Keeyan Suazo

The power and the promise and the mystery of that green-blooded body explores how the queer body holds and has the capacity to become the site of optimism and hope. The title of the series references a quote from the novel Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. The power (with its physicality and its existence as we perceive it now), the promise (with its optimism) and the mystery (with the inherent opacity of hope and future) lives within the queer-of-colour body. There is an adjective that I added to describe the body that was not in the original text, green-blooded.

Green is commonly associated with nature, but with its intense lurid variants, it can also signify artificiality and toxicity. But within this specific context, green becomes a quiet intimation of an underlying cultural narrative. In the Philippines, green is an adjective used to describe something lewd (e.g. green-minded means having sexual thoughts). My current research explores the term ‘berdeng dugo’ or ‘green-blooded’, a term for queer men. This terminology, with its observed usage, function between a derogatory term and a euphemism. The origin of this phrase has been quite elusive; nevertheless, green-blooded is a form of applied transparency, a form of othering. I ask myself: What shade of green is my blood then?

I’d like to imagine my blood, my green blood as chroma-key green. Chroma-key green is often used in film as a backdrop (green screens), allowing subjects to be edited into any background. I am interested in the pure ambiguity and transportative capabilities of green screens to conjure a portal for imagining a radical queer future where one can be whatever, whenever and wherever they imagine. Chroma-key-green-blood becomes a cloak, a teleportation device and a time machine—a portal within our veins. Connotations with the colour green shift between discourses: as something to degrade queerness, but also as an entry point for imagining queer futurity. Bask in the verdant green glow of potentiality.