Books by Olivier Vallerand
Sexuality and gender have long been influential in understanding the construction of domestic spa... more Sexuality and gender have long been influential in understanding the construction of domestic space, its meanings, often revealing a binary division of private and public, female and male. By reconstructing the foundation of queer critiques of space and by analyzing the representation of domesticity in contemporary art and architecture, Unplanned Visitors shows the blurring of private and public that can occur in any domestic space and explores the potential of queer theory for understanding, and designing, the built environment.
Olivier Vallerand investigates how queer critiques, building on pioneering feminist work, question the relation between identity and architecture and highlight normative constructs underlying domestic spaces. He draws out a genealogy of queer space in theoretical discourse in architecture, studying projects by Mark Robbins, Joel Sanders, J Mayer H, Elmgreen & Dragset, Andrés Jaque, and MYCKET, among others. These works blur the traditional borders between architecture and art to emphasize the tensions between private and public and their impact on assumptions about domestic space and family structure. The challenges in moving from experimental installations to built environments suggest how designers must acknowledge and respond to the social contexts that shape architecture, rethinking how domestic spaces can be designed to allow everyone to better manage the expression of their self-identification through their living environments.
Unplanned Visitors poses a challenge to traditional architectural theory and history, but also suggests a renewed and more inclusive ethics whereby designers explicitly address social and political power structures. The potential of a queer approach to architectural design, history, theory, and education is precisely to enact a method that creates more inclusive buildings and safer neighbourhoods for everyone.
Papers by Olivier Vallerand
Nouvelles pratiques sociales, 2021
GRIS-Montreal « demystifies » sexual and gender diversity by mobilizing experiential knowledge th... more GRIS-Montreal « demystifies » sexual and gender diversity by mobilizing experiential knowledge through a biographical approach in order to deconstruct received ideas and stereotypes. Different issues of representation, representativeness and legitimacy mark the use of intimate experiences as an intervention method. This article presents the reflection developed when trans and non-binary experiences were added to the mission of GRIS, initially created to demystify only sexual orientation, on ethical sensitivity, methodological challenges and preferred narrative methods. / Le GRIS-Montréal « démystifie » la diversité sexuelle et de genre en utilisant une formule mobilisant les savoirs expérientiels et l’approche biographique dans le but de déconstruire les idées reçues et les stéréotypes. Différents enjeux de représentation, de représentativité et de légitimité marquent le recours au témoignage intime comme méthode d’intervention. Cet article présente la réflexion développée lors de l’ajout des réalités trans et non binaires à la mission du GRIS, initialement créé pour démystifier seulement l’orientation sexuelle, sur la sensibilité éthique, les défis méthodologiques et les méthodes narratives à privilégier.
Somatechnics, 2020
Queer space discourse in architecture has often been about reclaiming sexualized spaces or spaces... more Queer space discourse in architecture has often been about reclaiming sexualized spaces or spaces used by LGBT people as being part of architectural history. However, critical practitioners have sought to expand from an understanding based on an essentialist understanding of queer bodies to link instead the experience of built environments to the repression of non-normative/non-compliant bodies. This article discusses projects by J. Mayer H., Andrés Jaque/Office for Political Innovation (OFFPOLINN), and MYCKET that build on a queer understanding of architecture and design to explore relationships between bodies, the materiality of domestic spaces, and communal identities, challenging binary understandings of architectural design spaces and linking them to the configuration of citizenship. J. Mayer H.’s work on data-protection patterns and thermo-sensitive materials uses bodies as material in developing a discourse on privacy stemming in part from queer people's experience of oppressing policies. OFFPOLINN's projects on IKEA and on gay cruising digital environments question the role of architects by underlining the close integration of advertisement, online social networks, and urban and architectural policies in relation to the experience of citizenship and migration. Finally, MYCKET's queer feminist performative architectures attempts to reframe the neutrality of the architectural modernist tradition to celebrate the messiness that comes with thinking of space as designed for a diversity of people. The three practices expand architectural discussions of domesticity beyond an understanding of the house as a container for family life and towards seeing it as a nexus of social and political relations that converge around the body.
Contentious Cities: Design and the Gendered Production of Space, 2020
Queer space discourses emerged in architecture in the early 1990s, but similar to how the word qu... more Queer space discourses emerged in architecture in the early 1990s, but similar to how the word queer itself is understood in different ways, they have been understood in divergent and not always compatible ways. Thus, historical studies interested in reclaiming gay and lesbian designers or studying spaces used by lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and trans people (LGBT) coexist with psychanalytically-oriented readings of urban and architectural forms and challenges to normative architectural approaches informed by queer theory. Furthermore, mirroring changes in the way society at large has included notions of gender and sexuality in public discourses, discussions of gender identity and trans issues in architecture and planning were almost non-existent until very recently. With many queer space architects and thinkers closely associated with the academic world, it is not surprising that some of them have used their teaching forums to develop and share thinking about queer space. This chapter explores how queer and feminist educators have sought to imagine modes of teaching that go beyond the study of LGBT-oriented spaces to embrace queer and feminist critiques in both course content and teaching methods. Some have focused on making visible the contribution of diverse people to the design disciplines, others have instead interpreted queer design as challenging ideological assumptions inscribed in pedagogical methods, as well as in form and composition principles, while others have looked more closely at occupation of space and human relations impacted by design. The methods presented here were gathered through interviews with architecture, urban design, and interior design educators in North America, Europe, and Australia; differences between professional and institutional contexts were often part of the discussions.
