My last film

https://vimeo.com/201699985

QUEER ECOLOGY

as a different way of thinking ecology, one possible visual concept is mesh or meshing. 

Mesh is what keeps us together- is a plethora of intersections.

Mesh has strands that connect and it also has holes.

“Ecological humiliation”

heterosexism and binary gender expression are not universal – in other life forms

there is lots of gayness, of hemophrodites and other expressions

also play (bonobos)

When we think of sexuality as binary, it perpetrates violence

Queer ecology allows for the blurring of distinctions between genetic expressions

RNA and DNA are life machines—they operate in some ways like viruses, going through their programs.

Strange stranger= the one that doesn’t ever become familiar. They are alien and familiar at same time.

Like when you look at a close old friend or spouse and you go.. wow you are so weird looking.. even after years.. or you realize you will never know that being.. they will never be the same as you… they will always be strange or alien.

“recognizing the multiplicity of difference”

difference is everywhere

the collectivity is also strange; not just the individual

we don’t have the capacity to do that because we have not encountered it; therefore how do we return those rights to the other(s).

we have multiple ways to associate; there is never just one way to produce relations. To have relationality (kinship as Haraway and indigenous people would say)

weakness over mastery..

we are always desiring… individuals.. machines..

project of queer ecology.. we will never be there.. we are not there yet..

structural problems cannot be fixed by solution oriented processes. (why? Because we do not have the capacity to understand enough of it to not fuck it up worse.. )

desire to get closer is important however, even if we can’t get there..

Masculinity as a hierarchical order and value has consequences because it carries along a normative neutrality that is a fiction

“leave no trace” impossible.. there is always a trace.. the humans have interrelatedness and impact no matter what (but you can still pick up your litter)

“dark ecology” (Morton):

a realistic ecology that removes cultural ideas of nature.

Queer, changing, interrelated.

Meshlike, interactive

Start with an overappreciation of another’s enjoyment beyond your tolerance

The three Goddesses of Black Speculative Fiction

Goddesses! Jewell Gomez, Nnedi Okorafor and Nalo Hopkinson are so dubbed by John Jennings at the 2016 Black Comix Arts Festival. Watch the interview below. 

Nnedi Okorafor’s Marvel comic featuring the superhero, Ngozi. 

‘So many different types of strange’: how Nnedi Okorafor is changing the face of sci-fi

Article in the Guardian about Nnedi Okorafor: follow the link

With a Marvel comic under her belt and a novel being adapted for TV by HBO, the Nigerian-American writer is flying the flag for black, female geeks

Interview with Nalo Hopkinson

Interview with Hopkinson

The replaceable body (not really!): Compensation for loss when laboring

How Much is your arm worth? 

Lewis Hine

Posthumanism

Beyond humanism and anthropocentrism

Can a new kind of humanities—posthumanities—respond to the redefinition of humanity's place in the world by both the technological and the biological or "green" continuum in which the "human" is but one life form among many? Exploring this radical repositioning, Cary Wolfe ranges across bioethics, cognitive science, animal ethics, gender, and disability to develop a theoretical and philosophical approach responsive to our changing understanding of ourselves and our world.

What Is Posthumanism? is an original, thoroughly argued, fundamental redefinition and refocusing of posthumanism. Firmly distinguishing posthumanism from discourses of the ‘posthuman’ or ‘transhumanism,’ this book will be at the center of discussion for a long time to come.

—

Donna Haraway, author of When Species Meet

Above is a definitional work exploring implications of post (belong) or trans (transcending) humanism. We can also explore our own expectations of this term as well as our experiences.

Another important analysis was written by Katherine Hayles: This study engages less in the questions of embodiment itself and its ethical positioning and more on the emergence of this new technologized construction of the human as becoming integrated with and penetrated by systems of information exchange.

How We Became Posthuman

VIRTUAL BODIES IN CYBERNETICS, LITERATURE, AND INFORMATICS

287

N. KATHERINE HAYLES

364 pages | 5 line drawings | 6 x 9 | © 1999

In this age of DNA computers and artificial intelligence, information is becoming disembodied even as the "bodies" that once carried it vanish into virtuality. While some marvel at these changes, envisioning consciousness downloaded into a computer or humans "beamed" Star Trek-style, others view them with horror, seeing monsters brooding in the machines. In How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles separates hype from fact, investigating the fate of embodiment in an information age.

Hayles relates three interwoven stories: how information lost its body, that is, how it came to be conceptualized as an entity separate from the material forms that carry it; the cultural and technological construction of the cyborg; and the dismantling of the liberal humanist "subject" in cybernetic discourse, along with the emergence of the "posthuman." ***** to discuss

Ranging widely across the history of technology, cultural studies, and literary criticism, Hayles shows what had to be erased, forgotten, and elided to conceive of information as a disembodied entity. Thus she moves from the post-World War II Macy Conferences on cybernetics to the 1952 novel Limbo by cybernetics aficionado Bernard Wolfe; from the concept of self-making to Philip K. Dick's literary explorations of hallucination and reality; and from artificial life to postmodern novels exploring the implications of seeing humans as cybernetic systems.

Although becoming posthuman can be nightmarish, Hayles shows how it can also be liberating. From the birth of cybernetics to artificial life, How We Became Posthuman provides an indispensable account of how we arrived in our virtual age, and of where we might go from here.

