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 , 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, “,” directed Alterity is a means of social by , 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 ’s re-combinatory practices. cheering, and zig-zagging their fingers through a Paris Is Burning. , For these scholars, the ab- Pepper LaBeija, , 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: 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 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 , 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. Christina B. Hanhardt’s Safe Space: Gay absence is nonetheless consistent with the broader Neighborhood History and the ideological, pedagogical, and methodological Politics of Violence does refer- circumscription of bodies and practices that do not ence ballroom culture but only

123 THRESHOLDS 48 KIN

conform to existing structures of historical writing. 9 Even with the tremendous contributions and efforts of architectural scholars and practitioners, there still remains an extraordinary lack of sexual, racial, gendered, classed, and “othered” architectural histories.10 At the core, this failure has to do with the conditions of architecture, as a collection of abstract knowledge practices and physical, built objects, to delimit and/or give rise to cultural understandings of spatialized and embodied ontologies of blackness and queerness.

An analysis of ballroom’s history and the urban 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 and architectural forces that shape both QPOC subjects and the ballroom community during the 9 During a graduate lecture Architecture, Representation, 1970s and 1980s may begin to fill the gaping hole to PhD students at the Yale Black Identity, 2016), Charles School of Architecture, left by the profession’s disregard of and for otherness. L. Davis II (Building Character: Charles L. Davis II spoke The Racial Politics of Modern Ballroom culture and Livingston’s Paris can be about the barriers scholars of Architectural Style, 2019), Joel positioned as architectural and urban texts. This architectural history confront Sanders (Stud: Architectures first requires locating the socio-political elements when it comes to researching of Masculinity, 1996), and Ma- that brought QPOCs to New York City in the late blackness in architecture. bel O. Wilson (Negro Building: To overcome these barriers, Black Americans in the World 1970s and 1980s, followed by an analysis of the Davis II suggested two methods of Fairs and Museums, 2012). architectural and urban elements that shaped for emerging scholars: the 11 “The War on Drugs” is QPOC life and ballroom culture. Such an analysis first being that rather than an expression to connote the relies on the use of sources rarely brought to bear seeking a formal tectonics or anti-drug campaign led by physical building, the common the U.S. federal government. on studies in traditional architectural history: subjects of architectural Although it is argued that the artists’ oral histories, literature reviews, television analyses, scholars of black campaign’s origins extend shows, and artistic photography. histories, or, what could from the beginning of the A racialized counter-archive of queer subculture reductively be called “black twentieth century (i.e., the architecture,” must often look Smoking Opium Exclusion Act such as this one offers a historical heterotopia for the occupation(s) of space in 1909 or the Marijuana Tax of queer kinship for QPOCs in the face of increasing as a means in which blackness Act of 1937), the phrase was social, state, and media marginalization and is expressed architecturally, popularized by the media in violence—the War on Drugs,11 the Reagan-Bush which is inherently ephemeral 1971 after President Richard culture wars,12 HIV/AIDS, homelessness, cable media and complicated to reconstruct. Nixon’s June address to con- The second, that absence of gress on the importance of 13 caricatures —that was commonplace in New York formal architecture is a form his 1970 Comprehensive Drug City during the period of development following of architecture. Aaron Betsky Abuse Prevention and Control the city’s financial crisis. Central to ballroom’s expressed a similar struggle Act, in which he declared production of safe spaces was its use of “realness” in his reconstruction of disco- drugs and drug abuse to be era spaces in New York City. “public enemy number one.” to reflect the intimate link between identity, its Charles L Davis II and Summer Critics accuse the campaign 14 performativity, and urban space. For the QPOC Sutton, “YSOA PhD Dialogues: of disproportionately affecting subject embodied in multiple identities needing to Access, Accountability, Archi- black and Latinx communities negotiate several spatial and political antagonisms, tecture,” Lecture, Yale School and that underlying these of Architecture, , federal policies is racism: physical movements across New York’s urban New Haven, November 8, “Race has always influenced fabric requires constant, performative shifts or else 2018; Aaron Betsky, email the administration of justice risks violence from a hostile exterior—exposing message with the author, in the United States … Biased the imbricated relationship between performances November 7, 2018. police practices are … nothing of identity and the designing of space, and vice 10 Architectural scholars new, a recurring theme of and practitioners who have African American experience versa. Spatial character, program, purpose, and addressed themes of black- since blacks were targeted etiquette are deeply interwoven with social identity ness or queerness include, by the police as suspected and its (proper) performativity. Aaron Betsky (Queer Space, runaway slaves. And every 1997; Building Sex: Men, drug war that has ever been Women, Architecture, and waged in the United States— the Construction of Sexuality, including alcohol prohibition— 1995), George Chauncey (Gay has been tainted or driven New York: Gender, Urban by racial bias.” Chris Barber, Culture, and the Making of the “Public Enemy Number One: Gay Male World, 1890-1940, A Pragmatic Approach to 1995), Beatriz Colomina America’s Drug Problem,” (Sexuality & Space, 1997), Richard Nixon Foundation, Mario Gooden (Dark Space: accessed October 4, 2019,

