Animating the Interior By Nikē Baneberry

Reverential - Sacred Architecture - Queer Spaces - Covert Text - Orthographic as in Queer

A black and white drawing of a courtyard space, with a blank white square in the center representing the open sky of a cloister.
Enclosing the sky.
The cloister as a spiritual and reverent space, frames the sky, blocking the horizon from view. This worm's eye drawing represents the cloister-from the same root word of closet as a parallel evolution of the ideas of enclosure. The closet here isn't a dingy overstuffed storage room, full of things that don't have a place, but rather a collective gathering space. Here in the cloister, the courtyard is a container for sacred relationships. The connection to the sky is palpable, removing the horizon line completely - we are in an alternate environment, one which lifts us out of our bodies towards the stars.
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Intended to seclude monks from the exterior world, the cloister with its covered walkway oriented around a central courtyard provided a space for meditation, contemplation, and prayer. Contained in a closed space but open to the sky is the removal from the urban bustle and layman concerns. As a queercrip I live a form of cloistered life, split off from the world around me. Dissociated from the rest, I distance myself from the normative pressures I'm subjected to. Splitting from the heteronormative and able bodied society I am forced to participate in, the cloister is a sacred closet. I hide within this corridor of my mind circling my window of the sky with meditation and prayer, just as the monks of the British monasteries circumscribe the garth. Queerness’s contemplative touch and mindful connections is erotic and alluring, breaking through the perimeter, puncturing the skin. This book is a garth itself, a portal into the sky, into new possibilities. Falling into the crevice of the page, I am congregated with the other crumbs at the edge, crumbling under the pressures. With every turn of the page, I am squished together with the other crumbs, molded into a subversive edge community of queer mad crips.

A black and white drawing of a courtyard space, with smaller rooms nested in the center.
A closet inside a cloister
This drawing nests the many types of closets inside of each other. The spatial relationship between closet and cloister - as embodied by language and their shared root word klau* is made tangible. A closet is nested inside of a cloinsular, inside of a cloister. Existing between these spaces are many possibilities of the idea of enclosure. Just as there are many different ways one feels about their time in the closet. A secret relationship, hidden glances, concealed touches, being in the closet sometimes feels as sacred as dancing in the cloister - no witnesses but the sky.
Tracings

I trace in multiple ways both physically and proverbially. A tracing is a way to copy, a way to recapitulate, but also a way to follow the crumbs back to previous iterations. Tracing as a trans architectural theory speaks to the many iterations of my body as a space I inhabit. Trace paper is one of the most essential tools of the architect, replaced today not even by the computer. Trace paper is a means to iterate ideas, transforming with every tracing the original into something else. Tracing back, this is a gestural process of flipping through books, looking at old photographs, following lines on a drawing with my finger to discover new details, placing my hands on a wall and walking towards a glass of water in the night. Traces, leaving evidence of my existence like the pollen residue of a bee, acknowledging that I leave marks and imprints in the spaces I move around.