Unit 1

of Thought
Queer School

Teaching staff:
Kleanthis Kyriakou
Jack O’ Brien
Martha Summers
Our Disobedient School
THE CONTEXT IN LONDON
AIM
Long before the decriminalisation of homosexuality, the
In this group we will engage with queer theory, performa- repeal of section 28*, the arrival of the internet and the
tive actions and improvised-making processess to invent collateral rise of online dating apps, queer spaces (such as
and design the ‘Queer School of Thought’. Our school will be bars, pubs, nightclubs, bathhouses and community centres)
situated and enacted here, at Central Saint Martins. A school were instrumental in harnessing a sense of self, safety and
within a school. We will use ‘the Street’ as a canvas (a testing belonging to the members of LGBTQ+ community within
ground and a incubator for queer action), a liminal space large urban enclaves. The transgression and lawlessness that
where disciplines meet and cross over. It’s where students - often defined those spaces tested the limits of what society
socialise, showcase, challenge each other and work collabo- deemed acceptable through the constant construction,
ratively. reconstruction and reconfiguration of gender.

Along the way, we hope to cultivate critical and creative Queer space, in this regard, is inextricably tied to its occu-
thinkers who can work across mediums, across scales, across pants, those who get to make and remake space; for
discources; those who can really embrace the social and themselves and their wandering identities.
political facets of queer spaces and the communities that
inhabit them. We want to distill a set of pedagogies and In London, the dramatic closures* of LGBTQ+ venues-fuelled
methodologies, that are inherently queer but can then be by gentrification-have left a physical and cultural gap in the
applied to any design process and scenario. Thus enriching city. Queer spaces are not just gathering spaces for perfor-
and widening the traditional skillset that a spatial practision- mance acts and light entertainment. They are classrooms in
er possess. In the age of great social and political unrest, of the city. It is where community members get to meet
climate breakdown we need to find transformative ways to activists, get mobilised and politicised during dance
engage with existing systems and communities. routines and cigarette breaks.

WHAT IS QUEER? Week 1 - Monday 23.10.23

Queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosex- A. QUEER CARTOGRAPHY : Revealing Queer Erasure
ual or cisgender. Originally meaning "strange" or "peculiar"
in the middle ages, queer came to be used pejoratively “...Mapping unfolds potential; it-remakes territory over and
against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the over again, each time with new and diverse consequences.
late 19th century. Beginning in the late 1980s, queer Not all maps accomplish this, however; some simply repro-
activists, such as the members of Queer Nation, began to duce what is already known. These are more ’tracings’ than
reclaim the word as a deliberately provocative and political- maps, delineating patterns but revealing nothing new. In
ly radical alternative to the more assimilationist branches of describing and advocating more open-ended forms of
the LGBT community. creativity, philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
declare: Make a map not a tracing!”.
QUEER SPACE IS AN EMERGING DISCOURSE
(source: The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and
Queer space’ is a relatively new subject in academic Invention by James Corner)
discourses and emerged in the early 1990s. Following the
Stonewall uprising in 1969, the decriminalization of homo- On Queer Cartography:
sexuality in the UK during the 1980s and the AIDS epidemic,
the experience of the ‘other’ citizen was high on the agenda. Queer cartographies consist of the mapping, identification
and subversion of heteronormative and patriarchal ideas
The 1994 exhibition at the Storefront of Art and Architecture and practices about space and place.
in NYC titled ‘QUEER SPACE’, co-curated by architectural
historian Beatriz Colomina, was truly ground-breaking. It Those queer cartographies can include:
raised signi cant questions regarding sexuality and space,
at a time when homosexuality was still a taboo. The exhibi- -The Mapping and identification of spaces of sexual and
tion’s manifesto claimed that ‘QUEER SPACE’ sought to gender exclusion (queer erasure) in the city. (e.g. this could
uncover various definitions of the terms: ‘queer’ and ‘space’ be about lost queer histories & spaces )
and the conceptual bonds that unite them. It asked: How
can minorities de ne their rights to occupy spaces within -The Mapping and identification of architectures, spaces and
the city? How can such space be legitimized, given a history parts of the city that celebrate queerness and non-heter-
and a future? onormativity.

