Back in August I was invited to deliver a lecture at UniSA as part of the series ‘Gender, Writing and the Natural World’ organised by Jess White. The edited text of that lecture is now up as an essay on the Sydney Review of Books. Unnatural Being looks at some of the changing ideas of “nature” and the uncanny in Australian writing, and what it is to love nature in the Anthropocene; and at how queer ecology might help us to generate kinship and care with the non-human world. It was a real gift for me to think through my ideas on this subject and read/revisit many other thinkers, only some of whom I was able to directly cite – and a further gift to be able to make my thinking public, via the wonderful SRB.
That event was closely followed by Adhocracy, Vitalstatistix’ annual development hothouse that returned with fresh energy in September. It was an opportunity for lots of reflection and discussion. As part of my residency there I have been working on an essay about the material conditions of artists’ work and how they determine what gets made and how we make it. After years of scarcity and punitive cuts, then the pandemic, I think we are in the midst of a major time of reckoning for artists, writers and arts organisations. I wanted to capture some of these pressures in the hope we can make use of the opportunity for change, and I couldn’t pass up the chance to speak with so many brilliant and politically engaged artists about the issues we face. The essay is forthcoming in Artlink.
Work on these issues through Vitals has dovetailed with reading a bit about care and labour in researching the novel I’m working on (slowly but surely). Highly recommend Emma Dowling’s book The Care Crisis (Verso) for an insightful and accessible discussion of the political economy of care.
I will leave you with a friend’s gift, and a reminder that we cannot keep working the way we were before; that we have a duty to resist the extractive capitalist methodologies that push us into ever longer hours and ever greater asks, a duty to resist the obsession with busy-ness and productivity that is contributing to so much harm – to our communities, and to our planet.
Take care.