The Plan Journal, 2019
Until recently, discussions of the relation of sexual orientation with the built environment have... more Until recently, discussions of the relation of sexual orientation with the built environment have mostly focused on gay men at the expense of lesbian women and trans people. This study thus presents a review of discourses in architecture and design as well as interviews with lesbian designers to understand how and why queer women have been almost invisible. The privileged position of men allows expression of their sexual orientation with less risk than women who are already facing discrimination. Furthermore, structural inequities have forced women architects to focus on issues of equality and inclusion for all women, with the side effect of often silencing how other forces such as sexual orientation or race combine to create more complex power relations. Invisibility is a problem, however, as it limits the ability to respond adequately to diverse social needs and to sustain more inclusive design disciplines. Bringing to the foreground the intersection of identities with experience of space can encourage younger generations of architects by offering role models and diversifying the range of life experiences informing the design of spaces.
Santé LGBT : les minorités de genre et de sexualité face aux soins, 2020
Genre Éducation Formation, 2019
En tant qu’espace privilégié pour la construction identitaire et pour le développement du jugemen... more En tant qu’espace privilégié pour la construction identitaire et pour le développement du jugement critique, l’école québécoise a pour mission de transmettre des connaissances et des valeurs, mais aussi d’accompagner l’apprentissage d’une citoyenneté engagée. Le débat comme dispositif didactique est l’une des entrées retenues pour initier les élèves à la délibération démocratique. S’appuyant sur les savoirs coconstruits par le GRIS-Montréal, un organisme communautaire québécois « démystifiant » la diversité sexuelle et de genre, cet article présente une méthode pédagogique où le témoignage est au cœur d’une démarche de conscientisation préalable au débat. Il convient d’abord de déconstruire les préjugés, avant d’envisager débattre de façon critique de questions touchant à la diversité sexuelle et de genre. Le témoignage personnel offre alors des prises efficaces pour sensibiliser les élèves, en accolant à des réalités méconnues des expériences vécues qui s’éloignent des théories ou des points de vue désincarnés.
Revue Genre Éducation Formation, Dec 2019
En tant qu’espace privilégié pour la construction identitaire et pour le développement du jugemen... more En tant qu’espace privilégié pour la construction identitaire et pour le développement du jugement critique, l’école québécoise a pour mission de transmettre des connaissances et des valeurs, mais aussi d’accompagner l’apprentissage d’une citoyenneté engagée. Le débat comme dispositif didactique est l’une des entrées retenues pour initier les élèves à la délibération démocratique. S’appuyant sur les savoirs coconstruits par le GRIS-Montréal, un organisme communautaire québécois « démystifiant » la diversité sexuelle et de genre, cet article présente une méthode pédagogique où le témoignage est au cœur d’une démarche de conscientisation préalable au débat. Il convient d’abord de déconstruire les préjugés, avant d’envisager débattre de façon critique de questions touchant à la diversité sexuelle et de genre. Le témoignage personnel offre alors des prises efficaces pour sensibiliser les élèves, en accolant à des réalités méconnues des expériences vécues qui s’éloignent des théories ou des points de vue désincarnés.
Platform, 2019
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Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture, Apr 1, 2019
https://doi.org/10.1080/20419112.2019.1565175
Despite its emergence in architectural discussion... more https://doi.org/10.1080/20419112.2019.1565175
Despite its emergence in architectural discussions in the early 1990s, more than 25 years later, the idea of queerness has yet to fully transform the way we practice, teach or even experience spatial design. While obviously focused on how gender and sexuality play a role in the building of personal and collective identifications, queer theory becomes much more interesting when used to think more broadly about how different elements intersect in our experience and use of space. Unfortunately, despite most of the thinking about the relation between queerness and architecture taking place in the academic world, its impact on architectural pedagogy has been quite limited and very few designers have learned from queer theory’s insights. This essay develops different innovative teaching methods through interviews with educators across the world and focuses on how interiors education can become a vessel for queer and feminist ideas to impact architecture and design education at large. These strategies include embracing failure and disruption, supporting students, and becoming engaged activist educators. They focus on bridging a gap between different groups, on helping designers to acknowledge the limits of their designs and to maximize the possibilities offered by their design decisions. Queering design means building relations, offering layered opportunities, multiplying possible experiences. Queering design pedagogy in turn means multiplying points of views, opening the discipline to not only other disciplines, but to the everyday, and thinking about how our experiences as human beings, impact and transform our designs.