Much of queer architectural theory is based primarily on -The Mapping of Queer futurisms: Operating as a form of
white male experience, constructed largely after North projection into the future, this form of queer cartography
American and Eurocentric scopes, the prime example being can include the mapping and exploration of emancipatory,
Aaron Betsky’s “Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex joyful futures where all identities are welcome, nourished
Desire” (1997). As important as Betsky’s seminal book is, two and protected.
decades later we must note that he was writing about ‘gay’
spaces, not ‘queer’ spaces, and that his central thesis—“the
purpose of queer space is ulti- mately sex”—is reductive,
simplistic, and erroneous.*
“Queer people have often forged love and revolution in Notes:
unmapped places. Donning invisibility has sometimes saved
lives, but lives deserve to be whole-their memories bursting -Where necessary include any basic information that any
with stories, histories, monuments, landmarks, folklore, architectural map should possess (scale, north sign, grids or
music, loss, victories, sacrifice and style. And yet queer lives contours etc)
have never been so visible and vulnerable as they are now.”
-Be playful in the way you approach the mapping task: How
(Aastha D , Queer Refusal , Disegno Mag 2022 ) are you ‘queering’ the map and its formal, rigid language?

-Treat every drawing/map that you create as a visual artefact

For this project, we ask you to think about what the concept
- in its own right.
of ‘Queer erasure’ means for the city and marginalised
communities. We want you to investigate and map sites of -Can you relate your findings with queer sites in global
queer erasure, uncover their histories and project memories contexts, of the global south? To tell the stories of marginal-
or alternative futures through performance and situated ised, queer BIPOC folk?
interventions.
Visits:
Task:
-Bishopsgate Institute: LGBTQ+ Archives
-For this week we ask that you visit the LGBTQ+ archives at
Bishopsgate Institute, conduct desktop or active (on-site) -Site of Caravan Club, 81 Endell Street
research to map and document places of queer erasure in
London. -Site of Madame Jojo’s Soho

-The resulting map/s should deviate from conventional Additional reading:

‘tracing’ approaches to mapping. Instead, your map/s
should aim to uncover spaces, data or stories that have not LGBTQ+ Cultural Infrastructure in London: Night Venues,
been visible or documented before. 2006–present. Ben Campkin and Laura Marshall, July 2017
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/urban-lab/docs/LGBTQ_cultural_in-
-You should also be critical of ways in which queer spaces or fra-
groups have been represented in media in the past, result- structure_in_London_nightlife_venues_2006_to_the_prese
ing in negative associations and exclusionary practices. nt.pdf

-Think about how to communicate your findings creatively The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention
(I.e through a performative map – this can be a large-scale by James Corner
model, a tablecloth or a tapestry).

References:

-‘Queering the Map’ by Lucas La Rochelle:

Queering the Map is a community-based, interactive project
that seeks to preserve LGBTQ+ memory beyond borders.
The platform hosts a selection of user-generated queer
stories from around the world; mapped and inserted into
physical space by using a counter-version of Google Maps.
https://www.queeringthemap.com/

-‘Cuirtopia’ by Dr Regner Ramos

Cuirtopia is a project to map out queer buildings and
territories in the Caribbean using fiction and history;
storytelling and archives.
https://www.cuirtopia.xyz/

-‘For Your Convenience’(a double-entendre) by Thomas

Burke, 1937. A map of showing public toilets (or cottaging
sites) in London. For historian Matt Houlbrook, this guide to
London formalises men’s knowledge of these sexual
possibilities and codifies their knowledge of the tactics
needed to use these sites safely.

-Mayor of London:Cultural Infrastructure Map/LGBT

nightime venues
https://apps.london.gov.uk/cim/index.html?_gl=1*1dhsvg-
j*_ga*M-
jU5MTI3ODY1LjE2Njc4NDcxOTY.*_ga_PY4SWZN1RJ*MTY2N
zg0NzI0Mi4xLjAuMTY2Nzg0NzI0Mi42MC4wLjA.