Queer Perspectives in Architecture

On June 10, 2022, SCI-Arc will host a public screening of the National Endowment for the Arts supported SCI-Arc Channel Film series "Queer Perspectives in Architecture." The three-part, short-form film series examines diverse perspectives on aesthetics, practice, alternative histories, and possible futures for queer architecture. Three talented artists— Evaline Wu Huang (M.Arch ’17), Enrique Agudo (M.Arch 2 + MS Fiction and Entertainment ’19), and John Ira Palmer—have been invited by SCI-Arc Channel producers Reza Monahan and Marcelyn Gow to each develop and direct a short film exploring Queer Perspectives in Architecture. The screenings will be accompanied by public panel discussions moderated by Natou Fall (M.Arch ’19) and David Eskenazi (M.Arch ’19)." This event will be held at SCI-Arc in the Keck Lecture Hall.

Schedule

6:00pm
Introductions by Hernán Díaz Alonso

Part 1: Film by Evaline Wu Huang
6:10pm-7:15pm
Film Screening + Panel Discussion with Daren Rabinovitch and Ade Macalinao

Part 2: Film by Enrique Agudo
7:20pm-8:25pm
Film Screening + Panel Discussion with Ruben Esparza and Natania Meeker

Part 3: Film by John Ira Palmer
8:30pm-9:35pm
Film Screening + Panel Discussion with Tag Christof and Jaffer Kolb

Each panel discussion will be moderated by Natou Fall (M.Arch ’19) and David Eskenazi (M.Arch ’13).

More information on the films, the filmmakers, and the event participants can be found below.

Evaline Wu Huang

Evaline Wu Huang is a production designer living in Los Angeles / working worldwide. Her narrative work has premiered at SXSW (Nominated, Grand Jury Award), Blackstar Film Festival, Outfest, Seattle International Film Festival, and Toronto International Film Festival among others. Select press includes Nowness, CNN, Dezeen, i-D, Numero, the New York Times, the Director's Library, and Vogue. In the short form world, she has designed runway shows for Paris Fashion Week (Reese Cooper, SS 2021) as well as New York Fashion Week (Maisie Wilen, FW 2021). Most recently, she designed the debut rebrand campaigns of Meta (The Tiger and the Buffalo) and Farfetch (featuring Kim Cattrell). Her music video clients includes The Weeknd, Summer Walker, SZA, Cardi B, Vince Staples, Japanese Breakfast, Migos, Masego, 070 Shake, Olivia Rodrigo, and Virgil Abloh. Her latest feature film, starring Greg Kinnear and Isla Fisher, is in the midst of wrapping. She looks forward to getting some sleep soon.

Huang holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an M. Arch from the Southern California Institute of Architecture. She is a member of the Art Directors Guild and is represented by The Gersh Agency.

Enrique Agudo
Enrique Agudo is a New Media Artist. Contemporary culture is infused with digital imagery, and Agudo’s work focuses on the pattern recognition of these digital indexes and shedding light on how they affect the way we behave, we see the world through digital interfaces and by extension, that is how we unavoidably understand ourselves. Agudo is the Creative Director behind The Pantheon of Queer Mythology, a VR short film premiered at Tribeca Film Festival 2020, Cannes VR, FIVARS Film Festival, or Geneva Film Festival in 2020. Enrique is a graduate of the Architectural Association (RIBA Part I), IE University (BArch (Hons)), and SCI-Arc (M.Arch 2 + MS Fiction and Entertainment). After working as Studio Director for Daniel Canogar’s Los Angeles Office, Agudo continues to use immersive and experimental digital media as the tools to question and challenge anthropological discourse around identity through new forms of mythology in the upc.oming exhibition Ipseity in Madrid, Spain.

The Nomad is a short film animation of artist Enrique Agudo in collaboration with Miwa Espinoza and Michelle Recio. The Nomad is a vessel traveling across the American landscape that houses a matriarchal clan, with the purpose of rewilding and biodiversifying its surroundings. This chariot is more than a home, and a tool, and a form of transport - it portrays the notion that we are guests in a land that cannot be owned. In our world, plants shape human existence and The Nomad reveals a whimsical technological mediation between us and our vegetal environment. Human relationships to Nature are molded by a culture whose definition of “Nature” is biased around homophobia, classicism, sexism, racism and xenophobia to justify its exploitation. Thus, The Nomad presents a speculative illustration of the potential for Queer environmentalism.

