In the summer of 2016, I curated a symposium entitled “EMBODYING ENLIVENMENT – Queer, SM and Eco-Sexual Perspectives” at the “Xplore” Festival in Berlin – probably one of the most original and deeply inter- and transdisciplinary festivals I ever encountered.
With the Xplore Symposium, held in parallel to and as an integral part of the Xplore Festival, I was searching for ways in which different embodied and sexual practices may relate to an ecological way of thinking and way of life, as part of my ongoing exploration of the cultural dimension of sustainability. Together with the symposium’s seven speakers, the festival’s workshops organizers and many participants, we engaged into a journey of discovery, which weaved together exceptionally well the theoretical threads (mostly at the symposium) and experiential-practical threads (mostly at the workshops and performances): We ventured into original ways of thinking and experiencing ourselves as hybrid becomings: becoming queerer and other, becoming animals, becoming plants, becoming meta-beings (meta-humans, meta-animals) and overall approaching a richer and deeper experience of becoming ecologies.