124 Architecture Is Burning: An Urbanism of Queer Kinship in Ballroom Culture LOCATING THE QUEER PERSON OF COLOR IN 1980S NEW YORK CITY

Juan Manuel Rivera’s story of coming to and surviving in New York City in the late 1970s is told through interviews with Professor of Spanish and Latin American/Latinx literatures and culture at Fordham University Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé in Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza: Hard Tails. It is one of the few (material) allegories

to offer an insight to the everyday life of queer 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 people of color during the cultural shift of the late ‘70s and ‘80s in New York City. Beginning with https://www.nixonfoundation. which simultaneously conceal Juan’s teenage years in New Haven, Connecticut, org/2016/06/26404; Michelle or dissimulate the very act Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Cruz-Malavé sensitively and respectfully lays out performativity seeks to mimic. Mass Incarceration in the Age Judith Butler, Gender Trouble the troubling yet common conditions that sent Juan of Colorblindness (New York: (New York: Routledge, 1990); to New York City: homophobia, familial rejection, The New Press, 2012), 187. Butler, Bodies That Matter: On and the desire to be free: 12 American sociologist the Discursive Limits of “Sex” James Davison Hunter coined (New York: Routledge, 1993). the term “culture wars” in his …my brother was staring at me, and there was more 15 Emphasis in original. 1991 Culture Wars: The Strug- hate in his face than I’d ever seen. And without saying Cruz-Malavé, Queer Latino gle to Define America. Hunter a word, he just got up and knocked all of my art Testimonio, 19. argues that American politics work on the floor. And I could tell he’d just found out, 16 Ibid., 4. was radically reshaped under that L … had finally told him I was a faggot. And for 17 Ibid. the conservative presidencies the first time in my life I got real mad and hit him. And 18 Ibid. of Ronald Reagan and George he punched me back, and I fell to the floor. And as I H. W. Bush, which focused the was getting up, he lunged for my back with a kitchen attention of their offices on knife. And lucky for me a friend of his jumped in and polarizing cultural issues such grabbed the knife as it was coming down. And as my abortion, gun rights, LGBT brother’s friend was desperately trying to restrain rights, religious freedom, him, my sister was screaming hysterically. And when (racialized) crime, and femi- my parents came in they started yelling at me: “Tú nism. James Davison Hunter, eres el mayor! You should know better … You should Culture Wars: The Struggle … !” And as my father raised his hand to strike me I to Define America (New York: grabbed it in midair, and my mother started shaking Basic Books, 1991). and crying, and I ran out … Yeah, it was then I decided 13 The 1980s brought the to run away to New York.15 advent of 24-hour cable news channels like CNN. During Following this violent incident, Juan fled to this decade, pervasive media narratives of urban crime New York City in order to escape his conservative, and decline on both cable and homophobic hometown. To Juan, New York embodied non-cable stations, such as “the values of liberation and personal freedom in CBS News’ “48-hours on emblematized by the 1960s, chief among them sexual Crack Street,” were prevalent. 16 Crime, drug abuse, homeless- self-expression.” When he arrived in the city, Juan ness, poverty, disease, issues was “overwhelmed,” poor, and clueless as to how that were often represented he would survive in his new city but thought it with a black face, were framed completely impossible to return to his family. For as antithetical to the nation’s the first two months, Juan lived, as he describes, as founding liberal principles (liberty, justice, meritocracy) 17 a “derelict:” and reinforced by the U.S. fed- eral government’s anti-drug … after the second day in the City, your stomach efforts against the continued starts talking to you, and it’s like it never dawned on “public enemy number one.” you that you had to eat. And so, after a while you end 14 Judith Butler introduces up living like a derelict, going through garbage cans her theory of performativity to eat. And if I had only known how to steal, it would’ve in her 1990 Gender Trouble. been different, but I didn’t … So pretty soon I felt She later clarifies and revises like a derelict, I was a derelict. And for about two her theory in her 1993 Bodies months I slept in [sic] church benches, in alleyways, That Matter, arguing that in city parks.18 performativity is a reiteration of normative social acts that acquire an “act-like status”

