Issue 08
Description
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Welcome to a rich audio world that spans continents, species, genres and geological eras. With firework-studded skies, creepy streetscapes and remote mountains, travels by bike, jeep, foot and imagination, and connections through music, meditation, the natural world and community joy, there’s something for everyone in Queer Out Here Issue 08.
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Information about Issue 08
Length: 1:23:43
Transcript: Google Docs / PDF
High quality audio version: Google Drive (.wav file, 1.24GB)
Running order:
A Dutch New Year - Jenny List
Winter 2020 - Elisabeth Flett
Uncanny Nausea - Shaughn Martel (aka bit-form)
Being Outside - Bilen Berhanu
Space in Nature - Dee Lister
Silence - Celia
Merging Temporalities - Jaime Simons
A Pretty One Sided Conversation with a Pigeon - Fish (aka Xym)
Conduits for Joy - Roxanna Barry with Alison Wormell and Mari Funabashi
TransBike Europe - Bart
My Shiny Jeep and Me - Cheryna Guzman
Queer Forest Bathing with Toadstool Walks - Travis Clough
Grandmother Earth, Grandfather Sky - Indigie Femme
Cover art: This issue’s fantastic cover photo and design is by Dee Lister (they/she). Dee is a queer biracial visual artist and writer who’s in complex trauma recovery. Dee finds joy in the process of artmaking just as much as what’s created in consequence. When they aren’t walking in nature or creating black and white analogue photographs, Dee likes to doodle or read poetry whilst sitting under a blanket with their rescue dog. Dee writes of their cover, “The metaphor resonates of a bedraggled though majestic bird soaring away from the others who huddle atop a building nestled within the urban decay of a town centre (which in this case was Bolton). This may be cliché, but I believe transcending internalised shame and fear with gentleness, self-worth and acceptance of past trauma makes just stepping out the door an act of resistance.” Find Dee at their website, or visit their Linktree for other socials.
Content notes: The pieces in Queer Out Here talk about many things related to being queer and the outdoors. This issue contains: discussions of mental illness, mental health, disability, and social ostracisation; non-detailed mentions of queerphobia, racism and ableism; mentions of Covid lockdown; non-graphic references to animal harm (e.g. fishing); sudden and loud sounds like fireworks, vehicles and wind distortion; harsh and unusual whispering sounds; some swearing and use of language that’s often considered ableist (e.g. “crazy”). If you have specific anxieties or triggers, check this transcript or ask a trusted friend to listen and give you feedback. Please let us know if there is something we’ve missed and we will add it to the show notes on our website.
Acknowledgement of Country: This issue and its documentation were edited in part on Brayakaulung (Gunaikurnai) Country. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land. We pay our respects to Gunaikurnai elders and we extend this to all Indigenous elders and Indigenous and First Nations listeners around the world.
Show notes for Issue 08
Opener - various contributors
Short description: A mixture of sounds from the pieces in this issue, including thunder, singing, whale sounds, water, footsteps and snippets of talking.
Introduction - Jonathan (he/they) and Allysse (she/they)
Short description: Welcome and housekeeping with Allysse and Jonathan. In the background there are gentle sounds of birds in the countryside in rural Wales.
A Dutch New Year - Jenny List (she/her)
Short description: Audio postcard. A walk through a small Dutch town on New Years Eve, with attendant spontaneous firework display.
Creator bio: Jenny is a middle-aged British trans woman with a lifelong love of the outdoors.
Creator link: Website
Creator statement: This is one of the most unexpected yet completely Dutch experiences for a British tourist to find in the Netherlands, when a sensible small town turns into something that looks and sounds like a warzone as everyone sets off as many fireworks as they can.
Content notes: Loud noises, mentions of alcohol use and transphobia.
Winter 2020 - Elisabeth Flett (she/her)
Short description: Sound art. Join Elisabeth Flett in the depths of December 2020 as she goes on her nightly nocturnal walk and begins to question her sanity.
Creator bio: Elisabeth Flett is an award-winning writer, theatre-maker, musician and general feminist trouble maker. Winner of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama Rose Lawrence Award for academic writing in 2017 and University of Aberdeen Literary Lights 2021, Elisabeth’s writing spans academia, poetry, plays, fiction and auto-biographical content. Her poetry is featured in zines published by Hysteria and Coin-Operated Press, and in Out on the Page’s anthology “Queer Writing for a Brave New World”. Elisabeth is passionate about mental health awareness, LGBTQ+ rights and gender equality, themes which often feature in all forms of her work as a creative practitioner.
Creator statement: Winter 2020 might seem a surprising creative response to the prompt “outside”. Indeed, when I played it to a friend she expressed horror that I’d created something so unnerving instead of something more joyful! When I think of the “outside”, however, my memory inevitably skips straight to the time period where I realised I’d always taken the outdoors for granted as I paced around my small flat, cooped up with the rest of the nation during Covid lockdown as we all went slowly insane and hoarded toilet paper. Living in Aberdeen and struggling through a Masters degree over Zoom, I was terribly lonely, lacking purpose, and with nothing to stop me I found myself sliding into a sleep routine worthy of Dracula. Wandering around deserted central Aberdeen at night, I felt like I’d slid into the pages of War of the Worlds, the city abandoned apart from me and perhaps an overly optimistic man skulking somewhere around in the sewers. As a fan of Jeff Wayne’s musical version of the novel I decide
United States
