Knowledge-land-scape - User contributions [en]

Point of Beginning Mx. Science

2025-03-18T11:23:26Z

46.29.25.109: /* The Liminal Scientist */

<small>Estimated time to follow this cut: 10 minutes</small>

This is one of three tracks alongside which you can thread your way alongside my explorative account on how ethical knowledge conciliation may come to matter within community-based polar bear research through aesthetic action. The aesthetic action traced here are the affective encounters around the physical presence of "Mx. Science": a figure performed by myself.

This particular aesthetic action was informed by the practices and insights that emerged from the other two tracks: community-based co-creative filmmaking, and the organization of the final BearWatch (pre-)workshops. Its performance practice diffractively cuts across two events: the final BearWatch (pre-)workshop in Gjoa Haven, and the Annual Science Meeting (ASM), a large conference gathering that connects researchers and scientists from across the Circumpolar Arctic.

=Mx. Science=

[[File:20221020 122351.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:Mx. Science mindmap.jpg|thumb]]

"Mx. Science", is a situated, playful figure, that invites to reimagine how we make space for "difference" within "scientific" context, like conferences, meetings or the laboratory.

Mx. Science is performed by me, a non-Inuit researcher conducting research from a western educational institute and as part of the BearWatch team. In the context of BearWatch workshops, or the Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) conference, the performance can therefore not be seen as an intervention: a movement from the outside-in. Neither can my use of make-up and choice of clothing and attributes be understood as fitting fully "inside" the social contracts of the spaces within which I have introduced Mx. Science. Mx. science is therefore rather a diffractive event, proposed from the liminal. Acting neither from the inside, nor the outside.

Acting from such a liminal space, I made sure to receive permission from the ASM organizers, as well as explicit sanction and input from community-partners, representatives and participants, and the BearWatch PI's for the Gjoa Haven, BearWatch project workshops.

<div class="next_choice">'''Keep Going'''</div>

=First introductions=

As a pilot experience, I had first introduced Mx. Science to the school in Coral Harbour. This was initiated by invite of the grade four teacher and with permission from the school principle. Mx. Science, being a very colourful and playful character was received positively by the school, students and teachers. Although no formal data was collected, I received informal feedback from the teacher and principle that my presence was very much enjoyed by multiple people in the school, and that there was expressed desire for me to return to the school.

After this brief but positive experience in Coral Harbour, I introduced Mx. Science during the second day of the pre-workshop in Gjoa Haven, to discuss its potential and the desirability of introducing a playful, yet potentially unsetting element into an important gathering. Again, the persona was very positively received, and the decision was made with sanction from the Gjoa Haven HTA, the BearWatch PI's and the participants of the pre-workshop to host the final gathering as Mx. Science.

[[File:Mx. visiting grade 4.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:Mx cabin.png|thumb]]

<div class="next_choice">If you arrived at this cross-road after visiting the Coral Harbour school, and wish to continue wayfaring the Bearwatch project, '''"Return"''' to Cut 3.

If you arrived here as part of the Mx. Science case-study or the pre-workshop in Gjoa Haven, then go check out the '''Landmark''' "Becoming Other".</div>

<span class="return to-cut-3 link" data-page-title="Collage and Zine-Making" data-section-id="3" data-encounter-type="return">[[Collage and Zine-Making#Wayfaring Calendar Pilot|Return to Cut 3: "Wayfaring the BW Project"]]</span>

<span class="pop-up landmark link" data-page-title="Becoming Other" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="landmark">[[Becoming Other|Landmark: Becoming Other]]</span>

=The Liminal Scientist=

Mx. Science defies normative categorization and conventional performances of cis-gendered or professional presentation, nor is Mx. Science determinately human (blue-skinned, pink-furred and horned). Some elements of Mx. Science's appearance, nevertheless, mark them as an "insider" to the sciences (wearing a laboratory-coat, and safety glasses, referring to sciences that conduct laboratory experiments, or as an anthropologist or geographer, wearing various lenses and recording devices like a clipboard for notes).

These marks, in combination with the observations that I am wearing a "costume" or "mask" make it impossible to fully externalize Mx. Science as fully "other" to scientists in the room.
By presenting a liminal figure of "the scientist", it becomes possible to query science and scientists themselves as a phenomenon that includes boundaries and properties. This in turn makes it possible to explore all the im/possible ways of being "different" within such a phenomena.

"Mx. Science" invites non-indigenous researchers (including myself) to rethink and reflect on their presence and the positions they take up in different contexts. As a figure that can unsettle taken for granted terms of engagements in multiple ways, Mx. Science holds the potential to open up a liminal space within which new relationships can be sensed or "felt" out, and provoke conversations about how we encounter each other across our differences. As a situated performance it is both an exercise in new ways of engaging each other through genuine curiosity, as well as an effective tool to que(e)ry where and when differentiated bodies dis/connect in space.

[[File:Mx science without background.png|thumb]]

=Drag as a Diffractive Method=

The creation of Mx. Science, as a method, draws from my practice as a dragking (classically defined as a male-impersonator). As a performer, I explore non-binary, female, and more-than-human masculinities, and am part of a relatively recent revival of drag’-kings’, ‘-quings’ and ‘-things’ across the "global North". This generation of (club-)performers can be understood to have in common, a politically informed stage, or nightlife practice, that undoes, or "bends" traditional, western categorical understandings of gender, sex and family through queer kinship structures.

The techniques employed within drag to que(e)ry, perform, undo or bend boundaries and categories like the ‘natural’ and the ‘human’ can also be directly applied towards questions around the social ecologies of environmental research and management.