Posthumanism or post-humanism (meaning "after humanism" or "beyond humanism") is a term with at least seven definitions according to philosopher Francesca Ferrando:^[1]

1. Antihumanism: any theory that is critical of traditional humanism and traditional ideas about humanity and the human condition.^[2]
2. Cultural posthumanism: a branch of cultural theory critical of the foundational assumptions of humanism and its legacy^[3] that examines and questions the historical notions of "human" and "human nature", often challenging typical notions of human subjectivity and embodiment^[4] and strives to move beyond archaic concepts of "human nature" to develop ones which constantly adapt to contemporary technoscientificknowledge.^[5]
3. Philosophical posthumanism: a philosophical direction which draws on cultural posthumanism, the philosophical strand examines the ethical implications of expanding the circle of moral concern and extending subjectivities beyond the human species^[4]
4. Posthuman condition: the deconstruction of the human condition by critical theorists.^[6]
5. Transhumanism: an ideology and movement which seeks to develop and make available technologies that eliminate aging and greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities, in order to achieve a "posthuman future".^[7]
6. AI takeover: A more pessimistic alternative to transhumanism in which humans will not be enhanced, but rather eventually replaced by artificial intelligences. Some philosophers, including Nick Land, promote the view that humans should embrace and accept their eventual demise.^[8] This is related to the view of "cosmism" which supports the building of strong artificial intelligence even if it may entail the end of humanity as in their view it "would be a cosmic tragedy if humanity freezes evolution at the puny human level".^[9][10][11]
7. Voluntary Human Extinction, which seeks a "posthuman future" that in this case is a future without humans.

Also all of this is from Wikipedia so take it with a grain of salt; its to start conversation. 

Automation and labor as a science fiction theme

from Wikipedia: "With Folded Hands ..." is a 1947 science fiction novelette by American writer Jack Williamson. Willamson's influence for this story was the aftermath of World War II and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasakiand his concern that "some of the technological creations we had developed with the best intentions might have disastrous consequences in the long run."^[1]

In a 1991 interview, Williamson revealed how the story construction reflected events of his childhood in addition to technological extrapolations:

I wrote "With Folded Hands" immediately after World War II, when the shadow of the atomic bomb had just fallen over SF and was just beginning to haunt the imaginations of people in the US. The story grows out of that general feeling that some of the technological creations we had developed with the best intentions might have disastrous consequences in the long run (that idea, of course, still seems relevant today). The notion I was consciously working on specifically came out of a fragment of a story I had worked on for a while about an astronaut in space who is accompanied by a robot obviously superior to him physically—i.e., the robot wasn't hurt by gravity, extremes of temperature, radiation, or whatever. Just looking at the fragment gave me the sense of how inferior humanity is in many ways to mechanical creations. That basic recognition was the essence of the story, and as I wrote it up in my notes the theme was that the perfect machine would prove to be perfectly destructive.. 

It was only when I looked back at the story much later on that I was able to realize that the emotional reach of the story undoubtedly derived from my own early childhood, when people were attempting to protect me from all those hazardous things a kid is going to encounter in the isolated frontier setting I grew up in. As a result, I felt frustrated and over protected by people whom I couldn't hate because I loved them. A sort of psychological trap. Specifically, the first three years of my life were spent on a ranch at the top of the Sierra Madre Mountains on the headwaters of the Yaqui River in Sonora, Mexico. There were no neighbors close, and my mother was afraid of all sorts of things: that I might be kidnapped or get lost, that I would be bitten by a scorpion and die (something she'd heard of happening to Mexican kids), or that I might be caught by a mountain lion or a bear. The house we were living in was primitive, with no door, only curtains, and when she'd see bulls fighting outside, she couldn't see why invaders wouldn't just charge into the house. She was terrified by this environment. My father built a crib that became a psychological prison for me, particularly because my mother apparently kept me in it too long, when I needed to get out and crawl on the floor. I understand my mother's good intentions—the floor was mud and there were scorpions crawling around, so she was afraid of what might happen to me—but this experience produced in me a deep seated distrust of benevolent protection. In retrospect, I'm certain I projected my fears and suspicions of this kind of conditioning, and these projections became the governing emotional principle of "With Folded Hands" and The Humanoids.^[1]

From Isaac Asimov's "I Robot" The three laws of Robotics:
1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm
2) A robot must obey orders givein to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Themes in Dawn by Octavia Butler

- consent: nobody seemed to believe in it- there was what we would call rape- Nikanj uses tentacles.. 

• rape as ambiguous- often 
• blackness/gendered female- rape victim

non-cons-tenticle- kinky sex

- Exchange-

• Ooloi trade selves
• but humans can't refuse to trade

- drugging
- Oolois- complicated sexuality- 

• they can read what is in mind of others
• but maybe they misread

- rape as ambiguous
- genocide being perpetrated- 

• but humans were already almost dead
• or were the Oankalii colonizers
• humanity-wanting to preserve humans- kind of a strike for purity
• so happy or so fucked up

- experience for Oankali can be acquired and lost- it has materiality

- domestication

- eugenics- histories of slavery.. 

• genetic manipulation

- uneven relationship. period.

- cancers (like another kind of character)

- attraction and disgust

- Lilith- pragmatic, strong, doesn't have leader ego

- Lilith- powerful black woman

- identities as subjects muddled(human/gender/geography/species) but not skin color

- resistance

- cooperation/noncooperation

making room for others

I love that section heading so much. Here is an article also an audio interview on Octavia Butler

Octavia Butler: Writing herself into the story

Raw Materials