This thesis presents theatrical queer feminist interpretations of architecture staged within a series of architectural scenes: architect Eileen Gray’s building E.1027 in the south of France (1926-29); author Natalie Barney’s literary salon at 20 rue Jacob, Paris (1909-1968); and author Selma Lagerlöf’s former home and memorial estate Mårbacka, situated in mid-west Sweden and transformed between 1919 and 1923. Interpreted as queer performative acts, or enactments of architecture, these cases bring into play the interconnectedness of material container, the setting, the deeds and the actors. A broad aim of the thesis is to explore the role played by architecture in the social and cultural constructions of bodies, in particular in relation to gender and sexuality. Architecture is investigated as one of the subjectivating norms that constitute gender performativity. The thesis is thus not only about but also operates through enactment. It masquerades as a series of lectures written in the form of scripted drama. The aim of this formal experiment is not only to explicate and critique from a detached perspective but also to represent architecture in the process of being enacted. Architecture is investigated not only as a theoretical metaphor but also as a concrete material practice always entangled with subject positions. With this exploration into the queerness and the theatricality of architecture, Behind Straight Curtains seeks to affect both the analysis and enactment of architecture and contribute to an architectural shift towards a built environment that does not simply repeat repressive structures but attempts to resist discrimination and dismantle hierarchies.
This article is a queer reading of the architecture of Swedish writer Selma Lagerlöf's mansion Mårbacka. Through a combination of performativity theory and architecture theory, the article addresses social and historical constructions of gender and sexuality, complicit with the entities age, class and nationality, through architecture. Architecture is explored 'on the one hand' as a representation of social norms and 'on the other hand' as a practice which can subvert them. Departing from a performative perspective on identity, the term cross-cladding is introduced as a tool to interpret architecture as dressing and thereby its complex, layered and manifold performances of gender and sexualities. The article writes a social and architectural history of what has been called 'the most famous manor in Sweden and of Swedish manors the most famous in the world' (Sterner 1935, 4). Mårbacka was not simply the home of Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940) and her kin but also a public display of this Nobel Prize-winning first woman of the Swedish Academy - a national monument. Lagerlöf continuously worked on the main building. In 1919-1924, it was transformed with the help of the architects' office of Isak Gustaf Clason. It also appears in Lagerlöf's novels and throughout the building there are references to her books and biography. There is something queer here. The master of Mårbacka was a woman who loved women and made room for a household of women. This article discusses how architecture can represent a gendered disguise and reveals Mårbacka as an excessive, patriarchal 'power suit', which enabled a lifestyle that deviated from the norms of society.
Går det att rucka på husens tröghet och sega strukturer?Katarina Bonnevier lyfter fram kvinnliga arkitekters motmaktför att tänka nytt och visa att rum går att förvandla.
Sexuality and gender are often implicit burdens in architecture theory. The performative force of the male, western, middle class, heterosexual canon dominates the practices, methodologies, contents and theories, of architectural research. Feminists have pointed out the pretence of an objective, disembodied knowledge producer, and within the discourse of architecture they have pointed out how space often is considered uncritically as a neutral entity that is designed, shaped and used by autonomous subjects. In this paper I will, through a productive relationship between the critical fields of architecture and gender studies, revisit Mårbacka, the memorial estate and former home of author Selma Lagerlöf and her kin to disclose some of the implicit burdens and to draw out a methodology for a theory of action.The paper, which builds on my doctoral dissertation (Bonnevier 2007), consists of different writing modes and genres; a theoretical stage is set up for a couple of performances in writing that attempt to both read and enact building constellations from a queer feminist perspective. Formal concerns are important in the process of writing and performing queer theory, because the political aim, to paraphrase Judith Butler, is to speak in ways that have not yet been legitimized, and hence produce legitimation in new and future forms (Butler 1997; 41). The speaking body always says something it does not intend; it acts in excess of what is said. Shoshana Felman claims that the excess of the speaking body produce powerful scandals which can throw new light on established truths (Felman 1980).In her lecture series ‘A Room of One’s Own’ Virginia Woolf discussed performance, language and misbehavior as critical acts -“whole flights of words would need to wing their way illegitimately into existence before a woman could say what happens when she goes into a room.” (Woolf 1929; 100). Woolf pulls the setting into the plot as a performance in matter. The material conditions – flight of stairs, private rooms, and the act of entering – presented to an audience and subject to interpretation, and the illegitimate words that make possible critical reflection is like a charge from Woolf which sums up the ambitions of this paper; to present a theory of action.
Genom en studie kring Salongen undersöker jag de performativa aspekter som finns i allarkitektur. Salongen är både den materiella, rumsliga behållaren och den tidsbegränsade händelsen – en typ av iscensättning där människorna och handlingarna inte kan särskiljas från detbyggda. Texten kretsar kring den litterära, feministiska och sexuellt gränsöverskridande salong författaren Natalie Clifford Barney iscensatte i sitt hem på 20, rue Jacob i Paris undernittonhundratalet, och ett par samtida Stockholms salonger som låtit sig inspireras av Barney.På café Copacabana har det under flera säsonger hållits litterära salonger en gång i månaden.Där har ”historiska och dagsaktuella kulturella och queerfeministiska teman” presenterats. Föratt komma salongsarkitekturen närmare gav jag, som ett slags fullskaleexperiment, en salonghösten 2004 inom ramen för mitt avhandlingsarbete. Det försöket som var ett akademiskt seminarium förklätt till salong hade också sin utgångspunkt i Barneys evenemang. Genom salongens rollbesatta arkitektur framträder relationen mellan människa och arkitektur skarpareeftersom aktörer och publik alltid redan är inskrivna. Jag frågar mig hur konstruerar arkitekturen genus, ”lägre” stående grupper eller ”avvikare” från normen? Mitt huvudtema är queerastrategier, frågan om motstånd och överskridande av sådana ordningar. Det handlar om maskerad arkitektur, det queera eller icke-straighta. Mitt antagande är att sambandet mellanmänniskor och arkitektur har mycket att göra med ytan; beklädnaden. En arkitekt i Barneyssamtid som arbetade utifrån detta synsätt var Elsie de Wolfe. Det är arkitektur betraktat somvisuella rumsliga avgränsningar, vilket rör sig i skala från accessoarer och klädedräkter, viascenerier och kulisser, till väggar och husgrupper.
Over the years, colleagues at the Architecture School of Stockholm have developed a most remarkable and inspiring approach to architecture and writing in terms of performances and the performative while integrating feminist and queer theory. Of particular interest are the Critical Studies in Architecture group, the group Fatale for feminist architecture theory and practice, and the Mycket collaboration. By way of an interview between Footprint editors Dirk van den Heuvel and Robert Gorny, and the Stockholm colleagues Brady Burroughs, Katarina Bonnevier, Katja Grillner, and Hélène Frichot questions of pedagogy, research and methodology are further investigated, how to ‘stay with the trouble’ and where to situate newly emerging knowledge models.