Knowledge-land-scape - User contributions [en]

The Distanced Observer

2025-02-13T15:44:33Z

92.109.35.87:

[[File:The wrecksite.png|thumb]]

“This new practice evolved from an expressed desire of the community, adapting available technology, revised ethics approval from Queen’s University, and agreement on Covid-19 protocols that exceed local requirements” (LSARP report, March 2021), Nevertheless, its material realities did not function in a satisfactory way when executed.

[[File:Distanced observer.png|thumb|The material wreckage required to facilitate detached observers.]]

A mounted phone, a large table-stand microphone and two go-pro cameras, of which one mounted on a structure that was built over the dining table to film the mapping exercise that was part of the interview, were required to respectively live-stream the go-pro recording, a conference call and to also record high-quality audio. Other materials required for these interviews included a large paper map of Southampton Island, an acetate sheet and waterproof markers in front of the interviewee, and a piece of paper to mark specific timestamps in front of the interviewer. This was in addition to another phone mounted on a tripod elsewhere in the room to record an offline version of the interview.

<div class="next_choice">

Continue with Cut 3 to pick up the thread after Covid-19 restrictions were lifted.</div>

<span class="return to-cut-3 link" data-page-title="Wayfaring_the_BW_project" data-section-id="5" data-encounter-type="return">[[Wayfaring the BW project#Fieldtrip BW Team Coral Harbour Summer 2021|Return to Cut 3: Wayfaring the BW project]]</span>

The Distanced Observer

2025-02-13T15:43:57Z

92.109.35.87:

[[File:The wrecksite.png|thumb]]

Although “This new practice evolved from an expressed desire of the community, adapting available technology, revised ethics approval from Queen’s University, and agreement on Covid-19 protocols that exceed local requirements” (LSARP report, March 2021), its material realities did not function in a satisfactory way when executed.

[[File:Distanced observer.png|thumb|The material wreckage required to facilitate detached observers.]]

A mounted phone, a large table-stand microphone and two go-pro cameras, of which one mounted on a structure that was built over the dining table to film the mapping exercise that was part of the interview, were required to respectively live-stream the go-pro recording, a conference call and to also record high-quality audio. Other materials required for these interviews included a large paper map of Southampton Island, an acetate sheet and waterproof markers in front of the interviewee, and a piece of paper to mark specific timestamps in front of the interviewer. This was in addition to another phone mounted on a tripod elsewhere in the room to record an offline version of the interview.

<div class="next_choice">

Continue with Cut 3 to pick up the thread after Covid-19 restrictions were lifted.</div>

<span class="return to-cut-3 link" data-page-title="Wayfaring_the_BW_project" data-section-id="5" data-encounter-type="return">[[Wayfaring the BW project#Fieldtrip BW Team Coral Harbour Summer 2021|Return to Cut 3: Wayfaring the BW project]]</span>

Point of Beginning Mx. Science

2025-02-09T12:44:20Z

92.109.35.87:

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

This is one of three case studies conducted as part of my research that seeks to explore how ethical knowledge conciliation may come to matter within community-based polar bear research alongside aesthetic action.

This particular case study was informed by the other two cuts of community-based co-creative filmmaking, and the organization of the final BearWatch (pre-)workshops. It diffractively cuts across two events: the final BearWatch (pre-)workshop in Gjoa Haven, and the Annual Science Meeting (ASM), a large conference platform that connects researchers and scientists from across the Circumpolar Arctic. performance-based exploration of how the technicalities of drag may allow for the reconfiguration of what it means to be a community-based researcher.

The aesthetic action that is traced along this cut, is the performative presence of "Mx. Science".

=Mx. Science=

[[File:20221020 122351.jpg|thumb]]

"Mx. Science", is a situated, playful, reconfigurative invitation to reimagine (a) scien/ce/tist, performed by me.

As Mx. Science, I practice (my) research while displaying various (in)determinate signifiers. Some of these allow me to be categorized- for example as a scientists/researcher (wearing a laboratory-coat, and safety glasses, referring to sciences that conduct laboratory experiments, while also wearing various lenses and a carrying a clipboard for notes, that signal towards disciplines like anthropology, or geography). Other ways of presenting, however, defy categorization. Mx. Science is for example not determinately human (blue-skinned), or cis-gendered (for example, tonal qualities of my voice that are dissonant with gendered presentations like facial hair).

