Fabulating Bog Girl: Queer Entanglements of Body and Land Histories in More-than-Human AutoFiction and Design
Heidi Biggs
Abstract
The more-than-human turn in HCI has explored entanglements with non-human others that include animals, plants, and technologies. Building on this agenda, this work constructs more-than-human (MTH) entanglements through the lens of queer non-binary, human/non-human entanglements of land and body. By fabulating an autofiction (fiction based on personal experience) titled Bog Girl – this work explores the way non-binary lands of wetlands, and non-binary bodies, share similar experiences of being cut (literally and metaphorically) by bifurcating logics in medical and agricultural settings. However, these experiences allow for new human/land animations, entanglements, grieving, and healing, ultimately, imagining non-binary grounds for design. The work contributes 1) new considerations of the generative and designerly potential storytelling and fiction in more-than-human research 2) queer embodied approaches to MTH work in HCI 3) and discuss non-binary ethics for MTH design that imagine pluriversal bodily consent and paths to entangled healing.