the thing with feathers

Hand holding a transparent note with a belle hooks quote

the thing with feathers’ explores the idea of queer listening. It imagines queer listening as a listening past, through or underneath the static of heteronormative dominant noise.

Sounds moves easily in and out of spaces, through walls and across thresholds; even crossing with ease between what we consider our outer and inner selves. In the context of queer difference and loneliness, these unruly sounds, and queer listening, becomes a way of connection against the odds.

The work imagines the intimate and subtle act of sounding/listening as a meeting and a sharing; a reaching toward the other, where sound acts as a bridge; a moment of solidarity, resistance and hope.

Queer listening listens out for, reaches toward, the disoriented or differently oriented other(…) Queer is always listening out through the static produced by not-queer emanations of vocalic bodies.

Queer Listening to Queer Vocal Timbre yvon Bonenfant

Two books, Love letters between Vita Sackville West and Virginia Woolf, and all about love by belle hooks
Bluetit
Two hands held out together as an offering of something

can I tell you a secret