marko jobst

Prof Catharina Gabrielsson (KTH Stockholm) and I have an edited volume coming out later this year. The title is Instituting Worlds: Architecture and Islands, and it sets the ground for a cross-disciplinary exchange between island studies and architecture. I am also currently part of an exciting creative project initiated by colleagues from the University of Greenwich, Dr Caroline Robourdin and Dr Katarina Stenke, which brings together architects, artists, historians and theorists in an exploration of the concept of conviviality. It is a transdisciplinary work that challenges standard writerly outputs and foregrounds collaboration. 

 I am fond of the chapter I wrote for Queering Architecture: Methods, Practices, Spaces, Pedagogies, a volume I co-edited with Prof Naomi Stead (RMIT Melbourne), titled ‘Queering Architectural History: Anomalous Histories and Historiographies of the Baroque’. The mischievous part of me enjoys this chapter’s unruly nature – after covering some reasonable theoretical ground in relation to the Baroque and queer theory, it abruptly shifts focus and launches off on a bit of a tangent by relating to more performative piece of writing centred on Belgrade (and its ‘mythical’ Baroque). Not a method I recommend to my students! 

 I am going to anticipate here, rather than reflect on past experiences, by saying that I am looking forward to seeing ‘Flora Yukhnovich and François Boucher: The Language of the Rococo’, which is at The Wallace Collection in London.  

 Difficult question! I am not sure there is a collaboration aspect to this, but I am a big fan of novelist M. John Harrison’s writing and would love to see him involved with architecture… 

I would like to bring my various interests in unorthodox writerly methods into a tighter constellation of research and practice. The notion of fiction will likely offer common ground for this. 

 Again, this is something I am excited to start reading but haven’t yet: QueerBeograd Cabaret: A Shared Space between Queer, Anti-Facism and No Borders Politics, by Ivana Marjanović. 

I am interested in the changes taking place in Belgrade, Serbia (where I am originally from) as a result of the influx of Ukrainians and Russians fleeing war. I will be making contacts and having conversations this summer with the aim of possibly developing work around the subject. This may or may not end up related to the question of what ‘queer’ means in non-anglophone contexts…