Spatially organizing future genders: An artistic intervention in the creation of a hir-toilet

Abstract

Toilets, a neglected facility in the study of human relations at work and beyond, have become increasingly important in discussions about future experiences of gender diversity. To further investigate the spatial production of gender and its potential expressions, we transformed a unisex single-occupancy toilet at Uppsala University into an all-gender or ‘hir-toilet’.1 With the aim to disrupt and expose the dominant spatial organization of the two binary genders, we inaugurated the hir-toilet with the help of a performance artist. We describe and analyse internal and external responses thereto, using Lefebvre’s work on dialectics and space. Focusing on how space is variously lived, conceived and perceived, our analysis questions the very rationale of gender categorizations. The results contribute to a renewed critique of binary thinking in the organization of workplaces by extending our understanding of how space and human relations mutually constitute each other.

The Topographical Imagination: Space and organization theory

“…Gender binaries are created through the performance of everyday placing in office space, and these placings continue to polarize human relations through the repetitious recitation of spatially enabled and expressed norms. (Skoglund and Holt, 2020) At its most telling and intense the spatial enactment of material and social facts governs the very nature of subjectification and subjectivity, as opposed to being one expression of such. One study making this apparent is Martin's (2003) analysis of Mies van de Rohe's Seagram building in New York.…”

“…Gender binaries are created through the performance of everyday placing in office space, and these placings continue to polarize human relations through the repetitious recitation of spatially enabled and expressed norms. (Skoglund and Holt, 2020)…”

“…We find some attempts in organizational spatial studies to respond to this call by tracing how what can be perceived, experienced and expressed is spatially reconfigured through artistic interventions (Beyes, 2010; Beyes & Steyaert, 2013), for example the use of performance art in the creation of a ‘hir’ or all-gender toilet (Skoglund & Holt, 2020). Likewise, by way of thinking of the sensory and affective registers of spacing through the notion of atmosphere – yet another promising concept of organization theory’s spatial turn – Michels and Steyaert (2017) follow a musical intervention, a ‘guerrilla concert’, into the streets and squares of the urban everyday.…”

“…Second , we can only note in passing (in concluding) that studies such as those by Skoglund and Holt (2020), Nash (2018), O’Doherty (2013), Beyes and Steyaert (2012) and Sheller and Urry (2006) explicitly thematize and discuss the methodological implications of taking spacing seriously as a matter of concern that is invariably beyond (full) representation. Arguably, we would not be able to speak of organization theory’s topographical imagination if it would leave unturned the methods and procedures of how organizational sites are approached, configured and written.…”

“…A body of work is emerging acknowledging the intimacy between space and organization. This association is at its most apparent in studies of the spatial settings of work place architecture (Burrell & Dale, 2003; Kornberger & Clegg, 2004; Wasserman & Frenkel, 2011), yet it has also led to inquiries into different sites of organizing such as the city (Michels & Steyaert, 2017; Nash, 2018), festivals (Toraldo & Islam, 2019), hubs (Cnossen & Bencherki, 2018) and stairwells and toilets (Shortt, 2015; Skoglund & Holt, 2020). Heralded as the ‘spatial turn’ in organization theory (Beyes & Steyaert, 2012), this heterogeneous body of work is marked by a distinct topographical imagination (Weigel, 2009).…”