“I find myself returning to the appeal of in-between spaces, thresholds and envelopes, of movement, departing and arriving, and dynamic errors with spatial implications such as leaning, slipping, disorientating, deviating, and blurring. These are characteristics tied to queerness which complicate binary notions such as inside-outside, self-other, the familiar-the strange.”
Extract from Rainbow Palace (2022) p.12, informed by thoughts from Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism (2020) and Fanny Söderbäck, Liminal Spaces: Reflections on the In-Between (2017).
Rainbow Palace speaks about feminist science fiction, in-between states, architecture, shifting experiences of space throughout the pandemic and the opening potential of queerness. The text combines personal experiences and observations of specific spaces – the interior of an aeroplane and a one-bedroom apartment in Bergen, Norway – with a broader reflection on how history, heteronormativity and power structures are embedded in architecture and architectural practice. Through a parallel analysis of The Four Profound Weaves (2020) by R. B. Lemburg feminist science fiction is introduced as a tool for architectural critique. Rainbow Palace assembles and blurs theory, fiction and personal narratives in order to find new meanings.
Rainbow Palace is a text-based project that has been presented in various formats, as printed and online publications, performative readings and video work. Rainbow Palace was published by Karmaklubb* in March 2022 with a launch at Kiosken in Bergen, Norway. While in development, it was shown at PRAKSIS 18 Perfection/Speculation in Oslo, Open Out Festival 2021 Border/Lines in Tromsø and METEOR 2021 International Theatre Festival in Bergen.
Maike Statz (b.1992 Sydney) is an artist and interior architect educated in The Netherlands and Australia, now living in Bergen, Norway. Through her work Maike is engaged in the influence of architecture on individuals and society, focusing on the relationship between gender, sexuality and space. Working with writing, performance and installation she makes use of architectural tools and methodologies, questioning how history is embedded in our various architectures and what power dynamics are at play. Focusing on specific interior elements, such as furniture and textiles, Maike reflects on their philosophical and practical meanings as well as processes of production.
Maike completed a MA in Interior Architecture with Studio for Immediate Spaces at Sandberg Instituut, Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam NL in 2019. She recently co-founded NOGOODS with Danja Burchard, a moving project and studio space between art, architecture and performance in Bergen, Norway. Together they are developing the magazine BIAS (Bodies in Architecture/Structures) and co-curating the artistic research project Dissident Publics: Future Artefacts of Queer Methodologies together with Exutoire at ROM for kunst og arkitektur in Oslo.
I would describe my practice as a research-based artistic and spatial practice. Through this practice I’ve been inspired by practices of site-writing, auto-theory and assemblage. I’ve adapted methods of site-writing in my work as a way to speak about my own situatedness and reflect on the importance of architecture to recognise the multiplicity of experiences and identities it holds. I hosted a Table Writing Workshop at NOGOODS in Bergen May 2022, where participants responded to prompts, focusing on kitchen and dining tables, memory, materiality, situatedness and experience of space. I’m interested in such assemblages of site-writing from multiple perspectives.
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (New York, USA, 1969).
Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology, Orientations, Objects, Others, (Durham, USA, 2006).
Katarina Bonnevier, Behind Straight Curtains: Towards a Queer Feminist Theory of Architecture (Stockholm, Sweden, 2007).
