Queering Space
Elective Course at Parsons School of Design, 2019
Co-taught with Will Fryer.
Course Description
Queer space is antinormative. It is ephemeral, ambiguous and theatrical. Any space can become a queer space through performance. What happens to normative space once it has been queered? In this course we will gain a better understanding of what it means to queer space. We will examine the way the status quo is enforced in our environment through the suppression of antinormative behavior. All design disciplines perform a role in this suppression. The built spaces we inhabit, the products we use and the clothes we wear are both tools we use to act out identity and performers in their own right that act upon us, often putting us in a role we did not choose. How can we disrupt conformance? Students will create, perform and document a series of ‘disruptions’ both in and outside of the university. This series will manifest in a disruption that will participate in the world pride march in June.
more info about the class and the float here
Performance / Float at World Pride Parade NYC 2019
Parsons Queering Space Float
Pictures by Sarah Rocco
The Newcomers
@ Performa 17, November 2017
From Performa's website: American architects and artists Alex Schweder and Ward Shelley present The Newcomers, a durational architectural performance that spans both time and distance with responsive and ambulatory forms of habitation. Joined by collaborators Len Kouvela(*Bois Futuri) and Sarah Burns, the group builds and lives in an evolving nomadic structure that changes each day from temporary home to makeshift bridge in order to reach the next day’s supplies along their route. The same materials are reconstituted into a shelter where they spend the next night before moving again, challenging the discipline of architecture to think beyond permanence.
Image credit: Alex Schweder and Ward Shelley, The Newcomers, 2017. Photo © Paula Court. Courtesy of Performa.
