“Architectures of Intimacy” is a durational performance that explores the architecture, resilience, and versatility of intimacy. Through repetition of the same movement over the course of four hours in the same position, “Architectures of Intimacy” explores how form and meaning relate, the contingencies of meaning-making.

The movement utilized is the form of wielding a gun, inspired by interviews I conducted with a trans-woman, activist, and researcher of queer politics and discourse. There has been increasing militancy amongst trans-activist groups to defend against increased physical, legislative and discursive violence against trans communities. Trans communities do not take up arms to incite violence, but rather to protect those they care for. Guns, then, are wielded as an act of love. 

Through this piece I ask, how does the same form shift in meaning? Are the lines around what violence and care look like as defined as we imagine? What does intimacy require? What are the mental and embodied architectures we construct and deconstruct as we navigate a potentially emergent space of intimacy? To what extent must we detach from defined meanings and leave ourselves vulnerable to uncertainty, to create intimacy? What does it mean, feel and look like to keep going with no certainty of what will happen?