MANIFESTO
An ever-evolving ever-growing catalogue of vulnerable, imperfect, body explorations. The Chimerical is a collection of tools and resources.
Here, the body is always recognized as: glitch, cyborg, story, data, archive, catalogue, artifact, mobile. It trembles, it twitches, it blurs.
The Chimerical will look like a bi-monthly-ish journal that will take the form of essays, video and written conversations, artistic dialogues and expressions, poetry, imagery, journal entries, digital interfaces, photos, paintings, intellectual musings, video art, sound art starting with my own and others’ works. It will always seek to validate the body in the state that its in.
It will also house information around panels and courses connected to Chimera + Friends.
The Chimerical will gather interdsciplinary convergences and provide tactical and artsitic resources toward deeper becomings, fuller personhoods, that collectively embrace our trembles, twitches, and blurs.
“We use the body to give material form to an idea that has no form, assemblage that is abstract.”
~ Legacy Russell - Glitch Feminism (p.8)
Glitch.
Legacy Russell uses glitch as a way of communicating how these body lineages of boundary have “gone wrong.” She, of course, does not mean that it has actually gone wrong. But simply refers to that which has fallen outside of hegemonies and commonly recognized ontologies. In this journal, and its’ collection of artworks, mediations, conversations, digitalizations, materializations, and performances, I hope to actively recognize and materialize these wrongs as rightnesses. These glitches, the ways in which we each, our imperfections, our words, our songs, our bodies, fall outside the expected. This journal asks us to look at that which is already outside of our common understandings, and also asks what are the pieces that we should hold onto? That are the ones that bring us closer together? What does it mean to come together? When are separations useful?
Trembles.
This journal seeks to embrace nuance, difference, while also generating languages, narratives, and meaning-makings to tangibilize and embody belongings that rub and collapse. This act of becoming, especially alongside others and on display for others, is vulnerable. It trembles. These become a collection of literal and metaphorical (always both) trembling voices, trembling in fear, depth, struggle, joy. I borrow this concept trembling from Kristin Juarez and Lydia Bell (here). I like this idea of tremble because it somatically, sensorially, grounds. My decision to start this cyberzine, came from a moment of literal trembling as I asked a question at a panel for the very first time. I had been so deeply afraid to use my voice, to ask questions publically. I feared the ways in which I would show up imperfectly, how that imperfection would be interpreted, or more importantly, felt, by others. This space, and its many avenues and outlets, seeks to accept imperfection, curiosity, and growth as constants. I want to accept those imperfections, and also challenge it and grow from it. So many see writers and artists’ claims and questions as constant. They are not, especially to their creators.
Twitches.
As my body learns safety, processes trauma, and builds joy…it twitches. At first it was just my thumbs during EMDR and various somatic-psychotherapies. Now, I notice it daily, mostly in my hands, which have consistently been a place of safety for me, but sometimes in my hips or my feet as well. It is uncomfortable, looks kinda weird, but most often is unnoticed by others or myself. These twitches are important in that they show how this work becomes embodied and de-bodied (which, defining embodiment should probably become its own essay at some point). Energy, a readiness for our bodies to expel cortisol, is released. These glitches, trembles, and twitches are the result of material and immaterial, digital, interfacing.
Blur.
Boundaries and borders bleed into each other. Definitions are unstable, but languages necessary. So many have addressed this via symbolisms of the cyborg, the monster, water bodies. Bodies carry past/present/future as a lived constant. "The troubled material of the body" (Glitch p. 9) is always hazy and in flux. At some point I will probably dedicate an essay to the cosmological blurredness of body.