One Made of Light, 2020
One Made of Light, 2020
One Made of Light, 2020
A collaborative video/archive essay, made during a plague.
Queer people are experiencing a mainstream media moment at this time, which is conveniently coinciding with the collapse of empire. This is not an accident. Queer people, third gender people, have always been summoned by mainstream society during times of major ecological collapse and unrest. We are a community of edgewalkers, nimbly code-switching to pass into and out of various social ecologies. Similarly, the littoral zone between two ecosystems (forest and field, sea and shore, woods and plains) is always a place of both greater creativity and risk. More diversity lives in these zones, and the flurry of different species have to get inventive in order to access adequate resources needed for survival. They are also more likely to die.
Queer people have always been border-dwellers edge-walkers. We still are. When we are thrust into the mainstream—like in ancient Rome, when Cybele’s temple, which only permitted transfeminine priestesses, was moved from the outskirts to the center of the city—it means that either we have gained enough visibility and acceptance to be considered both a financial asset and a threat, or the dominant culture needs us to bridge the gap between the end of one way of life and the beginning of another. So, we step into the spotlight, for a time, before things shift again, and we bring our edge magic there.
This video essay, comprising three parts and an interlude, visually consists entirely of footage found online paired with footage shot by my friends on their phones. The audio consists of excerpts from several texts listed below narrated by yours truly, paired with some found music.
PART ONE: The First Faggot
The story of Asushunamir, an intersex deity from ancient Sumerian mythology. This myth is over 5000 years old, and obliquely tracks the rise and fall and potential re-rise of queer folk relative to mainstream society. The story leaves our protagonist cursed, exiled, and gifted with many talents, with a promise that their kind will rise again.
Text adapted from "The Origin of the Queer Ones," by Storm Faerywolf and Claudia Lorie, from the translations of the ancient myth as previously published in Blossom of Bone by Randy Connor, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Kramer, and The Greatness that was Babylon by H.W.F. Saggs. Commentary by Storm Faerywolf.
INTERLUDE: A Timeline
Some interesting events in the history of witchcraft.
Text adapted from Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture by Arthur Evans.
PART TWO The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions
Some of what the faggots and their friends did to survive between revolutions.
Text adapted from The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell.
PART THREE: PRESENT
Text from "Present: A Ritual for Queer Shame" by Andy Izensen. Footage from my friends' phones.