Mx. Science is performed by me, a non-Inuit researcher conducting research from a western educational institute and as part of the BearWatch team. 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 from such a liminal space, I made sure to receive explicit sanction and input from the BearWatch PI's, as well as community-partners, representatives and participants.

<div class="next_choice">'''Keep Going''' to read more on such community sanction and the liminal.</div>

=First introductions=

I had first introduced Mx. Science to the school in Coral Harbour, by invitation 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 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 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. I followed up with 15 people, who I had conversed with at the conference to conduct a follow-up interview.

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

<div class="next_choice">Take a closer look at the Landmark, to see how the experiences shared during these interviews eventually configured the haunting presence of a "Great White Beast" in 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>

=The Liminal and the Ethical Space=

This liminal performance of (a) scien/ce/tist, provided several insight on the different im/possibilities for co-creating an ethical space of engagement in the context of the BearWatch workshops and ASM.

Firstly, Mx. Science turned out to function as what I later understood to be a diffractive device. My follow-up interviews were semi-structured conversations, designed to explore the meaning that could be attributed to my presence at the conference. What became apparent after 15 interviews, however, was that such meaning could often not be separated from the meaning-makers own movements through the conference and other scientific spaces.

=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 performative possibilities this persona has enabled to imagine science and scientists as a phenomena outside of it conventional apparatus. In fact you have only been able to find this cut through attentive engagement with others as you have been making your way along other tracks and paths. This case study tracked an approach to explore the meaning of "ethical space" that might have not been immediately intuitive. It is however, an attempt to directly implicate myself into the stakes that are at play when engaging in such trans-cultural boundary work. Keep going to explore how Mx. Science has continued its material agencies beyond this cut.</div>

=Beyond the Cut=

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

Through my interventions with Mx. Science I have gained an interest in what can be done through self-directed work of un-learning, decentering- and decolonizing the western scientist in cross-cultural contexts. For transformative practices to come to fruition, such un/learning should happen both by accepting leadership and practicing respectful collaboration with non-western partners, as well as through a self-initiated repositioning.

To explore the future possibilities of drag and performance art to decolonize, and 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 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 the 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|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|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|Cut 3 Wayfaring the BW project]]</span>

Aesthetic Action

2025-02-09T12:44:00Z

92.109.35.87:

Welcome to the in-between.

[[File:1737039042167-3934f768-a251-4572-acf4-33d2c96518b9 1.jpg|thumb]]

=Aesthetics=

First, before you start following this cut, a note on "aesthetics":

Robinson and Martin understand aesthetics as the material and sensuous encounters between bodies-in-action, and the affective forces created in such encounters. What makes "aesthetic action” different from any other action, according to them, is the intentionality of either the action itself or the artist, or the aesthetic experience of the participating actor <ref>Robinson, D., & Martin, K. (Eds.). (2016). Arts of engagement: Taking aesthetic action in and beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press.</ref>.

<small><references /></small>

=Aesthetic Encounter as Knowledge Conciliation=

This cut reconfigures the challenge of knowledge co-production in the context of polar bear monitoring research in Nunavut as one that may come to matter through aesthetic encounters.

You are invited to think alongside the spaces that have emerged from prospective aesthetic actions like co-creating a motion-graphic documentary, built an igloo-, spent time on the land-, sharing food, and artistic interventions. Together we may feel our way forward through this knowledge-land-scape to understand how such encounters between research partners from Queen’s University and the community of Gjoa Haven, Nunavut have come to matter, and how they may provide meaning in terms of knowledge conciliation.

<div class="next_choice">'''"Detour"''' if you want to read an abstract.</div>

<span class="detour link" data-page-title="Cut 2 Abstract" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="detour">[[Cut 2 Abstract|Detour: Abstract]]</span>

=(Re-)Configurating Space=

The questions I have asked myself alongside the unfolding of some of the events in this knowledge-land-scape are: What kind of spaces open up? What insights emerge within such spaces? What possibilities for cross-cultural exchange, beyond data, become possible? What slippages do they reveal between the promises of ethical knowledge engagement, and the material practices of doing so? And what can we learn from such slippages?