Arctic ‘wildernesses’, for example, can be seen as sites for the enactment of a specific white, hetero-masculinity associated with physical strength, roughness, ingenuity, and self-realization (Sandilands & Ericson, 2010). Such sites of enactment (can) extend into scientific spaces, like laboratories or lecture rooms, reproducing hegemonic masculinities and perpetuating racial and gender inequalities and unequal power relations (MacGregor & Seymour, 2017). Drag has the potential to de-naturalize and unsettle such masculinities by embodying its technologies as separable from sex. Such masculinity, as performed through drag then becomes liminal, a place beyond categories – a space of play; ‘the betwixt and between’ through which shape-shifting figures turn things on their heads and pass on their way from one state of being to another (Rosenfeld, 2003). Taking these techniques and applying them not so much towards normative categories of gender, but towards norms upheld within western scientific spaces, opens our understanding of its conventions and social contracts in similar ways. Drag can thus, shift fixed positions, and transform everyday expectations and habits, that allows us to not to conduct transformative research – but also transform the researcher itself.

=Annual Scientific Meeting Mx. Science=

To better understand the possibilities Mx. Science enables to imagine ethical encounter outside of its conventional institutional structures, I had asked and gained permission from the organizers the Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM), also known as the ArticNet Conference in Toronto, in December 2022 - to attend as Mx. Science, directly after the final workshops in Nunavut.

I had informed the organizers that I would only be present, and did not require a stage or a timeslot as Mx. Science. During the 3-day conference, I attended as Mx. Science, and observed how people responded to me, as I moved through the conference space.

[[File:20221207 152641.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:20221207 152657.jpg|thumb]]

=The Liminal and the Ethical Space=

How do we determine who is a scientist? How do we meet each other in "scientific" spaces? What are the markers of inclusion, where lie the boundaries, and how do we recognize each other?

At the Annual Science Meeting in Toronto in December 2022, I was not often immediately recognized as a researcher or a scientist. Some attendees thought I was a performing some kind of mythical creature. Other associated me with the "smurfs". The lack of determinable signifiers prompted explorative questions like: are you wearing a costume? Is this a mask? Others were more explicit with their uncertainty: "I feel like I am walking into a minefield, how do I refer to you? Are you a persona? A character? I haven't kept up...", as if my presence was meant to perform a test of their use of language.

For others, there was some relief, when they could mark me as an "insider" through my official conference nametag (One side displayed my name and institutional affiliation in print, the other side displayed "Mx. Science in my own handwriting). Such marking as an "insider", was often immediately followed up with questions of my underlying research, my methodology or "what" my presence was supposed to represent. When the request for a re-presentative answer, or clear underlying message about science or scientists, remained unaccommodated, the moment of relief was replaced with various degrees of discomfort.

Explaining that Mx. Science becomes meaningful within encounters like the one we were engaging in then sparked for many a curiosity to explore - a trajectory that was often engaged through the form of a follow-up interview after the conference. Each of these interviews was semi-structured around three questions, how did Mx. Science affect you? Do you think Mx. Science was representative of something? What do you think Mx. Science was practicing at the conference? The ensuing conversations indicated that Mx. Science performed a very different material-discursive practice for each person that engaged with them. Whether this practice related to how we engage with the "other" during our research, how we take up space in settler-Indigenous context, or what (unexamined) standards of representability we uphold in scientific spaces.

<div class="next_choice">You have encountered the presence of a "Great White Beast". Check out the landmark to consider how this figure haunts this Knowledge-Land-Scape.</div>

<span class="pop-up landmark link" data-page-title="The Great White Beast" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="landmark">[[The Great White Beast|Landmark: "The Great White Beast"]]</span>

=Another Point of Beginning=

You have reached "Another Point of Beginning". These are not conclusive endings to my research, but rather perform at the cusp of emergence: They are a story so-far. Some of these points mark the end of funding cycles or project activities. Or they mark the limitations and scope of this particular PhD dissertation. Others are trails, and tracks that have faded out, as they remained un-revisited. They however always mark one moment along an ongoing animate line of correspondence between multiple agencies, and they usually allow for continuing with another cut.

This is where we take account for our journey so far. This journey is always partial, and so are the insights we have built on our way. You can trace the path you have taken through this Knowledge-Land-Scape by clicking the "trace" bar in the upper left corner of your screen. It will allow you to account for some of the insights that your journey has given you. The map below shows you the full extent of wayfaring possibilities of the scape.

<HTML><iframe width="768" height="432" src="https://miro.com/app/live-embed/uXjVLuaaSIw=/?moveToViewport=-6303,-1839,4422,3256&embedId=190872630107" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allow="fullscreen; clipboard-read; clipboard-write" allowfullscreen></iframe></html>

<div class="next_choice">This cut has taken you along the development of Mx. Science and the possibilities this persona performs to re-configuratively imagine scientific spaces as a phenomena with determinate boundaries and properties which materialize in different possibilities for different humans and non-humans. As a method, it is one that has most explicitly required me to implicate my body into the explorative research that I have been conducting.

Keep going to explore how Mx. Science has continued to perform beyond this cut.</div>

=Beyond the Cut=

[[File:Beyond the cut.png|thumb]]

Through my situated performances as Mx. Science I have gained an extended understanding of what shapes self-directed work of un-learning, decentering- and decolonizing can take within the institutional spaces of western "science".

To explore the future performative possibilities of drag to unsettle scientific conventions within its own institutional spaces I have organized a workshop at the Descartes Institute of Science and Technology Studies at Utrecht University in 2024.

In February 2025, I was invited to attend a three-day general assembly meeting of a EU-funded Horizon 2020 research project as Mx. Science.

