Double Invisibility: Revisiting Queer Spaces in Central Europe, přednáška na konferenci Society of Architectural Historians 71st Annual International Conference, 18.–22. dubna 2018, Society of Architectural Historians, St. Paul, MN

přednáška

angličtina

In 1940, the openly gay movie producer Miloš Havel commissioned a project for a luxury villa that was later described in a contemporary novel as the residence the owner shows to his young male lover, who reacts as follows: “in the dressing room, a white room with a red rug and a sofa, he opened all the wardrobes. […] He instantly fell into a visual trance and dazzling sense of wonder caused by the realization that such a comfort existed.” This shows a strategy of wealthy gay men to furnish their homes as strikingly visibly queer, open to their queer social and sexual circles. At the same time that the house was under construction, the lesbian surrealist painter Toyen acquired her one-room apartment which one could characterize by using avant-garde theorist Karel Teige’s term “the minimum dwelling.” Both apartments were significant in pre-war social and cultural life but actually, they different represented two aspects of queer domestic spaces. The 20th century queer spaces in Central Europe were shaped by the different situation in which independent men and women found themselves and their queer aspects were forgotten due to following totalitarian regimes. At the same time, modern architects brought redrew the lines between the traditionally public and private sphere in heterosexual situations. The queer spaces in Central Europe, however, were not actually in-between, but could became both: they subverted Aaron Betsky’s idea of spaces of domination and tricks of domesticity into spaces of domesticity and tricks of domination. The paper will focus on how under different historical conditions the queer spaces in Central Europe overstepped binarity of gender (masculine – feminine), binarity of identities (gay – lesbian) and borders between what is public and private, as well as visible and invisible.

queer studies; architecture; Central Europe; Miloš Havel; Toyen; queer architecture; queer spaces

ZIKMUND-LENDER, L.

21. 4. 2018

Society of Architectural Historians

St. Paul, MN

https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/96/programme-builder/submission/3233?backHref=/events/84/sessions/1988&view=published