Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: I am Maria and I'll be your host today. I'll be co hosting this episode with Maria Torian Juana. Hello, Maria Torian Juana. Hello, Ola.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hola, Maria.
[00:00:15] Speaker A: This is the 7th episode of the On Discomfort series that we started recording more than a year ago. I'm going to kind of quickly go back to why we started this. It's interesting because we haven't go back necessarily to the explanation of this Comfort and Discomfort series or how it started. So I'm just going to give a little introduction to that again. But this series of short podcasts investigates how the concepts of comfort and discomfort are entangled with the dynamics of power embedded in the production of space. Originally, we departed from Sarah Ahmed's concepts about how concept of discomfort can be a productive place to delve into spatial politics and architecture. And we have been discussing them the past six episodes. So, as I said, this is our 7th episode and today we have very special guests. Today we are talking with Exutois, a transdisciplinary spatial practice composed by Polandoan Luca and Wikuisson. They are based between Oslo and Hanoi.
And I think before continuing this introduction, I think it's interesting that we finally are bringing people that have a bit more of a design practice because we have been talking with a lot of researchers, anthropologists, but in your case, you do approach it besides being curators, but you also design. You are more into a practice that's, let's say I don't want to say practical. Everything in some ways practical, but in your case it is. But anyway, that's exciting. So hello Polando Anson, and thank you for joining us.
[00:01:38] Speaker C: Hi, Maria. Hi.
[00:01:40] Speaker D: Hello. Thanks for having us.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: Paul Antoine and Son. The practice goes around teaching editorial curatorial and design work. They investigate social material and spatial justice directed to underrepresented discourses and marginalized voices. I think something that we find particularly interesting about their practice and it's something that has also kind of built up from previous episodes is the idea that their practice is also defined as a queer practice. And we think that discussing queer architecture from ideas of comfort and discomfort is very relevant for discussion. In the second episode of this series, we were talking with from also one of the editors of Failed Architecture, we were talking about his book that just launched Smooth City. But at some point, the idea of queer practices or querying architecture comes up and this is something that kind of stayed with us. But in the other episodes, we never really discuss it. So we thought, okay, let's invite someone to talk about this.
What do we mean when we talk about queering architecture or a queer architecture practice? So what do you mean with a queer spatial practice and how do you kind of materialize or make this happen in your work?
[00:02:54] Speaker D: Yeah, I think I can start, but yeah, the term queer is an umbrella term. It has for a long time being and it can mean a lot of things. So maybe the thoughts that we'll share with you are very personal. So kind of like they represent our personal perspective on it.
But for me, maybe it means two main things. So the first thing that I see in queerness is basically like queerness is somehow defined by the state of something being different from the rest or from what is defined as the norm.
So by querying a spatial practice or practicing queerness in architecture, we mean doing things differently. So how can we question what is already established, the norms and the normativity that is reproduced by standards and codes in architectural and design practices today and also the effects that it creates on the bodies and the people who are actually inhabiting these spaces and are affected by surrounded by these infrastructures. So that's like the first thing. And then on the other hand, I kind of associate and we associate queerness with the idea of kindness, of caring for each other, of being mindful and careful and just attentive to everything that is around us, including nature and other people. So we kind of really want to, by defining our practice as queer and by practicing that queerness, we really want to maybe critique a lot of exploitative practices that exist everywhere in the world and especially in architecture and design. And we want to really maybe recenter what has been marginalized in these practices, which is the care and maintenance work, and to really embrace the fact that we need more than just one in order to do architecture and design. So then to really focus on collaborative and collective processes and to end this tyranny of the one egoistic starchitect which doesn't exist for us.
[00:05:13] Speaker C: I think for me, I'll answer the question a bit like chronologically. I think we started our practice kind of as a creative outlet for how we work and then like to kind of get rid of all our frustration from working in an office. And then so that was in 2019 and then in 2020, kind of what Kick started what we call now a queer practice of architecture is this project Safe Space, that we did with a friend, which was like to talk about discrimination and racism in the field of architecture in Norway specifically. And then the last part of that project, which included a podcast and series of small publications, was about towards creating more equitable architecture. And then one aspect of this was a queer practice of architecture. And I think right after that project, we felt like that's what we want to follow through. Like having that queer lens, an intersectional lens through which to look at making and thinking architecture. And then we really connected with the term like how Jose Stein Minion talks about it. I think in some ways of this idea of queerness never being there. So this ideality and utopia in a way, which means for us. It's a practice that will constantly challenge itself, doesn't have a fixed form, that it will seek to always do better than it did before and then to challenge new things like knowing that we will never attain kind of that ideality of society.