125 THRESHOLDS 48 KIN

Although not a full-fledged child of the ballroom scene until the 1990s, Juan was very close with the children of the : “I’d always thought of myself as a child of the House of Xtravaganza, ’cause I’d been there with the legendary children of Xtravaganza when the houses were being formed.”19 Juan’s connection to the House of Xtravaganza is framed as a life-support during the darker periods of his life, especially once Cruz-Malavé’s biography later tells the story of Juan’s relatively unknown romantic relationship

with the Pop artist Keith Haring from 1986 to 1990, 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 period that proved to be “the most frenetically productive years of [Haring’s] career.”20 19 Ibid., 55. However, Jennie Livingston Echoing the early hardships Juan faced when 20 Ibid., 3. does not explicitly state the 21 In Paris, Venus explains reasons why Venus Xtrav- fleeing to New York City is one of Paris Is Burning’s that “most of all the drag aganza must participate in star performers, , who discloses, queens that are involved in sex work. It can be assumed though only partially, her participation in the sex the ball, say ninety percent though that the lack of trade. This is the most direct correlation made of them, are hustlers. I guess workplace anti-discrimination in Paris between ballroom and the city’s sex trade, that’s how they make their laws for LGBT people and money to go to the balls the Reagan-Bush culture revealing the kind of labor many transwomen must and get whatever they need wars allowed transphobia to often undertake as a means of subsistence.21 Venus and stuff.” It is important to become commonplace in shares her own near-death experiences with a note here, however, that the work environments in the transphobic john as well as her fear of contracting film has been criticized for 1970s and 1980s. oversimplifying the overlap 25 Ibid., 5. HIV/AIDS, which eventually led to her (partial) between illicit practices and 26 The welfare state was 22 withdrawal from sex work. Juan’s biography, too, ballroom culture; it is unlikely significantly waning in the unveils similarly cruel experiences within the sex that ninety percent of drag 1970s but became severely trade, beginning with his first-time hustling: queens were involved in the undermined in the 1980s when sex trade. Nevertheless, the the Reagan administration 1970s and 1980s witnessed eliminated or significantly [A john] ended up taking me home and doing all kindsa strict anti-cross-dressing dis- reduced various welfare [sic] stuff to me. And at one point I was so destroyed, crimination that made it hard programs across multiple ‘cause I didn’t want to do what he wanted me to for trans-people to obtain or levels of government. John A. do—I didn’t wanna get fucked! And he was trying his maintain employment. Other Ferejohn, “Changes in Welfare damned hardest to fuck me, and I was going, “Stop, documentaries contemporary Policy in the 1980s,” in Politics Charlie! Charlie, stop! Go to sleep, Charlie! Go to to Paris like Susana Aikin’s and Economics in the Eighties, sleep!,” but he kept trying all night long. And by the The Salt Mines (1990) similarly eds. Alberto Alesina and time he was fucking me the second time that night, capture the economic strug- Geoffrey Carliner (Chicago: I was crying, you know, and asking God to give me the gles of transwomen and their University of Chicago Press, strength not to turn around and kill this man, ‘cause relationship with the city’s 1990), 123-142. I was ready to kill him. So I was crying and praying sex trade. Lucas Hilderbrand, 27 Nico Sifra Quintana, at the same time that this be over with … Yeah, that Paris Is Burning, 69. Josh Rosenthal, and Jeff was the first time … And after that, I kinda went 22 Although Venus Xtrava- Krehely, On the Streets: The back, and did it for twenty, thirty dollars, and made ganza claims in the film that Federal Response to Gay enough money to get an apartment and clothes.23 she no longer participates in and Homeless sex work, at another point she Youth (Washington, DC: These painful testimonies of violence, desper- does allude to continuing to Center for American Progress, ation, and sex work reveal an underbelly of the work as an escort. Her murder 2010), 7-9. ’80s, in which the prosperous images projected during the filming of Paris Is 28 Ibid., 8. by primetime television fare such as Dynasty and Burning is suspected to have 29 According to the report, been a result of a transphobic the average age range in which were far removed from the lives of many john who strangled her to individuals first became aware QPOCs.24 Carlos Aparicio and Susana Aikin’s 1990 death upon learning that she of their same-sex attraction documentary The Salt Mines adds further evidence was a transwoman. during the 1970s was 13 for of the centrality of sex work, public violence, and 23 Cruz-Malavé, Queer men and 14 to 16 for women. In Latino Testimonio, 21. the 1980s, these ages dropped economic desperation for QPOCs living in New 24 Juan explains in his inter- to 9 for men and 10 for women. York during the time. Similarly, for heterosexual views with Cruz-Malavé that Similarly, the report captures people of color (POC), New York City’s triumph his inability to obtain “legiti- the same trend in the average over its possible bankruptcy in 1975 was starkly mate” employment stemmed age range individuals began to from his inability to read and self-identify as gay or lesbian: absent from many of its inner-city neighborhoods. write due to an inadequate 19 to 21 for males and 21 to 23 These communities “remained a devastated war public education in the New for females in the 1970s, and zone of abandoned and burned-out buildings and Haven education system. 14 to 16 for males and 15 to 16

