Artist Q&A with Sex and Nature Artist-in-residence, Dr Amy Cutler, in conversation with Dr Sarah Bezan and Dr Ina Linge

This artist Q&A explores histories of zoö-curious sex discourse in semi-domesticated spaces, such as the beehive, the aquarium, and the television set. Cutler discusses nonhuman influences on her sound, film, and live performance work, from the sexual foibles of Victorian insect writing (with the hive itself seen as a female super-organism, with an insatiable mouth and an insatiable oviduct), to the heteronormativity of the birds nest in Disney’s nature documentaries about “mother Nature” and in the use of the “birds and the bees” idiom by the Eugenics movement. Discussing her work with live cinema for film festivals and with radio for the BBC, Cutler also explores the collapsing scales of “love” as a matter of both public and private work. From animal betrothals to cross-species femme fatales, how can we artistically intervene in the public stories of nature and the ways they police our private lives? Can we, after Negarestani, find ways of becoming-vermin in these pedagogies – opening up plot holes and desires, rather than the “wholesome plots” which cover them up?

This Q&A was part of the Sex and Nature conference. You can find our more about the conference here.

You can listen to more podcasts from the Sex and Nature conference by clicking on the Podcasts and Videos series tab above.