For Lost Species Day 2022, we’re delighted to announce ONCA’s winter events programme – Queer(ing) Ecological Futures.

The programme consists of a diverse range of online and in-person talks and workshops that celebrate imaginings of multiple possible futures beyond mainstream notions of ‘humanity’. Part protest, part celebration, part futures co-laboratory, it uplifts joyful expressions of worlding against elimination and investigates what it means to queer death and ‘extinction’.

All events are free but donations are warmly welcomed. This year, any donations will go to ONCA as we mark our tenth birthday, helping us continue our vital work of creatively challenging the driving forces of climate breakdown and biodiversity loss.

Online

6:30 – 8pm, 30 November: Spells to Bind Giants. On Remembrance Day for Lost Species, join the Lost Species Day co-founders Feral Theatre for a participatory online ritual to mark Earth’s losses and bind corporate giants.

6:30 – 7:30pm, 1 December: ‘Extinction, Endangerment and Dark Humour’. Acclaimed queer thinker and author of ‘Bad Environmentalism’ Nicole Seymour will explore the role that dark humour might play in grappling with the tragedy of species loss.

6:30 – 8pm, 6 December: Artecologist Becky Lyon hosts Queering Decay – Thinking-with Dead Wood – an online talk and workshop investigating the processes of decay and decomposition associated with dead wood as conduit for queer/ying inherited concepts of life/death binaries.

In person (ONCA Gallery)

6 – 8:30pm, 12 December: LARPing with the Land. The trajectory of loss seems exponential in the Anthropocene; in this playful, speculative workshop, Bea Xu explores the ways in which LARP (live action roleplay games) might offer us ways to ritualistically queer this sense of inevitability.

6 – 7:30pm, 13 December: Queer Ecotones – Non-binary reflections on listening. Join sound artist Joshua Legalliene for a talk and workshop that consider what might it mean to listen ecologically, to listen in places of tension, to listen beyond binaries.

This programme has been made possible with funds from:

• University of London School of Advanced Study Public Engagement Fund
• Sussex Humanities Lab via Interdependents – a collaboration between ONCA, Fabrica, Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts and Sussex Humanities Lab. SHL is an interdisciplinary research programme at the University of Sussex that experiments with digital methods in research and investigates the interactions between technology and culture, society and environment in order to imagine and create more sustainable and just futures for all.

Many thanks to Enaiê Azambuja and Alice Eldridge and for their support.

Photograph by Emily Laurens. Image description: a dense cluster of small creamy fungi growing upwards from a surface covered in bright green moss