The Department of Sexual Revolutions Studies - Workshop Bunk

Week four - Bunk

Laws against so called ‘lewd acts’, designed to prevent sex in public, leaves sexuality for the most part contingent on access to private property. Meanwhile, both marriage and legal protections against sexual violence remain bound up in women-as-property laws. The shared domestic space therefore functions at once as a surveillance system which reinforces social norms, and a private harbour for intimate partner violence. In public and private, from the domestic bed to the public toilets, we will examine how architecture, interior furniture, and other designed objects become instructive scripts for sexual activity.

The Department of Sexual Revolutions Studies

The Department of Sexual Revolutions Studies is a collaboration between the Van Abbemuseum and the Design Academy Eindhoven, lead by Eimear Walshe as part of the Deviant Practice Research Programme. The department is a new learning platform invested in critical enquiry on the subject of sexual revolution in art, design and visual culture. The public are invited to join the five weekly sessions at the Van Abbemuseum.
Combining the interests and methodologies of queer theory and gender studies, it also seeks to emphasise the legacy of sexual revolution outside of Europe and America. Rather than a focus solely on the liberalisation of attitudes around sexual practices, it will look at examples of antagonism, transgression, inversion and repression as moments which reveal power and inequality. The department has a particular interest in strategies which wield sexuality as a force for social change, from ‘sex strikes’ to ‘kiss-ins’, whether through the power of its visibility, or the threat of its absence. In each session we will ask: how can contemporary sexual practices help us to better understand the relationship between sexuality and society today, including issues such as politics, housing, and technology?