Tag: gender
Understanding the role of gender in the cultural construction of public and private space
This thesis asserts that the role of gender is significant in the experience of the built environment and comes into sharp focus when explored through a comparative cross-cultural framework. This is most evident when the cultural construction of public and private space in certain contexts encourages, discourages, or excludes women from participating in them, or else demands compliance with rigid codes of conduct in exchange for access.
With such gendered spaces in place in our cities, a ‘dis-belonging’, particularly for women in public spaces, can follow. Drawing upon personal experience of public spaces in Lahore and London, this thesis project sets out to illustrate the contrast between men’s and women’s experiences, and the various cultural codes which are followed. Film is employed as a medium to represent the experiential dimension and auto-ethnographic aspect of the thesis, in an attempt to capture the reality of a subject area which so often is merely theorised in architectural discourse.
Exploring the socio-political significance of boundaries by reimagining how the enclosing garden wall could define the concept of public and private space within Jahan Garden, Karaj.
This design thesis challenges the existence of women-only gardens in Iran and, more specifically, examines the Jahan Garden in Karaj. As its starting point, the project conceptualises the wall enclosing the garden as a socio-political boundary. The project uses this idea as a springboard to evolve a design which actively questions and reshapes the garden space by redefining the nature of the enclosing wall. The re-designed garden encourages dialogue of varying scales, access, and natures, between the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. It aims, at the same time, to serve as a critique of the current political context, presenting the redefinition of the garden as a symbolic manifesto of feminism for the city. The overall plan of the proposed garden is based on and inspired by the themes present in some of the most influential women figures in contemporary Iran.
Visualising the spatial subtexts of gender and place.
The thesis project aims to tackle a number of conceptual tensions and conflicts relating to subjectivity in feminist gender theories. Taking the case of gender perceptions in Sudanese culture, it first examines the theoretical disparities between critical and constructed subjectivities through interviewing female Sudanese women. Secondly, it develops this concept further by reconstructing the information provided by the interviewees through a carefully considered interpretive process. The project then transacts with subjectivity as the specific foundation to create and design a methodology that pulls together strands from ethnographic research methods and feminist theory. It presents how feminist theories have clashed on theorising the entity of gender, as a result disintegrating gender and its subjectivities, and proving gender to be of paradoxical nature. The thesis then responds by foregrounding that which inhabits the space between seemingly polarised debates on subjectivity and gender by engaging the theme of ‘place’. This, ultimately, allows creative exploration into the spatial subtexts of gender and place.
For a number of reasons – some obvious, others not so – the vehicle for expressing this bespoke methodology is an instruction manual.
Using Art and Design to Educate Audiences about Continuing Rates of HIV Transmission
John Walter’s practice-based PhD Alien Sex Club addressed contemporary modes of representation of HIV in art. It grew out of the minimalist aesthetic developed by artists such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres during the earlier part of the AIDS crisis. Today, however, it is acknowledged that HIV is an interconnected web of problems that should be represented in a holistic way. Rates of HIV transmission are increasing among gay men in the West. Although the availability of highly effective antiretroviral drugs means HIV is no longer a life-threatening illness, a resulting decrease in the perception of risk – leading to condom fatigue, unprotected sex and recreational drug use – may be some of a number of factors that are contributing to the increase in transmissions.
Despite changes in the cultural, social and scientific context of HIV, artistic representations of the subject have remained the same as those originated before effective treatment was available. Through his PhD, Walter sought to re-politicise art as an arena for addressing HIV by mobilising a range of visual and aesthetic genres in a curated installation.
Alien Sex Club used art and architecture, and drew from contemporary scientific and political approaches, to raise new questions about HIV in ways that differed from previous modes of representation, and apply them within an academic context. Taking the form of a cruise maze, the installation (first at Ambika P3, London and later the Wellcome Collection, London) made use of spatial design and a maximalist aesthetic to update the representation of HIV and transpose knowledge about HIV from science, sociology and philosophy into a visual art practice.
The installation invited audiences to consider HIV in new ways through the interactive nature of the gallery experience. It acted as a test site to gather data of audience responses which were then subjected to textual analysis. The multi-layered nature of Alien Sex Club allowed it to operate as a counter discourse to the prevailing minimalist representations of HIV. The PhD both generated knowledge on audience education about continuing rates of HIV transmission, and extended understandings of the nature of the artist as activist.
[supervisors: Prof. Lindsay Bremner, Dr Victoria Watson, Dr Francis White]
- Year: 2016
- Alien Sex Club