In April 2025 I will start an eight month fellowship with the Arctic Governance Research Group of the RIFS Institute in Potsdam to explore the diffractive possibilities Mx. Science offers within their scientific institute.

<span class="detour to-cut-1 link" data-page-title="Voices of Thunder" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="detour">[[Voices of Thunder|Detour to Cut 1: Cut 1 Voices of Thunder]]</span>

<span class="detour to-cut-2 link" data-page-title="Aesthetic_Action" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="detour">[[Aesthetic Action#Aesthetic (in)action in BearWatch|Detour to Cut 2: Cut 2 Aesthetic (in)action in BearWatch]]</span>

<span class="detour to-cut-3 link" data-page-title="Wayfaring the BW project Point of Beginning" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="detour">[[Wayfaring the BW project Point of Beginning|Detour to Cut 3: Cut 3 Wayfaring the BW project]]</span>

Point of Beginning Mx. Science

2025-03-18T11:22:40Z

46.29.25.109: /* First introductions */

<small>Estimated time to follow this cut: 10 minutes</small>

This is one of three tracks alongside which you can thread your way alongside my explorative account on how ethical knowledge conciliation may come to matter within community-based polar bear research through aesthetic action. The aesthetic action traced here are the affective encounters around the physical presence of "Mx. Science": a figure performed by myself.

This particular aesthetic action was informed by the practices and insights that emerged from the other two tracks: community-based co-creative filmmaking, and the organization of the final BearWatch (pre-)workshops. Its performance practice diffractively cuts across two events: the final BearWatch (pre-)workshop in Gjoa Haven, and the Annual Science Meeting (ASM), a large conference gathering that connects researchers and scientists from across the Circumpolar Arctic.

=Mx. Science=

[[File:20221020 122351.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:Mx. Science mindmap.jpg|thumb]]

"Mx. Science", is a situated, playful figure, that invites to reimagine how we make space for "difference" within "scientific" context, like conferences, meetings or the laboratory.

Mx. Science is performed by me, a non-Inuit researcher conducting research from a western educational institute and as part of the BearWatch team. In the context of BearWatch workshops, or the Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) conference, the performance can therefore not be seen as an intervention: a movement from the outside-in. Neither can my use of make-up and choice of clothing and attributes be understood as fitting fully "inside" the social contracts of the spaces within which I have introduced Mx. Science. Mx. science is therefore rather a diffractive event, proposed from the liminal. Acting neither from the inside, nor the outside.

Acting from such a liminal space, I made sure to receive permission from the ASM organizers, as well as explicit sanction and input from community-partners, representatives and participants, and the BearWatch PI's for the Gjoa Haven, BearWatch project workshops.

<div class="next_choice">'''Keep Going'''</div>

=First introductions=

As a pilot experience, I had first introduced Mx. Science to the school in Coral Harbour. This was initiated by invite of the grade four teacher and with permission from the school principle. Mx. Science, being a very colourful and playful character was received positively by the school, students and teachers. Although no formal data was collected, I received informal feedback from the teacher and principle that my presence was very much enjoyed by multiple people in the school, and that there was expressed desire for me to return to the school.

After this brief but positive experience in Coral Harbour, I introduced Mx. Science during the second day of the pre-workshop in Gjoa Haven, to discuss its potential and the desirability of introducing a playful, yet potentially unsetting element into an important gathering. Again, the persona was very positively received, and the decision was made with sanction from the Gjoa Haven HTA, the BearWatch PI's and the participants of the pre-workshop to host the final gathering as Mx. Science.

[[File:Mx. visiting grade 4.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:Mx cabin.png|thumb]]

<div class="next_choice">If you arrived at this cross-road after visiting the Coral Harbour school, and wish to continue wayfaring the Bearwatch project, '''"Return"''' to Cut 3.

If you arrived here as part of the Mx. Science case-study or the pre-workshop in Gjoa Haven, then go check out the '''Landmark''' "Becoming Other".</div>

<span class="return to-cut-3 link" data-page-title="Collage and Zine-Making" data-section-id="3" data-encounter-type="return">[[Collage and Zine-Making#Wayfaring Calendar Pilot|Return to Cut 3: "Wayfaring the BW Project"]]</span>

<span class="pop-up landmark link" data-page-title="Becoming Other" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="landmark">[[Becoming Other|Landmark: Becoming Other]]</span>

=The Liminal Scientist=

By presenting a liminal figure of "the scientist", it becomes possible to query science and scientists themselves as a phenomenon that includes boundaries and properties. This in turn makes it possible to explore all the im/possible ways of being "different" within such a phenomena.

"Mx. Science" invites non-indigenous researchers (including myself) to rethink and reflect on their presence and the positions they take up in different contexts. As a figure that can unsettle taken for granted terms of engagements in multiple ways, Mx. Science holds the potential to open up a liminal space within which new relationships can be sensed or "felt" out, and provoke conversations about how we encounter each other across our differences. As a situated performance it is both an exercise in new ways of engaging each other through genuine curiosity, as well as an effective tool to que(e)ry where and when differentiated bodies dis/connect in space.

[[File:Mx science without background.png|thumb]]

=Drag as a Diffractive Method=

The creation of Mx. Science, as a method, draws from my practice as a dragking (classically defined as a male-impersonator). As a performer, I explore non-binary, female, and more-than-human masculinities, and am part of a relatively recent revival of drag’-kings’, ‘-quings’ and ‘-things’ across the "global North". This generation of (club-)performers can be understood to have in common, a politically informed stage, or nightlife practice, that undoes, or "bends" traditional, western categorical understandings of gender, sex and family through queer kinship structures.

