‘Planet Queer’ by Luke van Gessel
BA Communication and Multimedia Design (2017-22)
Zuyd University, Netherlands
Key supervisors: Marie van Vollenhoven
keywords: Science Fiction, Inclusive design, Fashion design, Illustration, Queer, Gender
Planet Queer touches upon the themes of clothing and gender and asks the question: Why are certain clothing items seen as ‘only for one gender’? The goal of this work is to show that our obsession with labelling clothing items as feminine or masculine limits us as people.
Planet Queer shows an alternative reality, in which creatures from other planets would come to planet earth. Each of their planets would’ve dealt with a form of global warming, making the planets unlivable. But these aliens wouldn’t have a gender such as humans do. They’re genderless beings. Upon arriving on earth, they would discover human fashion and start playing around with it. As these creatures themselves have no gender, they wouldn’t see clothing as feminine or masculine. They’d just wear whatever they like, regardless of gender.
With this project I want to add to the social discourse about gender, emphasizing on the fact that people should wear whatever they want regardless what their gender identity is and detach from the idea that someone’s gender should determine what clothes they wear. But I also added a small nod to theme of climate change in this project, as this topic is becoming unavoidably urgent. Unlike the aliens in this alternate reality, we can’t live on other planets (yet). Now the question is, what should we work on first: hurrying to make other planets inhabitable or saving what is left of planet earth?
This project is the result of a course called ‘Photoshop drawing and more’, which teaches students the multiple uses of Adobe Photoshop and it’s tools. As an illustrator, I already had a little experience doing digital drawings, but I always used to play it very ‘safe’. During this course I had the complete freedom to let go of my limits and play around freely with Photoshop. This was a very liberating feeling and it resulted in me gaining the ability to create drawings beyond my imagination.
Below the narrative structure of the project:
“Once upon a time, the planets of Neptune, Mercury, Pluto, Jupiter and Saturn were vastly inhabited. Unfortunately those planets slowly started becoming unlivable for their inhabitants. All planets suffered their own consequences of global warming: Neptune became a huge ball of ice, Saturn started releasing poisonous gasses, etc.
Unable to live on their respective planets, some creatures fled to earth and immigrated on our planet. Later, even creatures from other planets arrived on earth. Once the aliens arrived, they were in awe with our sense of fashion and started to experiment with it.
There was just one thing they didn’t like about it: society’s excessive need to conform to the binary split between men and women. So these aliens decided to mix it up, and in that way started teaching us humans to let go of the binary norm.”
Luke van Gessel / BA ComDes / Zuyd / 2017-22
My name is Luke van Gessel: an interdisplinary multimedia designer and artist who likes to create work involving queer themes. While I specialize in illustrative work, I’m not scared to push myself out of this box and explore new and different kinds of media.