Revue Jeunes et société, 2018
http://rjs.inrs.ca/index.php/rjs/article/view/126/76
L'article compare l'évolution des attitudes... more http://rjs.inrs.ca/index.php/rjs/article/view/126/76
L'article compare l'évolution des attitudes des jeunes rencontrés par le GRIS-Montréal, un organisme qui lutte contre l'homophobie et favorise, par le témoignage, une meilleure connaissance des réalités homosexuelles et bisexuelles en milieu scolaire. Quatre temps de mesure échelonnés entre 2001 et 2017 ont permis de dépouiller 7 122 questionnaires remplis par des élèves du secondaire âgés de 12 à 18 ans (moyenne de 15 ans). Les résultats montrent d'abord qu'un plus grand nombre d'élèves mentionnent aujourd'hui des attirances sexuelles autres que seulement pour le genre opposé. Ils montrent ensuite une évolution positive sur quinze ans des niveaux d'aise des jeunes pour l'ensemble des dimensions étudiées à l'aide du questionnaire. Toutefois, si les niveaux d'aise par rapport à la plupart des dimensions augmentent alors que les jeunes avancent vers l'âge adulte, avec un changement particulier entre 14 et 15 ans, le niveau d'aise par rapport aux droits des personnes gaies et lesbiennes diminue avec l'âge chez les jeunes rencontrés. De plus, alors que le niveau d'aise par rapport aux lesbiennes n'est pas affecté par le genre des répondants, le niveau d'aise par rapport aux gais est significativement plus petit chez les garçons. L'article se termine en discutant la nécessité pour le GRIS-Montréal de répondre aux besoins des jeunes quant à leurs conceptions de plus en plus sophistiquées de l'orientation sexuelle et du genre, ainsi que les défis que posent de tels changements. Mots-clés : diversité sexuelle, école secondaire, témoignage, attitudes, Québec
GRIS-Montréal: A Witness and Contributor to Secondary Students’ Changing Attitudes to Sexual Diversity
Our article explores changing attitudes among students who attend workshops offered by GRIS-Montréal, an organization dedicated to fighting homophobia and to raising awareness of the realities faced by homosexuals and bisexuals in the school system. In the context of four separate surveys conducted between 2001 and 2017, secondary students between the ages of 12 and 18 (average age of 15) completed 7,122 questionnaires. To begin with, the results show that a larger number of students now acknowledge feelings of sexual attraction other than those for the opposite sex. Furthermore, over the course of 15 years, young people have grown increasingly comfortable with all of the issues raised by the questionnaire. But although comfort levels with most issues increase during the transition to adulthood, with a particular change occurring between the ages of 14 and 15, comfort levels with gay and lesbian rights actually decrease with age. And while the gender of the respondents does not affect comfort levels with lesbians, boys are significantly less comfortable with gay men. The article concludes by discussing the essential role of GRIS-Montréal in addressing the needs of young people with respect to increasingly sophisticated conceptions of sexual orientation and gender, as well as the challenges posed by these changes.
Keywords: sexual diversity, secondary school, testimonials, attitudes, Quebec
Le témoignage sexuel et intime, un levier de changement social?, 2017
Féminismes et luttes contre l’homophobie : de l’apprentissage à la subversion des codes, 2016
Dans le cadre du 82 e congrès de l'ACFAS, le colloque Féminismes et luttes contre l'homophobie : ... more Dans le cadre du 82 e congrès de l'ACFAS, le colloque Féminismes et luttes contre l'homophobie : zones de convergence a permis d'aborder le thème des luttes à l'homophobie. Une table ronde a réuni des membres de divers groupes qui, chacun apportant son expertise, utilisent l'éducation afin de faire de l'école et de la société en général des espaces plus sécuritaires et ouverts à la diversité sexuelle. À cette occasion, l'organisme GRIS-Montréal a joint ses expériences à celles des autres en dressant un portrait de ses actions et de ses réflexions sur l'expression de genre dans la démystification de l'homosexualité et de la bisexualité.
To fight homophobia in schools in Québec, many teachers rely on community or- ganizations such as... more To fight homophobia in schools in Québec, many teachers rely on community or- ganizations such as the Groupe de Recherche et d’Intervention Sociale (Research and Social Intervention Group) to address sexual diversity in class. This article documents major outcomes of these workshops as seen by students. Students iden- tified topics related to sexuality and gender inversion as controversial, especially when involving men. The authors present how GRIS leaders decided to adapt intervention practices following such findings.
Depuis plus de 20 ans, le Groupe de recherche et d’intervention sociale (GRIS) de Montréal réalis... more Depuis plus de 20 ans, le Groupe de recherche et d’intervention sociale (GRIS) de Montréal réalise des interventions de démystification de l’homosexualité et de la bisexualité dans des écoles de Montréal et des régions environnantes. Son 20e anniversaire est une occasion de procéder à un bilan et à une réflexion critique sur ses activités. Trois enjeux sont discutés dans cet article, soit le rôle du discours religieux dans la réception des interventions, l’importance de la déconstruction des rôles de genre dans la lutte contre l’homophobie, la lesbophobie et la biphobie, ainsi que le tabou entourant la sexualité.
Mots-clés : homosexualité, bisexualité, intervention, homophobie, hétérosexisme, éducation, Montréal
For more than 20 years, GRIS-Montréal (Groupe de recherche et d’intervention sociale) has been dedicated to demystifying homosexuality and bisexuality through workshops in schools of Montreal and surrounding areas. Its 20th anniversary is a good opportunity to proceed to a critical assessment of its activities. Three challenges are discussed in this article: the impact of religious discourse on workshops’ reception, the importance of deconstructing gender roles in the fight against homophobia, lesbophobia and biphobia, and the taboo surrounding discourses on sexuality.
