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The Beginning

The First Edition emerged in the fall of 2010. From scientific cupcakes an interactive fundraising component for Out In School's High School Confidential event. We stood in lab coats with clipboards for notetaking while talking gender and sexuality, selling posters, and helping people to select which elements might represent their personal molecule in the form of buttons and magnets.

Living Culture is Iterative

As the Work continued to be accepted for showings, the interactive public engagement component energized a total of three iterations. Input was collected online, in person while facilitating engagement with the installation, and through colouring books with pages completed by those who chose to linger. Some elements were moved around, and others were deleted or added based on feedback. The feedback was mostly warm, the conversations rich, and the generosity with emotions and stories humbling.

Media picked up on us. Posters were sent around the world. At one point the project website count was over 60,000 visitors. We stopped paying attention and kept engaging with participants. Over the years, things died down; the social media accounts were allowed to go fallow and followers moved on. But metrics of the current moment don't reflect what was happening at the time.

Evidence from the Past Informs the Present
With the 10-year anniversary we plan to open the archives to share what was gathered. There are many pages of language suggestions and critiques made by participants. We have several colouring book pages to consider, and all the digital input too.

We will be looking to the past, considering the present, and asking questions about the future to inform the Second Edition of the Queeriodic Table.

Acquire an Artifact
The suite of original artifacts created in the fall of 2010 (11x17 poster, individual elements available as a button or magnet) grew. To them were added a colouring book, an 8' x5' wall version, a puzzle, a word find, and an interactive website. All of them created as part of the installation's evolutionary response to participant feedback.

For those interested in First Edition (2010) artifacts artifacts still in existence for collection or personal identification / representation purposes there are a  that have survived through time. More information how how they may be acquired will be available before the winter months arrive.

!K

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2021 Marks the 10-Year Anniversary
2021 marks 10 years since thousands of people on both sides of the border, and at festivals, events, and academia interacted with with this interactive, iterative project.

Designed to capture a sampling of the universe of queer in periodic table form, the categories and elements were chosen to represent a wide range of experience. Similar to the ones used in science classrooms, it plays with the learned nature of scientific elements in school – what is possible, how to categorize, and how to memorize what is considered essential.

Time Brings Change
When this art project commenced in 2010, there were only 112 elements on the Table. While we were working on the project, scientists manifested one of the theoretical elements on the table. Today, 10 years later, there more discoveries have been made and the number stands at 118.

Like the scientific table, the cultural linguistics around queer identity, sexuality, and gender have also expanded. There are terms in common parlance today that only existed within community and the academy.

This is why the project is intended to emerge, review, and document every 10 years. The intention to be decennial is an intention to document progress and to provoke new conversations.

It never was fulsome. After a year it was placed in hiatus to wait like a cicada to emerge at the decennial mark. And now the time has come for the Second Edition.

Onwards!
We look forward to reviewing how language from only 10 years ago has evolved, and to devising ways during these challenging covid19 times to explore what's new through in-person and online engagements.

Watch our ever evolving online spaces for information on how you can claim the elements of your identity, and work with us on new versions that better represent our current universes and realities.

!K