Queerly Complex Points of Reference - Spring 2025
- Jason Wyman
- Mar 21
- 11 min read
Overview
Queerly Complex has been many things over the years. It started as a blog. It became a definition. It transformed into an online store. Now, Queerly Complex is, simply, another name I call myself.
Under the moniker Queerly Complex, I do a lot of different things. I help co-create collectives, ways of gathering as peers, movement-based art projects, and language that articulates one’s values, intentions, and dreams. I engage (erratically) on social media as a means of connecting with a more public audience, by posting artists updates and events, by sharing others posts, and through commenting (mostly) on politics (for the social square, digital or otherwise, is always political.) I also explore ideas, concepts, frameworks, and theories on topics including racial justice, Indigenous worldviews, religions and spiritual traditions, queer magic, gender liberation, and myth. I try to embody the art of relating to one’s self, each other, and the Cosmic Mysteries. That’s Queerly Complex. That’s me.
I also understand that with queer complexity there frequently comes confusion. Add to this the constantly shifting / evolving nature of being, and it's no wonder I get asked "But what exactly do you do?"
Trying to respond in the moment seems to always fluster me. Answering this question, depends on a lot of context. Who is asking? Why? What exactly are they seeking? Are they interested in / do they have time for a longer story? What feels most relevant in this moment? And I sometimes get hung up on the contextual questions racing through my head that I never really give a complete answer.
So, right now in March 2025, I want to reveal a bit of my queer complexity with a mind map (above) of (most) of the connections between Queerly Complex "things" (things here is doing a lot of work as an umbrella.) Looking at it even now, there are things I missed and probably should include. But I am also feeling overwhelmed by my own breadth of work this Spring 2025, and don't need all to demonstrate what's clearly a sprawling web of relations, co-creations, ideas, gatherings, and so many much more.
To aid understanding, I've included "references" for each "point" on the map. Links to more information are included when available. Please look around, click through, and leave a comment. I would love to know what you'd like to know more about or how queer / complexity shows up in your life.
One thing I am rediscovering as I reflect on this map and its missed points is the sheer co-creation of it all. Nothing is done alone. It includes a lot of people / relations who I call comrade, friend, family, neighbor. Some are human. Some are more than human. And the more I witness its interrelatedness and recognize connections upon connections the more at ease / in flow my being is amidst the chaos of it all.
Queerly Complex Points of Reference
Mapped Points
All of the following Points are mapped in the image above. The lines show how they are connected. Some lines go beyond the page / image to convey that there are even more connections between things. Proximity does not equate to importance. While Queerly Complex is positioned within the middle of the page, it is merely One Point within a never-ending / infinite web, where each Point is but a reflection of all other points (reference: Indra's Net.)
Co-founded with Crystal Mason, Tree of Change is a dynamic, adaptive framework for organizational and cultural transformation. We use the metaphor of a tree to represent growth, interconnectedness, and sustainable change. Current work includes impact storytelling, strategic planning, and workshops for personal, creative, and organizational change. One current client is the African American Art & Culture Complex.
Co-founded with Vanessa Rodriguez Minero, Wendy Martinez Moroquin, and Crystal Mason, Culture Tending Commons & Collective facilitates virtual space for exploration and co-creation of peer-based, somatic and arts-based practices that cultivate equity, inclusion, and belonging in service towards collective liberation. We publish regularly on the Culture Tending Commons. Culture Tending Collective members are all integrating Peer Exchange praxis into their work.
465 Collective is BlackMaria MicroCinema, Alchemy Film Foundation, Ginger Chen, EARTH Lab SF, Lydia, Devon Devine, Lady Monster, and me. We activate a physical space in San Francisco's Mission District that holds both a lounge and a gallery. The recent Nothing New show was installed in the gallery.
I have been working with Fivestar and the Filthy Studios crew for about two years. I support values-based business strategy, apparel design, and peer-based event production. Filthy Studios is one of the co-producers of the Adult Industry / Sex Worker Peer Exchange.
Nothing New is an installation and art catalog co-curated by Bushra Gill and me at the 465 Collective gallery from February 15, 2025, to March 16, 2025. It featured 66 Immigrant and/or Queer Artists from across North America ranging in age from 16 to 70s from diverse cultures, traditions, practices, and forms. The digital Nothing New Catalog is in the Internet Archive and physical copies will be submitted to Queer Archives across North America.
Solidarity Statement & Guides
Written by Crystal Mason and me with input and feedback from Vanessa Rodriguez Minero and Wendy Martinez Morroquin, the Solidarity Statement and Guides to Time-Space aid us in orienting our beings in our virtual and in-person Peer Exchanges and other gatherings. They draw from a long, deep, rich multi-racial, intergenerational, cross-movement legacy of peer, popular, and political education.
