Queer artists can create a language of resistance against the ongoing climate crisis and against corporate hypocrisy
Pride Month is coming, and it might be the most important one yet. Globally, we’re seeing the rise of hate and violence towards LGBTQIA+ people, as governments launch aggressive attacks against queer rights—from Italy where Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has declared war against the “LGBT lobby” to Uganda where a new law punishes “aggravated homosexuality” with the death penalty.
In the Philippines, Christian fundamentalists and lawmakers such as Joel Villanueva continue to roadblock the passage of the SOGIE Equality Bill, legislation that has been languishing for over 20 years. Online anti-LGBTQIA+ propaganda has also been escalating, as queerphobes attempt to sway public opinion against equal rights by arguing that the SOGIE Equality Bill will harm freedom of religion and curtail academic freedom.
A government that crushes dissent will inevitably come after us at some point. We saw how many queer Filipinos argued during the last election that putting people with a history of disrespecting human rights spell doom for the community.
We have grown aware of how larger systems affect the progress or downfall of the LGBTQIA+ community.
Numerous think pieces and research have highlighted that the climate crisis’ damage and the queer community’s suffering are intertwined
And yet, despite this awakening and recognition of how larger systems play a part in ensuring greater and stronger queer inclusion, what I find interesting is how the community has left the climate crisis issue largely untouched. In my last column, I mentioned that we’re soon to cross the 1.5°C global warming target, which means that the climate crisis may get worse.
This spells bad news for LGBTQIA+ Filipinos, as people from developing countries (such as the Philippines) will be the most affected by the worsening climate. As the crisis amplifies the challenges that the minorities from these countries are already facing (such as homelessness, unemployment, lack of medical access, and poverty), we can expect all the marginal gains the Filipino queer community has achieved to start unraveling.
This is not speculation: Numerous think pieces and research have highlighted that the climate crisis’ damage and the queer community’s suffering are intertwined.
Fossil fuel companies have managed to deflect criticism from the queer community in the Philippines by cozying up with us. Shell, in particular, is known for its active efforts to support LGBTQIA+ and LGBTQIA+-adjacent causes such as HIV advocacy. We see how Shell sponsored last year’s Pride PH March, joined an LGBTQIA+ inter-industry pride organization (together with another fossil fuel company, Chevron), and supported the #AwraSafely campaign (you could even see that the campaign’s contact email is a Pilipinas Shell Foundation email.)
Because the mythmaking force of language can be such an effective tool for hoarding power, it’s unsurprising that authoritarian regimes and destructive corporations would also use it to muddy the discourse, coopting progressive words into their marketing to paint themselves as heroes allied with other progressive movements
The power of language and storytelling has been crucial for LGBTQIA+ people to articulate our needs, with neologisms and terminologies expanding the articulation of our reality to the larger world. Concepts like sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, sex characteristics, pinkwashing, and queer joy (among the many other words and phrases in our ever-growing lexicon) enrich and illuminate the multifaceted experiences of our community. As a counterpoint to the criticism often lobbed by cis-het (and some queer people, too) that these new jargons only serve to complicate and obfuscate our existence, it isn’t the fault of these concepts: Human nature is simply a complicated and creatively chaotic affair.
Because the mythmaking force of language can be such an effective tool for hoarding power, it’s unsurprising that authoritarian regimes and destructive corporations would also use it to muddy the discourse, coopting progressive words into their marketing to paint themselves as heroes allied with other progressive movements.
Sarah Seger, activist and co-founder of the Aoetearoa Liberation League (ALL), calls out this “vague-washing.” In a video posted on ALL’s Instagram account, she explains:
“Take diversity, for example. A diversity of thought can be a beautiful thing, but it’s reduced to mean a diversity of appearances and identities. This can create an illusion of diversity, without reflecting on the needs of the most oppressed, like victims of poverty or war.
In fact, the most oppressive powers tend to beat their own drums the loudest. To resist their vague-washing tactics, we must make concrete and measurable demands led by those whose needs are most urgent.”
It is difficult to imagine a world outside of patriarchy, as it is hard to imagine a world beyond capitalism. Oppressive systems often have cunning ways of simultaneously destroying people who question the status quo, fomenting discord within communities, and crushing hopes for a better world, which, in turn, leads to marginalized people accepting their subjugation and even inspiring them to love their oppressors. (I am wont to believe that years of persecution are what led gay hairdresser Ricky Reyes to be defeated enough to say: “Ang api ng bakla dapat sa ’tin lang ‘yan. ‘Wag nating ipangalandakan sa tao, ba’t kailangan pa sabihin sa madlang people na, ‘Uy intindihin mo nga ako, bakla ako.’ Teka muna.”)
Even philanthropy can be used by billionaires and multinationals to alleviate symptoms rather than address the causes, through performative acts that perfume their brands.
