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Architecture Is Burning: an Urbanism of Queer Kinship in Ballroom Culture

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Architecture Is Burning: an Urbanism of Queer Kinship in Ballroom Culture THRESHOLDS 48 KIN ARCHITECTURE IS BURNING: AN URBANISM OF QUEER KINSHIP IN BALLROOM CULTURE Malcolm Rio (Rio UltraOmni) Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00716/1611019/thld_a_00716.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 A ball is a gathering of people who are not welcomed 1 In the words of Blanca are outside of all places, even to gather anywhere else. A celebration of a life Evangelista, the fictional Moth- though it may be possible to that the rest of the world does not deem worthy of er of the House of Evangelista indicate their location in reali- celebration. There are categories—people dress in the US television serial ty.” Michel Foucault, “Of Other up for them, walk. There’s voting, trophies … Pose, which premiered June Spaces: Utopias and Hetero- Better than money—you can actually make a name 2, 2018. Due to ballroom’s topias,” trans. Jay Miskowiec, for yourself by winning a trophy or two. And in subcultural nature, defining it Architecture /Mouvement/ [the ballroom] community, the glory of your name through conventional norms Continuité 5 (1984): 46-49. is everything.1 such as a dictionary is not 5 For utopian scholars appropriate. Thus ballroom’s such as Tom Moylan, Edward definition must come from K. Chan, Ruth Levitas, Raffaelle Late at night in the streets of New York City, a figure oral histories shared by Baccolini, and associated engulfed by a billowy golden ensemble of sequin members within the ballroom scholars with the Ralahine community in which some Center for Utopian Studies https://doi.org/10.1162/thld_a_00716 and lamé is illuminated by flickering neon and fluo- serve as advisors and writers at the University of Limerick, rescent lights. She walks up the streets of Harlem for the television show Pose. alterity is an essential com- to the fire-engine red doors of the Imperial Elk’s Emphasis added. Pose, season ponent to utopian thinking. Lodge. As the doors open—in a metaphorical hinge 1, episode 1, “Pilot,” directed Alterity is a means of social by Ryan Murphy, aired June dreaming or world-building between architecture and urbanism, dividing a 3, 2018, on FX, https://www. that re-envisions existing queer interior and a normative exterior—indistinct netflix.com/watch/81029280. social relations through shouting over upbeat techno erupts from a crowd 2 Description from the be- provisional, fluctuating, and of joyous black and brown bodies that are clapping, ginning of Jennie Livingston’s re-combinatory practices. cheering, and zig-zagging their fingers through a Paris Is Burning. Dorian Corey, For these scholars, the ab- Pepper LaBeija, Willi Ninja, sence of alterity would impede humid and hazy air. An emcee shouts, “Get off the Freddie Pendavis, Jennie possibilities of social progress floor. Get off the floor!” as the cloud of gold lamé Livingston, Paris Is Burning, and change which depend shuffles across the threshold and into the main directed by Jennie Livingston upon the ability to imagine space. The emcee continues, “Learn it, and learn it (Burbank: Miramax Home new, even preposterous, Entertainment, 2005). social relations. Anti-utopian well.” His comments set off the figure in gold who 3 These economic and thinking, characteristic of begins whacking, bopping, and bouncing across social hardships include the the Modern era and that of the floor, shedding elements of her costume that economic and energy crises of the later half of the twentieth reveal even more gold sequin. The cheering from the 1970s, the shrinking century, often argues against of U.S. welfare programs in the alterity-thinking as imprac- on-lookers that flank the dancing gold figure 1980s and 1990s, intensified tical, fictitious, or delusional. exponentially intensifies with many jumping out drug enforcement and policing See Ruth Levitas, Utopia As of their seats, hands raised high over their heads, in black and brown communi- Method: The Imaginary Recon- dramatically clapping to accentuate their approval. ties, and a significant spike in stitution of Society (New York: One spectator screams at the golden figure, “Girl, the nation’s crime rates in the Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); 1970s and 1980s concentrated Tom Moyland and Raffaella 2 give me those motherf**king heels!” in urban areas. These hard- Baccolini, Utopia Method Ballroom is a queer subculture that emerged ships are addressed in further Vision: The Use Value of Social out of drag performance in the early 1970s in New detail later in the essay. Ibid. Dreaming (Oxford: Peter York City. It largely comprises queer people of color 4 Michel Foucault defines Lang, 2007); Edward K. Chan, heterotopia as “real places The Racial Horizon of Utopia: (QPOCs) who compete or “walk” in ways that em- … which are something like Unthinking the Future of Race ulate the archetypal traits of a gender, sex, or social counter-sites, a kind of effec- in the Late Twentieth-Century class that is not theirs—or battle through a dance tively enacted utopia in which American Utopian Novels known