Ways to Change The Body/Land

• Published in: UnderCurrents: Journal of Critical Environmental Studies
• Main Author: Mayhew, Jaimes
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: York University 2015
• Subjects: Iceland
• Online Access: https://currents.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/currents/article/view/40254; https://doi.org/10.25071/2292-4736/40254

Inspired by eco-queer and eco-feminist notions of power and ecology, as well as my own experience as a transgender person from a family of geologists and ecologists, Ways To Change The Body/Land is a series of photos taken out of a car window in southern Iceland with instructions that suggest small ways one could change the social, political, cultural, physical, or ecological contexts of a body or landscape: the body/land. These instructions are abstract, inciting a call to action but not assigning the power that is needed to follow through. This leaves room for questions—if one wanted to change a body/land by assessing value, what kind of value should be assessed? Would taking out a life insurance policy assess value? Would estimating available resources assess value? All of these works seek to acknowledge the constant flux of a body/land in a perpetual state of becoming. Although I do not believe that landscapes and bodies are qualitatively the same, I believe that we assign meaning to both in similar ways.