126 Architecture Is Burning: An Urbanism of Queer Kinship in Ballroom Culture vacant lots, overrun by the drug trade and patrolled by an unsympathetic police [state]” that conflated racial color, homelessness, and economic poverty “as the [root] cause, rather than the victims,” of the city’s lingering socio-economic problems.25 These socio-economic issues similarly hit the influx of queer youth who arrived in New York City in the late 1970s and through the 1980s, many of whom, like Juanito Xtravaganza’s story, were estranged or disowned from their biological families. Without emotional, economic, and social support either

from the state and national welfare programs or 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 their own biological families, queer individuals were left to organize their own means of support, for females in the 1980s. Caitlin especially amongst the increasing number of homeless Ryan, “LGBT Youth: Health Concerns, Services and Care,” queers that colored the city’s growing “new” form Clinical Research and Regula- 26 of homelessness. The number of homeless queer tory Affairs 20 (2003): 137-158. youth continued to rise throughout the ’80s and 30 “Greenwich Village ’90s, correlating with the decrease in the average Waterfront,” NYC LGBT His- age at which many teenagers became aware of their toric Sites Project, accessed May 1, 2019, http://www. 27 sexual identity during these decades. In the 1970s, nyclgbtsites.org/site/green- young “people realized their lesbian or gay identity wich-village-waterfront-and- … between ages 14 to 16, and they then came out the-christopher-street-pier. after high school when they were between 19 to 31 The Institute for the 28 Protection of Lesbian and Gay 24 years old.” However, in the ’80s and ’90s, Youth (IPLGY) was renamed “the average age for identity realization dropped in 1988 to the Hetrick-Martin between ages 9 and 10, with youth coming out Institute (HMI). “Institute for predominantly in high school at ages 14 to 16.”29 the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth,” NYC LGBT Historic The need to support “one’s own” led Marsha P. Sites Project, accessed May 3, Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, the transvestites and 2019, http://www.nyclgbtsites. trans-activists pivotal in the Stonewall Inn uprising, org/site/institute-for-the- to found the Street Transvestite Action Revolution- protection-of-lesbian-and-gay- aries (STAR) in 1970 in order to provide shelter, youth-iplgy. 32 “Ariel Eisenberg on the housing, and support to homeless queer youth and 1980s NYC Homeless Crisis,” sex workers along the Greenwich Village Water- Organization of American front.30 Similarly, the Institute for the Protection Historians, April 23, 2015, of Lesbian and Gay Youth (IPLGY) was founded in http://www.processhistory. org/ariel-eisenberg-on- 1979 by psychiatrist Dr. Emery S. Hetrick and New the-new-york-city-homeless- York University professor Dr. A. Damien Martin crisis-in-the-1980s. to discuss “at-risk LGBT youth in New York City affected by homophobia, physical abuse, home- lessness, chronic truancy and school dropout, and involvement in sex work.”31 Both STAR and IPLGY offer institutional examples of the many ways queer people worked towards helping “their own,” especially addressing urban homelessness. Further, these queer organizations demonstrate the “increasing … legibil[ity], that embodied intersecting issues of race, gender, sexuality, disability, cleanliness, and bodily comportment that emerged in tandem with (and as a result of) struggles over housing, neighborhood change, rising economic inequality, deinstitutionalization, and fears of crime during the Reagan Era.”32 Ballroom similarly became a support mechanism for QPOCs. Although a significant portion of Juan Rivera’s story of the 1980s centers on his relationship

127 THRESHOLDS 48 KIN of mutual support with Keith Haring, it ends with him returning to the ballroom children and becoming an Xtravaganza. After Haring passed away from AIDS-related complications, Juan, himself infected with HIV, fell into a deep despair: “I couldn’t get a job, had AIDS, and needed to take care of myself.”33 With limited employment opportunities, Juan returned to hustling despite his strong dislike of it.34 It was also a period marked by myriad AIDS-related deaths of other loved ones. Juan’s friends, whom he had come to