Keywords: homosexuality, bisexuality, intervention, homophobia, heterosexism, education, Montreal
Because sexual orientation cannot be identified through any particular physical signs, lesbian, g... more Because sexual orientation cannot be identified through any particular physical signs, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people (LGBT) are often identified through the spaces they visit. Bars, as important social meeting places, thus have a particular significance in LGBT histories. Even if popular culture has long linked architecture/space and sexual orientation, gay bars, perceived as everyday or vernacular, are rarely discussed by architectural historians and theorists. This project does not attempt to analyse gay bars by comparing them to straight bars, but instead argues that it is essential to study and document this public architecture, as bars are among the few physical traces of gay communities. Gay bars, as built artefacts from LGBT minorities, embody and shape the evolution of the relation between LGBT people and society at large and also in the struggles of these minorities. They also present an interesting case study to better understand queer space. This project presents an overview of queer theory’s potential for a rethinking of architectural history and theory. It is then followed by an analysis of the evolution of LGBT spaces in Montréal that focuses on two bars from different generations, Complexe Bourbon and Parking.
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Books by Olivier Vallerand
Olivier Vallerand investigates how queer critiques, building on pioneering feminist work, question the relation between identity and architecture and highlight normative constructs underlying domestic spaces. He draws out a genealogy of queer space in theoretical discourse in architecture, studying projects by Mark Robbins, Joel Sanders, J Mayer H, Elmgreen & Dragset, Andrés Jaque, and MYCKET, among others. These works blur the traditional borders between architecture and art to emphasize the tensions between private and public and their impact on assumptions about domestic space and family structure. The challenges in moving from experimental installations to built environments suggest how designers must acknowledge and respond to the social contexts that shape architecture, rethinking how domestic spaces can be designed to allow everyone to better manage the expression of their self-identification through their living environments.
Unplanned Visitors poses a challenge to traditional architectural theory and history, but also suggests a renewed and more inclusive ethics whereby designers explicitly address social and political power structures. The potential of a queer approach to architectural design, history, theory, and education is precisely to enact a method that creates more inclusive buildings and safer neighbourhoods for everyone.
Papers by Olivier Vallerand
Despite its emergence in architectural discussions in the early 1990s, more than 25 years later, the idea of queerness has yet to fully transform the way we practice, teach or even experience spatial design. While obviously focused on how gender and sexuality play a role in the building of personal and collective identifications, queer theory becomes much more interesting when used to think more broadly about how different elements intersect in our experience and use of space. Unfortunately, despite most of the thinking about the relation between queerness and architecture taking place in the academic world, its impact on architectural pedagogy has been quite limited and very few designers have learned from queer theory’s insights. This essay develops different innovative teaching methods through interviews with educators across the world and focuses on how interiors education can become a vessel for queer and feminist ideas to impact architecture and design education at large. These strategies include embracing failure and disruption, supporting students, and becoming engaged activist educators. They focus on bridging a gap between different groups, on helping designers to acknowledge the limits of their designs and to maximize the possibilities offered by their design decisions. Queering design means building relations, offering layered opportunities, multiplying possible experiences. Queering design pedagogy in turn means multiplying points of views, opening the discipline to not only other disciplines, but to the everyday, and thinking about how our experiences as human beings, impact and transform our designs.
L'article compare l'évolution des attitudes des jeunes rencontrés par le GRIS-Montréal, un organisme qui lutte contre l'homophobie et favorise, par le témoignage, une meilleure connaissance des réalités homosexuelles et bisexuelles en milieu scolaire. Quatre temps de mesure échelonnés entre 2001 et 2017 ont permis de dépouiller 7 122 questionnaires remplis par des élèves du secondaire âgés de 12 à 18 ans (moyenne de 15 ans). Les résultats montrent d'abord qu'un plus grand nombre d'élèves mentionnent aujourd'hui des attirances sexuelles autres que seulement pour le genre opposé. Ils montrent ensuite une évolution positive sur quinze ans des niveaux d'aise des jeunes pour l'ensemble des dimensions étudiées à l'aide du questionnaire. Toutefois, si les niveaux d'aise par rapport à la plupart des dimensions augmentent alors que les jeunes avancent vers l'âge adulte, avec un changement particulier entre 14 et 15 ans, le niveau d'aise par rapport aux droits des personnes gaies et lesbiennes diminue avec l'âge chez les jeunes rencontrés. De plus, alors que le niveau d'aise par rapport aux lesbiennes n'est pas affecté par le genre des répondants, le niveau d'aise par rapport aux gais est significativement plus petit chez les garçons. L'article se termine en discutant la nécessité pour le GRIS-Montréal de répondre aux besoins des jeunes quant à leurs conceptions de plus en plus sophistiquées de l'orientation sexuelle et du genre, ainsi que les défis que posent de tels changements. Mots-clés : diversité sexuelle, école secondaire, témoignage, attitudes, Québec
GRIS-Montréal: A Witness and Contributor to Secondary Students’ Changing Attitudes to Sexual Diversity
Our article explores changing attitudes among students who attend workshops offered by GRIS-Montréal, an organization dedicated to fighting homophobia and to raising awareness of the realities faced by homosexuals and bisexuals in the school system. In the context of four separate surveys conducted between 2001 and 2017, secondary students between the ages of 12 and 18 (average age of 15) completed 7,122 questionnaires. To begin with, the results show that a larger number of students now acknowledge feelings of sexual attraction other than those for the opposite sex. Furthermore, over the course of 15 years, young people have grown increasingly comfortable with all of the issues raised by the questionnaire. But although comfort levels with most issues increase during the transition to adulthood, with a particular change occurring between the ages of 14 and 15, comfort levels with gay and lesbian rights actually decrease with age. And while the gender of the respondents does not affect comfort levels with lesbians, boys are significantly less comfortable with gay men. The article concludes by discussing the essential role of GRIS-Montréal in addressing the needs of young people with respect to increasingly sophisticated conceptions of sexual orientation and gender, as well as the challenges posed by these changes.
