staging
Sebastian Moske
“‘Agua Mansa – Designing Filth in Gentle Waters’ is a recent collaboration with Ann-Mirjam Vaikla ” for an exhibition in Mexico City. In the video, our exchange of letters explores questions surrounding ecocide, humanity’s pursuit of control over nations, identity, and movements, as well as queer relationality.
Within it, I reflect on Klaus Theweleit’s analysis of the writings of the Freikorps men in the interwar period: the fear of losing control is expressed as a flood of weakening forces (feminine, abstract, alien), unrooting/undermining the strong, erect German male body.
It’s a traumatic projection with the (re)action to defend a homeland – and thus identity or interiority.
Interiority, crucial to the Romantics, is now utilised in neoliberal capitalism by ‘furnishing’ one’s own space and personality, as seen in pink-washing as queer representation.
From it, I coin the term ‘gay romanticism’: a traumatic reaction with no proper homecoming, teetering on the brink/verge of creating ‘families’ or ‘properties’.”
During the spring semester Decolonizing Architecture shares the concepts that informed this year individual and collective research.