Design Map · Eindhoven
we “other victorians”
Graduation project by Frank d. van Beek at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
‘we “other Victorians”’ questions whether queer cruising can still be understood as a revolutionary practice within contemporary north-western Europe, where gestures once shaped by violent repression have become institutionalised, aestheticised and increasingly tokenised. Drawing on archival research, autotheory and autofiction, the project reappraises the subversive potential of cruising through performance, treating the body as a site where collective memory, alienation and queer futurity converge.
The work unfolds as a three-act performance with two performers and a metronome, whose changing rhythm dictates the choreography. Movable aluminium screens with reflective surfaces are continuously reconfigured through waltzing. Instead of documenting the performance, the installation preserves only its traces in the form of the discarded costumes that remain unwashed, carrying the physical residue of each performance. Rather than preserving queer history as a fixed narrative, the work asks how queer communities inherit, perform and transform the ghosts of liberation.a