homoneurotic | June Readings

A bit late, but here's some of the articles I read over the month of June, as well as some of my favorite quotes from each.

Art

Inside Istanbul's Underground Queer Scene - I-D, June 10th, 2022
- “While expecting to be understood and accepted, we shouldn’t forget to try to understand and accept others as well. Be tolerant, receptive and questioning . . . being productive and expressive . . . is the thing that will heal us.”
- “I wish patience and fortitude to future generations in their struggle to hold on to their own truths when they are seduced by unoriginal thoughts.”
Heidi Gustafson Recounts How She Established an Archive of Hundreds of Samples of Humanity’s Oldest Art Material - Colossal, June 7, 2022
- “When you get into the nature of color . . . you start to realize color symbolism has a lot of direct, solid foundations in geomorphology. Red that feels “intense or energizing” is often made of 500 million-year-old ancient volcano spew. Yellow that is “sunny” might be ochre made by spring sunlight interacting with microbes to create fresh iron hydroxide. Blue that feels “mournful or spiritual” could be made from vivianite (iron phosphate) forming in dead bodies. There’s a mythic geology to every single natural pigment that tells deep time and place stories, as well as conveys artistic and scientific knowledge. Color is always ecological, and for humans, also carries cultural heritage and insight. I love imagining and feeling how a rock could be exposed to heat, freeze, water, storms, mythic drama, earthquakes, drought, stampedes, violence, human hubris. In that way, color is a language of the gods…. usually weather gods!”

Culture

The Changing Nature of Lubunca, Turkey's LGBTQ Slang - Atlas Obscura, Sept. 15, 2017
The Human Toll of Fallout 76’s Disastrous Launch - Kotaku, June 8, 2022

Politics

What an Archive of Testimonals Tells Us About Abortion Before Roe - LitHub, June 3, 2022
- “In Japan, abortion was decriminalized after World War II—not out of a feminist sensibility, but to improve the “racial quality” of the nation. Tellingly, the bill that decriminalized abortion also included a clause enabling sterilization, both consensual and forced . . . this is an archive of agency, but it also reveals how US women’s ability to have abortions outside United States borders was based on curtailments of reproductive freedoms, elsewhere.”

History