James Taylor-Foster
Selected writing 2015 – 2022
  • About
  • Category
  • Title
  • Publication
  • Year
  • Curatorial
  • Cruising Pavilion: Architecture, Gay Sex, Cruising Culture
  • 2019
James Taylor-Foster
editor & writer of essays & reviews,
architectural designer,
maker of exhibitions
Selected writing 2015 – 2022
  • Cruising Pavilion: Architecture, Gay Sex, Cruising Culture

Cruising is the quest for sex by homosexual men in public spaces. It can take place in parks, public toilets, and car parks, as well as in dedicated establishments such as sex clubs and bath houses. Sexual encounters—often between strangers—disappear in plain sight. But cruising cannot be limited to any one location, nor can it be reduced to neither men nor gays.

Through the lens of architecture and the city, this exhibition explores some of the ways in which the traditional model of cruising is evolving. The combination of digital hook up apps, urban development, and the commodification of LGBTQ+ cultures means that cruising grounds are continually adapting. Today, technologies are generating a psychosexual geography that spreads across homes and profiles.


Fig 1. The Bar / Baren (Johan Dehlin, 2019)

Cruising Pavilion: Architecture, Gay Sex and Cruising Culture (Boxen at ArkDes) invites you into a sequence of environments: The Bar, The Darkroom, and The Bedroom. These rooms make space for the work of international artists, architects and designers. Their works are a collection of interpretative stances and sideways glances that together map cruising cultures and explore the sensual production of space. But this is not a history, nor is at a documentary. From videogames and drawings to films and furniture, cruising is revealed as a form of resistance, an avant-garde, and a vernacular – with an active relevance in and beyond LGBTQ+ circles.

Cruising is not obsolete. Public sex remains a laboratory for political futures and spaces, and is central to understanding new ways of thinking, living, loving, meeting, and belonging.


Fig 2. The Darkroom / Darkroom (Johan Dehlin, 2019)

Fig 3. The Bedroom / Sovrummet through The Darkroom / Darkroom (Johan Dehlin, 2019)

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


Fig 4. The Darkroom / Darkroom (Johan Dehlin, 2019)

Fig 5. The Darkroom / Darkroom towards The Bar / Baren (Johan Dehlin, 2019)

Fig 6. The Darkroom / Darkroom (Johan Dehlin, 2019)

Cruising Pavilion at ArkDes is an exhibition that represents 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 (Ludlow38, Goethe Institut), have explored the different directions by which cruising practices have evolved. In this third and final edition, the exhibition focuses broadly on the intersection of sexuality and the architecture of the city.


Fig 7. Gloryhole (Peter Hansen/Señor Studio, 2019)

Fig 8. Invitation

Fig 9. Cinema Queer International Film Festival (Klaudia Rychlik, 2019)

Fig 10. Curators: Pierre-Alexandre Mateos, Charles Teyssou, Rasmus Myrup, and Octave Perrault (Cruising Pavilion) with James Taylor-Foster (ArkDes) (Frida Vega Salomonsson, 2019)


 
Cruising Pavilion Pierre-Alexandre Mateos, Rasmus Myrup, Octave Perrault, Charles Teyssou Production Assistant Elisabet Norin Editor (Swedish) Annie Jensen Proofreading Shumi Bose, Daniel Golling Light Design Anders Bill (El & Scenteknik AB) Installation Markus Eberle, Stefan Mossfeldt Production (Programming) Elisabet Schön Graphic Identity (Boxen) Studio Reko Installation Photography Johan Dehlin, Peter Hansen Portraits Frida Vega Salomonsson
With support from Institut Français de Suède. Thanks to Sexperterna, RFSL Stockholm.
September 20 — November 10, 2019
Boxen,
ArkDes
Selected Press Bon, PIN-UP, The Architect’s Newspaper, QX, Expressen, Dezeen, Disegno