Keywords: sexual diversity, secondary school, testimonials, attitudes, Quebec
Mots-clés : homosexualité, bisexualité, intervention, homophobie, hétérosexisme, éducation, Montréal
For more than 20 years, GRIS-Montréal (Groupe de recherche et d’intervention sociale) has been dedicated to demystifying homosexuality and bisexuality through workshops in schools of Montreal and surrounding areas. Its 20th anniversary is a good opportunity to proceed to a critical assessment of its activities. Three challenges are discussed in this article: the impact of religious discourse on workshops’ reception, the importance of deconstructing gender roles in the fight against homophobia, lesbophobia and biphobia, and the taboo surrounding discourses on sexuality.
Keywords: homosexuality, bisexuality, intervention, homophobia, heterosexism, education, Montreal
Olivier Vallerand investigates how queer critiques, building on pioneering feminist work, question the relation between identity and architecture and highlight normative constructs underlying domestic spaces. He draws out a genealogy of queer space in theoretical discourse in architecture, studying projects by Mark Robbins, Joel Sanders, J Mayer H, Elmgreen & Dragset, Andrés Jaque, and MYCKET, among others. These works blur the traditional borders between architecture and art to emphasize the tensions between private and public and their impact on assumptions about domestic space and family structure. The challenges in moving from experimental installations to built environments suggest how designers must acknowledge and respond to the social contexts that shape architecture, rethinking how domestic spaces can be designed to allow everyone to better manage the expression of their self-identification through their living environments.
Unplanned Visitors poses a challenge to traditional architectural theory and history, but also suggests a renewed and more inclusive ethics whereby designers explicitly address social and political power structures. The potential of a queer approach to architectural design, history, theory, and education is precisely to enact a method that creates more inclusive buildings and safer neighbourhoods for everyone.
Despite its emergence in architectural discussions in the early 1990s, more than 25 years later, the idea of queerness has yet to fully transform the way we practice, teach or even experience spatial design. While obviously focused on how gender and sexuality play a role in the building of personal and collective identifications, queer theory becomes much more interesting when used to think more broadly about how different elements intersect in our experience and use of space. Unfortunately, despite most of the thinking about the relation between queerness and architecture taking place in the academic world, its impact on architectural pedagogy has been quite limited and very few designers have learned from queer theory’s insights. This essay develops different innovative teaching methods through interviews with educators across the world and focuses on how interiors education can become a vessel for queer and feminist ideas to impact architecture and design education at large. These strategies include embracing failure and disruption, supporting students, and becoming engaged activist educators. They focus on bridging a gap between different groups, on helping designers to acknowledge the limits of their designs and to maximize the possibilities offered by their design decisions. Queering design means building relations, offering layered opportunities, multiplying possible experiences. Queering design pedagogy in turn means multiplying points of views, opening the discipline to not only other disciplines, but to the everyday, and thinking about how our experiences as human beings, impact and transform our designs.
