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


=Mx. Science=
=Mx. Science=


[[File:20221020 122351.jpg|thumb]]
[[File:Mx. Science sketch.jpg|thumb|Concept sketch Mx. Science in research diary (de Wildt, 2022)]]
[[File:Mx. Science mindmap (sm).jpg|thumb|Mx. Science associative mindmap in research diary (de Wildt, 2022)]]


"Mx. Science", is a situated, playful, reconfigurative invitation to reimagine (a) scien/ce/tist, performed by me.  
"Mx. Science", is a situated, playful figure, that invites us to reimagine how we make space for "difference" within "scientific" context, like conferences, meetings or the laboratory.  


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


=First introductions=
=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.
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 principal. 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 principal 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]]


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 unsettling 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 hbe present at the final gathering as Mx. Science.


[[File:Mx. visiting grade 4.jpg|thumb|Mx. Science visiting fourth grade in Coral Harbour school]]
[[File:Mx cabin.png|thumb|Mx. Science at Gjoa Haven pre-workshop]]


<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.
<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.
Line 43: Line 38:
=The Liminal Scientist=
=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 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.
 
=Re-orientations=


"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.
"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]]
[[File:Mx science without background.png|thumb|Portrait Mx. Science, photographed by co-PI van Coeverden-de Groot in Coral Harbour, 2022]]


=Drag as a Diffractive Method=
=Drag as a Diffractive Method=
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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.  
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.
<div class="next_choice">You have spotted a wrecksite.
 
Check out the '''"wrecksite"''' of "Arctic Masculinities"
 
or,
 
'''"Keep Going"'''
 
<span class="pop-up wrecksite link" data-page-title="Arctic Masculinities" data-section-id="0" data-encounter-type="wrecksite">[[Arctic Masculinities|Wrecksite: Arctic Masculinities]]</span>


=Annual Scientific Meeting Mx. Science=
=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.   
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 the conference 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 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. Every day I recorded my experiences, at the start and end of the day. In the weeks afterward I followed up with 15 people, who I had conversed with at the conference to conduct a follow-up interview.
[[File:Mx. Science at ASM I (photographed by Andrew Bateman 2022).jpg|thumb|Mx. Science at ASM I (photographed by Andrew Bateman 2022)]]
[[File:Mx. Science at ASM II (photographed by Andrew Bateman 2022).jpg|thumb|Mx. Science at ASM II (photographed by Andrew Bateman 2022)]]


[[File:20221207 152641.jpg|thumb]]
=The Liminal and the Ethical Space=
[[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>
How do we determine who is a scientist, and who is not? 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?


<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>
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. Others associated me with the "smurfs". The lack of categorically determinable signifyers 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 politically correct use of language.


=The Liminal and the Ethical Space=
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 representative answer, or predetermined message about science or scientists, remained unaccommodated, the moment of relief was replaced with various degrees of discomfort.


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?
Explaining that Mx. Science becomes meaningful within particular encounters like the one me and my conversation partner were engaging in, then sparked for some a curiosity to explore - often facilitated through the form of a follow-up interview after the conference.


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.  
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.


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.
<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>


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.
<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=
=Another Point of Beginning=
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<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>
<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>
<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=
=Beyond the Cut=


[[File:Beyond the cut.png|thumb]]
[[File:Beyond the cut (sm).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.  
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 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.  
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 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 the scientific institute.  
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-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>

Latest revision as of 14:41, 16 August 2025

Estimated time to follow this cut: 10 minutes

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[edit]

Concept sketch Mx. Science in research diary (de Wildt, 2022)
Mx. Science associative mindmap in research diary (de Wildt, 2022)

"Mx. Science", is a situated, playful figure, that invites us 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.

Keep Going

First introductions[edit]

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 principal. 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 principal 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 unsettling 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 hbe present at the final gathering as Mx. Science.

Mx. Science visiting fourth grade in Coral Harbour school
Mx. Science at Gjoa Haven pre-workshop
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".

Return to Cut 3: "Wayfaring the BW Project"

Landmark: Becoming Other

The Liminal Scientist[edit]

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.

Re-orientations[edit]

"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.

Portrait Mx. Science, photographed by co-PI van Coeverden-de Groot in Coral Harbour, 2022

Drag as a Diffractive Method[edit]

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.

You have spotted a wrecksite.

Check out the "wrecksite" of "Arctic Masculinities"

or,

"Keep Going"

Wrecksite: Arctic Masculinities

Annual Scientific Meeting Mx. Science[edit]

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 the conference 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.

Mx. Science at ASM I (photographed by Andrew Bateman 2022)
Mx. Science at ASM II (photographed by Andrew Bateman 2022)

The Liminal and the Ethical Space[edit]

How do we determine who is a scientist, and who is not? 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. Others associated me with the "smurfs". The lack of categorically determinable signifyers 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 politically correct 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 representative answer, or predetermined 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 particular encounters like the one me and my conversation partner were engaging in, then sparked for some a curiosity to explore - often facilitated 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.

You have encountered the presence of a "Great White Beast". Check out the landmark to consider how this figure haunts this Knowledge-Land-Scape.

Landmark: "The Great White Beast"

Another Point of Beginning[edit]

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.

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.

Beyond the Cut[edit]

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.

Detour to Cut 1: Cut 1 Voices of Thunder

Detour to Cut 2: Cut 2 Aesthetic (in)action in BearWatch

Detour to Cut 3: Cut 3 Wayfaring the BW project

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