Animating the Interior By Nikē Baneberry

PART 1: The Enclosures of Private Life

Academic - Theory - Abstract - Poetic - Queer Theory - Etymology - Cripping the Text - Patterns

  1. A worm’s eye axonometric drawing depicting a closet overflowing with personal items. Its red walls and blue door coloured with pencil crayons.
    Closet
    The closet is where we keep some of our most sacred items. We fill it with the private parts of ourselves. It’s where I have experienced some of my biggest meltdowns and squirreled away my most secret letters.
  2. Primary colour pencil crayons and pen drawing of a bedroom, drawn from below. A typical inaccessible kid room with bunk beds, tight turns, and a narrow door.
    Bed
    A typical inaccessible children’s bedroom, a small space filled with bunk beds. Narrow door and not enough storage. Bedrooms are where we begin to resist through conversions in the dark of night, with lovers, and in the company of our own solitude.
  3. In the style of a worm’s eye architectural drawing, is a bathroom. With yellow sinks, pink walls and purple windows.
    Bath
    In the bathroom, with one toilet, one shower, one sink - it's clear how we see cleaning ourselves as an individual responsibility. Peeing with the door open, showering with a loved one, brushing your teeth together at a sleepover - it's one of the deepest displays of love.

This first series looks at the “capitalist privatizing enclosures of social life”: that is to say, how our shared complicated messy collective lives have been closed off from each other, so that we now exist in a culture of heteronormative single-family homes, institutions for the disabled and elderly, and disconnected production cycles.

The enclosures of common life is so pervasive in western contemporary society that within our own homes we have cordoned off distinct rooms for things deemed as deeply private: bedrooms, lavatories, and closets. These spaces often represent some of our deepest desires, but within capitalist logic are separated from the happenings of the public sphere such as work, education, services, etc. For queer, trans, crip, and mad folks these spaces become sites of resistance. In this chapter I break apart the CLOSET, BATH, and BED.

Part 1: Resist the Enclosures

PART 2: Commons as a Form of Care

Academic - Theory - Abstract - Poetic - Queer Theory - Etymology - Cripping the Text - Patterns

Architectural black and white line drawing of a small sleeping house drawn from below. The top diagonal corner of the drawing is shaded.
Sleeping House
When we begin to share collective needs - the divide between private needs and collective amenities is important to define. This sleeping house is a small building connected by a covered walkway to the main house. This drawing shows the small private house from below to illustrate how full and vibrant a small space can be.

Springing forth from my examinations of how Queer, Trans, Mad, and Disabled folks are commoning their homes through their daily acts of subversion, misfitting, and rebellion, I reimagine common spaces where our most sacred needs are shared and cared for together.

Presented are a series of drawings that show examples of what common houses might look like, how they can be built up from ideas of queer people loving each other across bedroom divides, mad people having safety in collective space, disabled people showering together, trans people dressing how they like. Through drawings and stories is a fictionalized map and story of a common space. Informed by my own personal experiences; my desires and affinity for solar punk, anarchism, and commoning; and my personal work to transition private rural land into collective ownership, this map is both already tangible, a plan, and a hopeful vision.

I dream of being an artist, a builder, and a cheesemaker. I dream of collective writing, skill shares, queer collective parenting, a world with mutual aid and no money, a world with seasonal time and rituals.

Part 2: Explore the Commons