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James Taylor-Foster
editor & writer of essays & reviews,
architectural designer,
maker of exhibitions
  • CuratorialI.
  • ProjectsII.
  • PublicationsIII.
  • SpeakingIV.
  • WritingV.
I.Curatorial
  • ✶ WEIRD SENSATION FEELS GOOD, London2022
  • ✶ Mira Bergh × Josefin Zachrisson: Utomhusverket2022
  • ✶ The Limits of Our World: LARP and Design2022
  • ✶ Solicited: Proposals2021
  • ✶ Studio Ossidiana: Utomhusverket2021
  • WEIRD SENSATION FEELS GOOD, Stockholm2020
  • Architecture Projects: Skeppsbron + Brunnsparken2019
  • Cruising Pavilion: Architecture, Gay Sex, Cruising Culture2019
  • The Craft of Swedish Videogame Design2019
  • Petra Gipp and Mikael Olsson; Sigurd Lewerentz – Freestanding2018
  • Space Popular: Value in the Virtual2018
  • You Are Not Alone2017
  • In Therapy2016
  • Keeping Up Appearances2015
II.Projects
  • ASMR, An Exhibition Trailer2022
  • Watch & Chill 2.0: Streaming Senses2022
  • ASMRology2021
  • Plug-in Poesi2020
  • ✶ Interdependence: Stockholm and pandemia2020
  • Future Architecture Rooms2020
  • SOFT GOSSIP2020
  • Mukbang Veneziano2020
  • Körper2019
  • Architecture on Display2018
  • Boxen at ArkDes2018
  • The Stones of Venice: A Kimono2017
  • Misunderstandings (A Reliquary)2016
III.Publications
  • ✶ softspot2021
  • Living on Water2017
  • Elemental Living2016
  • People, Place, Purpose2015
IV.Speaking
  • ✶ Scaffold #612022
  • Salons, The New Architecture School2022
  • ✶ Protagonist of the Erotic: A Bed2022
  • OAT Academy, Curating Architecture2022
  • ✶ Protagonist of the Erotic: An Island2021
  • A Future for Exhibitions2021
  • Future Architecture CEx2020 Focus Talks2020
  • Modevisningar är den flyktigaste formen av arkitektur2018
  • Exhibition Models2017
V.Writing
  • Studio Ossidiana on the Sentimental Scale of the City2022
  • Wang & Söderström: Royal Chambers2022
  • A Strange Sort of Weight2021
  • What’s Mine Is Theirs: an interview with Max Lamb2020
  • ✶ Screen Glow Sedation2020
  • No Time to Stand and Stare2020
  • On Norra Tornen2020
  • ✶ Don’t Fear a Snowflake2020
  • In Riga, A Conference On Architecture and Migration2019
  • On Practical Futurology2019
  • Foreword: On the Manifesto2019
  • Making Believe with Charlap Hyman & Herrero2019
  • ✶ To Speak As If In Capital Letters2019
  • Baltoscandia: A Complex Utopia2018
  • ✶ Virgil Abloh, Editor in Brief2018
  • A Weak Monument2018
  • Sigurd Lewerentz: Villa Edstrand2018
  • On the Cruising Pavilion2018
  • A Diary of Virgil Abloh’s First Louis Vuitton Show2018
  • ✶ The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied.2018
  • Concrete Mountain2017
  • ✶ On Liquid Modernity2017
  • ✶ #003399, #FFCC00; The Meaning of a Flag2017
  • Pillars of Society: “Jantelagen”2017
  • Exhibiting the Postmodern2017
  • Future Architecture and the Idea of Europe2017
  • Domains of Influence2017
  • Ingress: Black Rock City2017
  • In Dialogue With Gravity2017
  • Rem, Redacted2016
  • Media States, Or The State of Media2016
  • A Piece of England to Call One’s Own2016
  • Upon This Rock (I Will Build My Church)2016
  • The Design of the Species2016
  • Venice Isn’t Sinking, It’s Flooding2016
James Taylor-Foster
editor & writer of essays & reviews,
architectural designer,
maker of exhibitions
Selected writing 2015 – 2022
Curatorial
  • Cruising Pavilion: Architecture, Gay Sex, Cruising Culture 2019
  • in Boxen (ArkDes) with Cruising Pavilion – Pierre-Alexandre Mateos, Rasmus Myrup, Octave Perrault, Charles Teyssou
Back