Peer Exchanges are a method of gathering a group of approximately 7 to 25 people in circle to share personal stories instigated by creative inquiry over the course of two hours. The result is a co-created space that is brave enough and vulnerable enough for each person to feel more free to be themselves, in all their complexities. Peer Exchanges are the framework for Queer Artist Survival Salons and the Queer Artist Survival Salons. Creative outputs from both are and will be shared via the Culture Tending Commons.
Queer Artist Survival Salons are a bi-monthly gathering co-created by Beth Stephens / EARTH Lab SF and me. Over the course of two hours, queer and trans artists engage in creative inquiry around Recipes for Care, Hope, and Joy, Queer Life Social Security, and Queer Autonomous Zones. It is held in the 465 Collective lounge, and a "zine" from each salon is published on the Culture Tending Commons. A digital version of the whole project will be submitted to the Internet Archive.
Adult Industry / Sex Worker Peer Exchange
Co-produced by Filthy Studios, PASS Certified, and me, these bi-monthly virtual Peer Exchanges facilitate conversation among sex workers, adult industry workers, and advocates to co-create Autonomous Collective Actions that contribute to a future where sex and adult industry workers are valued for their labor and their wellness is a given. The final form will be a digital "zine" by and for sex and adult industry workers (and their comrades) to inspire all to take personal actions that lead towards collective liberation.
Autonomous Collective Actions
Autonomous Collective Action is a concept born out of Peer Exchange between sex workers, adult industry workers, and advocates. It describes how individual actions can add up towards collective liberation. This is especially helpful within a labor force and industry that can make coming to consensus on working towards a large coordinated goal difficult. Autonomous Collective Actions can be generated by a limited-in-scope group and then shared broadly with the intention that anyone who reads it has the choice to take an action. And that when more and more people take them it creates more possibility of our liberation from systems of shame, punishment, domination, and oppression.
Through Tree of Change, Crystal Mason and I have been working with the African American Art & Culture Complex on impact storytelling, popular education, dreaming and listening sessions, culture tending, and event production. This spring, Crystal and Jason are co-producing a series of family-style, creative inquiry dinners for community stakeholders that will be resulting in a mural by Rtystk illustrating key questions and community responses that will guide future strategic planning for the AAACC.
I am a founding Board Member of People Power Media, whose mission is "to build power for housing justice and equity in land use. We do this through multimedia popular education, policy innovation, and organizing." One way People Power Media does this is through the Race and Equity in All Planning Coalition SF. REP-SF is composed of almost 40 member-based housing and tenant organizations. Through Tree of Change, Crystal and I facilitated a strategic planning process that brought People Power Media's mission, vision, and values into more alignment with the work in housing equity they were doing. Additionally, I worked with People Power Media, REP-SF organizations, and artists Sen Mendez and Christen Alqueza on two zines. One was focused on Building Affordable Housing First, a REP-SF core value, and included voices from San Franciscans young and old. The other document Kapuso Gardens, which is a community-driven WIN for affordable housing near Balboa BART Station.
Zines
Zines are an easy distribution form that I use in many of my projects. Zines are the format we used in the REP-SF Housing Justice zines. The format provided an accessible and familiar way to work with the artists, journalists, and community members to work together on content. The limited number of pages and size of paper meant everyone had to be concise and communicate through image, words, and design. Additionally, the eight-page zine is perfect for sharing on social media. This has made the reach of the Housing Justice zines go even farther. Last, the format of the zine inspired my approach to the NOTHING NEW Catalog.
Queer and Trans Archives and Ethnographies
One concept / model / resource that I have been deeply exploring are queer and trans archives and ethnographies. As Queer and Trans Peoples (in all of our complexities,) we are the ones who ensure our existence into the future. We must plant seeds for our non-blood relatives to find for our existence is so frequently violently erased and legislated out of existence. Documenting our own ethnographies and maintaining our own archives are ways for us to be witnessed here and now and to preserve our cultures so our descendants can continue growing what is Queer and what is Trans. In 2025, I am finding ways to ensure physical materials are archived within Queer and Trans Archives across the world, and I am facilitating experiences of personal and collective inquiry into who I / we be and dream to be.
Immigrant Artist Network
The Immigrant Artist Network is a small group of immigrant and comrade artists. It was founded during the pandemic and grew as a response to immigrant artists needing space to talk about the fullness / complexity of their being and practice. Initially designed by Rupy C. Tut and me, we hosted a virtual tea and listened. This invited more to become involved and co-create a distributive network of peer support that has morphed and evolved over the past four years. The Immigrant Artist Network and its deep relational connections is what instigated Nothing New. It is a long-standing demonstration of the Peer Exchange model to inspire autonomous collective actions. And it made possible I'll Show You the Night.
