navigating precarity in queer amman
columbia university, GSAPPspring 2016 seminar
a spatial and soundscape installation investigating the informal urban and digital network the LGBTQ community is connected through in Amman, Jordan.
The project examines the exterior and interior spaces in Amman, Jordan, that the LGBTQ community navigate along as a visible entity, and examines the impermanence of their legitimacy as their bodies form an alliance that is constantly denied appearance in these spaces. The mediatic platform becomes an important tool for invisible bodies to virtually exist on Ammanís grid while constantly infiltrating physical environs, posing both opportunities and risks for the community.
The LGBT community is constantly faced with the challenge of ëworld-makingí, currently using mediated forms to allow for a sense of legitimacy and spaces of intimacy and expressiveness. As their world unfolds, this creates the challenge of social illegality and denial. In navigating the city, the LGBT community deploys its media form as a physical expression of its existence. As they remain relatively invisible to the public, the community is able to mobilize and move through archipelagos of transitory acceptance in the city of Amman.
A soundscape resonates through the installation highlighting the precarious state of queer bodies in Jordan as well as their methods of existing as subjects of a state that constantly denies them safety and acceptance. To reinforce their hidden figures, the voices of those telling their stories are replaced by automated sounds, leaving them as virtual entities behind digital (and literal) walls.
The city of Amman is mapped on the floor and the LGBTQ archipelagos are highlighted through vertical dowels connected through strings that symbolize the limited movement of queer bodies around the city. Objects of cultural and social relevance to the queer community in Amman is also displayed along with contextual description of the various significant events that have occurred in recent years as well as literature developed in the region about queer identity.
The overlaying of interior spaces over the urban landscape highlights the disconnect between the public and the intimate. Exterior spaces of these architectures become irrelevant as the bodies navigate through the cityís landscape directly into concealed interiorities, leaving the exterior architecture anonymous.
design | research
studio: after belonging with adv. ignacio gonzales gnala, carlos minguez carrasco, alejandra navarrete llopis
