Glitching in Waterways: Like places shaped by Water, we are shaped and reshaped

“Glitching:” to cause an accident or error.

The first time I saw my body glitched in a photograph, I was thrilled. I’ve spent a lot of time manipulating self-portraits to create similar effects, and for it to happen as a digital malfunction or accident—while using the panoramic setting on my camera—was like experiencing magic.

As a queer artist, a lot of my creative explorations have been about expressing my sense of being in-between, not-quite-here, something other, the more than visible, the we of me. At worse, I can have a feeling that I have performed or experienced some terrible accident I can’t completely remember but is always present in my blood and influencing my state of mind. At best, these feelings are ancient, pagan memories / spirits / ancestors trying to break through the garbage and illusions of the present Western Colonial mind of oppression.

Glitching is the simultaneous fracturing of the self while glimpsing between the cracks the possibility of a wholeness of self that includes Earth.

“We used to be called shapeshifters,” they say to me.

I will not claim that word “shapeshifter” until systems of oppression are destroyed. Instead I will be glitching and finding ways to cause glitches in this world.