Cruising Pavilion

Cruising describes the quest for sex by homosexual men in public spaces. It is an urban pursuit taking place in parks, public toilets and car parks, as well as in dedicated establishments such as sex clubs and bathhouses. But cruising cannot be reduced to neither men nor gays, nor to any definite location. The historical model of cruising is evolving.

Presenting the many facets of cruising culture through the work of international architects, designers and artists, Cruising Pavilion: Architecture, Gay Sex and Cruising Culture explores a sexual and spatial practice that spans historical and contemporary culture. The combination of digital hook-up apps, urban development, and the commodification of LGTBQ+ cultures means that traditional cruising grounds are continually adapting. Geospatial technologies have generated a psychosexual geography that spreads across digitally-connected homes and profiles.

The exhibition presents cruising as the producer of a non-hetero architecture that closely mirrors the patriarchal nature of the built environment. Cruising is at once revealed as a resistance, an avant-garde and a vernacular, with an active relevance in and beyond LGTBQ+ circles.

Participants
Andreas Angelidakis, Monica Bonvicini, Tom Burr, Shu Lea Cheang, Victoria Colmegna, Earl Combs + Steve Ostrow, Etienne Descloux, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, DYKE_ON, Pol Esteve + Marc Navarro, General Idea, Robert Getso, Horace Gifford, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Nguyen Tan Hoang, Andrés Jaque (Office for Political Innovation), Studio Karhard, Ann Krsul + Amy Cappellazzo + Alexis Roworth + Sarah Drake, John Lindell, Henrik Olesen, Puppies Puppies (Jade Kuriki Olivo), Hannah Quinlan + Rosie Hastings, Carlos Reyes, Prem Sahib, Jaanus Samma, S H U I (Jon Wang + Sean Roland), Max Sohl + Paul Morris, Charles Terrell + Bruce Mailman, Tommy Ting, Madelon Vriesendorp, Steven Warwick, Robert Yang, Trevor Yeung

Cruising Pavilion at ArkDes is the culmination of two years of research by the curatorial collective Cruising Pavilion. Previous exhibitions of the project in Venice, Italy (Spazio Punch), and New York City, USA (Ludlow38), have explored the different directions by which cruising practices have evolved. In this third and final exhibition, the project focuses on the intersection of sexuality and the architecture of the city.

Boxen at ArkDes
Boxen is a platform for fast-changing, experimental projects at ArkDes, the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design. It provides space for alternative voices to inspire discussions about architecture, design, and their relationship to society by promoting radical and responsive installations, exhibitions, events and dialogues by and between architects, designers, and thinkers. Designed by the emerging architecture studio Dehlin Brattgård, Boxen opened in 2018.

Cruising Pavilion at ArkDes is a curatorial project by Pierre-Alexandre Mateos, Rasmus Myrup, Octave Perrault, Charles Teyssou, and James Taylor-Foster (Curator of Contemporary Architecture and Design, ArkDes).