know and care for during his time with Haring, 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 suddenly turned their backs on him, spreading stories that “[h]e and these Puerto Rican gay 33 Cruz-Malavé, Queer hustlers had brought down Haring”—an intentional Latino Testimonio, 51. 34 Ibid. accusation, according to Juan, to discredit his 35 Emphasis in original. romantic relationship with Haring and therefore Ibid., 53. distance Juan’s historical impact on Haring’s 36 Paris Is Burning. artwork and his postmortem Foundation.35 37 Davis and Sutton, “Access, Accountability, Architecture,” Lecture, Yale School of Architecture, LOCATING THE BALLROOM: Yale University, New Haven, ORDINARY SPACES OF November 8, 2018. SPECTACULAR PERFORMANCES 38 Aaron Betsky, email message from the author, November 17, 2018. A house? A house—Let’s see if we can put it down 39 Betsky, Queer Space, 5. sharply. They’re families. You can say that. They’re 40 Hilderbrand, Paris Is families … for a lot of children who don’t have families. Burning, 60. But this is a new meaning of family. The hippies had 41 Ibid. families, and no one thought nothing about it. It wasn’t 42 The co-habitation of a question of a man and a woman and children, which numerous individuals may we grew up knowing as a family. It’s a question of a have violated certain lease group of human beings in a mutual bond. You know conditions. what a house is. I’ll tell you what a house is. A house is 43 Paris Is Burning (1991), a gay street gang. Now, where street gangs get their 00:23:20—00:24:30. rewards from street fights, a gay house street-fights 44 Ibid., 00:28:20—00: at a ball.36 45 Ibid., 00:29:30—00:30:01. 46 Hilderbrand, Paris Is Similarly to the search for “blackness” within Burning, 61. 47 Such matters can only architecture, a peculiar problem arises in locating the be reconstructed through architecture and spaces of ballroom—the venues oral histories with ballroom that host balls and the apartment complexes in individuals of that era. which houses converge: they often lack any formal I have had various degrees of success in recalling history and/or an enduring spatial presence. As the specificities of these architectural historian Charles L. Davis II has domestic elements through championed, the occupation of space is one way in interviews on and off the which blackness is expressed architecturally. This is, record with ballroom however, often unnoticed by architectural theorists members. Rori Xtravaganza, interviews with the author, and historians owing to a disciplinary reliance on New York, NY, January 15, traditional methods for identifying proper architec- 2019; Chantal Regnault, tural production such as a formal tectonic style Voguing and the House or the existence of a physical building. For Davis Ballroom Scene of New York City 1989-1992 (: the absence of “formal architecture” is a form Soul Jazz Books, 2011), 208. of architecture and the form most often associated 48 Here I am assuming that with blackness rather than a formal tectonics of ballroom members would physical building.37 Architectural critic, curator, and want to live in or approximate to the city’s central queer author of Queer Space Aaron Betsky encounters the community based on informal same dilemma writing a historical reconstruction and formal interviews with of the environments of disco-era New York: spaces ballroom members.

128 Architecture Is Burning: An Urbanism of Queer Kinship in Ballroom Culture that were “essentially ephemeral, with only oral : My name is Angie Xtravaganza histories and a few grainy photographs [and] and I am the mother of the House of Xtravaganza. When there’s a ball, I’m always doing something films to document what were complex spaces for everybody in my house … I always offer advice, created by a combination of lighting, architectonic you know—as far as what I know and what I’ve been elements, music, and performance … [without] through in gay life, you know. I ran away from my any descriptions that took full account of the house when I was 14 and I’ve learned all sorts of complexities of all of these factors.”38 Indeed, it things—good and bad—and how to survive in gay world [sic], you know. It’s kind of hard.44 was the ephemerality of New York’s disco scene, specifically that of Studio 54, that made their FREDDIE XTRAVAGANZA: …I’ll always get a birthday spaces so magnetic: gift from Angie. Won’t get one from my real mother. Like when I got thrown out of my house, Angie let The spaces that appeared and disappeared there me stay with her until I got myself together and I got 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 every night were so much more clearly focused, working. She always fed me. She can be a pain in the so much more direct. Exactly because they did not ass sometimes, but I wouldn’t trade her in for any 45 stick around long enough to accrue meanings, other mother. memories, or emotions, they confronted you much more clearly as nothing but pure space, activated Houses “indicated a lack of personal domestic only by your body. Instead of walls, floors, and ceilings, space for some … but … also indicated a strong here was a space that appeared and disappeared 46 continually. Instead of places of privacy, where design sense of community and kinship,” a queer was unwanted, and public spaces where architecture construction of family that offered solidarity and had to appear in a correct guise, here was a place support against the myriad urban crises countless where the most intimate acts, whether real or acted QPOCs endured including HIV/AIDS, homelessness, out in dance, occurred in full view through a structure of lights, sounds, and arrangements that made it all sex work, drugs, and commonplace bigotry. Thus, seem natural. Instead of references to buildings or in the absence of filiation, Pepper, Freddie, and paintings, instead of a grammar of ornament and a Angie construct affiliative relationships through syntax of facades, here was only rhythm and light.39 the house. These bonds, however, should not be mistaken as a congregation driven by tragedy; The environments of ballroom prove no different rather, the foundation of every house is the desire and, considering the numerous forms of violence to support and love fellow house members and and oppression QPOCs witnessed in the late ’70s remove them from close proximity with the urban and ’80s, ballroom’s lack of a paper trail about its crises in their everyday life. Both Freddie and Angie spaces comes as no surprise. make clear that biology does not determine the The most difficult to locate are the residential form of kinship but rather the rituals of support spaces in which houses congregated. In his analysis and care. of Paris, Lucas Hilderbrand points out that Livingston’s Despite the lack of conventional archival sources film alludes to a house as a residence in which from which to infer the complexes in which houses members cohabitate.40 Although some house were located, their plans and layout, the manner in Mothers and Fathers did informally take in children which spaces were divided, how many occupants who were homeless or kicked out of their earlier commonly resided in a house, rental agreements, familial homes, “many ball walkers continue[d] to and their geographical distribution across New York live with their biological [families].”41 Stories about City, what is known is that the majority of houses house mothers and/or fathers sheltering other were in Harlem or .47 A number of factors members of their houses are circumstantial, without probably occasioned this: namely, that these areas an official record, either because of their informality had existing ethnic-minority communities in which or because this practice was not technically legal.42 many ballroom members grew up and lower rents It was more common for house children to hang compared to locations in Greenwich Village.48 out in or around their house’s mother or father’s Although tracing the historic network of house house, whether for a few hours, a day, or a week- apartments proves difficult, what is known are some end, during which they would socialize with other of the key spaces wherein balls were produced and QPOCs, talk about queer issues they were unable to hosted: the Imperial Elks Lodge No. 127, the Harlem talk about in other spaces, and prepare for balls: YMCA, the Roller Rock Skating Rink, the Crystal Ballroom, the Uptown Social Club, and the Golden PEPPER LABEIJA: When someone has rejection Terrace Ballroom in Harlem; Club Constellation, from … their family … they search. They search the Red Zone nightclub, and Hotel Diplomat/Club for someone to fill that void. I know this for [sic] experience, because I’ve had kids come to me and Sweatz in the Midtown/Times Square area; Tracks latch hold of me like I’m their mother or like I’m their NYC nightclub, the Paradise Garage nightclub, the father, ‘cause they can talk to me and I’m gay and Marc Ballroom, and the Lesbian and Gay Commu- 43 they’re gay. nity Services Center in Greenwich Village.49 These

