Graduate Program in Media + Modernity | Princeton University

soft resistance collective

"house of differences — making home in displacement”
[Responses by Janus Lafontaine Carboni, and NOMAS representatives Favor Idika, Jayda Muhammad]

Tuesday, April 15, 2025 @5pm ET

N202 Second Floor Gallery (School of Architecture)


DINNER DINNER DINNER — Join us for a special event in the Media + Modernity Lecture Series, presented in collaboration with Princeton NOMAS. Held in the second-floor gallery, this gathering will feature a shared dinner in a more convivial setting designed to encourage conversation and exchange.


Practices of queer homemaking in displacement can act as resistance against hetero-patriarchal norms, thereby critiquing power structures, and committing to alternative modes of living. In conversation with historical and contemporary queer communes and individuals living in China, Italy, and the diaspora, our research documented memories, labor, and intangible layers of homemaking. Testing these strategies at a vacant villa of ETH Zurich, we transformed the institutional space into a domestic one by queering space and furniture. This talk will offer insight into both the research methodologies and the collective living practice, presented through a fiction book and a short film.

soft resistance collective works at the intersection of art and architecture. Through collective drawing, writing, filmmaking, and space-making, they frame the daily acts of displaced queer bodies as conscious homemaking strategies. For them, softness and queerness are political means to envision alternatives to the normative home.

Qianer Zhu (b. 1995) is a feminist killjoy exploring the intersection of decolonial, feminist, and queer theories through grassroots initiatives and activism. Based in between Zurich and Shanghai and trained at Tsinghua, ETH, and Harvard GSD, her work has been presented at MIT Shift+W, Venice Biennale, trans magazine, among others.

Giacomo Rossi (b. 1997) is an architect, researcher, and curator based in Switzerland and Italy. Trained in Mendrisio and ETH, he co-founded Unmasking Space and is exploring architecture as an agent of empowerment in relation to labor, activism, and the environment. He collaborated with the CCA, Kunsthalle Zurich, Triennale Milano, among others. 

Filémon Brault-Archambeault (b. 1999) is an artist based in Tiothià:ke/Montréal whose practice examines sexuality, memory and world-making. Their video work has screened at festivals worldwide, notably Images and FIFA. They have also founded À Flots Magazine and worked as a curator for Art Matters.
 

Janus Lafontaine Carboni (she/they) is an architect, educator and researcher crafting queer and trans* architectural histories through fleshy, oral and embodied infrastructures. They are SNSF postdoctoral fellow at Princeton, attempting to trace heterogeneous historiographies of queer and trans* architectures of love in Berlin and NYC throughout the AIDS crisis. 

Favor Idika (they/them) is a second year M.Arch candidate whose research focuses on Black+Queer spatiality, sound composition, the interaction between soundscapes and landscapes, and the spatial qualities of horror audio. 

Jeyda Muhammad is a third year M.Arch candidate in Princeton’s School of Architecture. Her work examines intersections of community space, cultural modality, and spaces of resistance.



 Co-organized with Princeton NOMAS, and cosponsored by the GSG Events Board and the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. 


 

M+M strives to make everyone feel welcome. If you are concerned that Betts Auditorium will not provide adequate physical accommodation for you, please contact us in advance to discuss it.