Trans Ecologies Symposium

‘The Shelled Gastropod: Trans-Corporeality In Necro-Ecologies’ was presented as part of the Trans Ecologies Symposium, Department of Geography at Durham University.

Abstract: This paper contributes to contemporary dialogues on the permeability of bodies, our trans-corporeality (Alaimo 2010), within the milieu of a posthumanist new materialism with a specific focus on necro-ecologies and a soft approach to forensic architecture (Weizman, 2012, 2021). Like Barad’s ‘agential trans*materiality’ (2015) and Bradotti’s ‘active transposition’ (2006), the trans- in Alaimo’s trans-corporeality signifies a plethora of intersectional readings offering a conduit for thought. Here, the prefix functions as a becoming and ontological folding of binary sensibilities, whether -gender, -species or interior-exterior conditional relations. In this contribution, attention is paid to sites of trans-ition (as with hospitals and mortuaries), and the ‘transmigration of form’ (Oestigaard, 2005) (i.e., putrefaction, seepage, confluence, re-constitution) following funereal practices. This paper uses a discursive-diffractive methodology in recognising these space-time matterings (Barad, 2007).

Panel: How might creative and playful practices help compose with/in trans ecologies, and to decompose the taxonomic regimes through which sex, gender, and species are demarcated and policed?

This panel explores what is made possible through creative and playful practices at the interconnected levels of the body and of structures and systems of knowledge making. New forms of embodiment and relationality may issue forth from playful disruptions of dominant taxonomies, while artistic engagement with biological processes of decomposition might orient us towards modes of ambiguous slippage that signal possibilities for other ways of knowing. In exploring creativity and playfulness, this panel encourages collective reflection on ways of thinking that enable exploration of sex and gender as multiplicitous and non-linear, and modes of embodiment that exceed or confound systems of oppression and exploitation.
This paper responds to the panel’s provocation by building on Sharples’ practice-led research and sculpture Soft Shell (2023), a critical-material exploration of the porous boundaries between bodies and spaces. Using silicone to cast architectural surfaces from former medico-religious sites, the work preserves the patina, wounds, and present–absence of space, producing speculative trans-corporeal forms. Situated within a posthumanist framework, the paper articulates biological processes as energetic – where matter leaks, filters, and transforms beyond the perimeters of taxonomic classification. By attending to infrastructural and necro-ecological entanglements, the work folds Cartesian readings of sex, species, and self, creating space for queer and posthuman becomings.

Convened by: Dr. Sage Brice & Dr. Felix McNulty.
Keynote: Cleo Wölfle Hazard & Kes Otter Lieffe.
Panel: Practices: Ecologies of Creativity and Play.
Nick Koenig, Dr. Victoria Sharples, Dr. Eden Kinkaid, Kate Marston.