The techniques employed within drag to que(e)ry, perform, undo or bend boundaries and categories like the ‘natural’ and the ‘human’ can also be directly applied towards questions around the social ecologies of environmental research and management.

Arctic ‘wildernesses’, for example, can be seen as sites for the enactment of a specific white, hetero-masculinity associated with physical strength, roughness, ingenuity, and self-realization (Sandilands & Ericson, 2010). Such sites of enactment (can) extend into scientific spaces, like laboratories or lecture rooms, reproducing hegemonic masculinities and perpetuating racial and gender inequalities and unequal power relations (MacGregor & Seymour, 2017). Drag has the potential to de-naturalize and unsettle such masculinities by embodying its technologies as separable from sex. Such masculinity, as performed through drag then becomes liminal, a place beyond categories – a space of play; ‘the betwixt and between’ through which shape-shifting figures turn things on their heads and pass on their way from one state of being to another (Rosenfeld, 2003). Taking these techniques and applying them not so much towards normative categories of gender, but towards norms upheld within western scientific spaces, opens our understanding of its conventions and social contracts in similar ways. Drag can thus, shift fixed positions, and transform everyday expectations and habits, that allows us to not to conduct transformative research – but also transform the researcher itself.

=Annual Scientific Meeting Mx. Science=

To better understand the possibilities Mx. Science enables to imagine ethical encounter outside of its conventional institutional structures, I had asked and gained permission from the organizers the Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM), also known as the ArticNet Conference in Toronto, in December 2022 - to attend as Mx. Science, directly after the final workshops in Nunavut.

I had informed the organizers that I would only be present, and did not require a stage or a timeslot as Mx. Science. During the 3-day conference, I attended as Mx. Science, and observed how people responded to me, as I moved through the conference space.

[[File:20221207 152641.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:20221207 152657.jpg|thumb]]

=The Liminal and the Ethical Space=

How do we determine who is a scientist? How do we meet each other in "scientific" spaces? What are the markers of inclusion, where lie the boundaries, and how do we recognize each other?

At the Annual Science Meeting in Toronto in December 2022, I was not often immediately recognized as a researcher or a scientist. Some attendees thought I was a performing some kind of mythical creature. Other associated me with the "smurfs". The lack of determinable signifiers prompted explorative questions like: are you wearing a costume? Is this a mask? Others were more explicit with their uncertainty: "I feel like I am walking into a minefield, how do I refer to you? Are you a persona? A character? I haven't kept up...", as if my presence was meant to perform a test of their use of language.

For others, there was some relief, when they could mark me as an "insider" through my official conference nametag (One side displayed my name and institutional affiliation in print, the other side displayed "Mx. Science in my own handwriting). Such marking as an "insider", was often immediately followed up with questions of my underlying research, my methodology or "what" my presence was supposed to represent. When the request for a re-presentative answer, or clear underlying message about science or scientists, remained unaccommodated, the moment of relief was replaced with various degrees of discomfort.

Explaining that Mx. Science becomes meaningful within encounters like the one we were engaging in then sparked for many a curiosity to explore - a trajectory that was often engaged through the form of a follow-up interview after the conference. Each of these interviews was semi-structured around three questions, how did Mx. Science affect you? Do you think Mx. Science was representative of something? What do you think Mx. Science was practicing at the conference? The ensuing conversations indicated that Mx. Science performed a very different material-discursive practice for each person that engaged with them. Whether this practice related to how we engage with the "other" during our research, how we take up space in settler-Indigenous context, or what (unexamined) standards of representability we uphold in scientific spaces.

<div class="next_choice">You have encountered the presence of a "Great White Beast". Check out the landmark to consider how this figure haunts this Knowledge-Land-Scape.</div>

<span class="pop-up landmark link" data-page-title="The Great White Beast" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="landmark">[[The Great White Beast|Landmark: "The Great White Beast"]]</span>

=Another Point of Beginning=

You have reached "Another Point of Beginning". These are not conclusive endings to my research, but rather perform at the cusp of emergence: They are a story so-far. Some of these points mark the end of funding cycles or project activities. Or they mark the limitations and scope of this particular PhD dissertation. Others are trails, and tracks that have faded out, as they remained un-revisited. They however always mark one moment along an ongoing animate line of correspondence between multiple agencies, and they usually allow for continuing with another cut.

This is where we take account for our journey so far. This journey is always partial, and so are the insights we have built on our way. You can trace the path you have taken through this Knowledge-Land-Scape by clicking the "trace" bar in the upper left corner of your screen. It will allow you to account for some of the insights that your journey has given you. The map below shows you the full extent of wayfaring possibilities of the scape.

<HTML><iframe width="768" height="432" src="https://miro.com/app/live-embed/uXjVLuaaSIw=/?moveToViewport=-6303,-1839,4422,3256&embedId=190872630107" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allow="fullscreen; clipboard-read; clipboard-write" allowfullscreen></iframe></html>

<div class="next_choice">This cut has taken you along the development of Mx. Science and the possibilities this persona performs to re-configuratively imagine scientific spaces as a phenomena with determinate boundaries and properties which materialize in different possibilities for different humans and non-humans. As a method, it is one that has most explicitly required me to implicate my body into the explorative research that I have been conducting.

Keep going to explore how Mx. Science has continued to perform beyond this cut.</div>

=Beyond the Cut=

[[File:Beyond the cut.png|thumb]]

Through my situated performances as Mx. Science I have gained an extended understanding of what shapes self-directed work of un-learning, decentering- and decolonizing can take within the institutional spaces of western "science".

To explore the future performative possibilities of drag to unsettle scientific conventions within its own institutional spaces I have organized a workshop at the Descartes Institute of Science and Technology Studies at Utrecht University in 2024.