L'article compare l'évolution des attitudes des jeunes rencontrés par le GRIS-Montréal, un organisme qui lutte contre l'homophobie et favorise, par le témoignage, une meilleure connaissance des réalités homosexuelles et bisexuelles en milieu scolaire. Quatre temps de mesure échelonnés entre 2001 et 2017 ont permis de dépouiller 7 122 questionnaires remplis par des élèves du secondaire âgés de 12 à 18 ans (moyenne de 15 ans). Les résultats montrent d'abord qu'un plus grand nombre d'élèves mentionnent aujourd'hui des attirances sexuelles autres que seulement pour le genre opposé. Ils montrent ensuite une évolution positive sur quinze ans des niveaux d'aise des jeunes pour l'ensemble des dimensions étudiées à l'aide du questionnaire. Toutefois, si les niveaux d'aise par rapport à la plupart des dimensions augmentent alors que les jeunes avancent vers l'âge adulte, avec un changement particulier entre 14 et 15 ans, le niveau d'aise par rapport aux droits des personnes gaies et lesbiennes diminue avec l'âge chez les jeunes rencontrés. De plus, alors que le niveau d'aise par rapport aux lesbiennes n'est pas affecté par le genre des répondants, le niveau d'aise par rapport aux gais est significativement plus petit chez les garçons. L'article se termine en discutant la nécessité pour le GRIS-Montréal de répondre aux besoins des jeunes quant à leurs conceptions de plus en plus sophistiquées de l'orientation sexuelle et du genre, ainsi que les défis que posent de tels changements. Mots-clés : diversité sexuelle, école secondaire, témoignage, attitudes, Québec
GRIS-Montréal: A Witness and Contributor to Secondary Students’ Changing Attitudes to Sexual Diversity
Our article explores changing attitudes among students who attend workshops offered by GRIS-Montréal, an organization dedicated to fighting homophobia and to raising awareness of the realities faced by homosexuals and bisexuals in the school system. In the context of four separate surveys conducted between 2001 and 2017, secondary students between the ages of 12 and 18 (average age of 15) completed 7,122 questionnaires. To begin with, the results show that a larger number of students now acknowledge feelings of sexual attraction other than those for the opposite sex. Furthermore, over the course of 15 years, young people have grown increasingly comfortable with all of the issues raised by the questionnaire. But although comfort levels with most issues increase during the transition to adulthood, with a particular change occurring between the ages of 14 and 15, comfort levels with gay and lesbian rights actually decrease with age. And while the gender of the respondents does not affect comfort levels with lesbians, boys are significantly less comfortable with gay men. The article concludes by discussing the essential role of GRIS-Montréal in addressing the needs of young people with respect to increasingly sophisticated conceptions of sexual orientation and gender, as well as the challenges posed by these changes.
Keywords: sexual diversity, secondary school, testimonials, attitudes, Quebec
Mots-clés : homosexualité, bisexualité, intervention, homophobie, hétérosexisme, éducation, Montréal
For more than 20 years, GRIS-Montréal (Groupe de recherche et d’intervention sociale) has been dedicated to demystifying homosexuality and bisexuality through workshops in schools of Montreal and surrounding areas. Its 20th anniversary is a good opportunity to proceed to a critical assessment of its activities. Three challenges are discussed in this article: the impact of religious discourse on workshops’ reception, the importance of deconstructing gender roles in the fight against homophobia, lesbophobia and biphobia, and the taboo surrounding discourses on sexuality.
Keywords: homosexuality, bisexuality, intervention, homophobia, heterosexism, education, Montreal
This dissertation is an examination of queer critiques of domestic spaces. How do these critiques, building on feminist practitioners and theorists, highlight assumptions present in mainstream domestic representations and the ways in which these representations reinforce certain normative constructs? Archival material, interviews and installation visits are used to analyse exhibitions and installation projects that blur the traditional borders between architecture and art: exhibitions curated by queer space theorists and practitioners (Queer Space and House Rules, both 1994) and art projects by Mark Robbins (Households, 2002-06), Dorit Margreiter and the Toxic Titties (10104 Angelo View Drive, 2004), and Elmgreen & Dragset (The One & The Many, 2010-11; The Collectors, 2009; Tomorrow, 2013). The projects chosen, inspired in part by the emergence of queer theory in the late 1980s, address issues of normative domesticity through an emphasis on the tensions between private and public, and traditional and non-traditional family units. These questions are highlighted in these projects by the shift in context that transforms everyday domestic environments, often assumed to be neutral containers and havens for private lives, into objectified art pieces presented in (public) gallery spaces; this shift emphasizes the normative aspects of most domestic architecture. This study is completed by an analysis of two architectural projects, Elmgreen & Dragset’s own studio-house in Berlin (the Pumpwerk Neukölln, 2006-08) and the BOOM retirement neighbourhoods in Palm Springs and on the Costa del Sol (unbuilt). The two projects are attempts to implement some of the queer critiques discussed into actual buildings; the architects and artists involved faced various challenges in this move from installations to built environments that echo the resistances associated to traditional notions of domesticity.
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Cette thèse porte sur les critiques queers des espaces domestiques. Comment ces critiques, inspirées par des praticiennes et théoriciennes féministes, soulignent-elles les présupposés présents dans les représentations de la domesticité ainsi que les façons par lesquelles celles-ci renforcent certaines constructions normatives? Des archives, entrevues et visites d’installations sont utilisées pour analyser des projets qui brouillent les limites traditionnelles entre l’architecture et l’art : des expositions organisées par des théoriciens de l’espace queer (Queer Space, 1994; House Rules, 1994) et des projets artistiques de Mark Robbins (Households, 2002-06), Dorit Margreiter et les Toxic Titties (10104 Angelo View Drive, 2004) et Elmgreen & Dragset (The One & the Many, 2010-11; The Collectors, 2009, Tomorrow, 2013). Ces projets, inspirés en partie par l’émergence de la théorie queer à la fin des années 1980, s’intéressent aux questions liées à la normativité domestique en mettant l’emphase sur les tensions entre le privé et le public et entre les conceptions traditionnelles et non-traditionnelles de la famille. Ces questions sont soulignées par un déplacement de contexte qui transforme des environnements domestiques associés au quotidien, souvent considérés comme étant des enveloppes neutres protégeant la vie privée, en objets d’art présentés dans des galeries; ce déplacement souligne les aspects normatifs de la plupart des espaces domestiques. La thèse est complétée par l’analyse de deux projets architecturaux, la maison-atelier de Elmgreen & Dragset (la Pumpwerk Neukölln, 2006-08) et les développements pour retraités BOOM (non construites). Ces deux projets sont des tentatives de mettre en œuvre certaines des critiques queers dans des bâtiments habitables; les architectes et artistes impliqués se sont heurtés à des défis divers qui montrent les résistances associées aux conceptions traditionnelles de la domesticité.
