Horn of Plenty

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20314386

This edition of the thesis paper has been reformatted with type, margins, and the addition of a book cover. Queer culture has historically embraced movies, art, and people with subversive qualities (i.e. the style of camp, the celebration of all that is artificial, excessive, and performative) to provide an alternative authority for taste other than what the cisgender and heteronormative mainstream dictates or in order to communicate to other members in a discrete and coded manner. In order for queer culture to continue to grow and to evolve over time (and therefore to become more inclusive and hopefully more likely to be accepted by society at large), there has to be room for queer individuals to create new "subspecies" of culture. Through a transformation of dated, kitschy or campy materials into biomorphic forms which suited my personal taste, I created a collection of artifacts imagined for a queer utopian future. Biomorphism and camp subvert the binaries of alive/inanimate and good/bad taste, respectively. This subversion gives them an authority supplementary to normative sets of standards. A superficial, as opposed to a cultural, read of camp biased my prior appreciation for the genre and limited my feelings of inclusion within the queer community. During a time of personal development, identity formation and physical transformation as a young queer person, I challenged and expanded my standards of taste. Exploration and dialogues surrounding inclusion and diversity within the LGBTQ+ community is crucial now more than ever to ensure a safe and prosperous future for its members.