In February 2025, I was invited to attend a three-day general assembly meeting of a EU-funded Horizon 2020 research project as Mx. Science.

In April 2025 I will start an eight month fellowship with the Arctic Governance Research Group of the RIFS Institute in Potsdam to explore the diffractive possibilities Mx. Science offers within their scientific institute.

<span class="detour to-cut-1 link" data-page-title="Voices of Thunder" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="detour">[[Voices of Thunder|Detour to Cut 1: Cut 1 Voices of Thunder]]</span>

<span class="detour to-cut-2 link" data-page-title="Aesthetic_Action" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="detour">[[Aesthetic Action#Aesthetic (in)action in BearWatch|Detour to Cut 2: Cut 2 Aesthetic (in)action in BearWatch]]</span>

<span class="detour to-cut-3 link" data-page-title="Wayfaring the BW project Point of Beginning" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="detour">[[Wayfaring the BW project Point of Beginning|Detour to Cut 3: Cut 3 Wayfaring the BW project]]</span>

Point of Beginning Mx. Science

2025-03-18T11:22:19Z

46.29.25.109: /* Mx. Science */

<small>Estimated time to follow this cut: 10 minutes</small>

This is one of three tracks alongside which you can thread your way alongside my explorative account on how ethical knowledge conciliation may come to matter within community-based polar bear research through aesthetic action. The aesthetic action traced here are the affective encounters around the physical presence of "Mx. Science": a figure performed by myself.

This particular aesthetic action was informed by the practices and insights that emerged from the other two tracks: community-based co-creative filmmaking, and the organization of the final BearWatch (pre-)workshops. Its performance practice diffractively cuts across two events: the final BearWatch (pre-)workshop in Gjoa Haven, and the Annual Science Meeting (ASM), a large conference gathering that connects researchers and scientists from across the Circumpolar Arctic.

=Mx. Science=

[[File:20221020 122351.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:Mx. Science mindmap.jpg|thumb]]

"Mx. Science", is a situated, playful figure, that invites to reimagine how we make space for "difference" within "scientific" context, like conferences, meetings or the laboratory.

Mx. Science is performed by me, a non-Inuit researcher conducting research from a western educational institute and as part of the BearWatch team. In the context of BearWatch workshops, or the Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) conference, the performance can therefore not be seen as an intervention: a movement from the outside-in. Neither can my use of make-up and choice of clothing and attributes be understood as fitting fully "inside" the social contracts of the spaces within which I have introduced Mx. Science. Mx. science is therefore rather a diffractive event, proposed from the liminal. Acting neither from the inside, nor the outside.

Acting from such a liminal space, I made sure to receive permission from the ASM organizers, as well as explicit sanction and input from community-partners, representatives and participants, and the BearWatch PI's for the Gjoa Haven, BearWatch project workshops.

<div class="next_choice">'''Keep Going'''</div>

=First introductions=

As a pilot experience, I had first introduced Mx. Science to the school in Coral Harbour. This was initiated by invite of the grade four teacher and with permission from the school principle. Mx. Science, being a very colourful and playful character was received positively by the school, students and teachers. Although no formal data was collected, I received informal feedback from the teacher and principle that my presence was very much enjoyed by multiple people in the school, and that there was expressed desire for me to return to the school.

After this brief but positive experience in Coral Harbour, I introduced Mx. Science during the second day of the pre-workshop in Gjoa Haven, to discuss its potential and the desirability of introducing a playful, yet potentially unsetting element into an important gathering. Again, the persona was very positively received, and the decision was made with sanction from the Gjoa Haven HTA, the BearWatch PI's and the participants of the pre-workshop to host the final gathering as Mx. Science.

[[File:Mx. visiting grade 4.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:Mx cabin.png|thumb]]

<div class="next_choice">If you arrived at this cross-road after visiting the Coral Harbour school, and wish to continue wayfaring the Bearwatch project, '''"Return"''' to Cut 3.

If you arrived here as part of the Mx. Science case-study or the pre-workshop in Gjoa Haven, then go check out the '''Landmark''' "Becoming Other".</div>

<span class="return to-cut-3 link" data-page-title="Collage and Zine-Making" data-section-id="3" data-encounter-type="return">[[Collage and Zine-Making#Wayfaring Calendar Pilot|Return to Cut 3: "Wayfaring the BW Project"]]</span>

<span class="pop-up landmark link" data-page-title="Becoming Other" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="landmark">[[Becoming Other|Landmark: Becoming Other]]</span>

=The Liminal Scientist=

By presenting a liminal figure of "the scientist", it becomes possible to query science and scientists themselves as a phenomenon that includes boundaries and properties. This in turn makes it possible to explore all the im/possible ways of being "different" within such a phenomena.

"Mx. Science" invites non-indigenous researchers (including myself) to rethink and reflect on their presence and the positions they take up in different contexts. As a figure that can unsettle taken for granted terms of engagements in multiple ways, Mx. Science holds the potential to open up a liminal space within which new relationships can be sensed or "felt" out, and provoke conversations about how we encounter each other across our differences. As a situated performance it is both an exercise in new ways of engaging each other through genuine curiosity, as well as an effective tool to que(e)ry where and when differentiated bodies dis/connect in space.

[[File:Mx science without background.png|thumb]]

=Drag as a Diffractive Method=

The creation of Mx. Science, as a method, draws from my practice as a dragking (classically defined as a male-impersonator). As a performer, I explore non-binary, female, and more-than-human masculinities, and am part of a relatively recent revival of drag’-kings’, ‘-quings’ and ‘-things’ across the "global North". This generation of (club-)performers can be understood to have in common, a politically informed stage, or nightlife practice, that undoes, or "bends" traditional, western categorical understandings of gender, sex and family through queer kinship structures.

