia.
Sweeper - Richard
1:07:25
How Are You? - Jade Mutyora
1:08:39
Short description: Poetry. A poem about the mood-altering power of outdoors.
Creator bio: Jade Mutyora (she) is a writer of British and Zimbabwean descent based in Yorkshire. She is currently working on novels for children and young people and writes short fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry when she wants to procrastinate. Her work appears in Fourteen Poems, Juno, Untitled:Voices, Ang(st), Ghostheart Literary Journal, Forever Endeavour and The Selkie. She was awarded 1st prize in the Nottingham Writers Studio George Floyd short story competition. She is represented by Abi Fellows at The Good Literary Agency.
Creator statement: I wrote this for my partner, who dragged me out to go for a walk while I was stuck in bed, paralysed by depression, knowing that being outside is important for my mental health but unable to take that first step on my own.
Acknowledgment: Liz Chadwick Pywell
Content note: References to mental health struggle (experience of depression). Some wind distortion.
The Stick - Martha Casey and Jonathan
1:10:03
Short description: Sound art. Martha re-learns how to walk and explores her neighbourhood while recovering from spinal surgery.
Creator bio: Martha Casey (she) is a Jill of all trades and mistress of none. She lives in Brighton with two cats and no husbands
Creator link: Instagram
Creator bio: Jonathan (he/they) enjoys being outside, eating, stickybeaking and creating. He is one of the editors of Queer Out Here.
Creator statement: Martha always walked as a matter of course, sometimes even regarding it as a chore when commuting, covering the same ground again and again. But at the end of 2020, she sustained an injury to her lower back, and pain shrunk her world until she could barely get from her bedroom to the kitchen. She was rushed to hospital and underwent emergency surgery. As Martha’s recovery has progressed, she has rediscovered the pain and the joy of being on her feet, like a toddler, stumbling and out of sync. As her world began to expand again - from the house, to a bench less than 100m away, to the end of the housing estate and beyond - Martha recorded her thoughts, finding a new novelty in the sight of brick buildings and the seagulls that lurk by the bins. Jonathan edited Martha’s recordings to echo the progression of her movements post-surgery. It starts with uncertainty and hesitation then graduates to longer phrases as Martha is able to move more freely. The music, based on the rhythms of Martha’s voice, supports this growing sense of physical ease. The piece builds up a portrait of Martha’s experience of her body and neighbourhood.
Content note: Swearing.
Sounds of Ice Swimming - Corrie
1:16:09
Short description: Field recording, monologue. Come on a journey through ice and water...
Creator bio: Corrie (she) is a mum, wife, swimmer and doctor in the North of England. Along with 27 other northern swimmers she swam every day in January to raise money for the homeless charity, Crisis.
Creator statement: With the coldest winter in years came the opportunity to break ice to swim. Swimming in the wild is always a multidimensional experience but the ice added to the experience further, with unique sounds, light and sensations.
Acknowledgement: The January Daily Dippers for their support with swimming every day in January.
Desire Lines - Ariana Martinez
1:20:22
Short description: Sound art, poetry, field recording. A poetic journey through stages of desire - for oneself, for lovers, & for the natural world.
Creator bio: Ariana Martinez is a multimedia artist based in New York City. Their creative work spans images, objects, and audio documentary—responding to the ways geography, space, and place affect individual and collective experience. Ariana has produced radio features for BBC Radio 4's Short Cuts, BBC Radio 3's the Essay, and was the sound designer for Brain on Nature, a 6-part audio documentary series created with Australian producers, Sarah Allely and Olivia Rosenman. Ariana’s work has been featured at the LUCIA Festival in Florence, Italy; the HearSay Festival in Kilfinane, Ireland; and the Third Coast Conference in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Ariana dreams of endless mountain ranges and hybrid art forms that have no name.
Creator statement: Grounded both literally and figuratively in the natural world, Desire Lines explores the slow-build of desire and the unique, multi-layered sensory and sensual pleasure that only comes to our bodies when we are outdoors. Embedded in this piece are field recordings I collected myself in August of 2019 in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of Minnesota (USA), as well as found sound collected by others. I wrote the poem that forms the anchor of this work in the following winter - that summer's journey returning to me as a flood of warm longing. As a city-dweller, I'm preoccupied with the kind of loneliness and detachment from the natural world we experience, and how the desire to be back out in nature is as strong as the desire for human companionship and love. This poem reads as if it calls to a lover because it does - even if the recipient of that love is ambiguous, be it a landscape or person, or the experience of being bodies in a landscape.
Conclusion - Allysse and Jonathan
1:22:25
Short description: Concluding comments and thanks. Sounds of snow, dripping trees, wind and water play beneath the voices, fading out at the end.