The Revue of STYLES

Abstract

This revue swirls in the queer stream of STYLES at the conference Architecture and Feminisms. STYLES was curated and hosted by the artistic research family MYCKET, comprising Mariana Alves Silva, Katarina Bonnevier, Thérèse Kristiansson and assistant Ullis Ohlgren. Through an abundance of creative and other modes of research STYLES raised the significance of aesthetics in queer/feminist efforts to transform architecture, material culture, knowledge production and society. Forty-five researchers, artists and practitioners participated in the stream of STYLES with their projects: at two panel sessions, BORDERLANDS and ARTIFACTS, an exhibition and several performances, QUEERYING SPACE, and the full-scale enactment for 150 people, the STYLES salon (act 13 of MYCKET’s project The Club Scene). All are present in the revue as an argument for multitude and complexity. The revue articulates excess, torsions and simultaneity as architectural queer/feminist tactics as a way to open ourselves to diversity, inclusiveness and things we do not already know.

Keywords:

• architecture
• design
• queer theory and practice
• cultural studies
• architectural theory and practice
• feminist studies

Acknowledgments

MYCKET is grateful to a number of people for their generous support of STYLES, for lending a helping hand, and for their expertise – from the School of Dance and Circus: Ingela Stefaniak, Victor Svälas, Cecilia Roos, Anna Efraimsson, Frédéric Gies, Orlando Ravandoni and Fredrik Heimdal; piano player Sanna Ohlgren; film and photography: Patriez van der Wens, Marie Carlsson and Nisella Åhlund; and producer Frida Sandström. A heartfelt special thank you to keynote speaker Fanny Söderbäck and Salonnière Yvonne Rock, for daring to imagine and perform this event together with us.

Notes

1 Ellen Söderhult, “How to Do Things with Romance” (performance paper presented at the Architecture and Feminisms conference, the annual international conference of the Architecture and Humanities Research Association, at KTH and DOCH, Stockholm, November 17–19, 2016); Ellen Söderhult (choreography and dancer), Anna Bontha, Anna-Karin Domfors, Anna-Maria Ertl, Carima Neusser, Elise Sjöberg, Emma Strandsäter, Gry Tingskog, Ida Arenius, Klara Sjöblom, Klára Utke Ács, Lisa Schåman, Minna Berglund, Moa Autio, Oda Brekke, Susanna Ujanen and Tiia Kasurinen (dancers).

2 t.A.T.u., All the Things She Said (Santa Monica, CA: Universal Interscope, 2002).

3 MYCKET means “a lot” in Swedish. And, as you will understand from this revue, we do a lot, the more the merrier – we work with a maximalist attitude.

4 Several people have worked on the project Praxagora’s Kitchen, and some generously came to assist with the soup: Jenny Chen, Monira Haj ab Dallah, Shazia Chaudhry and Dunya Yousif (Stella Nova), Faiza Rebandi and Michaela Karlsson (Verdandi), and Lisa Partby and Elin Strand Ruin.

5 Kroppsfunktion, “Choreo-abilities” (performance paper presented at the Architecture and Feminisms conference, the annual international conference of the Architecture and Humanities Research Association, at KTH and DOCH, Stockholm, November 17–19, 2016).

6 “Safer” space is a concept that articulates the wish for bodies and behaviors to be able to take place without being subject to conformist repression, or violence; it acknowledges that a completely “safe” space is neither possible nor desired.

7 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has written about how the reparative relies on the critical to raise the subjects and structures that are taken for granted, and thereby to take into account the subject positions excluded. However, the critical without the reparative fosters a paranoia, a fear of unintended effects, whereas the real effect is that every response becomes predictable. Mattias Danbolt has underlined the importance of the critical-reparative relation to artistic practices; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); Mathias Danbolt, “Touching History: Art, Performance, and Politics in Queer Times” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Bergen, 2013).

8 Simona Castricum, “When Program is the Enemy of Function” (performance paper presented at the Architecture and Feminisms conference, the annual international conference of the Architecture and Humanities Research Association, at KTH and DOCH, Stockholm, November 17–19, 2016).

9 An example is the epic salon of author Natalie Barney, which I investigated in my doctoral thesis as a queer performative architecture of event, container and bodies; Katarina Bonnevier, Behind Straight Curtains: Towards a Queer Feminist Theory of Architecture (Stockholm: Axl, 2007). The first act of The Club Scene was “Lala salon,” a name we borrowed from a contemporary queer artist and activist club in a private apartment in Beijing.

10 “[I]t’s about producing wrenches, about not going in a straight line” (approximate translation by Raquelle K. Bostow and Katarina Bonnevier; added emphasis); Hélène Cixous, “Méduse en Sorbonne,” in Le Rire de la Méduse: Regards Critiques, ed. Frédéric Regard and Martine Reid (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2015), 144–145.

11 Sue-Ellen Case, Feminism and Theatre (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988).

12 Yvonne Rock, “A Soup with a Story” (performance paper presented at the Architecture and Feminisms conference, the annual international conference of the Architecture and Humanities Research Association, at KTH and DOCH, Stockholm, November 17–19, 2016).

13 Fanny Söderbäck, “The Daughter of a Salonnière” (keynote address, the Architecture and Feminisms conference, the annual international conference of the Architecture and Humanities Research Association, at KTH and DOCH, Stockholm, November 17–19, 2016).

