Walking Body as Barometer: Trans Ecologies of Gichigami (Lake Superior)

This paper examines transness as atmospheric ways of being connected to land, place and more-than-human bodies through the artistic practice of Jay Pahre, and more specifically his project The Weather Report (2024), begun during an artist residency on Minong (Isle Royale National Park) and developed while artist-in-residence at Western Front. The Weather Report is an online series of writings that are broadcast as weather reports every hour from locations across gichigami (Lake Superior) and minong (Isle Royale). The weather report gives us an account of transition attentive to intra-active forces of atmospheric pressure that are embodied, pervasive, and persistent. Connected to his prior sculptural work ( Flipping the Island , 2019-ongoing) referencing the history of copper mining in the area, and resulting collapse of wolf and other mega ecologies, the Weather Report takes up weather in what trans philosopher Hil Malatino calls ‘disequilibrium,’ where transness is “committed to exploring what it means to subsist and persist in and through such collapse: what it means to weather” [1]. Engaging with queer formations of climate change and geopolitics of national parks, the reports are vivid descriptions of the corporeal and the environment: a walking body as barometer , or a kind of atmospheric fieldwork. As Malatino states “atmospheres suffuse, infuse, seep, absorb, infiltrate, creep, inundate, saturate, encompass. Because of the porosity of flesh and world, they get into you, you get into them. They are everywhere and no-place, tangible but not isolatable” [2]. Grappling with Malatino’s writing on transness and weather to articulate an ‘otherwise’ beyond settler colonial violence, Indigenous scholar Recollet’s [3] work on radical relationality, and Stephanie Springgay’s research-creation scholarship on queer ecologies of walking, this paper presents a conversation on Pahre’s practice. An early conversation about Pahre’s work took place over zoom hosted by Western Front in Vancouver. The conversation has been expanded and edited for this essay form.