This lukewarm world — Noor Boiten

This lukewarm world

MIXED-MEDIA VIDEO-INSTALLATION
2025-ongoing

With increasing frequency, trans* and gender nonconforming people find themselves victims of scapegoating, the socio-political mechanism through which frustration and aggression are directed at a group that is not the cause agent of the frustration. The conservative, religious right forms a predominantly white ingroup, juxtaposed with an outgroup of LGBTQIA+ or trans* people that are far outnumbered by the first. The implied threat to existing order, by a perverted group of ‘trans people’, forms the illusion of the contemporary trans debate. The trans* body in question is often described as 'monstrous' and 'unnatural', failing to comply with heteronormative desires and traditional forms of kinship, in conflict with what’s deemed natural.

This fantasy of the ‘natural’, as a ‘pure’ nature, is a conviction rooted strongly in nationalist ideologies, where unprobed nature, untouched by the impurity of ‘others’, is the highest form of perfection. This is a rich and compelling fantasy that is inherently authoritarian, since there is no rational argument against it. Nature becomes an instrument of reason for the dominant nationalist group, reminiscent of an imagined nostalgic past where land still belonged to the people that claimed ownership of it.

The disruption of nature, of the homeland, of the system, poses a significant threat to the lives of those that abide by its imagined rules. Here, the queer body, especially the technologically mediated trans body, is cast as the Frankensteinian failure of organicism, the violation of natural law. Historian and author Susan Stryker explains that “gender attribution is compulsory; it codes and deploys our bodies in ways that materially affect us, yet we choose neither our marks nor the meanings they carry.”

'This Lukewarm World' is a video-installation that takes on the shape of a re-examination of the contemporary 'monstrous' through the lens of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, whose composite body can be understood as a metaphor for contemporary queer and trans* existence. By adopting the 'monstrous', we can deliberately become hybrid, rejecting definition, becoming something more than what was intended by the structures that created us. This act of destroying established structures through failure of compliance could be seen as a deliberate one, shattering hegemonic frameworks one at a time. The 'monstrous', in this case, becomes extra-ordinary, providing strength and resilience. This Lukewarm World invites you to contemplate the presence of the monstrous in yourself, reflected in the blacks of your eyes when your gaze graces the mirror, revealing your own seams and stitches.