Ros del Olmo: A Queer House: Habitabilities Among Genealogies, Grafted Instances In-between Deflexion and Materiality.

 

Thesis Advisor: Julia Morandeira Arrizabalaga

Thesis: A Queer House: Habitabilities Among Genealogies, Grafted Instances In-between Deflexion and Materiality.

July 2023

Abstract

This work presents an exploration of the intersection between queer theory, the poetics of space, and the political potential of queer habitability. It highlights the ruptures and possibilities that emerge when challenging conventional notions of belonging, identity, and the nuclear family order, providing an insight into critical genealogy. Different rooms of the queer house diverge and draft into one another and create a scenario that uses the oxymoron of the queer house itself as a theoretical force.

The space of the queer house, symbolised by the branchless tree El Ebrancado, serves as a focal point for examining issues of identity, heritage, and non-hierarchical kinship. This text takes interdisciplinary pieces of art and theory to showcase the complexities of genealogy, inheritance, and the construction of queer spaces, with an emphasis on affective structures, lived gestures, and ephemeral objects in shaping the queer house between the material and the fleeting movement of its disappearing points.

The text also explores the ambivalent nature of interiority and exteriority within these architectures in touch with queer affects, seeking to create more liveable lives. It draws upon literary examples and poetic spaces to present the queer house as a site of resistance, flight, and reimagined horizons of the meaning of inhabiting. Furthermore, the mention of the almanac of queer places and its role in mapping utopian possibilities adds a layer of anticipation and future directions for the exploration of other, wider ways of understanding habitability.

Author: Ros del Olmo