as voguing. Many ballroom participants the real sites, all the other real (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2016). sites that can be found within 6 Livingston’s Paris Is belong to one of a series of social groups known [a] culture, are simultaneously Burning was one of the first as houses, which serve as queer alternative families represented, contested, and commercially successful films © 2020 Malcolm© 2020 Rio led by a Mother and/or Father who provides inverted. Places of this kind to focus primarily on topics of 122 wisdom and guidance to the house’s other members, known as children. During the late 1980s—aBURNING: periodIS ARCHITECTURE of ballroom immortalized by Jennie Livingston’s 1991 popular documentary Paris Is BurningQUEER —bothOF URBANISM AN the social structures of houses and ballroom performance rapidly evolved to provideCULTURE ever more BALLROOM IN KINSHIP inclusive, safe spaces for the many young QPOCs disproportionately affected by a variety of economic and social hardships during the last third of the twentieth century.3 Indeed, Paris Is Burning captures the everyday lives of QPOCs and their wrestling with the socio-economic adversity of the late 1980s. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00716/1611019/thld_a_00716.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 By 2016, the Library of Congress recognized the film as deserving of inclusion in its National Film homosexuality and transsex- in passing and predominantly Registry. uality (especially within black through its mainstream form, and Latinx communities). Through Paris, the audience’s gaze is directed Livingston’s Paris Is Burning. Film critic Lucas Hilderbrand Aaron Betsky, Queer Space: at the creative and invented systems of ballroom’s similarly notes throughout Architecture and Same-Sex queer kinship. The forms of kinship ballroom is his book, Paris Is Burning: A Desire (New York: William co-constitutive with are a site for utopic thinking Queer Film Classic, the rarity Morrow and Company, Inc., and practices, comparable to what Michel Foucault of the film’s commercial and 1997); Joel Sanders, Stud: mainstream success for both Architectures of Masculinity termed “heterotopia,” and provide both individual its genre, a documentary, (New York: Princeton Archi- and collective affirmation, validation, and appreciation and subject matter, homosex- tectural Press, 1996); Chris- despite this community’s systemic oppression.4 By ual and transsexual people tina B. Hanhardt, Safe Space: organizing and participating in balls and affiliating of color. Lucas Hilderbrand, Gay Neighborhood History Paris Is Burning: A Queer Film and the Politics of Violence with a house, members of ballroom make real a Classic (Vancouver: Arsenal (Durham: Duke University fabulous and ingenious form of queer, racial, and Pulp Press, 2014); Ashley Press, 2013), 192, 197. spatial alterity—an essential component to utopic/ Clark, “Burning down the heterotopic thinking, as evidenced by the manner House: Why the Debate over Paris Is Burning Rages On,” in which Paris frames its subjects.5 When watching The Guardian, June 24, 2015, Paris, viewers witness QPOCs actively engage https://www.theguardian. in subcultural productions of space that creatively com/film/2015/jun/24/burning- reject the values and positions within which down-the-house-debate-paris- the normative social order hopes to regulate them. is-burning. 7 The social and political However, popular and academic references to urban spaces Paris Is Burning Livingston’s documentary or a larger acknowledge- focuses on include low-income ment of the film’s subject matter—the subculture of apartments, community cen- ballroom—are acutely absent within the disciplinary ters, churches, parks, piers, 6 sidewalks, and streets that discourses of architecture and urbanism. This is host illegal activity and forms especially shocking given the film’s unprecedented of labor, as well as spaces of commercial success, its cult-like adoration, and exclusion predicated on race, its explicit attention to the social politics of urban class, gender, and sexuality such as high-end retail stores spaces that contributed to the film’s 2016 induction or city neighborhoods with into the National Film Registry to be preserved as exclusive real estate markets an emblem of American film history and heritage.7 such as the Upper East Side This omission lays bare the failure of architectural along Park Avenue. historians and theorists to develop frameworks for 8 Although Aaron Betsky’s 1997 Queer Space does a addressing stories and experiences such as those tremendous job reconstruct- documented in Paris as well as the very exclusions ing queer nocturnal leisure of QPOCs from being a part of their discussions. spaces of the late 1970s This absence is especially striking given the numerous and early 1980s, there is no reference to the spaces of architectural texts, projects, exhibitions, and critical- ballroom. Similarly, Joel Sand- practice studios centered on topics such as subversive ers’ Stud: Architectures of cultural practices, the politics of resistance, occupation, Masculinity does not mention right to the city, and speculative futures.8 Yet, this ballroom culture.
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