129 THRESHOLDS 48 KIN

spaces typically had conventional open floor plans or banquet halls, seemingly ordinary, but easily adaptable and accommodating to large groups and spectacular performances. Unfortunately, many of these venues shut down prior to the new millennia and were redeveloped into new commercial entities that failed to leave behind accessible plans or documentation of their prior spaces.50 Yet, through a handful of photo- graphic and film documentations on ballroom, a coherent spatial organization emerges, a spatial

pattern Marlon M. Bailey attempts to diagram in his 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 2014 essay, “Engendering Space: Ballroom Culture and the Spatial Practice of Possibility in Detroit.”51 49 This list was compiled Jörg Heiser, Mateo Kries, Bailey’s “The Ballroom culture ground plan” from Kevin (Ultra Omni) Jochen Eisenbrand, Catharine Burrus’s “Harlem Ballroom categorizes the essential components of a ball and Rossi (Night Fever, 2018), Historic Timeline” document and Cynthia Rose (Design distributes them within a common ball configuration: and credited photo locations After Dark, 1991). It should be a central, long, and narrow runway/performance of Chantal Regnault’s pho- emphasized, however, that in area flanked by areas for participants and spectators tography of ballroom culture the case of ballroom, this ad to its left, right and back, and capped with a panel from 1989 to 1992. Chantal hoc architecture was also Regnault, Voguing and the 52 the product of limited funds, of judges at its front. Vacillating between the House Ballroom Scene, 208. a lack of consistent access panel of judges and the middle of the runaway area Kevin Omni Burrus, “Harlem to spaces for black queer joy, is a commentator(s) who performs just as much Ballroom Historic Timeline,” and the need to remain covert as a walker, maintaining the event’s high energy accessed May 16, 2019, http:// and undiscovered due to harlemballroomhistorictime- social and cultural disapproval and moderating between the judges’ critiques and line.blogspot.com. of homosexuality within black 53 a walker’s reactions. 50 Some exceptions include and Latinx communities. Even though Bailey’s analysis is derived from the Harlem YMCA and the 56 Tim Murphy, “Gay Old his experiences with Detroit’s contemporary Lesbian and Gay Community Times … 1969,” New York Mag- Services Center. The former azine, June 21, 2009, http:// ballroom scene, Livingston’s documentary work was declared a National www.nymag.com/guides/ on late-’80s ballroom, and Gerard H. Gaskin and Historic Landmark in 1976 but summer/2009/57468/index1. Chantal Regnault’s artistic photographs relay is not often recognized (in the html. the configurations Bailey’s plan conceives, revealing mainstream) as a site of LGBT 57 Tavia Nyong’o, email a consistent spatial logic maintained in ballroom life. The latter was marked message with the author, a cultural LGBT landmark January 7, 2019. 54 culture likely since its beginnings. Bailey’s descrip- and was a pivotal site in the 58 Michael Musto, “How tion of contemporary ballroom’s spaces as well founding of queer activist Mayor Giuliani Decimated as Livingston’s and Regnault’s documentary work groups, including the AIDS New York City Nightlife,” Vice, expose another organizational consistency: the Coalition to Unleash Power March 5, 2017, https://www. (ACT UP), the Gay & Lesbian vice.com/en_us/article/bjjdzq/ use of easily foldable furniture and simple decorations Alliance Against Defamation how-mayor-giuliani-decimated- such as streamers, cutting ribbons, metallic curtains. (GLAAD), Senior Action in a new-york-city-nightlife. The use of these furnishings afforded swift setup Gay Environment (SAGE), and 59 Although there is not and disassembly, allowing any venue to be easily the Gender Identity Project. enough space in the article 51 Marlon M. Bailey, “En- to properly discuss the and temporarily co-opted into a site of queer fabu- gendering Space: Ballroom role of gay shaming, known lousness and subsequently restored to its original Culture and the Spatial Prac- as “reading” and “throwing ordinariness, a likely necessity for bypassing the tice of Possibility in Detroit,” shade,” in ballroom culture, it policing of the (hetero)normative social order or Gender Place and Culture: A is nonetheless important to the distinct homophobia present within the black Journal of Feminist Geography acknowledge it as a central 21 (2014): 489-507. part to ballroom. “Reading” community at the time—a spatial argot that built 52 Ibid., 500. and “throwing shade” are on the need for QPOC space that ballroom provided.55 53 Ibid., 499-500. social mechanisms for policing This theory is supported by the fact that earlier 54 Gerard H. Gaskin, other QPOC bodies that oper- eras of ballroom were held late at night: “balls were Legendary: Inside the House ate within varying degrees Ballroom Scene (Durham: of playfulness and seriousness, held late at night because the rent was cheaper Duke University Press, 2013); ranging from a lighthearted and drag queens were safer than on Harlem streets, Regnault, Voguing and the competition cattiness to where black-nationalist militancy had cramped House Ballroom Scene. serious callouts on the ways the quasi tolerance of gay culture common in the 55 This kind of ad hoc, lo-fi in which another person’s 56 architecture is noted as typical embodiment of a different neighborhood in prior decades.” Cloaked under of nightlife and club culture gender/sex, race, or class the darkness between midnight and twilight, by scholars such as Sarah fails to be believable. In participants were free to commute in their grandiose Thornton (Club Cultures, 1996) my graduate thesis at the

