Understanding the interplay between who we are and the setting we find ourselves in. Keywords: observation, analysis, collaboration, understanding, vulnerability, and reciprocation.

During the first segment of this assignment you’ve done research into the chosen location and have mapped out in one way or another, what the social rules / groups / history / context / experience of this space is.


Through a queer framework we will question the [in]visible rules of the spaces that we are constantly engaged with.
You can queer a space by challenging its politics and social dynamics or by making the social norms happening there visible.

For example, if your research question was ‘how do women experience the train station at night?’ then your question for a proposal could be ‘what makes a train station feminist?’. Then you could propose as an intervention for example to occupy the train station with a big crowd of women and investigate how that changes the dynamic of the space.

Assignment ‘Queering Spaces’

First research

First mapping

NEW Brief & research

For the second part of the assignment, we ask you to
(1) redefine your research question more specifically and reframe it towards a proposal and

(2) propose an intervention that queers your space in any form (using performance, installation, visual campaign, fashion etc...).

Second part of the assignment

Final presentation

For your final presentation, you will present

(1) research and findings through your mappings,
(2) a series of experimentations and tests that help you to design your intervention and
(3) your final proposal for queering your space.

Testing and prototyping

Testing and prototyping interventions can happen in many accessible ways. For instance:

If you’re researching childrens and adults behavior in playground, what happens when you as an adult start playing? How does this address an unwritten rule?

If you’re researching public persona as a performance of identity, how could you exaggerate this in your clothing and body language?

If you’re researching public space/outside furniture and how they dictate peoples behavoir towards eachother, what happens when you add furniture that refers to inside intimacy?

If you’re researching a digital medium, what would the physical world alternative look like and what would it reveal?

Questions

Are spaces hierarchical?

What does it mean to have agency in a space?

How do notions of space, place, and scale interplay with issues of race, gender, and class?

How do dominant ideas on what it means to be part of society manifest in our surroundings?