PRIDE: Queerkins in the Making

Queerkins in the Making — makeover, make believe, and logging on with NURSE3D and xiexie3lla

Being queer is to challenge fixed, established labels and embrace fluidity. “Making Queerkins” promotes alternative modes of forming connections and relationships. Inspired by posthuman theorist Donna Haraway’s notion of “Making Oddkin”, it encourages new forms of kinship and support away from anthropocentric, heteronormative, nuclear blood families in favour of pluralistic, queer found families, and multi-species symbiotic communities that prioritise environmental consciousness. Empowered by speculative storytelling, queerkins continuously shape and reshape their kinship, reaffirm and reinvent their bodies, and thrive in the transformative potential of waste and compost. Through these processes, queerkins cultivate a collective sense of belonging and acceptance among those who do not comply with social norms.

How does the way of queernkins inspire art and living in our time of digitality? Join Shimai Tribe with Berlin-based DJ and producer NURSE3D and Swedish-Chinese multidisciplinary artist xiexie3lla for a Saturday afternoon chat and makeover as they discuss their persona (re)invention, worldmaking, and how they mediate their queer identities through virtual spaces. While we explore elements of digitality, doom and horror, transgressive aesthetics in their practice, the artists will literally morph and embody their hybrid alter egos via a full makeup process; treating their bodies as apparatus for transformation. NURSE3D and xiexie3lla will speak with Angela Liu, Shimai Tribe forest friend and curator, to unpack ideas about posthumanism, speculative storytelling, queer bodies and bonds. Through making-over and making believe, we open up new possibilities for identity and embodiment, social relations and care systems.

Organised and curated by Shimai Tribe, part of the Making Queerkins pride month party series.