And then maybe lastly, because we also say that we're a bit critical spatial practice. So that comes from Jane Randall terminology to define a practice which is kind of based on critical theory and the idea of self reflection and social transformation. So that's also really what we are focusing on. It's like all the projects that we try to do is to deal with uncomfortable discussions, social political discussions somehow and try to enact social transformations through the projects that we do, whether it be either build design but also like discursive platforms that we develop, for instance.
So that's I think an aspect of queerness we try to integrate within the project.
[00:07:34] Speaker D: I think it's important to state that we're both queer people.
But somehow it's not the only reason that we're practicing queerness in architecture. Because I think even though for sure the experience of growing up a queer person and a queer professional in this industry have shaped the way that we look at things and the way that we want to approach things. But I think what Polantoan kind of talked about as the first reason for which we got into this was very true. Because I think we kind of see queerness as a very englobing, sort of like, intersectional way to deal with all kinds of social injustices around the world because it proposes an alternative for a different future. And it doesn't mean that we have to be queer in order to be interested or to employ queer theory or queer practices. And we don't mean to only create, I don't know, queer spaces for queer people, by queer people, for queer people, even though it is an important part of it. But it doesn't necessarily only mean that from me personally, I think queerness kind of opened up a lot of possibilities when it comes to dealing with racism because I think that's, like racism in architecture is maybe it's what affected me the most. And it's like after the events of Black Lives Matter in 2020, I think that really took a toll on me and that's what really pushed me to study social justice in architecture. It was first through the lens of racism, but then kind of like I feel like queer theory gives a perspective that it maybe is more hopeful and it helps us to maybe paint different kinds of utopias and ideals about space and it gives us solutions to how to solve certain things. So that's kind of like maybe my access point into it.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Thank you. It's really wonderful to sort of get this fresh perspective of how you anchor your practice.
One of the most recent projects that we also wanted to ask you about and discuss is the dissident publics the future artifacts of queer methodologies? I know that this is a collective project with many more architects, designer, artists, but as it was recently, you recently had the final exhibit between May and June in Oslo.
[00:10:29] Speaker D: Right.
[00:10:30] Speaker B: We wanted to know a bit more about how was the process and the results of these projects and how that helped you to sort of continue or keep on discussing these questions of queerness and what queer methodologies means. And also perhaps the other word that it's there is the idea of artifacts and what future artifacts meant in that context. I wonder if you can introduce us and just narrate a bit about that project and that experience. That seems very exciting.
[00:11:07] Speaker D: Yeah. So. It was a very heartfelt project, I have to say, that we conducted over the past year. And a so after Safe Space, which is the project that Sonotan mentioned.
We kind of had the opportunity to be curators in residence at a cultural institution in Oslo where we were tasked to come up with a project that deal with queerness and architecture. And then our way to approach it was to initiate a co creation project that would involve a lot more people. Because as we mentioned, I think collective and collaborative processes are key to maybe shaping a more equitable built environment. So we had seven other artists and architects join us as co curators and as collaborators of the project. And the idea was to investigate Queer methodologies. And for us, queer methodologies lie a lot in collective processes and how we.
[00:12:18] Speaker C: Can confront a plurality of identities in a way like from each our own perspective, own experiences, but also own, maybe queerness or relationship to queerness in that case was a way yeah. To kind of have different perspective on the similar question, to define a more encompassing, maybe set of methodologies.
[00:12:43] Speaker D: Yeah, and then we really wanted to look at the impact of the built environment on the bodies and behaviors that are surrounded by it. And we decided to focus on the idea of public space.
And that's when we maybe coined this idea of dissident publics, which for us kind of represents both the public space that can be defined as dissident and as well as the publics, the different audiences and people that would sort of come to terms maybe with the action within those spaces.
The concept of dissident publics is kind of defined as maybe like a co governed and co regulated environment wherein active transgressions of norms can take place and can be represented.
Because I think it came about as a predict to how hostile and clinical urban spaces have become in CV City. And I mean, this resonates really well with the idea Smooth City, right, that you discussed with Renee in the second episode. I mean, check it out, y'all.
And so then we kind of really want to question that and want to encourage and really embrace the possibility of people transgressing norms because norms are there. I mean to go back to the idea of greenness again, norms are there also to be like rules are there to be broken and then those norms are also built on a certain stereotype of users that do not represent everybody. So then how can we better that representation by allowing for transactions to happen.
