8 FAQS

1. How are bad animals identified and how do they threaten park protocol?
2. What is put at risk in attempting to seek out and commune with bad animals?
3. What are my queer research practices and rituals?
4. What forms can bad animal manifestos take?
5. How do I plug into the psychic life of the park - both its concious and unconcious nodes?
6. What are my ideation tools?
7. How can the survival stategies of bad animals be adopted?
8. What is the allure of both nature and nature porn?

This modest creature, the Banff Springs Snail (Physella Johsoni), makes its home in a handful of the park's thermal springs, and is found nowhere else on Earth. As well as acting a natural filter, the snail is as also a major foodsource for waterfowl.

This aquatic pulmonate gastropod mollusc is very unusual because it is adapted to life in an environment which is too harsh for most animals to survive in. The snails live in thermal springs where the water is low in oxygen and has a lot of hydrogen sulfide. The largest snails are only about one centimetre long when completely erect.

Destruction and disturbance of the snail's habitat continue to threaten its survival; human actions such as illegal swimming, vandalism, garbage and coins thrown into the springs, all seriously disturb the springs' delicate ecosystems.

1875 - Soap Smith, George Harrison, and Bill Potts; [Banff Packers]

1904 - Windy Carr and Unidentified Cowboy

Banff public washroom

Tearooms are popular not because they serve as gathering places for homosexuals, but because they attact a variety of men, a minority of whom are active in the homosexual subculture and a large group whom have no homosexual self-indentity.

Laud Humphreys, Tearoom Trade (1970)

Humpheys makes the point that the gay sex that takes place in such places as public washrooms or parks is usually an anonymous encounter and, as such, it provides a situation that is very different from any overt or public expression of same-sex desire. He explains that it is the promise of anonymous sex that attracts heterosexual men to these places.

Bad Animal Manifesto #2

1. Bad animals are not limited to those compiled in taxonomies or located on aerial maps.

2. Nor are they limited to the dusty archives of police files and court records.

3. Despite the best efforts of Park Rangers and satellites, bad animals continue to flourish in Banff, expanding their territories and influence.

4. The trouble with bad animals is not limited to those that display exuberant behavior (visitors to the Banff Centre will often see same-sex acts involving gay grizzly bears and lesbian beavers).

5. One of the main sources of trouble caused by bad animals is the fact that when captured on film, or in the traps set by the Park Rangers, they are often not the animals that we commonly identify as being bad but are instead our uncles, fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, boyfriends, priests, teachers, and politicians.

6. The trouble with bad animals is they won't shut up or be shut out. And here I'm not talking about the ones that shout: "We're here. We're queer. Get use to it." I'm talking about the bad animals that live in your gut and upper intestines and can't be flushed away.

Investing in the psychic life of bad animals