The techniques employed within drag to que(e)ry, perform, undo or bend boundaries and categories like the ‘natural’ and the ‘human’ can also be directly applied towards questions around the social ecologies of environmental research and management.

Arctic ‘wildernesses’, for example, can be seen as sites for the enactment of a specific white, hetero-masculinity associated with physical strength, roughness, ingenuity, and self-realization (Sandilands & Ericson, 2010). Such sites of enactment (can) extend into scientific spaces, like laboratories or lecture rooms, reproducing hegemonic masculinities and perpetuating racial and gender inequalities and unequal power relations (MacGregor & Seymour, 2017). Drag has the potential to de-naturalize and unsettle such masculinities by embodying its technologies as separable from sex. Such masculinity, as performed through drag then becomes liminal, a place beyond categories – a space of play; ‘the betwixt and between’ through which shape-shifting figures turn things on their heads and pass on their way from one state of being to another (Rosenfeld, 2003). Taking these techniques and applying them not so much towards normative categories of gender, but towards norms upheld within western scientific spaces, opens our understanding of its conventions and social contracts in similar ways. Drag can thus, shift fixed positions, and transform everyday expectations and habits, that allows us to not to conduct transformative research – but also transform the researcher itself.

=Annual Scientific Meeting Mx. Science=

To better understand the possibilities Mx. Science enables to imagine ethical encounter outside of its conventional institutional structures, I had asked and gained permission from the organizers the Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM), also known as the ArticNet Conference in Toronto, in December 2022 - to attend as Mx. Science, directly after the final workshops in Nunavut.

I had informed the organizers that I would only be present, and did not require a stage or a timeslot as Mx. Science. During the 3-day conference, I attended as Mx. Science, and observed how people responded to me, as I moved through the conference space.

[[File:20221207 152641.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:20221207 152657.jpg|thumb]]

=The Liminal and the Ethical Space=

How do we determine who is a scientist? How do we meet each other in "scientific" spaces? What are the markers of inclusion, where lie the boundaries, and how do we recognize each other?

At the Annual Science Meeting in Toronto in December 2022, I was not often immediately recognized as a researcher or a scientist. Some attendees thought I was a performing some kind of mythical creature. Other associated me with the "smurfs". The lack of determinable signifiers prompted explorative questions like: are you wearing a costume? Is this a mask? Others were more explicit with their uncertainty: "I feel like I am walking into a minefield, how do I refer to you? Are you a persona? A character? I haven't kept up...", as if my presence was meant to perform a test of their use of language.

For others, there was some relief, when they could mark me as an "insider" through my official conference nametag (One side displayed my name and institutional affiliation in print, the other side displayed "Mx. Science in my own handwriting). Such marking as an "insider", was often immediately followed up with questions of my underlying research, my methodology or "what" my presence was supposed to represent. When the request for a re-presentative answer, or clear underlying message about science or scientists, remained unaccommodated, the moment of relief was replaced with various degrees of discomfort.

Explaining that Mx. Science becomes meaningful within encounters like the one we were engaging in then sparked for many a curiosity to explore - a trajectory that was often engaged through the form of a follow-up interview after the conference. Each of these interviews was semi-structured around three questions, how did Mx. Science affect you? Do you think Mx. Science was representative of something? What do you think Mx. Science was practicing at the conference? The ensuing conversations indicated that Mx. Science performed a very different material-discursive practice for each person that engaged with them. Whether this practice related to how we engage with the "other" during our research, how we take up space in settler-Indigenous context, or what (unexamined) standards of representability we uphold in scientific spaces.

<div class="next_choice">You have encountered the presence of a "Great White Beast". Check out the landmark to consider how this figure haunts this Knowledge-Land-Scape.</div>

<span class="pop-up landmark link" data-page-title="The Great White Beast" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="landmark">[[The Great White Beast|Landmark: "The Great White Beast"]]</span>

=Another Point of Beginning=

You have reached "Another Point of Beginning". These are not conclusive endings to my research, but rather perform at the cusp of emergence: They are a story so-far. Some of these points mark the end of funding cycles or project activities. Or they mark the limitations and scope of this particular PhD dissertation. Others are trails, and tracks that have faded out, as they remained un-revisited. They however always mark one moment along an ongoing animate line of correspondence between multiple agencies, and they usually allow for continuing with another cut.

This is where we take account for our journey so far. This journey is always partial, and so are the insights we have built on our way. You can trace the path you have taken through this Knowledge-Land-Scape by clicking the "trace" bar in the upper left corner of your screen. It will allow you to account for some of the insights that your journey has given you. The map below shows you the full extent of wayfaring possibilities of the scape.

<HTML><iframe width="768" height="432" src="https://miro.com/app/live-embed/uXjVLuaaSIw=/?moveToViewport=-6303,-1839,4422,3256&embedId=190872630107" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allow="fullscreen; clipboard-read; clipboard-write" allowfullscreen></iframe></html>

<div class="next_choice">This cut has taken you along the development of Mx. Science and the possibilities this persona performs to re-configuratively imagine scientific spaces as a phenomena with determinate boundaries and properties which materialize in different possibilities for different humans and non-humans. As a method, it is one that has most explicitly required me to implicate my body into the explorative research that I have been conducting.

Keep going to explore how Mx. Science has continued to perform beyond this cut.</div>

=Beyond the Cut=

[[File:Beyond the cut.png|thumb]]

Through my situated performances as Mx. Science I have gained an extended understanding of what shapes self-directed work of un-learning, decentering- and decolonizing can take within the institutional spaces of western "science".

