ABSTRACT
This account explores the idea of inclusive placemaking through the lens of a monument dedicated to sexual and gender (i.e. LGBT) minorities on the basis of a conversation with Thijs Bartels, the author of Dancing on the Homomonument (2003). The Amsterdam-based Homomonument (1987) consists of three pink granite triangles, together forming a larger triangle, which in the conception of the designer, Karin Daan, reflect the past, present, and future. This tripartite triangle design is carried through in Bartels’ monograph and is also extrapolated in three conversational Acts in the pages of the account in hand. The Acts question how the Homomonument, about 30 years on, has opened up the space for putting LGBT minorities in place, pursuing inclusivity beyond symbology, and imagining inclusive alternatives. This account reveals queer placemaking through the dialogical questioning, or ‘que(e)ring,’ of the monument’s ‘stone matter’ in contexts of ‘lived matter’: memories of past and present experience of inclusionary vis-à-vis exclusionary processes and realities. It concludes that queer placemaking entails an extensive intersectional commitment and investment of hope in a perpetual social justice project.