In 2016, Shell launched its #MakeTheFuture campaign, The flashy campaign, launched with endorsers such as Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson, DJ Steve Aoki, Brazilian celebrity Luan Santana, Chinese pop star Tan WeiWei, and Nigerian singer Yemi Alade was supposed to showcase “the ongoing actions Shell is taking to help create a more sustainable, energy-rich, lower-carbon future.”
Yet, years after that campaign was launched, a report from environmental campaigner Global Witness said that Shell’s solar and wind investments are only 1.5 percent (about US$288 million) of its capital expenditure.
The Guardian’s Paul Vallely observes: “When it comes to addressing inequality, a well-intentioned philanthropist might finance educational bursaries for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, or fund training schemes to equip low-paid workers for better jobs. That allows a few people to exit bad circumstances, but it leaves countless others stuck in underperforming schools or low-paid, insecure work at the bottom of the labor market. Very few concerned philanthropists think of financing research or advocacy to address why so many schools are poor or so many jobs are exploitative. Such an approach, says David Callahan of Inside Philanthropy, is like ‘nurturing saplings while the forest is being cleared’.”
Art has often been a convenient accessory to give credibility to make the larger public fall hook, line, and sinker for the propaganda of companies like Shell, which in the first quarter of 2023 recorded $9.6 billion in profits, profiting off the rise of oil and natural gas prices and the Russian-Ukraine war. Despite their promises to do better, internal documents have revealed that Shell “has no immediate plans to move to a net-zero emissions portfolio over our investment horizon of 10-20 years.”
When queer art practitioners confront their uneasy corporate collaboration
For queer artist Derek Tumala, coming to terms with the destruction that Typhoon Haiyan left in its wake in 2013 was the starting point towards his greater awareness of climate change. With connecting art and science as an overarching theme of his art practice, creating work around the climate for him was a natural progression.
He shared with me the digital art project he did with SM Supermalls, “Kayamanan ng Pilipinas,” a digital garden displayed on the LED screen in the SM Mega Tower lobby, which morphed in sync with the weather outside. “We’re triggering weather data and translating it into actual weather inside the work. So kunwari ‘pag umulan sa Mandaluyong, it’s going to rain inside [on the digital garden],” he explains.
I couldn’t help but think about the treachery of images, where art becomes a convenient placeholder for reality: a world sanitized and removed from meaning and consequences. Seeing the changing weather, a lived reality by the masses outside, transubstantiated into an aesthetic piece contemplated upon by people shielded from its effects, seems more like a preview of a dystopic future. That SM commissioned it made the project even more surreal, as they covertly cut down dozens of trees to expand their Baguio mall despite environmentalists’ protests, with the Supreme Court stepping in to stop them for good.
He commented on how Shell, as a known patron of the local art scene (the Shell National Students Art Competition is about to enter its 56th year this 2023), has shielded itself from criticism from the art community.
“Being a patron of the arts for so long, they’ve already embedded themselves into that kind of spaces and positioned themselves as a good part of it.
“It’s all about business. What do you call, corporate social responsibility, which is bullshit, right? But it works. Because people need money. And the money comes from corporations”
“It’s all about business. What do you call, corporate social responsibility, which is bullshit, right? But it works. Because people need money. And the money comes from corporations. And I think artists or institutions want to counter that system, like how can we actually reimagine the structure that we don’t need corporations?
“If you ask me, I mean, I need money. Sometimes, I have to do corporate work because it’s not sustainable to depend on institutions… It’s really hard for artists to say no to projects, and you build a system on how you sustain your system. Corporate is easy money. That’s an ongoing conflict for me—how I can balance that out.”
David Loughran is an art curator and founder of coastal-based arts organization and residency Emerging Islands. Through Emerging Islands, Loughran and his partners try to connect artists with coastal communities to explore the most urgent ecological issues of our time. Informed by his background in the arts industry, Loughran knows this game that businesses play is neither new nor shocking.
“If you work long enough in cultural work or art, you can see through the fake glimmer of corporate social responsibility. You can very easily see how much of these projects are very top-down. They get in there, they try to paint a picture of what a community is like, but not do the bottom-down thing, to really shore up the stories, the actual histories, actual relationships with ecology.”
“That same thing is true of the development sphere as well. I think the development sphere these days is struggling to humanize their perspectives. And even that is a very limited point of view because it’s not just about humans. You’re talking about things that kind of really impact entire ecosystems. What does it mean to think multi-species, think more than human, or think about Indigenous [peoples]?”
