Dimensions of Political Ecology conference
University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY
Clips from Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story will be shown and discussed in the panel "Latent Destiny, Manifest Reversal" organized by July Oskar and Cleo Woelfle-Erskin. http://www.politicalecology.org/#!2014-conference/cdaa
The program is here: http://media.wix.com/ugd/819ace_03f51e967bac47f284e65f33ed793ece.pdf My presentation will combine a 3-5 minute video/introductory text with a 10-15 minute excerpt of my new film Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story (with Annie Sprinkle). The film’s story is told from my perspective as a native West Virginian. Using humor, situated knowledges, dialogical art, and sexuality Annie and I propose romantic/sensual/ecosexual love to create alternative relationships with the Earth, as well as to help alleviate the despair caused by the mass destruction of vast regions of our planet. This film addresses the Appalachian Mountains, which are being wiped out under the patriotic rubric of “national energy security.” Creative strategies deployed in Goodbye Gauley Mountain are offered to help queer environmental activism in order to reach different audiences, as well as to counter corporate propaganda that labels anti-mountain top removal (MTR) coal mining activists as “outsiders.” “Outsiders” implies that activists are not qualified to protest MTR and do not belong in the coalfields, reinforcing xenophobic stereotypes of hillbillies represented in films such as Deliverance. As both an insider and an outsider living in California my film attempts to counter stereotypes that justify the destruction of the land by building unlikely alliances between queers, hillbillies, and activists. We celebrate love for the Earth and marry the Appalachian Mountains. The film’s heretical use of heterosexuality’s most sacred institution strikes at core of the kinds of controlling normative beliefs, assumptions, practices, and borders that manifest destiny establishes and enforces to maintain the current economic colonialism practiced in the coalfields of Appalachia.