<div class="next_choice">You are presented with a vista "the Ethical Space of Engagement", go check it out to understand how ethical knowledge conciliation can be understood in terms of creating space.</div>

<span class="pop-up vista link" data-page-title="The ESE (Space)" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="Vista">[[The ESE (Space)|Vista: The Ethical Space Engagement: Space]]</span>

=Aesthetic Action and the ESE=

Aesthetics as a concept that is associated with western arts philosophy, but understood here as the affective and sensuous, provides multiple ways to engage and and think with the principles of in-between space, as put forward by Willie Ermine<ref>Ermine, W. (2007). The ethical space of engagement. Indigenous Law Journal, 6(1), 193–203.</ref>.

The artistic qualities of aesthetic actions can provide tools outside of traditional western-scientific paradigms, to facilitate ways of viewing, conducting and presenting research outside of dualistic thinking: the hallmark of classic western philosophy. As such aesthetic action can actively deconstruct, challenge and decenter the dominance of western ways of knowing and establish other sites of ‘enunciation’ - rather than merely critiquing- and re-centering them in the process <ref>Bhabha, H. K. (2012). The location of culture. routledge.</ref><ref>Simpson, L. R. (2004). Anticolonial strategies for the recovery and maintenance of Indigenous knowledge. American Indian Quarterly, 373-384.</ref><ref>Bhambra, G. K. (2014). Postcolonial and decolonial dialogues. Postcolonial studies, 17(2), 115-121.</ref>

In its rejection of certainty, the in-between opens up. Irwin’s describes this in-between, and the conditions it provides, as a possibility for ‘becoming’<ref>Irwin, R. L. (2013). Becoming a/r/tography. Studies in Art Education, 54(3), 198-215.</ref>. Irwin discusses ‘becoming’ as something that is placed between two multiplicities, not by becoming the other, but by ‘becoming-other’<ref>ibid</ref>.

<div class="next_choice">Check out the '''"Vista"''' to understand prospectively what this "Becoming Other" might mean - even if you have a suspicion that such "becoming other" is something that will only truly retain meaning in practice.</div>

<small><references /></small>

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

=Aesthetic (in)action in BearWatch=

You find yourself at a crossroad. Each of the paths forward will guide you across a case-study on aesthetic action in the BearWatch project.

<div class="next_choice">Choose between the aesthetic actions of "community-based filmmaking", "Community Gathering", or "Mx. Science", and explore whether and how they can possibly marked as Ethical Spaces of Engagement.

'''"Detour"''' to Point of Beginning Animated Graphic Documentary, to trace the space-making qualities of community-based filmmaking.

or,

'''"Detour"''' to Point of Beginning (Pre-)workshops, to trace the space-making qualities of community gatherings.

or,

'''"Detour"''' to Point of Beginning Mx. Science , to trace the space-making qualities of a particular situated arts-based intervention.
</div>

<span class="detour to-cut-2 link" data-page-title="Point of Beginning Animated Graphic Documentary" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="detour">[[Point of Beginning Animated Graphic Documentary|Detour to Cut 2: Point of Beginning Animated Graphic Documentary]]</span>

<span class="detour to-cut-2 link" data-page-title="Point of Beginning (Pre-)workshops" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="detour">[[Point of Beginning (Pre-)workshops|Detour to Cut 2: Point of Beginning (Pre-)workshops]]</span>

<span class="detour to-cut-2 link" data-page-title="Point of Beginning Mx. Science " data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="detour">[[Point of Beginning Mx. Science |Detour to Cut 2: Point of Beginning Mx. Science]]</span>

The Great White Beast

2025-02-09T12:41:24Z

92.109.35.87:

[[File:Landmark.png|thumb]]

What had become clear at the final workshops, at the ASM conference and was also reiterated at the interviews was that most people expected Mx. Science to re-present, or reveal a clear underlying message about science or scientists, at some point. The majority of people who approached me at the conference, asked me about my underlying methodology or "what" my presence was supposed to represent.

The Great White Beast is a figure that conjures many associative frames. Firstly, and foremost reference to polar bears, or more accurately a moniker that is employed within Inuit custom, to respectfully avoid talking about polar bears’ (Jimmy Qirqut, Gjoa Haven Elder, 2022), it also gestures towards the great white beast of colonialism, while simultaneously evoking a frame of powers and agencies that extend beyond our own comprehension or capacities: a “beast of a problem”.