To explore the future performative possibilities of drag to unsettle scientific conventions within its own institutional spaces I have organized a workshop at the Descartes Institute of Science and Technology Studies at Utrecht University in 2024.

In February 2025, I was invited to attend a three-day general assembly meeting of a EU-funded Horizon 2020 research project as Mx. Science.

In April 2025 I will start an eight month fellowship with the Arctic Governance Research Group of the RIFS Institute in Potsdam to explore the diffractive possibilities Mx. Science offers within their scientific institute.

<span class="detour to-cut-1 link" data-page-title="Voices of Thunder" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="detour">[[Voices of Thunder|Detour to Cut 1: Cut 1 Voices of Thunder]]</span>

<span class="detour to-cut-2 link" data-page-title="Aesthetic_Action" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="detour">[[Aesthetic Action#Aesthetic (in)action in BearWatch|Detour to Cut 2: Cut 2 Aesthetic (in)action in BearWatch]]</span>

<span class="detour to-cut-3 link" data-page-title="Wayfaring the BW project Point of Beginning" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="detour">[[Wayfaring the BW project Point of Beginning|Detour to Cut 3: Cut 3 Wayfaring the BW project]]</span>

The Land

2025-03-18T08:23:33Z

46.29.25.109:

[[File:Vista.png|thumb]]

Whether it is replacing the runners of a qamutiq, collecting fish samples, or camping out next to a Weir. These events provide and require knowledge that cannot be disconnected from the land.

<div class="next_choice">It is not so much that science and IQ would paint a complementary, but separate, picture of the land. It's that neither the land, nor IQ, nor western science about such land-based encounters can exists in intelligible ways outside of their intra-dependent relationships. Any differentiation made between these knowledges and the land are artificial, not pre-determined.

Go outside, and touch some dirt.
Take a walk.

Then, '''"Return"''' to Cut 3.</div>

<span class="return to cut 3 link" data-page-title="Wayfaring_the_BW_project" data-section-id="9" data-encounter-type="return">[[Wayfaring the BW project#Community-Lead Sampling Coral Harbour Spring 2022|Return to Cut 3: Community-lead Sampling in Coral Harbour]]</span>

Chores Around Town

2025-03-18T08:22:47Z

46.29.25.109: /* Camping at the Weir */

Being present in the community has taken many shapes for me over the course of my multiple field visits. In Gjoa Haven such presence has often taken shape around activities that are part of Inuit day to day life.

In the first week, when BearWatch researchers were present in Gjoa Haven in larger numbers, we for example helped George Konana take out his nets.

[[File:DSC00145.jpg|thumb|Pulling in the nets (photograph by author)]]
[[File:DSC00146.jpg|thumb|Pulling in the nets, close-up (photograph by author)]]
[[File:DSC00310.jpg|thumb|George Konana, cleaning some freshly caught Arctic Char]]

=Stranding the Car=

Most possibilities to get involved with chores around town and meeting people involved an old truck, the elements, and project-related logistics that had me drive across town for multiple purposes.

These activities created both possibilities and limitations in terms of community interaction patterns.

For example, the collective efforts required to pull the truck out of the ocean, when it stranded on the beach and got flooded by the rising tide of the ocean, is part of what co-PI van Coeverden-de Groot terms his “vulnerability narrative”. A performance of intra-dependency he understands his relationship with the community at large to be comprised of.

[[File:DSC00312.jpg|thumb|Truck stranded in the ocean (photograph by author.)]]

=Preparing and Packing for an ATV Ride=

The environmental conditions in Inuit Nunangat seem a fitting context for such a "vulnerability" narrative.

Take, for example, the actions involved with going on a camping trip:

Any visiting researcher who has tried to prepare, pack or pull a qamutik (sled) across the land outside of Arctic Summer for the first time, like I did in the fall of 2021, has likely encountered the particular teachings of patience and modesty.

Fumbling around with thick mitts, pens and paper in the cold, while sled runners need to be replaced, knots need to be tied, and qamutiks need to be repaired, quickly eliminates the feasibility of (ethnographic) documenting. What remains, is attentive presence, and hands-on assistance where possible.

[[File:Preparing the Qamutiq.jpg|thumb|Preparing the qamutik (photograph by author)]]
[[File:Repacking the Qamutiq on the way.jpg|thumb|One of many moments that the qamutik needed to be repacked on the way (photograph by author)]]

=Camping at the Weir=

After 4 hours of travelling by ATV, some of it in the dark, we arrive at the fishing Weir.

After setting up the tents we watch George and his family spearfish for a while.

[[File:DSC00404.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:DSC00398.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:DSC00432.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:DSC00387.jpg|thumb]]

<div class="next_choice">Being in the presence of someone like George, makes it very clear that it takes the experience of multiple generations to live with the land.

Just tagging along with someone like George for a couple of days allows you to learnt more than could ever be included in a knowledge-land-scape like this, or be transfered through writing or pictures.

The knowledge that is entangled within the tradition of spearfishing for example extends beyond its technique or it practices. It's entangled within a lived moment of human, fish and traditional technology meeting each other that cannot be sustained outside of that moment.
</div>

<span class="pop-up vista link" data-page-title="The Land" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="Vista">[[The Land|Vista: The Land]]</div>

Chores Around Town

2025-03-18T08:21:10Z

46.29.25.109: /* Preparing and Packing for an ATV Ride */

Being present in the community has taken many shapes for me over the course of my multiple field visits. In Gjoa Haven such presence has often taken shape around activities that are part of Inuit day to day life.

In the first week, when BearWatch researchers were present in Gjoa Haven in larger numbers, we for example helped George Konana take out his nets.