130 Architecture Is Burning: An Urbanism of Queer Kinship in Ballroom Culture costumes undetected by the homophobic social order and return home before the rest of the city awoke. These late hours also accommodated participants’ work—both formal and informal—and their life/ family schedules. Despite ballroom’s relationship with homelessness, poverty, and the sex trade, not all participants suffered their families’ rejection or were involved in informal living and labor practices. With some members pursuing doctorate degrees or working on Wall Street, these late-hour balls allowed participants to attend after regular work

hours as well as keep their “professional” or 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 “mainstream” lifestyle separate from the counter- culture scene of ballroom. Massachusetts Institute of however, what West calls Producing a ball required other measures to Technology, “Drag Hinge: ‘the pervasive sense of joy, Reading the Scales Between abate their detection and possible conflict. American laughter, and ingenious humor Architecture and Urbanism,” in the black community—flows cultural critic and historian Tavia Nyong’o points from which this article primarily from the African out that house fathers were often the ones responsible derives, I argue that gay American preoccupation with for securing ballroom venues, negotiating leases shame works as a mechanism tragedy.” L. Juliana M. Clas- and contracts, and dealing with other “behind the of survival, especially for sens, Claiming Her Dignity: transwomen, by calling out 57 Female Resistance in the scene roles,” imitating traditional gender roles and that their performativity Old Testament (Collegeville: expectations, such as men/fathers’ engagement in of sex and gender may fall Liturgical Press, 2016), 119; the legal matters of the household. In the late ’80s, short of believability and see also, Jacqueline A. Bussie, Kevin Omni Burrs, father and founder of the House lead to homophobic and “Flowers in the Dark: African transphobic violence or death. American Consciousness, of Ultra Omni, brought the ballroom scene to New Malcolm Rio, “Drag Hinge: Laughter, and Resistance in York’s Greenwich Village, hosted by nightclubs such Reading the Scales Between Toni Morison’s Beloved,” The as Tacks NYC, the Roxy, and the Paradise Garage. Architecture and Urbanism,” Laughter of the Oppressed: These balls could occur at earlier hours given the Master thesis (Massachusetts Ethical and Theological Resis- Institute of Technology, 2019), tance in Wiesel, Morrison, and Village’s acceptance of queer life and culture, which 124-6. Endo (New York: T & T Clark, also allowed for more participation and larger atten- 60 Safe spaces are 2007). dance. Although balls were spaces of alterity, black environments in which an joy, and critical self-reflection, they were also com- individual can feel free from mercial undertakings; the production] costs of balls prosecution, discrimination, or violence against aspects of and cash-prize awards required fundraising and their personhood. For Christi- entry fees, which meant attracting broader audiences. na Hanhardt, the ideal of this Today, ballroom endures despite the decline term was crucial in shaping of the city’s gay nightlife in the 1990s under Mayor 1960s LGBT social movements. 58 Hanhardt, Safe Space, 4. Giuliani’s “quality of life” policies. While many 61 Critical race scholars venues had to close their doors—Danceteria, Tracks such as Cornel West, Toni NYC, the Paradise Garage, Better Days, the Sound Morrison, and Jacqueline Factory Bar—ballroom’s ability to co-opt any space Bussie have written at length about the resistive heuristic is what makes it possible for ballroom to continue of laughter in the face of to this day; a ball is tied not to a specific fixed oppression and violence. “ … spatial typology but rather to a practice of spatial laughter [that] occurs even in organization. Ballroom and its supporting infrastruc- the face of death … according ture of the house, in contrast, provide a socially to Bussie communicated something of the laughter of and spatially malleable form of affiliative association the oppressed as a ‘transcen- structured around reframed notions kinship and dence of fear.’ Bussie cites familial support. Despite ballroom’s engaging in the work of Cornel West, who competition, house rivalries, and the queer cultural argues that laughter within the 59 African American commu- practice of shaming, this subculture nonetheless nity is a means to convey ‘a forms a network of positive queer solidarity against worldview of tragic hope’ that a myriad of urban, social, and political violence places ‘an enduring emphasis as witnessed in 1980s ballroom. By offering what on the tragic facts of human existence: death, disease, are commonly called “safe spaces,” ballroom disappointment, dread, and provides the queer social relationships necessary despair.’ Laughter within the for enduring tremendous oppressions.60 Like the African American experience,

