Karly McCloskey
Chimera: Queering the Myth of the One
Other
2021
I am drawn to analogue photography and film, revelling in the tactility of the processes and results, which force me to submit to the will of the material. Each creation is a hybridization between the internal and the external, human and non-human, subject and object, and all others. I am enamoured by all of the technical ‘mistakes’ and flaws that manifest in each photo, recognizing beauty in the ugly, in the abject, in the queer.
“Drawing from personal experiences, I investigate connections between orientation, desire, gender and otherness, questioning how desire affects bodies and if orientation is an embodiment of time. Considering these questions, I am also researching the concept of ‘human.’ What does it mean to be human? What is the difference between human and non-human? How are the two entangled? All points of my research intersect at the monster—the chimera. The chimera is an embodiment of the innate entanglements of all. Through contamination as collaboration, a term drawn from Anna Tsing’s A Mushroom at the End of the World, I investigate how we transform and are transformed by our encounters. This embraces auto-ethnographic poetry, photography, and filmmaking. Through imagination, I speculate on ideas of otherness, hybridity, and metamorphoses. I approach research through playfulness, seeking joy in all steps of thinking and creating. My material exploration informs and is informed by the theories I read. Through imagination and intuition, seemingly dissociated areas of investigation align and entangle, revealing threads of myself along the way. Contamination as collaboration is the lens through which each aspect of my material and theoretical research are perceived. Traces of myself and those I encounter are suspended together in this intricate web. My studies expose the intimate entanglements I recognize within myself while simultaneously welcoming others to find their own involvement. I invite you to join us—we begin with noticing.Over the last two years I wrote a poetry book and created a looping analogue film exploring the murky in-betweens of existence, the politics of being/feeling connected, shared impressions, affective contagion, attunements and difference in itself. Through material and theoretical research, I investigate how such entanglements affect bodies. Hybridity is a means to investigate possible futures informed by queer theory and intersectional feminism. Through speculative fabulation, I approach worldmaking in a way that embodies the pleasures and pains of becoming.”