14 IDA stands for the Institute for the Decolonization of Art, but it is also a feminine name and, when pronounced in Swedish, sounds like idag, which means “today.”

15 It is worth bearing in mind the observation made by IDA in the statement of aims they handed out during their workshop: “NUESTRAS MADRES understands that a person may have, or have had, one or several mothers. A mother in this context does not need to be biological.”

16 IDA (Estella Burga, Macarena Dusant and Isabel Löfgren), “Nuestras Madres” (performance paper presented at the Architecture and Feminisms conference, the annual international conference of the Architecture and Humanities Research Association, at KTH and DOCH, Stockholm, November 17–19, 2016).

17 Gloria Anzaldúa, La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness (San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute, 1987).

18 The presentations in the BORDERLANDS session were: Queer Undergrowth (Joseph Crowdy), It’s So Serious Doing the Twist (Johanna Leah Geldard), Rehearsals – Eight Acts on the Politics of Listening (Sophia Wiberg and Petra Bauer), and When Program is the Enemy of Function (Simona Castricum). The second STYLES session, ARTIFACTS, is not discussed here since we present it elsewhere in this issue.

19 Joseph Crowdy, “Queer Undergrowth” (paper presented at the Architecture and Feminisms conference, the annual international conference of the Architecture and Humanities Research Association, at KTH and DOCH, Stockholm, November 17–19, 2016); Johanna Leah Geldard, “It’s so Serious doing the Twist” (paper presented at the Architecture and Feminisms conference, the annual international conference of the Architecture and Humanities Research Association, at KTH and DOCH, Stockholm, November 17–19, 2016).

20 Former principal of DOCH, Efva Lilja, was key to the selection and application of the purple color. She commented: “My contribution was to find a color that was possible to light set. The ‘purple’ color functions well since it consists of many colors in itself. Because of this you can work with light settings that contain yellow, red, blue, green […]”; translated from an e-mail from Efva Lilja to Ingela Stefaniak, November 16, 2016).

21 Published on our webpage: https://www.mycket.org/CLUBSCENEN-ACT-13-STYLES-SALON/.

22 Goedele De Caluwé and Tomas Montulet, “A walk, a (S)pace, a Gaze” (performance paper presented at the Architecture and Feminisms conference, the annual international conference of the Architecture and Humanities Research Association, at KTH and DOCH, Stockholm, November 17–19, 2016).

23 Marion Preez, “Cycle Flâneur” (performance paper presented at the Architecture and Feminisms conference, the annual international conference of the Architecture and Humanities Research Association, at KTH and DOCH, Stockholm, November 17–19, 2016).

24 The term “walk-through closet” is a play on the heteronormative metaphor that someone is “in the closet” until that person has “come out of the closet,” i.e., performed a sexuality or identity which does not fit the binary gender opposition.

25 For images with the costumes from all acts of The Club Scene, see https://www.mycket.org/.

26 The food was prepared by Susanne Mobacker (Whakapapa) and Brita Lindvall Leitmann (Bastion). Mobacker plays an important role in the history of queer spaces in Stockholm through her previous venues Café Copacabana and Whakapapa.

27 “Xenia” refers to the Roman style of hospitality so beautifully described in Norman Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).

28 Sophia Wiberg and Petra Bauer, “Listen Up! Rehearsals – Eight Acts on the Politics of Listening” (performance paper presented at the Architecture and Feminisms conference, the annual international conference of the Architecture and Humanities Research Association, at KTH and DOCH, Stockholm, November 17–19, 2016).

29 “Choreo-abilities” by KROPPSFUNKTION (approximately “body function”) was created and performed by Alexander Malmgren, Amanda Krantzen, Anna Bring, Camilla Lien, Donna Magnusson, Fadia Audri, Henrietta Savage, Julia Hedenström, Kristin Kamrén Lundström, Linn Bergman, Magdalena Westin, Mahsheed Saber, My Edberg and Tove Sahlin.

30 Angelica Falkeling, “I like Older Women” (performance paper presented at the Architecture and Feminisms conference, the annual international conference of the Architecture and Humanities Research Association, at KTH and DOCH, Stockholm, November 17–19, 2016).

31 Teresa Hoskyns and Helen Stratford, “Was (is) Taking Place a Nomadic Practice?” (performance paper presented at the Architecture and Feminisms conference, the annual international conference of the Architecture and Humanities Research Association, at KTH and DOCH, Stockholm, November 17–19, 2016).

32 Hélène Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa,” trans. Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, Signs 1, no. 4 (1976): 893.

33 Hanna Wildow, “The Family Dinner” (performance paper presented at the Architecture and Feminisms conference, the annual international conference of the Architecture and Humanities Research Association, at KTH and DOCH, Stockholm, November 17–19, 2016).

34 Claudia Roselli, “Things that cannot be said” (paper installation presented at the Architecture and Feminisms conference, the annual international conference of the Architecture and Humanities Research Association, at KTH and DOCH, Stockholm, November 17–19, 2016); De Caluwé and Montulet, “A walk, a (S)pace, a Gaze.”

35 Nadja Hjorton and Katarina Winter, “Finding Memory” (paper installation presented at the Architecture and Feminisms conference, the annual international conference of the Architecture and Humanities Research Association, at KTH and DOCH, Stockholm, November 17–19, 2016).

36 Sheila Levrant de Bretteville in an interview with Ellen Lupton, Eye magazine (1992), https://elupton.com/2010/07/de-bretteville-sheila-levrant/.