19 February 2021
A display of pride flags in Montreal's gay district.
Let’s take back our disco
Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA), Montréal, CA
Using a dance floor to create an anti-patriarchy dataset of the human body in public space, inspired by Marianne Wex project ‘Let’s Take Back Our Space’.
In 1977, Marianne Wex presented her photographic study “Let’s Take Back Our Space. Female and Male Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures”. For Montréal’s Nuit Blanche in 2024, the Canadian Centre for Architecture invited Daily tous les jours to revisit her work.
Context
The work of Marianne Wex, temporarily exhibited in the CCA galleries as part of the exhibition Lives of Documents – Photography as a Project, invites us to explore questions of representation relating to body diversity in public spaces. The different poses and gestures assumed by figures in the images highlight how gender norms developed in patriarchal societies structure the everyday expressions and movements of body language.
Why does Marianne Wex’s work still resonate so strongly today?
If we examine the human scan datasets that fuel artificial intelligence, it becomes clear that stereotypical depictions continue to reinforce patriarchal structures today and into the future. We understand how these depictions have negative repercussions on equity, especially for communities that are falsely represented or simply forgotten, leading to further marginalization by algorithms.
Can a dance floor help counter the patriarchal bias of algorithms?
Disco dance floors were historically known to liberate from the rigid codes of conduct in everyday public space for marginalised communities. Still today, they are a refuge where we can express ourselves fully. Can self-invention, experimentation and communion from the dance floor challenge machines’ patriarchal bias?
For Montreal’s Nuit blanche, we set up a photobooth to revisit Wex’s work with a disco angle, creating a new dataset aiming to change algorithms’ gender perception, one dance move at a time.
Credits
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- A project by Daily tous les jours
- Artistic direction
- Mouna Andraos
- Melissa Mongiat
- Design team
- Michael Carosello
- Technical direction
- Manuel Acevedo Civantos
- A big thank you to
- Giovanna Borasi, Émilie Retailleau, Pedro, Sébastien, Alex, Elias
