Twelfth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

Whether providing safety for 19th century women to safely access economic opportunities to the radical transformations in London’s fabric brought on by migrant workers, domestic architecture has always performed its role as an unseen backdrop to the design of desire for queer, racialized, and female-identifying individuals. With the emergence of content subscription services like OnlyFans and JustForFans in tandem with economic changes brought on by global lockdowns over the past years, this labour has moved deeper into the home — into bedrooms and bathrooms across the world. Today, these spaces are modulated by even more prosthetics and appendages that turn everyday interiors into theatrical production stages, an entire erotic landscape of cell phones, ring lights and grip tight tri-pods. This paper examines the largely unconsidered emergence of armatures of media production such a ring lights, tripods and more in the context of the domestic interior arising in tandem with the emergence of content subscription services like OnlyFans and JustForFans. Centering on a selection of primarily queer content creators and actors, I will leverage both their formal products — videos, clips and films — as well images displayed on respective social media accounts to consider the manifold ways these new objects are assisting in a greater process of choreographing the domestic interior. The objective of this analysis is to speculate that these devices have created another strategy of organizing the domestic realm, one oriented to the production of life defined by and orientated towards the gaze of the camera.