In daily contemporary Archives it is possible to see a progressive approach that tries to avoid Muslim from Western terrain. In the meantime Nature is taking its revenge and invading the urban with its viruses in a hurry to survive. Queer is challenged with its own definition of being “non-identity marker” in the urban area and in its theories. Those progressive themes challenge the human being and a triptych they challenge themselves within. This research aims to give another look in the diverse Archives via Zooming-In/Out and challenge new Archives, which could function in non-binary ways.
Idea of Nature in its western terminology is totally exhausted likewise Nature itself. In European history of nature we do know the periods of Romanticism, which followed us till the contemporary times. (Morton. 2007: 84) Another aspect of Nature is seen in its antagonist character, where it was/is still opposed to culture or relatively to the urban. (Butler. 1993: 4) In that history it is possible to find archives in which the idea of State and Territory are being manifested. Through this manifestation, the idea of borders and maintaining those turned out to be a political contemporary fact. On the following events of Colonialism and Orientalism, the territory which had had a psychical discrepancy to the western world, has been also manifested as a place where the supposed Wildness and Savage are being existed, likewise in the idea of western Nature. It is still possible to experience these effects on daily lives. Many propositions, economic relations, identities, and futures are being built on the oppositions and the definitions of the Other to describe western-identity (Said, 2003: 1-2) and be holder to a knowledge which had been sealed and unlikely shared.
In one set of relations humans are seen on top of Nature, which has been named as Anthropocentrism. Yet, Queer ecology likewise the Queer positioning of in-between tries to resolve this understanding and its problems. Anthropocentrism causes a discrepancy to the Nature and creates an Other out of this. This discrepancy emerges with problems which are related to the destruction of existing ecologies. Queer Ecology sees the human as a part of the Nature or tries to embed Subject within to avoid the discrepancy and its emerging problems.
In the meantime, as a human eye capable of seeing things. Such an ability it manifests truth as the eye can do. The eye also cannot detect huge information that could be seen only with the act of magnifying. Interestingly, In the history of Islamic divination and sciences, there are also similar approaches that relate to seeing further. In some related Archives; Occultist practices are being used to see the Future and Nature events. (Savage-Smith. 2004: 13) In European history of Nature 18th century allowed the use of an Archive of Nature to order its objects/Subjects with giving names under a taxonomy. As Foucault puts, “Natural history is nothing more than the nomination of the visible” (Foucault,1994: 131,132). On the events of these scientific tools allowed to the eye seeing cells, bacteria and atoms and their particles. A Seeing is developed to create new Archives which could replace their former positions from unseen to visible.
Similar to those, Karen Barad also uses Zooming-in to unveil the ghost particles, namely the “Quarks”. In her model, she takes Niels Bohr’s contemplations on non-visible particles that swerves into vacuums. (Barad, 2012: 12-13) Similar movement is being mentioned in Sara Ahmed’s Wilfulness Archives. In one of her archives, Sara Ahmed uses the description by Lucretius. As Atoms and particles move on a straight course, it is possible to recognise some particles leaving their courses. In this swerving act, these particles are the ones who are Wilful to change their supposed destination. (Ahmed, 2014:10) Through this information it is possible to imagine that the Barad’s Vacuum is an organism which exists via transformation of wilful Archives. In other description Ahmed relates such Archives not to the Derridean “domicilations” which are being sheltered in closed “buildings”, instead of this for her a building or the Subject could be the part of these Archives. (Ahmed, 2014:13)
Islam or better said its believer Muslim is being progressively manifested as being opposed to scientific development, western thought, culture, or even the Queer. Surely, this is related with the lack of Archives, which has been not so popular in the societies where Islam is being practiced but also in their Others. These Archives are also being selectively used from researchers to avoid collisions with political agendas of their own State or society. In diverse evidence, it is possible to see if the existing Archives of Queers could be accepted and visibility might arrive. These Archives are also not just directly related to themes of gender and sexuality but they could be still Queer in other terms. Queer helps us not just to fill the gap with a knowledge, yet it tries to embed human to show hybrid, transformative openings like the vacuums. Another method is “Querness of things that are not Queer” that grasps itself as an approach which avoids to use Queer-Eye on not-Queer thing— “modalities, affairs, matters”—, instead it searches “new entities” of Queer. (Michaelis, Dietze, Haschemi Yekani. 2012: 186). Besides this, “Queer/ed Archived Methodology” by Jamie Ann Lee proposes also an alternative method with a principle: “keeping in mind archival endeavours produced with, for, and about non-normative and non-dominant peoples, multiple and even competing histories”. (Lee. 2015: 178). This principle is going to be useful to translate subaltern’s voice and needs in the terrains without exploiting sincere, sensible Archives.
Here arrives the term of “Transformative Aesthetics”* which has been first mentioned via participative murmuration. Transformative Aesthetics is not defined till its very end. It is still a progress which uses the mechanisms of artistic methods, activism, play, murmuring, improvisation and collaborative making/thinking. These aesthetics try to deconstruct through distancing to the dominating conventional structures and knowledge. It is critical and in constant change, probably it is an aesthetic which is part of sympoiesis— “making with.” (Haraway, 2016: 58)
Through the agency of above mentioned knowledges and methodologies I aim to enrich the Archives via my artistic doing. Those are going to be visible via installative terrains in which synthesis, phenomenological experience is going to be advanced.
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*Transformative Aesthetics has been first drafted in the seminars of Activist-Academic Miko Hucko (Hamburg, 2018) via participative murmuration.
Ahmed, Sara. Wilful Subjects. 2014. Duke University Press, pp.10,13.
Barad, Karen. What is the measure of Nothingness? Infinity, Virtuality, Justice. 2012. Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, pp.13.
Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter. 1993.pp.13. Routledgepp.13., New York, pp. 4.
Harraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. 2016. Duke University Press, Durham, pp. 58.
Foucault, Michel. Order of Things. 1994. Vintage Books, New York, pp. 131-312.
Lee, Jamie Ann. A Queer/ed Archival Methodology: Theorizing Practice through Radical Interrogations of the Archival Body. 2015. The University of Arizona, pp. 178.
Michaelis, Beatrice; Dietze, Gabriele; Haschemi Yekani, Elahe: Einleitung: The Queerness of Things not Queer: Entgrenzungen—Affekte und Materialitäten–Interventionen, in: Feministische Studien: Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Jg. 30. 2012. Nr. 2, 184-197. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25595/1147
Morton, Timothy. Ecology Without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics. 2007. Harvard University Press, pp. 82.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. 2003. Penguin Group, London, pp. 1-2.
Savage-Smith, Emily (Ed). Magic and Divination in Early Islam. 2004. Ashgate Variorum, Aldershot; Burlington, pp. 13.