The bathhouse is safe.
The bathhouse is not secure.
The bathhouse is a space to be seen.
The bathhouse is not a place to be watched.
The bathhouse is sensual.
The bathhouse is not unspiritual.
The bathhouse is a space for meaningful work.
The bathhouse is not a workplace.
The bathhouse is a technology.
The bathhouse is not a machine.
The bathhouse is immersive.
The bathhouse is not without a body.
The bathhouse is sweating.
The bathhouse is not drained.
The bathhouse is gone.
The bathhouse is not over.
"The Bathhouse" is a yet-to-exist space, generated through a set of (false) dichotomies , core questions, reflections and exercises. The characteristics of The Bathhouse are drawn from the "Queer/Bath/House Research Project" - A research project conceived of by Amina Ross, carried forward with artist and summer research assistant Bao Nguyen. "Queer/Bath/House Research Project" took place during the height of the covid-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020.
The Bathhouse is the Continental Baths in New York, the troglodytic town of Pantalica in Greece, the Schokofabrik in Berlin, Pedra de Xangô in Bahia, Man's Country in Chicago, the stepwell of Chand Baori in Rajasthan, the mycorrhizal network beneath a forest.
Each of the thought exercises above will be released asynchronously as a series of publications
in
print and/or online. A series of 8 publications in total.
Issue #1 - forthcoming December 2021
"What is the bathhouse?...The bathhouse is a space to be seen. The bathhouse is not a place to be watched."
Issue #1 will be released in conjunction with "Man’s Country," an exhibition by artist Amina Ross at Iceberg Projects in Chicago, IL
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Each publication is a blueprint, a simulator, a thought experiment. An exercise in imagining an "Elsewhere" inspired by a sprawling set of places that did or do exist. These spaces are sometimes literally subterranean, underground, spaces for collective being-together, exploration of self and other and transformation on the spiritual and social planes. These places exist at the intersection of the spiritual, the sexual, the sacred, the profane, the personal and the political.