Project by Zachary Lawrence
The project delineates a space for queer nightlife and intimacy. It operates as a queer refuge and haven centering belonging, expression, and liberation. Entry is the bathroom, a historic place of tension, binaries, surveillance, and policing of bodies. Access occurs through a threshold between the binaries. Adapted from Dutch flood-mitigation technologies, the mechanism integrates gears and hydraulics to raise and lower walls within the bathroom, rendering entry contingent on tidal conditions. The space functions as an off-grid speakeasy; the bathroom is the front. Using water as the determinant of access, the project reframes temporality through a queer lens, resistant to normative schedules. Anticipation generates, reinforcing the affective charge that accompanies queer spaces. Sea-level rise causes access to increase, making it vulnerable to gentrification, mirroring how queer spaces have been appropriated and commodified historically. In situating the space beyond jurisdiction, the project imagines an escape into a liminal, law-bending domain.
