Queer(y)ing Architectures of Home and Diaspora

Organized by the queer space working group network @queerspaceworkinggroup.

The queer space working group is thrilled to announce two public events that will take place on Friday December 6, at the gta/ETH: “Queerness, Migration, and the Early Modern Archive,” a discussion on historical research and teaching methodologies, moderated by Dr. Demetra Vogiatzaki (Visiting Lecturer gta/ETH) followed by “Queering Architectures of Home and Diaspora,” a panel on contemporary practices of homemaking and/in diaspora, chaired by Dr. Torsten Lange (HSLU Hochschule Luzern). The day will conclude with an apéro.

The events are organized in the context of “Queer(y)ing Architectures of Home and Diaspora,” the second annual meeting of the queer space working group network. Through roundtable discussions, performances, and archival visits, participants will collaborate to investigate how queer perspectives can redefine our understanding of home, as well as how various forms of contemporary marginalization shape spatial politics and the sense of belonging across diasporic communities, histories and geographies.

You can view the full public program (Dec. 5-7) external page here.

The 2024 meeting is made possible by a Swiss National Foundation (SNF) Scientific Exchanges Grant.

Program / Friday, 6 December 2024

gta / ETHZ Hönggerberg, HIL E 67 ‘Rote Hölle’

12:00–14:00 Lunchtime Discussion
Queerness, Migration, and the Early Modern Archive
Discussion between Dr. Anne Hultzsch (gta/ETH Zurich) and Dr. Daniela Fuhrmann (UZH), moderated by Dr. Demetra Vogiatzaki (gta/ETH Zurich).

This is an open discussion between two historians of architecture and a professor of literature whose work centers on pre- and early- modern chronologies (namely 17th-century to 19th- century). The discussion will unfold around three main directions: First, the methodological challenges and benefits of including queerness as an analytical or epistemological category in the study of pre 20th-century eras and subjects. Particular attention will be placed on questions of method, historiography and scope. Second, the pedagogical dimensions of teaching early modern architecture through the lenses of queer theory. Finally, the discussion will dovetail into the situated positionality of the researcher/educator and students towards questions of gender, and sexuality not only in what concerns the present, but also, the early modern archive.

Bios

Anne Hultzsch is an architectural historian and leads the ERC-funded group ‘Women Writing Architecture 1700-1900’ at ETH Zurich. With a PhD from UCL, London, and postdoc from AHO, Oslo, her research draws on intersectional feminism to study the reception of architectures and landscapes between ca. 1650 and 1930, focusing on gender, print cultures, perception, and travel.

Daniela Fuhrmann is a literary scholar at the German Department at UZH and works on the (narrative) literature of the Middle Ages and the early modern period. She is particularly interested in questions of poetics and literariness in both spiritual and secular texts. In addition to research, she is involved in the development of university teaching and experiments with formats of networking in academia and the non-academic public.

Demetra Vogiatzaki (she/her) is a licensed architect-engineer and a historian of 18th-century architecture, holding a Ph.D. in History of Architecture from Harvard University. She is currently a visiting lecturer at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) of ETH in Zurich, where she focuses on decolonial, feminist, and labor perspectives on architectural history and historiography. She serves at the board of HECAA (Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture) and is part of DocTalks and queer space working group initiatives.

15:00–17:00 Symposium
Queering Architectures of Home and Diaspora
in collaboration with the D-Arch Chair for Architecture and Care, moderated by Torsten Lange (HSLU).

Presenters in this public symposium, organized in collaboration with the Chair for Architecture and Care, will explore queer practices of homemaking by East Asian diasporic communities rooted in liberation, mutual aid, survival, and pleasure, as well as the creation of memory and identity through food. Their work delineates an engaged spatial praxis beyond solutionism

Speakers:

Introductory presentation by queer space working group (qswg) members
Chong Gu & Audrey Tseng de Melo Fischer (Transient Homemaking with Red Canary Song)
He Shen (Building a Queer Home with Tea and Tofu)
Querformat (presentation of the quilt)


Followed by an audience discussion

Bios:

Torsten Lange (he/him) is lecturer in cultural and architectural history at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU) and a founding member of queer space working group. His work focuses on histories of queer social infrastructures.

Chong Gu (they/he/she) is a co-founder of Rehearsing, a collective dedicated to framing otherness in transience, and a core organizer of Red Canary Song. Tracing social, spatial and material constructs of our urbanity, their work wrestles between axioms and senses, molding rooms for incremental resistance shared amongst heterogeneous communities.

Audrey Tseng de Melo Fischer (they/them) is a co-founder of Rehearsing, a collective dedicated to framing otherness in transience, and an ally of Red Canary Song. Their work analyzes the instrumentalization of borders and binaries within heritage and futurism, and their potential to deconstruct and reconstruct socio-political territories.

He Shen (they/them) is an architect and researcher whose work, linked to queer and postcolonial studies, covers questions related to Asianness, gender and sexuality with a special interest in dissident desires, hidden stories and the politics of space. In 2022, they joined the Chair of Architecture and Care (Prof. Anna Puigjaner), ETH Zürich.

Querformat is a queer working group at the Department of Architecture at ETH Zürich.Collectively, it conducts research on the intersection of queerness and spatial issues. Through curating, writing and performing, it seeks to involve different communities and to build up a safe space within the school. It advocates for awareness and visibility for the queer communities beyond the academic boundaries.

18:00-20:00 Apéro at the gta foyer (Eingangsbereich HIL D)

The queer space working group includes:

S.E. Eisterer, Princeton University
Torsten Lange, HSLU Hochschule Luzern
Demetra Vogiatzaki, gta/ETH Zurich
Pepe Sánchez-Molero, Dublin City University
Facundo Revuelta, University of Buenos Aires and The Bartlett/UCL
Janus Lafontaine-Carboni, ETH Zurich and Princeton University
Chong Gu, Bard College & Audrey Tseng de Melo Fischer
Heejoo Kim, Princeton University
Daniel K. Landez, Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Niloofar Rasooli, ETH Zurich
Shen He, ETH Zurich
Sergio V. Preston, Princeton University
Phevos Kallitsis, University of Portsmouth

Institutional Partners, Collaborators, Friends

gta ETH, D-ARCH ETH, house of differences, Princeton SoA, Chair of Affective Architectures D-Arch ETH, Sozialarchiv Zurich, Shedhalle Zurich, Vogiatzaki Visiting Lectureship gta/ETH.

Special thanks to: Giacomo Rossi and Qianer Zhu, Elisabet Jönsson Steiner, Filémon Brault-Archambeault, Nils Grootenzerink, Paul Haas, Querformat, Laura Golobish.