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"How to engage people with buildings?" In the early 1970s, this question guided a team of architectural historians and educators to devise a pioneering program for the United Kingdom's Open University, an experiment with mass education that is still ongoing. Forty years later, the question is still relevant, and even more so for an institution like the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Since the built environment is experienced by everyone , it follows that architecture should thus be one of the more " democratic " disciplines. And yet architectural education has paradoxically remained generally closed in on itself, organized around professional elites and academic historians that rarely dialogue between themselves and even less with a broader audience. While there have been attempts to rethink or challenge traditional ways of teaching design, in both architecture schools and more alternative practices, such as the Women's School of Planning and Architecture , they have been fairly limited. The University Is Now on Air: Broadcasting Modern Architecture, the CCA's current exhibition on the Open University's course on modern architecture, is thus a welcome opportunity to think about how to reach a wider audience for both universities and institutions such as the CCA itself. But it also challenges common thinking about the production and diffusion of knowledge.
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In the design for their Pumpwerk studio-house, a former water pumping station converted in 2006-8 after the end of their personal relationship in collaboration with architect Nils Wenk, Elmgreen & Dragset question expectations about the privacy of domestic queer lives. The artists’ juxtaposition within a single building of “private” living spaces and “public” studio spaces presents a clear critique of domestic planning, setting aside both the traditional family model and the dichotomy of private and public, associated for a long time with gender divisions. Furthermore, the spatial organization positions queer lives, long forbidden to be presented in the daylight, as valid and worthy of being seen by all.
Elmgreen & Dragset’s comment on queer lives’ visibility in their Memorial project comes as a direct continuation of some of their previous art projects, most notably their Cruising Pavillion / Powerless Structures, Fig. 55. Built in 1998 in a Danish public park, this project shares many formal, contextual and conceptual elements with the Memorial that point to the attempt to make it more than a simple commemorative space, to create a monument to the recognition of diverse queer lives in the public sphere. This call for recognition has also influenced the design of Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset’s own living spaces and studio in a converted pumping station in Berlin, a project that took shape in parallel to the development of the Memorial.
This paper argues that the design of the Memorial to the Homosexuals, by proposing a different relation to the body than the Memorial to the Jews, creates not only a memorial to horrible events from the past, but also an awakening to a current situation. It is a critique of the relative invisibility that still burdens sexual minorities and an opportunity to create a space (both social and physical) for queer lives and bodies in the public. Elmgreen & Dragset shape this critique through strategies of mimesis, temporality, and scale that echo challenges brought forward by queer theorists. The memorial also continues their ongoing project of using art installations and performances to highlight how space is gendered and sexualised.
Cette communication suggère que la conception du Mémorial aux homosexuels, en proposant une relation différente au corps, crée non seulement un mémorial à des événements horribles du passé, mais propose aussi un éveil à une situation toujours actuelle. Le Mémorial présente une critique de l’invisibilité relative qui opprime toujours aujourd’hui les minorités sexuelles. Il présente aussi une opportunité d’ouvrir un espace (tant social que physique) pour les personnes homosexuelles dans le domaine public. Elmgreen & Dragset forme cette critique par le biais de stratégies qui rappellent les idées mises de l’avant par les théoriciens queers. Le Mémorial continue aussi leur projet de proposer des installations artistiques qui souligne l’importance de la sexualité et du genre dans l’utilisation et la compréhension de l’espace.
This paper argues that the design of the Memorial to the Homosexuals, by proposing a different relation to the body than the Memorial to the Jews, creates not only a memorial to horrible events from the past, but also an awakening to a current situation. It is a critique of the relative invisibility that still burdens sexual minorities and an opportunity to create a space (both social and physical) for homosexual bodies in the public. Elmgreen & Dragset shape this critique through strategies of mimesis, temporality, and scale that echo challenges brought forward by queer theorists. The memorial also continues their ongoing project of using art installations and performances to highlight how space is gendered and sexualised.
The paper focuses on the architecture of two of Montréal’s large gay bars built in the past three decades. Although quite different in many aspects, they both defer to earlier times and practice a culture of demolition and reconstruction. Constantly transforming themselves, they try to imagine a past that never was while erasing their present condition. In the context of Montreal’s bilingual roots, this nostalgic urge also interestingly refers and mediates references to French and English colonial legacies. In the absence of existing traces of queer histories, I argue that the design of these spaces allows them to reconstruct a lost history.
Modeling a model of models rethinks simulation as a conflation of the separate simulations attempted to understand different projects. In trying to refer to the set of relations developing outside of the model, it aims at setting in place non-hierarchical relations between the elements, i.e. the different representations of each project. However, these non-hierarchical relations are oriented through the choices the person exploring the model is asked to make. It is not oriented towards any particular sets of reference; it is trying to offer a variety of possible relations from an initial starting point.
