Photo by Alex Woodward Unbuilding Gender: Trans* Anarchitectures In and Beyond the Work of Gordon Matta-Clark In this present talk, Jack Halberstam looks towards anarchitectural practices of unmaking as promulgated by the American artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978) and links the ideas of unbuilding and creative destruction that characterize his work to develop a queer concept of anarchitecture focused upon the trans* body . The concept of “anarchitecture” is attributed mainly to Matta-Clark, whose inventive site-specific cuts into abandoned buildings demonstrated an approach to the concept of home and to the market system of real estate that was anarchistic, creatively destructive, and full of queer promise. Of course, this is not to say that Matta-Clark nor any of the participants in the Anarchitecture group that he helped to found in downtown Manhattan in 1973 and ’74 would have understood their work in this sense. Rather, we might take up the challenge offered by Matta-Clark’s anarchitectural projects, in order to spin contemporary conversations about queer and trans* politics away from notions of respectability and inclusion and towards an anti-political orientation to unmaking a world within which queers and trans people, homeless people and immigrants are cast as problems for the neoliberal state. About Jack Halberstam Jack Halberstam is Professor of Gender Studies and English at Columbia University. Halberstam is the author of six books including: Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (Duke UP, 1995), Female Masculinity (Duke UP, 1998), In A Queer Time and Place (NYU Press, 2005), The Queer Art of Failure (Duke UP, 2011) and Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal (Beacon Press, 2012) and, most recently, a short book titled Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variance (University of California Press). Halberstam is currently working on several projects including a book titled WILD THING: QUEER THEORY AFTER NATURE on queer anarchy, performance and protest culture the intersections between animality, the human and the environment. Jack Halberstam is the recipient of the 2018 Arcus/Places Prize for innovative public scholarship on gender, sexuality, and the built environment, a collaboration between the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley and Places, supported by the Arcus Endowment. This lecture is based on Jack Halberstam's forthcoming Places Journal article. This lecture is sponsored by the Arcus Endowment, and it is part of the Fall 2018 Berkeley Architecture Lecture Series. Open to all! IMAGE: Gordon Matta-Clark, Splitting, 1974. Silver dye bleach print (Cibachrome), 30 x 40 inches. © The Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of The Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark and David Zwirner