Elke Mackenzie: Her Radical Symbiotics

We are all lichens.
—Scott Gilbert, “We Are All Lichens Now”

Believe it or not, I love lichens. There is a church wall on my way home. It's a gorgeous old stone wall and I treat looking at its lichens and gently touching its moss a must of my journey. Lichens are a mutualistic relationship between an alga and a fungi. A little partnership organisms, a fierce twosome..sometimes threeesome if a cyanobacterium gets involved in there. 

I like them because they are gorgeous, I like them for their folkloricness...they form on way stones, on rock formations touched by so many. They wear down the face of the hardiest markers and can live completely submerged in icy antarctic waters. 

I think they interrogate us with questions of symbiosis, power and abuse. 

Elke Mackenzie was fascinated by lichens, fungi and cyanobacterium. She dedicated her life to their meticulous catelogging and categorisation. This is a zine all about her and her transcendent relationship with lichens.

It was a challenge to make given the archival injustice enacted on Elke. Elke transitioned later in life and her archival presence is marked first by the species she discovered named after her deadname and the violence of the continued use of the pronouns she did not find affirming.

I hope this this is a very small gesture towards addressing archival injustice, a small stand with a brilliant, fascinating and caring lichenologist.