By using directly the artefacts developed by each participant instead of trying an interpretation of them, the focus is put on the possible relations between them. However, the relations are interpreted through the mechanisms chosen to explore these relations. The mechanisms require an engagement from the observer in the model similar to the outsider engagement towards the original sets of relation it depicts. How these relations are presented encourage a critical engagement that creates a new set of relations with each of the project separately and with the whole network of projects and relations. The model is thus performative as it situates itself within a set of pre-existing referents and tools, while simultaneously questioning this situation in relation to an outsider. The model takes significance and meaning as it is being used, as it enters in relation between the pre-existing conditions, its creator and its user.
The case studied in this paper not only questions the relation between the “real” and the model, but also the relation to the tools used. It questions the knowledge necessary to use digital means and transform the output usually expected from various modeling technologies. The transformation of the tools thus becomes itself a message that surrounds and adds to the model.
Discussions of LGBT-oriented spaces start to appear in the late 1970s, mostly in geography and sociology, and morph into queer space analysis in the early 1990s. From then on, these spaces irregularly surface in both academic and professional architectural publications. These discussions, however, vary greatly and too often focus on buildings or neighbourhoods used by gays and lesbians and understood as demarcated space from heteronormative space instead of thinking of queer space as imminent and challenging to (hetero)normativity. This broader concept offers strong potential for a political understanding of architecture. This paper thus suggests that queer space theories can inform research on LGBT-oriented architecture as an active vector of expression.
The paper argues that queer spaces gain political meaning through a recontextualisation of the private in public space. More than passive backgrounds for everyday activities, queer spaces actively display queer bodies. The juxtaposition of “private” queer erotic desires and “public” everyday activities in queer spaces creates conditions for changes and challenges to normativity. This paper compares two of Montréal’s gay-oriented bars to discuss how space is designed to blur the barrier between private and public and thus stage queer lives. Based on interviews with designers and owners, visits and plan analysis, the paper also engages with concepts developed by queer art and architecture theorists: John Paul Ricco’s “queer sex space theory” and “minor architecture”, Christopher Reed’s understanding of queer space as imminent, and Henry Urbach’s discussion of the “closet” and “ante-closet” metaphor as both concealing and disclosing identities.
Bars, as built artefacts of important social meeting spaces for LGBT minorities, are of primary importance as they embody and shape the evolution of the relation between LGBT people and society at large. The paper focuses on two of Montréal’s large gay bars. Their development occurs simultaneously with important changes in social visibility for LGBT people in Québec. After a first decade as predominantly gay space, Montréal’s Gay Village becomes gradually queered as the 1990s progressed. In this context, I discuss how changes in gay bars embody contrasting lifestyles within the LGBT minorities and shape relations with society. As gay architecture gains importance as a vector of identity for an increasingly homonormative community, it remains queerable and constantly challenged by insiders.
The paper focuses on one of Montréal’s large gay complexes. Montréal’s Gay Village’s development shortly preceded the emergence of “queer” and occurred simultaneously with an explosion of social visibility for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered people in Québec. After a first decade as predominantly gay space, the Village was gradually queered as the 1990s progressed. In this context, I discuss how changes in gay bars embody contrasting lifestyles. As gay architecture gains importance as a vector of identity for an increasingly homonormative community, it remains queerable and constantly challenged by insiders. The paper engages more specifically the political potential suggested by three art and architecture theorists: John Paul Ricco’s notions of “queer sex space theory” and “minor architecture”, Christopher Reed’s understanding of queer space as imminent and engaged with camp, and Henry Urbach’s discussion of the “closet” and “ante-closet” metaphor as both concealing and disclosing identities.
The Bourbon Complex is a gay-oriented entertainment and touristic complex established in 1993 as an expansion of pre-existing commercial institutions. Popular histories of Montréal’s Gay Village consider it as one of its foundational institutions. Self-described as “the largest gay complex in the world”, it has housed a hotel, a sauna, bars, numerous restaurants, and a cabaret-style theatre in a constantly changing and expanding setting. Of the three complexes that anchored the Village at the beginning of the 1990s (Station “C”, Sky and Bourbon), the Bourbon was originally the least mixed space and interestingly, the only one to have no specific lesbian space.
As a purpose-built “gay” space, the Bourbon Complex is also purposefully themed. From a French-Canadian perspective, a nostalgic American theme links the complex’s architectural style, names of commercial establishments, and marketing. Such an approach was unusual in the Village at the time the Bourbon first opened. One of its most famous components, the Club-Sandwich Diner, appropriated the catchphrase Retour vers l’original, a pun on the French title for the recently-released Back to the Future movie trilogy, but also a reference to the pioneering efforts of its developer and a nod to the built-in historical associations of the Complex.
This paper documents and investigates how the developer and his architects created and publicized a large and expressive “gay” space in Canada’s second-largest city, and how marginal groups gradually queerified it. It also explores how the Bourbon has contributed to the construction of the Village as a sexuality-based tourist destination.