[00:14:39] Speaker C: Then maybe the idea of queer methodologies was like a set of tools that we collectively developed through different workshops throughout the project that led to a final exhibition. Then it was really a way for us as a collective then gathered around that topic and that title to come up with a project and that project would be a spatial project within that institution in Nosville. That was the only kind of set goal we had in the beginning. Then we were really open to develop together how that would come about and what it would become. Trying to be very open to what everyone's practice is bringing to the table. So we really had quite a few moments of sharing where everyone started organizing workshops for the collective from the perspective of their own practice to kind of bring in within this collaborative process everyone's input as being part of the imaginary of the collective. So, like, really, by having everyone talking about their projects, but also having kind of small exercises and workshops around their methodologies that they use for their art, their architecture, their different coproduction projects andography, like, depending on everyone's discipline, we could understand how that could inform maybe this idea of a collective dissidents publics and maybe clashes between aesthetics of different people, between where they see queerness coming from, what that means for them, and kind of really embodying. Within the collective and the final project, that pluralism of identity that we seek to see within public space, in a way, if that makes sense.
[00:16:22] Speaker D: And then I think what kind of came together in the end is this exhibition and public program that used the exhibition as excite for investigation and that was built like that space was built upon these future artifacts that you mentioned wana, which we kind of define as traces and reference points at the same time. And then they are formed by acts of reconstruction and tools of marginalized voices.
[00:16:58] Speaker C: And that would sort of like that.
[00:17:00] Speaker D: Are there to represent our desire for challenging straight time and for a different future. And then there would be sort of like hacked urban furniture such as the fountains and the lampposts and maybe the benches and then there would be a mix of domestic and public elements to create a strange environment wherein people would kind of maybe have their own right to appropriate the space as they see fit.
[00:17:36] Speaker C: And I think overall how the project ended up being it also became kind of this literal patchwork. So it was a very patchworky project, like a lot of mostly reused material from different institutions around Oslo, from also different locations from where people could come from. So Paris, Brussels, Hanoi, like different objects and fabrics being brought in. And then to create, I think, an overall idea of softness openness. But also the artifacts came into play also in the idea of how the space would behave and for who the space would be designed, in a way. So it was always meant to facilitate for appropriation also for queer community organizations in Oslo. So that was also something that we had part of the project was really like to shape up a program. So what are we designing that public space for? What could that ideal public space within Oslo at that moment be for? And then that was the idea of offering that space. So building this project of public space as a support infrastructure, basically. So all those objects would become like tools for knowledge sharing. Whether it be like workshop, tables, benches and then could suggest different behaviors and ways of organizing and be there for hosting and caring for the communities that maybe are left out sometimes of public space making and then giving them that space for duration of the exhibition and hosting their own workshops, meetings and giving them a space to exist in a way thank you.
[00:19:09] Speaker E: Thank you very much.
I had a question, but I think every time I was thinking, oh, this is interesting, I'm going to ask them about this, then you answered it on the way. But I'm just very curious about why did you name it dissident publics?
Why keep talking about public, right? In a certain way? Because when we think about public, we cannot avoid thinking about the private. And when we think about the private, we think about binaries.
And not all of them, but some of the let's say some of the things that queer studies are questioning. Among them. For instance, Jose de Juan Munoz. But just to mention one of them is the notion of binaries, right? He, for instance, uses the concept or they, for instance, uses the concept of disidentification precisely to question all of these social normativities that end up producing binaries or forced identifications.
So I am just curious about why did you guys decided to work on the public, which I think it's something that we can I mean, in a certain way, I do believe it's something that we cannot abandon in the real world or in the everyday life. You cannot avoid the question of the public, of the public space. But I am also curious about what you added to the public, which is dissident. Why dissident? What is dissident about it? And why do we still need to talk about the public in a dissident way, so to say and not just disseminate everything, I don't know. For me, in a certain way, that can also produce a sort of anxiety, right? Like, okay, we disseminate the public. The private then what we have what's there? Okay, so no, let's go back to the public, but let's think about the dissident public.
[00:21:19] Speaker D: Great question.
