Expanding the LGBTQ+ community to include not only humans, but non-humans alike, is an effort best realized by first identifying the queer, non-human, creatures that have been omitted from scientific research until recently. In Precedent at the Water: A Symphony of Queers, viewers are invited to take their shoes off and step into a dark curtain draped room. Within the curtains, the viewers wade through three and a half inches of water around a woven vine sculpture sitting on top of a large leafed form at the water's surface. Both forms are phallic in appearance and focus on the action of penetration—the leafed form is inserted inside, or is topping, the woven vine form.
As viewers encircle the abstract structures, taking in the ambiguity of the homoerotic form; the materiality of the leaves and vines; and the sensation of water sloshing around their feet, they are met with an auditory soundscape— the symphony of queers. This work encircles water as its conduit for the queer creatures whose mating and conversational sounds I’ve sampled for this soundscape.
