SPACE, TRANSVERSAL:
DINNER AT THE ROUNDABOUT / CƠM TỐI Ở NGÃ SÁU BY EXUTOIRE
DINNER AT THE ROUNDABOUT / CƠM TỐI Ở NGÃ SÁU BY EXUTOIRE
August weather in Hanoi is extra hot and extra humid. The air is unbearably thick and heavy. We’re going through an intense heat wave—a period of oi weather—with unexpected, powerful torrential rains. After a deluge of changes in time schedules, attempting to avoid that haphazard early evening downpour, we finally decided, at the very last minute, on a date to organize our dinner at/inside a roundabout. This idea came from the discussions around transversality and space that we started just a couple of weeks ago. But why a dinner? Why a roundabout? What’s transversal about it?
To begin with, we understood “transversality” as a deliberately queer point of view, an intersectional method to think beyond systems and norms. This thought originated in the definition of a transversal (noun) as a line that intersects a system of (often straight, parallel) lines, which alludes to an established, normative order. The transversal comes in obliquely, subversively, turbulently, indicating a movement that questions the predefined “forward” direction.
We’ve known ba-bau for more than a year now, and the question of setting up and running a space (for knowledge exchange and community building) has animated many of our conversations. That common interest has led us to investigate what transversality means in spatial terms. In short, we wanted to create a temporary transversal space out of an existing public space in the city, one that shall be constructed through occupation, use, enactment, or performance.
As suggested by ba-bau, we quickly identified the roundabout as a possible site: a physical device with a strong visual presence, yet no spatial character. While site-scouting in Hanoi, the “Hào Nam roundabout” (as we call it) was the first location proposed. It actually doesn’t have a name nor an address, two parameters often deemed necessary to indicate a place. Here, the roundabout becomes a spatial metaphor of transversality: both an intersection between streets, mediating the meeting of the city’s circulation axes, and an elusive site for appropriation, capable of generating new imaginaries about urban space.
The idea of a dinner came about naturally, as eating and drinking are often the pretext of our gatherings. For us, food has a centripetal force, pulling people together; it combines necessity and pleasure, and is a catalyst for intimate interpersonal exchanges. To share a meal with someone means building a sense of safe space, trust, and conviviality. It is also an everyday gesture, something low-threshold, familiar, comforting. This caring act of sharing softens the discomfort and strangeness of the event.
In reality, what we thought would be a casual happening turned into an intricate enterprise. Interestingly, access to the inside of a roundabout is not permitted in Vietnam: it is considered a traffic disruption. Nonetheless, negotiating rules and regulations is commonplace when it comes to utilizing “public space”, a fact that convinced us to go ahead with our plans. Ultimately, the dinner turned out to be a challenge, a transgression, a dissident experiment that taught us how to navigate the effects of spatial norms on our bodies and minds.
To help ourselves find safety in such an exposed, ‘foreign’ place, we designed our own physical-spatial support: a set of lacquered stools and tables, made by artisans from a craft village in the south of Hanoi. As foldable and portable pieces, they brought a flexible dimension to the space, echoing what happens on sidewalks around the city. Despite the attention we attracted from passersby, our shared presence provided each other with a feeling of comfort and reassurance. Next to that, other traces of occupation gradually appeared as the dinner unfolded, proving that we were not the first users of this theoretically unusable space.
Through this collaborative project, we want to bring an explicit story about the possibility and feasibility of a transversal space to the fore—not only as a countercurrent to the norm but, more importantly, a liberatory ideal in its own right. The temporary bodily occupation of the space, the artifacts it involved (furniture, food, lighting, cameras, etc.), and the intentions that shaped the event became instrumental tools for enacting a new socio-spatial scenario for Hào Nam roundabout. Our friendship, our discussion, and the dinner we shared, define a method of queering (public) space: prompting a momentary sense of belonging and co-ownership.
After the meal, we left the space as we found it: empty but full of potential. Around us, a busy six-street intersection with vehicles coming and going from virtually every direction, the glary electric lights from restaurants nearby, the walls of a closed down gas station since a fire that happened four years ago. Resounding in our ears, the noise of Vietnam’s first metro line, gliding upon the unmissable concrete superstructure that defines Hanoi’s new urbanscape, going in and out of Cát Linh station.
A space is not transversal by design. Transversality is the people and conditions that make the space, and the possibilities it offers. Transversality can be felt at ba-bau’s space on Thợ Nhuộm street, in the stewardship of the collective, in the care, maintenance, and programming of the space. Transversality is also visible in Exutoire’s work, in the collaborative approach to creating platforms for discourse and knowledge production. Transversality is a situated, kind, collective, critical, versatile, emancipatory, regenerative practice of space.