131 THRESHOLDS 48 KIN many QPOCs that make up the subculture who must constantly and productively adapt to adverse conditions, often creatively distorting these conditions into means of social change, rather than buckling under them, ballroom reveals a different approach to architectural production.61 This form of architectural production is not predicated on fixed relations of programming and space as are zoning and landmarking, but instead opportunisti- cally transforms what is available to suit what is necessary. Further, ballroom subverts the tools

of architectural and organizational legitimacy, 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 carving out spaces for the enactment and celebra- tion of black queer life, joy, and fabulosity through 62 This work, which is a part Sydney (Syd) Baloue. My destabilizing mimetic practices.62 of a larger thesis project at sincerest gratitude to my the Massachusetts Institute thesis supervisor and readers of Technology would not have Dr. Arindam Dutta, Dr. Delia been possible without the Wendel, and Dr. Cornel West. fruitful conversations, uncon- Lastly, a special thanks to ditional support, love, and help Aaron Tobey, the Thresholds I received from many people. editors Stratton Coffman, Of the many, I would like to Dalma Földesi, and Sarah Malcolm Rio is a graphic and architectural designer thank those who went above Wagner, and the anonymous and thinker living in New York City. He is currently and beyond, offering their reviewers that have all worked a PhD student at Columbia University where guidance, support, warmth, hard on making this essay he researches the historical intersections of race, and time. They include Aaron much stronger. All shortcom- Betsky, Garnette Cadogan, ings are my own. sexuality, nationhood, architecture, and urbanism. Dr. Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, Dr. He received his MS in architecture studies Jackson Davidow, Jermaine (SMArchS) from the Massachusetts Institute of Ellis and the Hetrick-Martin Technology with several distinctions including Institute, Dr. Lauren Jacobi, Dr. Erica Caple James, Dr. the 2019 SMArchS Thesis Prize and the Arthur Kareem Khubchandani, Ken Rotch Special Prize for his research on urbanism, Lustbader and the NYC LGBT black ontology, and ballroom culture. Rio also Historic Sites Project, Caitlin holds a Master of Architecture (MArch) from the McCarthy and the archives of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and a BS the The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community in philosophy and a BFA in graphic design from Center, Matthew T. McMorrow, Towson University. Rio was an inaugural AICAD Tavia Nyong’O, Joel Sanders, teaching fellow positioned at the Maryland Institute Susanne Schindler, Paul College of Art (MICA) where he taught graphic Soulellis and Queer.Archive. Work, Yehoshua Talbert and design, architectural design and foundation studio the Coalition. I was star- courses. During his appointment at MICA, Rio’s struck and deeply humbled research focused on the racial and class dimensions when I received a reply-email of mobile network technologies in Baltimore from Jennie Livingston. Thank you for your willingness and City as a case study of the hollowing out of public excitement to speak with me transit systems in medium-sized, post-industrial about Paris Is Burning, New cities across the US. York City, and queer urbanism. I am especially indebted to those within the ballroom community who were willing to speak with me about ballroom and its history. A special thank you to Rori Xtravaganza (Rori Grenert), Koppi Mizrahi (Konomi Shishido), Icon and House of UltraOmni father Kevin Omni Burrus, father Andre Mizrahi, and Leggoh LaBeija. I would like to express my love and appreciation to the person who adopted me into the House of UltraOmni, writer and LGBTQ+ advocate

132