Émilie Renard in conversation with Jean-Charles de Quillacq who invites his cousin, Eric de Thoisy: “Architecture, digitality, gender: Queer spatialities?”, talk

“Architecture, digitality, gender: Queer spatialities?”

Eric de Thoisy

In her exposition of my cousin’s work, Vanessa Desclaux mentions the spatial dimension of terms currently applied to sexualities: orientation, straight, queer, etc. At the same time we are witnessing the appearance of numerous architectural forms described as feminine, uterine and even vaginal.
Might the relationship between genders/sexualities and space be decisive? The history feminist philosopher Donna Haraway sets out to dismantle in her Cyborg Manifesto is that of a “man in space”; as she sees it, the transition to the digital culture of the cyborg brings with it “disturbingly and pleasurably tight coupling”. What might this mean for architecture? In a further tie-in with the work of Jean-Charles de Quillacq, the “imitation game” suggested by the mathematician and digital culture pioneer Alan Turing may be the starting point for a new, queer conceptualisation of space.