Cruising is the quest for sex by homosexual men in public spaces. It can take place in parks, public toilets, and car parks, as well as in dedicated establishments such as sex clubs and bath houses. Sexual encounters—often between strangers—disappear in plain sight. But cruising cannot be limited to any one location, nor can it be reduced to neither men nor gays.

Through the lens of architecture and the city, this exhibition explores some of the ways in which the traditional model of cruising is evolving. The combination of digital hook up apps, urban development, and the commodification of LGBTQ+ cultures means that cruising grounds are continually adapting. Today, technologies are generating a psychosexual geography that spreads across homes and profiles.


Fig 1. The Bar / Baren (Johan Dehlin, 2019)

Cruising Pavilion: Architecture, Gay Sex and Cruising Culture (Boxen at ArkDes) invites you into a sequence of environments: The Bar, The Darkroom, and The Bedroom. These rooms make space for the work of international artists, architects and designers. Their works are a collection of interpretative stances and sideways glances that together map cruising cultures and explore the sensual production of space. But this is not a history, nor is at a documentary. From videogames and drawings to films and furniture, cruising is revealed as a form of resistance, an avant-garde, and a vernacular – with an active relevance in and beyond LGBTQ+ circles.

Cruising is not obsolete. Public sex remains a laboratory for political futures and spaces, and is central to understanding new ways of thinking, living, loving, meeting, and belonging.


Fig 2. The Darkroom / Darkroom (Johan Dehlin, 2019)

Fig 3. The Bedroom / Sovrummet through The Darkroom / Darkroom (Johan Dehlin, 2019)

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


Fig 4. The Darkroom / Darkroom (Johan Dehlin, 2019)

Fig 5. The Darkroom / Darkroom towards The Bar / Baren (Johan Dehlin, 2019)

Fig 6. The Darkroom / Darkroom (Johan Dehlin, 2019)

Cruising Pavilion at ArkDes is an exhibition that represents 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 (Ludlow38, Goethe Institut), have explored the different directions by which cruising practices have evolved. In this third and final edition, the exhibition focuses broadly on the intersection of sexuality and the architecture of the city.


Fig 7. Gloryhole (Peter Hansen/Señor Studio, 2019)

Fig 8. Invitation

Fig 9. Cinema Queer International Film Festival (Klaudia Rychlik, 2019)

Fig 10. Curators: Pierre-Alexandre Mateos, Charles Teyssou, Rasmus Myrup, and Octave Perrault (Cruising Pavilion) with James Taylor-Foster (ArkDes) (Frida Vega Salomonsson, 2019)


 
Cruising Pavilion Pierre-Alexandre Mateos, Rasmus Myrup, Octave Perrault, Charles Teyssou Production Assistant Elisabet Norin Editor (Swedish) Annie Jensen Proofreading Shumi Bose, Daniel Golling Light Design Anders Bill (El & Scenteknik AB) Installation Markus Eberle, Stefan Mossfeldt Production (Programming) Elisabet Schön Graphic Identity (Boxen) Studio Reko Installation Photography Johan Dehlin, Peter Hansen Portraits Frida Vega Salomonsson
With support from Institut Français de Suède. Thanks to Sexperterna, RFSL Stockholm.
September 20 — November 10, 2019
Boxen,
ArkDes
Selected Press Bon, PIN-UP, The Architect’s Newspaper, QX, Expressen, Dezeen, Disegno
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