Mud soup magic: queer*crip ecologies (EN)

You are warmly invited into a soft participatory ceremony, where we will tend to signs of illness in the surrounding landscape through somatic exercises, storytelling and the sensorial. This will be a collective act of spellcasting for disabled ecosystems: may we encounter each other with care. May we learn how to rot and rest. May we remember our interconnectedness. 

A queer*crip view on ecology is to embrace interconnectedness, in all its complexity. Recognizing that no ecosystem is untouched by devastation, and that restoration is complex and never complete, we will tend to ecosystems at points of tension, of illness, of uncertainty: queering and cripping dominant and destructive notions of “Nature”. 
As the climate collapses, as empires rear up in their dying, as biodiversity crumbles, we will need *crip wisdom to see us through. We will deal with sick ecosystems all the time: and it might not be possible – even with the most sustainable approach – to prevent disease outbreaks, damage by extreme weather, or other forms of unraveling ecological webs. We will need to build gardens, and futures, where illness and disability have a place, where queer*crip joy and thriving is possible, beyond healing. If we cannot return to a romanticized condition of “health” and “functionality”, which forms of care and tending-to can we find in the open wounds, the injuries, the impairment? How do we encounter our sick ecosystems? How could healing look like on a damaged planet? 

Toni Kritzer is a trans*, white, chronically ill/disabled performance artist, gardener, and storyteller, based in Amsterdam. They forage and tend to stories beyond the human, and are committed to marginalized ecologies. In their most recent performance project “The Sick Garden” they are busy with slugs, viruses, and weeds. 

This event took place during the festival in September 2025.