I have so many thoughts that I'm just trying to structure right now. But the first thing that I would say off the top of my head is that the plural form of publics, I think for us maybe defies the binary notions like connotations that might come behind it. So we're talking about publics, not only public and we nowhere in the project we mentioned the private sphere. So I think we didn't define public in opposition to private in here. And it was more like to put an emphasis on the notion of public. Because somehow, maybe there were two reasons that I could retain at the moment is that maybe a lot of queer studies in architecture focused on interior and private spaces. Because that's where maybe that was the safest and the most intimate and the most intuitive space in which queerness could get expressed. So then we wanted to maybe step a bit out of it and see what happens on the outside. And then there was a second argument that I'm now losing but I think there was the idea of defining the public as an adjective and as a noun was crucial to us because we're not only talking about what is so it's important to talk about what is public, what is public, what is considered publicness. Because we feel like in a lot of cities today, especially because of neoliberal urban development, the question of public land, for example, is being taken away, especially in Oslo when where the project took place that was important for us. And then at the same time, taking public as a noun was also sort of like a step forward, really questioning who we're designed for and because when a space gets shaped, there is a public, there's an audience, there are people who will use them and were non human elements as well, that those spaces should be built for. And so it's not just about the space per se but about what it caters to.
[00:23:36] Speaker C: And I think within public, within us is also this idea of pluralism. Again, I think diversity of indeed is represented within the public and not going for public space as a singular object that is maybe the homogenizing factor or the hegemony of a majority to some extent that becomes expressed in public space.
And also this idea of commons is also linked to the idea of publics. So the idea of commoning cooperation, collaboration, but also conflicts, negotiation, all of this. But that also kind of an alternative system that would be based on a different exchange value maybe.
So I think that is sometimes what is being taken in that term public is the idea of commons also being a new public space, neither public nor private, but really the idea of commons in a way.
[00:24:36] Speaker D: And again maybe one last thing just queer methodologies for us really represents. And it works towards forms of collectivity. So then it's like, for that reason, public space or the public sphere somehow still holds an instrumental role in that work because it's that space that we believe that belong to the public and to more than just one. So somehow going there was important.
[00:25:07] Speaker E: There is so much talk about. I'm so sad that this is so short. But in a certain way the notion of dissident publics makes me think of, I don't know if you know, the work of Rosemary Gardland Thompson and the notion of the misfit to describe precisely the material encounter between two bodies that in a certain way do not fit one to another. So it is not just about the space as such, or about the body as such. And of course she's using it to discuss questions on feminism and disabilities, but about the encounter. Right. And in a certain way I feel that that notion of publics in plural also brings the issue of encounters of the commons.
[00:26:04] Speaker C: And I think also the idea of dissident is also in that way linked in that idea of resistance, of failure, of conflict. So it's also, I think, this idea of not fitting and I think for us as a collective, it was also important to represent some form of queer history, manifest a bit like queer struggles physically also. So it's also this idea of patchwork stitching resistance. Like physically the space was also behaving like that. And then one artist also worked on that idea of reproducing through AI potential past memories that could have been erased of, let's say, a queer marriage happening in Oslo in the 1950s and also documenting maybe artifacts on fabric of the first lesbian diary or piece of literature that has been found in Norway, things like that. So there are small bits and pieces within the exhibition that also talk about that resistance, talk about that erasure of memory, or maybe also this idea of future artifacts, how to create memories that have never existed, but also a story that needs to be told, maybe through fiction narration. And that's also an idea of dissidents and resistance that's embedded within that public that maybe should be there and doesn't exist. So, same ideality utopia in a way.
[00:27:30] Speaker A: Right now you are based between Oslo and Hanoi, but at some point, Royal, you'll be 100% fully based in Hanoi. And I think this question of how is it going to change the fact of talking about queer architecture in the context of Oslo and then talking about this in Hanoi?
[00:27:48] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's, funnily enough, a question that a lot of our friends asked us when we were also preparing to kind of relocate towards Hanoi. And then it's been a bit of a recent move. And then I think I would say a few weeks ago, before I myself just moved here, the answer was more towards like well, the queer lens is the queer aspect of the practice as well. So the queer lens is this idea of challenging finding that ideality vouching for social spatial and material justice within the practice and that can take different forms in different contexts and that also is really linked to critical spatial practice. How do you enact social transformations within context? So then that social transformation is a self reflection, but that also is reflecting the context. So I think in the beginning we had very much an idea of maybe we cater more towards thinking about public space, about community, about everyday life, and how that creates community within the city of Hanoi, for example. Maybe infrastructures of assembly support infrastructures that are in the social fabric and how to maybe support that through space making or through curatorial editorial work.
Don't.