That corporations deploy a top-down approach to addressing social issues may be an essentialist problem: Corporations are, by nature, hierarchical creatures that worship at the altar of efficiency
That corporations deploy a top-down approach to addressing social issues may be an essentialist problem: Corporations are, by nature, hierarchical creatures that worship at the altar of efficiency. The solutions they often develop are grounded on a belief that resources can be quickly mobilized to tick off a list of problems. (This optimization of philanthropy may remind you of the burgeoning movement of bourgeois aid, effective altruism—which is being heavily criticized for its belief that positive change is a largely quantifiable endeavor.)
How queer artists can create a language of resistance
Rapper, visual artist, and climate activist Jon Bonifacio, who is also the national coordinator of the nationwide environmental campaign center Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment, believes the larger queer community can do something that large businesses like Shell will never be able to do: Empathize with those in the margins.
He cites the experience of Aries Soledad, queer activist, and Pamalakaya-Pilipinas community organizer. Soledad’s story, who is respected by Cavite’s coastal community for standing up against corporate land reclamation, is a lesson for all of us, notes Bonifacio.
“I think what we need to do as a community—whether queer or, like, you know, the broader Filipino audience, it’s to really go down there and see what queer people on the ground, in the poorest of the poor communities, see what they’re experiencing. And I think that is what groups like Shell can never go up.”
“The narratives they are pushing that they’re, you know, the friend of the queer community or the friend of the art community…you go down there, and you see how climate change is impacting all these people. That sort of breaks their narrative.”
“I think that’s what we need to champion: those narratives of people who are queer or people who are otherwise marginalized—and making those the figureheads of why we’re fighting for the climate, and why we’re fighting against climate change. Once we have a very clear and concrete idea of what goes on the ground, that’s how we’ll break the narratives being fed by groups like Shell.”
Those who are separately fighting for queer rights and climate justice already encounter heavy resistance from the ones who benefit most from oppressive systems. That’s why fighting for both (that is, to be a queer climate activist) can seem daunting: an open invitation from two giant enemies to tag-team and obliterate you.
Those who are separately fighting for queer rights and climate justice already encounter heavy resistance from the ones who benefit most from oppressive systems. That’s why fighting for both (that is, to be a queer climate activist) can seem daunting
I particularly like how Mitzi Jonelle Tan, climate activist and Youth Advocates for Climate Action Philippines convenor, acknowledges the power of transformative, positive, and radical imagination in guiding people towards an alternative future that builds up communities as it destroys destructive, greenwashing businesses.
In an interview with artist Leeroy New, who uses his word-building art practice as a way to spark conversations on climate change, Tan argues: “Radical imagination is a powerful and important tool in activist spaces. It’s difficult to imagine a sustainable and climate-just system when it’s so different from the one we have today, but we must practice imagining it and encourage others to do so as well.”
“We must show people what that other world looks like. We must create a better world in our mind’s eye. We can’t just be anti-imperialist, anti-fossil fuels, anti-extraction, and anti-injustice, without also being pro-people, pro-planet, pro-community, and pro-love and joy. We must collectively dare to break the mold: to, imagine and create these alternative futures.”
Tumala assents:
“There are a lot of stories or scenarios that are not being told… This is sad because we also don’t have much platform to say that. The [stories of the] most vulnerable are not really being articulated well. People here don’t really take it seriously. What art can’t do is solve problems. We can’t really say, like okay, this is the right thing. What we can do is say or articulate things that are not yet being articulated. What art can do is we can nudge thinking. We can enter these spaces that are not even thought about. Those are very important also.”
“Art can enter so many spaces, so many topics that a human being can experience.”
His current works, which are part of the ongoing exhibit “Adaptation: Reconnected Earth” at the Museum of Contemporary Art & Design Manila, do precisely that. He offers a space for contemplating climate change and how capitalist greed propels us beyond the point of no return. One of his dioramas, “Unearthing of Funny Weather,” is based on the Didipio Mine in Nueva Vizcaya operated by Australian Canadian mining firm Oceangold. Tumala’s work is a commentary on the interconnections of modern colonialism, capitalism, and climate change.
Bonifacio acknowledges that getting people to think about climate change through art is one thing; getting people to act is another.
“If you have that position in which you’re able to get a lot of people to listen or look at your work. that’s something that you can work on, and hopefully, use your mediums and avenues to really convey the messages that need to get up. But that’s just one part of the problem because a lot of people are doing that. A lot of people are, you know, already drawing or writing or illustrating about climate change or writing songs, or doing plays.”
“I mean, it’s all good work, but I think the next step is to get people from watching your work or listening to the stuff you put out—how do you get from there to having them do something concrete about climate change? Like, you know, lobbying for bills or going to communities and helping them with their organizing, all of that. How does one do that? How do you connect those two, you know, very different things?”
Like Bonifacio, I acknowledge that it is the big question we’re all trying to resolve: how to get people to act. Maybe the solutions won’t be as straightforward. The answers will not be easy. But until then, we need artists to help us express the questions that those in power try hard to stop us from asking.