The Unicorn and the Larva

In this performative co-interview, the unicorn (Tejal Shah) and the larva (Anuj Vaidya) reflect on their artistic practice, and the trajectory of their work from addressing issues of queer sexuality to those of queer ecology. Anuj and Tejal met at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where they collaborated on Chingari chumma (Stinging Kiss, 2000)—a short video that turns a cliched Bollywood ending into a queer fairy-tale phantasy— as an experiment in post-pornography. In this conversation, the artists reflect on the beginnings of their collaboration, giving special attention to their process, their shared love for drag and camp, and to the complicated reception to their work. While Tejal returned to India soon after, the pair continued to remain in conversation over the decades, even as their own practices meandered into questions of gender performance, nation-state politics, activism, and eventually into concerns about the environment and the nonhuman. In their most recent works, the artists confront the legacy of human exceptionalism and invoke the forgotten wisdom of interspecies dependence and desire as a way through the sixth extinction. Will we emerge on the other side? They dare not hope, but they do dare to wonder.

A Backward Glance for a Queer Utopian Future: Genesis, Climate Change, and Hope as a Hermeneutic

This article explores the ways in which biblical narratives and queer ecocritical voices can converge to recognize the importance of an intersectional climate change movement: to show that queer ecology matters. Specifically, I argue for an alternative approach to biblical ecocriticism, constructed around a queer(ed) biblical performance. I employ José Esteban Muñoz’s conceptualization of a queer utopian futurity, Lee Edelman’s critique of the political and rhetorical discourse centered on reproductive futurity, and Nicole Seymour’s blending of queer theory and ecocriticism in order to analyze conversations held by a cohort of the environmentally engaged nyc queer community. A performance and retelling of the story of Joseph(ine) in Genesis illustrates how queer engagement with biblical narratives offers an alternative to the dominant narrative of the climate change movement: “We must do it for our kids, for our grandkids.”