Animating the Interior By Nikē Baneberry

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

The history of these spaces has to some extent always been referenced to the mad, sick, and queer person. The lavatory, the bed, the closet. These three realms, private and intimate are distinct in their function, but each a container for the particularities of madness, disability, and gender. These drawings bring together these ideas through the abstraction of architectural drawings, all drawn from the worms’ eye axonometric.

  1. Projected at zero degrees, five types of closets are shown in black and white linework. From a forked branch door latch - the root meaning of the word closet - on the left, to a cloister - a space derived from the idea of a closet on right.
    Closeted: Language of Queerness
    Here this drawing, at a 0° projection, is drawing through scales of Language to show a queer history of the closet. Tracings root words and spatial etymologies; from Klau*, the root work for closet which means a hook branch, though the closet of my queer teen self, and out again to the cloister - a space of enclosure designed around reverence.
  2. A grid of nine different black and white architectural sketches. The top row depicts beds of gravel, the second row, beds of straw, the third row beds of dirt.
    Bedding: Marking Depressions
    Creating scales of composition, I look at the layering of ideas, dirt, identities, drawings, and how they settle into each other to form new mad realities. From ocean beds, to straw beddings, to rammed earth construction, to the scan bed, These beds are sites of depression - the weight of time, experience, dreams pressed into each other.
  3. Drawn from below at zero degrees, so that no corners are visible, a black and white architectural line drawing shows a collective bathing space.
    Bathing: Reflections
    This space is an amalgamation of different bathing spaces: together creating scales of sensations from touch, to sound, to sight. The overstimulation and intimate feelings so familiar to the disabled body. Underneath the water, sounds travel faster and louder - our disabled needs are heard clearly. Bathe with me, wash me down with care
The bed The bath The closet