I frequently use the Internet Archive to find archival material that is available for Creative Commons usage. Both are models / frameworks / institutions that I was introduced to in the early 2000s, when there was a deep excitement about how digital / virtual space can open up conversation / experimentation in authorship, ownership, community archiving, and digital / media rights. I have never, though, submitted something to the Internet Archive to ensure its digital preservation. So in 2025, I am committing to uploading PDFs of digital zines co-created through various Queerly Complex efforts. This includes the Nothing New catalog, ephemera from Peer Exchanges, and writing / art from the Culture Tending Commons.
Missed Points
Of course once something is mapped onto paper (physical or digital) there are points that are missed. These are a few that are also important to me. Imagine them simply beyond the edge of the page / image. Their lack of visual representation does not imply lack of importance.
I am a proud member of the AllThrive Education team. Last year, AllThrive Education worked with The Center at Sierra Health Foundation on a series of services to deepen the relationships among a cohort of grantees using arts and somatic-based practices as a means to inform ways the foundation can structurally ease burnout among first responders. Working with Wendy Martinez Morroquin, Vanessa Rodriguez Minero, Jasmine Leonard, and Shaka Jamal over the course of about 18 months was an incredibly collaborative experience, one that mirrors my work with Crystal Mason through Tree of Change. Wendy and Vane are also founding members of the Culture Tending Collective, and with Crystal we continue more deeply exploring and co-creating tools, processes, models, and frameworks that help us tend to the culture we want, need, and desire here and now, so it is present for future generations.
I'll Show You the Night was originally an album release experience for Brightdarkdawn / Anne Carol Mitchell performed at the Arlene Francis Center for Spirit, Art, & Politics in Santa Rosa, CA, featuring performances by Sindhu Natarajan, Maya McNeil, SJ Cook, and myself. In 2025, we are all back together with the addition of Amani Will / Wa Ama Ni Um. We will be performing a new iteration of it as part of Chabot Space and Science Center's Spring Concert Series in conjunction with Dark Sky Week. Our performance will be in the Planetarium, and it will feature a journey through the night sky with song, myth, and poetry. Telescopes will be available before and after the concert, so we all can more deeply connect with the night sky.
Creative Coaching
I continue providing Creative Coaching to artists of diverse cultural traditions and practices, who are seeking ways to question / queer their creative process and (re)discover ways to move projects / ideas forward. I use an anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-colonization framework to guide my listening and question asking as a means to disrupt cultural, political, and familial biases. The Queerly Complex Creative Coaching approach is informed in over three decades of peer-based, anti-racist, queer liberation praxis.
Artist Updates (Instagram)
I use social media as a way to find people I would not otherwise find and to share my non-algorithmic stories. I know my reach is limited due to my content, and still people are finding it and, thus, me. This aids me in co-weaving communities together offline, which is the ultimate goal of my social media engagement. We must find one another, so we can create together. I will continue posting additional Artist Updates throughout 2025. Artist Updates are about me, Queerly Complex, and my movements through the cosmos. My collaborative, co-creative work exists (somewhat) on social media through "collaborator" posts and (mostly) offline.
Research & Development
I am constantly reading, listening, watching, conversating, learning, and experimenting. New ideas, shifts in perspective, and ancestral remembrances alchemize into unforgetting (thanks Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz and Patty Krawec) and unflattening (thanks Nick Sousanis.) Some of the books guiding my research and development currently are Right Story, Wrong Story by Tyson Yunkaporta, The Story Is In Our Bones by Osprey Orielle Lake, Care by Premilla Nadasen, Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century by Grace and James Lee Boggs, and a number of books on queer magic, runes, the Tao Te Ching, and folklore.
Visual Art, Media, & Design
I am a designer, illustrator, photographer, filmmaker, and digital artist while also being a writer, performer, and social practice artist. I sometimes forget to acknowledge / promote my own contribution to aesthetic development within the projects I create or co-create. Currently, a lot of my work is within a conceptual / social practice / organizational art framework. Â In 2025, I want to become more consistent with crediting my work because I want to start getting work specifically for my visual art, media, and design. The Nothing New catalog, Queer Artist Survival Salons zines, and Queerly Complex and Tree of Change websites are all designed by me.
Secret Scriptwriting Project
Thanks to BlackMaria MicroCinema's Abstract Thinking and Decolonizing Scriptwriting Course at 465 Collective space, I picked an old project back up and started writing again. The story begins way back in 1998 when upon moving here I and started a novel about a young person's journey through a multiverse. Now, it is inspiration to tell a more personal, myth-filled story, one that is conjuring mystical experiences in a place I call home through deeply questioning what it means to belong to the cosmos. All told as a trilogy of scripts that themselves are micr-scripts for how one can possibly live, love, fuck, and create amidst the chaos of life and death, creation and obliteration on this tiniest of planets within these unfathomable Cosmic Mysteries.