The Funambulist
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The Funambulist is a print and online magazine dedicated to the politics of space and bodies. Every two months it proposes spatial perspectives on political, anticolonial, antiracist, queer, feminist, and/or anti-ableist struggles. It was initiated as an editorial project of the existing Funambulist blog and podcast. The production team currently comprises Léopold Lambert, Nadia El Hakim, Margarida Nzuzi Waco, and Carol Que. Lambert is a trained architect, a writer, and the founding editor of the Funambulist; his research focuses on the examination of the political violence enacted by architecture as the discipline that organizes bodies in space. El Hakim is an architect and exhibition designer researching mutations of the design process in the context of economic and political crisis in Europe and the Middle East. Waco is a business strategist mediating the intersection of publishing and architecture. Que is the magazine’s copy editor as well as a writer, researcher, and educator. The Funambulist has received four Graham Foundation grants.
Established 2015, Paris, France
Established 2015, Paris, France
Biennial Project
The Funambulist by Its Readers: Political Geographies from Chicago and Elsewhere, 2019Publication
Commissioned by the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial
Initiated in 2015 as a print and online magazine, The Funambulist understands architecture as a discipline that organizes bodies in space. Each issue takes up a particular topic—ranging from urbanism to clothing, in diverse geographies—and addresses it through the lens of architecture. The contributors thus take a uniquely spatial approach to questions of colonialism, racism, and capitalism in contemporary society, often foregrounding queer, trans, and feminist issues. For a special edition produced exclusively for the Chicago Architecture Biennial, The Funambulist invited twenty regular readers—many of them also contributors—to select the most politically useful texts from the publication’s first twenty-two issues. Additionally, The Funambulist asked five Chicago-based activists to write about their struggles in relation to the municipality, the police, gentrification, and the school system. The Funambulist by Its Readers: Political Geographies from Chicago and Elsewhere amplifies the voices of those working right now, on the ground, toward progress in the politics of space and bodies.
The Funambulist by Its Readers: Political Geographies from Chicago and Elsewhere is available at the Biennial bookstore, open daily from 12pm (noon) to 5pm.