[[File:DSC00145.jpg|thumb|Pulling in the nets (photograph by author)]]
[[File:DSC00146.jpg|thumb|Pulling in the nets, close-up (photograph by author)]]
[[File:DSC00310.jpg|thumb|George Konana, cleaning some freshly caught Arctic Char]]

=Stranding the Car=

Most possibilities to get involved with chores around town and meeting people involved an old truck, the elements, and project-related logistics that had me drive across town for multiple purposes.

These activities created both possibilities and limitations in terms of community interaction patterns.

For example, the collective efforts required to pull the truck out of the ocean, when it stranded on the beach and got flooded by the rising tide of the ocean, is part of what co-PI van Coeverden-de Groot terms his “vulnerability narrative”. A performance of intra-dependency he understands his relationship with the community at large to be comprised of.

[[File:DSC00312.jpg|thumb|Truck stranded in the ocean (photograph by author.)]]

=Preparing and Packing for an ATV Ride=

The environmental conditions in Inuit Nunangat seem a fitting context for such a "vulnerability" narrative.

Take, for example, the actions involved with going on a camping trip:

Any visiting researcher who has tried to prepare, pack or pull a qamutik (sled) across the land outside of Arctic Summer for the first time, like I did in the fall of 2021, has likely encountered the particular teachings of patience and modesty.

Fumbling around with thick mitts, pens and paper in the cold, while sled runners need to be replaced, knots need to be tied, and qamutiks need to be repaired, quickly eliminates the feasibility of (ethnographic) documenting. What remains, is attentive presence, and hands-on assistance where possible.

[[File:Preparing the Qamutiq.jpg|thumb|Preparing the qamutik (photograph by author)]]
[[File:Repacking the Qamutiq on the way.jpg|thumb|One of many moments that the qamutik needed to be repacked on the way (photograph by author)]]

=Camping at the Weir=

After 4 hours of travelling by ATV, some of it in the dark, we arrive at the fishing Weir.

After setting up the tents we watch George and his family spearfishing for a while.

[[File:DSC00404.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:DSC00398.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:DSC00432.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:DSC00387.jpg|thumb]]

<div class="next_choice">Being in the presence of someone like George, makes it very clear that it takes the experience of multiple generations to live with the land.

Just tagging along with someone like George for a couple of days allows you to learnt more than could ever be included in a knowledge-land-scape like this, or be transfered through writing or pictures.

The knowledge that is entangled within the tradition of spearfishing for example extends beyonds its technique or it practices. It's entangled within a lived moment of human and fish meeting each other that cannot be sustained outside of that moment.
</div>

<span class="pop-up vista link" data-page-title="The Land" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="Vista">[[The Land|Vista: The Land]]</div>

Chores Around Town

2025-03-18T08:15:15Z

46.29.25.109: /* Stranding the Car */

Being present in the community has taken many shapes for me over the course of my multiple field visits. In Gjoa Haven such presence has often taken shape around activities that are part of Inuit day to day life.

In the first week, when BearWatch researchers were present in Gjoa Haven in larger numbers, we for example helped George Konana take out his nets.

[[File:DSC00145.jpg|thumb|Pulling in the nets (photograph by author)]]
[[File:DSC00146.jpg|thumb|Pulling in the nets, close-up (photograph by author)]]
[[File:DSC00310.jpg|thumb|George Konana, cleaning some freshly caught Arctic Char]]

=Stranding the Car=

Most possibilities to get involved with chores around town and meeting people involved an old truck, the elements, and project-related logistics that had me drive across town for multiple purposes.

These activities created both possibilities and limitations in terms of community interaction patterns.

For example, the collective efforts required to pull the truck out of the ocean, when it stranded on the beach and got flooded by the rising tide of the ocean, is part of what co-PI van Coeverden-de Groot terms his “vulnerability narrative”. A performance of intra-dependency he understands his relationship with the community at large to be comprised of.

[[File:DSC00312.jpg|thumb|Truck stranded in the ocean (photograph by author.)]]

=Preparing and Packing for an ATV Ride=

The environmental conditions in Inuit Nunangat seem initially a fitting context for such a vulnerability narrative.

Take, for example, going on a camping trip:

Any visiting researcher who has tried to prepare, pack or pull a qamutiq (sled) across the land outside of Arctic Summer for the first time, like I did in 2021, has likely encountered the particular teachings of patience and modesty.

Fumbling around with thick mitts, pens and paper, while knots need to be tied, and qamutiks need to be repaired, quickly eliminates the feasibility of (ethnographic) documenting. What remains, however, is attentive presence, and hands-on assistance.

[[File:Preparing the Qamutiq.jpg|thumb|Preparing the Qamutiq (photograph by author)]]
[[File:Repacking the Qamutiq on the way.jpg|thumb|Repacking the Qamutiq on the way (photograph by author)]]

=Camping at the Weir=

After 4 hours of travelling by ATV, some of it in the dark, we arrive at the fishing Weir.

After setting up the tents we watch George and his family spearfishing for a while.

[[File:DSC00404.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:DSC00398.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:DSC00432.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:DSC00387.jpg|thumb]]

<div class="next_choice">Being in the presence of someone like George, makes it very clear that it takes the experience of multiple generations to live with the land.

Just tagging along with someone like George for a couple of days allows you to learnt more than could ever be included in a knowledge-land-scape like this, or be transfered through writing or pictures.

The knowledge that is entangled within the tradition of spearfishing for example extends beyonds its technique or it practices. It's entangled within a lived moment of human and fish meeting each other that cannot be sustained outside of that moment.
</div>

<span class="pop-up vista link" data-page-title="The Land" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="Vista">[[The Land|Vista: The Land]]</div>