John Ira Palmer
John Ira Palmer is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker. His experimental 16mm and super-8 short films have screened at venues such as REDCAT, Blum & Poe, and Pacific Film Archive. He has curated film series and programs for American Cinematheque, Echo Park Film Center, and San Francisco Art Institute. Past residencies and fellowships include Film at Lincoln Center’s Artist Academy at the New York Film Festival, Echo Park Film Center’s LA AIR program, and AICAD’s New York Studio Program, and awards include the ARRI Emerging Filmmaker Grant, the James Broughton Film Award, and a Princess Grace Foundation Film Honorarium. John earned his MFA in Film & Television Production at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and his BFA at San Francisco Art Institute.

Out of the Corner of our Eye is a short documentary reflection about seven iconic, formerly queer architectural sites in Los Angeles that are no longer what they once were. From a longstanding lesbian art and community haven to the custom-built home of America's first well-known drag performer, this film asks what queer space looks like–and might mean–today. Written and directed by John Ira Palmer, cinematography by Tag Christof, narrated by River Gallo, and music by JR Schwartz.

Event Panelists + Moderator

Jaffer Kolb is a designer based in New York and co-founder of the award-winning architectural practice N/A. He sometimes writes, sometimes curates, and often teaches—most recently at Yale University, Columbia University, and Cooper Union. He was the 2015 Muschenheim Fellow at the University of Michigan, and before that worked as a designer in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. His work has appeared in numerous exhibitions and has been published internationally. Previously he worked on the 13th Venice Architecture Biennial under David Chipperfield, and before that served as the US Editor of the Architectural Review. He holds a Master of Architecture from Princeton University, a Master’s in Urban Planning from the London School of Economics, and his Bachelor of Arts in Film Studies from Wesleyan University.

Tag Christof is a photographer and writer based in Los Angeles, CA and Santa Fe, NM. He tells stories about design and architecture, automobiles and the road, and the dark side of innovation. His recent clients include The New York Times, The Intercept, Design Within Reach, The Guardian, and Hello Mr., and he is a Central Saint Martins MA graduate and former editor-in-chief of Human Being Journal.

Rubén Esparza is an artist and independent curator based in Los Angeles. Esparza’s studio practice spans painting, drawings and digital work, mixing it with elements of Conceptualism, ethnicity and Queer Culture. His curatorial work focuses on under-represented artists primarily in the queer and ethnic communities. His work is included as part of the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Santa Barbara Museum, National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, Illinois, among others.

Natania Meeker is an associate professor of French and comparative literature at the University of Southern California. She published Voluptuous Philosophy: Literary Materialism in the French Enlightenment with Fordham University Press in 2006. Her research and teaching interests include animated and animating plants, vegetal ontologies, plant art and media, materialisms old and new, feminist theory and thought, and the Enlightenment, broadly conceived. She was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques in 2017.

Natou Fall (moderator) is a Senegalese-American interdisciplinary visual artist and creative director working across sculpture, film, makeup artistry, and design. Her practice embraces notions of multiplicity, and glamour to embolden radical self acceptance, and challenge classical notions of beauty rooted in whiteness and heteronormativity.

Trained as an architect, Fall’s developed procedural techniques of layering, casting, assemblage, and digital techniques of collage, and illustration. After receiving a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Interior Architecture and Design from the George Washington University, she went on to receive a Master’s in Architecture from SCI-Arc. In September of 2019 she received the Frank and Bertha Gehry Prize for her graduate thesis installation Shaping Face.

Fall has been commissioned by brands like Sonos and Ami Colé, and worked on productions for performing artists Janelle Monae, and D’Smoke. She is currently design studio faculty at SCI-Arc, and working on projects in Los Angeles.

David Eskenazi (moderator) (he/him) leads d.esk, a practice based in Los Angeles, with current projects in California and Mexico. Alongside the practice, David writes and teaches, with publications in journals including Log, Project, Offramp, and Pidgin. He’s been awarded the League Prize from the Architectural League of New York, the Oberdick Fellowship at the University of Michigan, the LeFevre Fellowship at the Ohio State University, and was a MacDowell Fellow. David is currently a design studio and visual studies faculty member at SCI-Arc, where he recently organized the event A Queer Query.

This event is generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.