Building straight

Artist group ak28 presents Canopus today at Liljevalchs. I'm all for examining structures of power and oppression even in unexpected phenomena, but a whole fanzine about gay architecture seems to me like a case of identity activism gone over board.

Along the lines of the American debate on gender oppression in public spaces, Canopus sets out to prove the existence of wide spread elements of gay architecture in society, and ends up with three issues examining the phenomenon of glory holes.

Fanzine author Pablo Bernard explains that ”gay architecture is evidently presented in the urban landscape, and it can be detected - its essence implicit - in the way people interact with the structures around them and evaluate these in bourgeois terms of comfort and well-being."

I think that’s overinterpreting the state of things, to say the least.