<span class="return to-cut-2 link" data-page-title="Point of Beginning Mx. Science" data-section-id="5" data-encounter-type="return">[[Point of Beginning Mx. Science#The Liminal and the Ethical Space|Return to Cut 2: "Mx. Science"]]</span></span>

Point of Beginning Mx. Science

2025-02-09T12:41:08Z

92.109.35.87: /* The Liminal and the Ethical Space */

This is one of three case studies conducted as part of my research that seeks to explore how ethical knowledge conciliation may come to matter within community-based polar bear research alongside aesthetic action.

This particular case study was informed by the other two cuts of community-based co-creative filmmaking, and the organization of the final BearWatch (pre-)workshops. It diffractively cuts across two events: the final BearWatch (pre-)workshop in Gjoa Haven, and the Annual Science Meeting (ASM), a large conference platform that connects researchers and scientists from across the Circumpolar Arctic. performance-based exploration of how the technicalities of drag may allow for the reconfiguration of what it means to be a community-based researcher.

The aesthetic action that is traced along this cut, is the performative presence of "Mx. Science".

=Mx. Science=

[[File:20221020 122351.jpg|thumb]]

"Mx. Science", is a situated, playful, reconfigurative invitation to reimagine (a) scien/ce/tist, performed by me.

As Mx. Science, I practice (my) research while displaying various (in)determinate signifiers. Some of these allow me to be categorized- for example as a scientists/researcher (wearing a laboratory-coat, and safety glasses, referring to sciences that conduct laboratory experiments, while also wearing various lenses and a carrying a clipboard for notes, that signal towards disciplines like anthropology, or geography). Other ways of presenting, however, defy categorization. Mx. Science is for example not determinately human (blue-skinned), or cis-gendered (for example, tonal qualities of my voice that are dissonant with gendered presentations like facial hair).

Mx. Science is performed by me, a non-Inuit researcher conducting research from a western educational institute and as part of the BearWatch team. 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 from such a liminal space, I made sure to receive explicit sanction and input from the BearWatch PI's, as well as community-partners, representatives and participants.

<div class="next_choice">'''Keep Going''' to read more on such community sanction and the liminal.</div>

=First introductions=

I had first introduced Mx. Science to the school in Coral Harbour, by invitation 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 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 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. I followed up with 15 people, who I had conversed with at the conference to conduct a follow-up interview.

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

<div class="next_choice">Take a closer look at the Landmark, to see how the experiences shared during these interviews eventually configured the haunting presence of a "Great White Beast" in 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>

=The Liminal and the Ethical Space=

This liminal performance of (a) scien/ce/tist, provided several insight on the different im/possibilities for co-creating an ethical space of engagement in the context of the BearWatch workshops and ASM.

Firstly, Mx. Science turned out to function as what I later understood to be a diffractive device. My follow-up interviews were semi-structured conversations, designed to explore the meaning that could be attributed to my presence at the conference. What became apparent after 15 interviews, however, was that such meaning could often not be separated from the meaning-makers own movements through the conference and other scientific spaces.

=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.

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<div class="next_choice">This cut has taken you along the development of Mx. Science and the performative possibilities this persona has enabled to imagine science and scientists as a phenomena outside of it conventional apparatus. In fact you have only been able to find this cut through attentive engagement with others as you have been making your way along other tracks and paths. This case study tracked an approach to explore the meaning of "ethical space" that might have not been immediately intuitive. It is however, an attempt to directly implicate myself into the stakes that are at play when engaging in such trans-cultural boundary work. Keep going to explore how Mx. Science has continued its material agencies beyond this cut.</div>

=Beyond the Cut=

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

Through my interventions with Mx. Science I have gained an interest in what can be done through self-directed work of un-learning, decentering- and decolonizing the western scientist in cross-cultural contexts. For transformative practices to come to fruition, such un/learning should happen both by accepting leadership and practicing respectful collaboration with non-western partners, as well as through a self-initiated repositioning.

To explore the future possibilities of drag and performance art to decolonize, and 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 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 the 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|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|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|Cut 3 Wayfaring the BW project]]</span>