A collaboration between Helen Edgar and Ryan Boren, Stimpunks Foundation
A new cabinet for post-normal possibilities
“Weird” comes from wyrd, the Old English word for fate and becoming. I used that etymology as the spine of a blog a while back, and it turns out it is also the heart of something else, which has grown into queering.earth. And queering.earth is alive.
From star stuff to the humanities
Starstuff.earth worked from physics: atoms forged inside stars, and nothing existing in isolation. There we shared the message that everything, living and non-living, belongs here, all the way down to our star stuff.
queering.earth works from the humanities instead, and from everything that has been handed down to us.
Neuroqueering as a verb
We are using neuroqueering as a verb, subverting neuronormativity and heteronormativity at the same time, because the two were never really separate arguments to begin with (Walker, 2021). We have been queering readings of literature, poetry, art, people and history, and we are excited to keep adding to our cabinet of curiosities.
An open, living archive
Every sheet is mounted and accessioned the way a herbarium mounts a pressed plant. Every correction we have needed to make lives in an open register that anyone can read, because we want to be transparent about our flaws, our changes of thought and the gaps in our knowledge rather than hide them.
We are queering the design, the text and the fonts too, but you can switch the decorative typography off and read in plain text whenever it gets in your way, because we want everything to be accessible.
Catching us mid-sentence
This is not really a launch. It is closer to catching us mid-sentence, as we pause to reflect on what we have made so far, and there is more to come. Come and explore what we have so far, and we will see you on the queerside!
References
Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer heresies: Notes on the neurodiversity paradigm, autistic empowerment, and postnormal possibilities. Autonomous Press.