My name is Thomas Stempka, and throughout my life I have been called an artist, a designer and a destroyer. I studied architecture and drawing, but ended up studying a Master in Spatial Strategies at the Kunstuniversität Linz and a Master in Advanced Design Studies at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona.
With one eye looking to the past and the other to the future, I have fallen more times than I would like to admit, but luckily I have discovered that the ground beneath my feet is an inspiring place. The asphalt world has informed my works, which search for the meaning, the contradictions, the beauty and the destruction between the layers of the concept of the city.
My thesis plays with the idea of ‘Queer Urbanism’- does it already exist, is it necessary, can it be built from a scratch or does it only work as a reconstruction? Is it just an advertising illusion to sell apartments? By dissecting and assembling the queer theory, artistic interventions and urbanism, I hope to arrive towards the satisfactory non-answer to some of the questions that are on my mind, and to enjoy the drift.