How can performance create and transform places of urban renewal and regeneration? What does performance contribute to the creation of community? These are some of the questions addressed in this study of the relationship of performance to urban space.
Marrying theory with a series of international case studies of performance practice and interviews with practitioners, this interdisciplinary study examines how space is performatively produced to create a sense of ‘placeness’.
Offering multiple perspectives on space and place, this book investigates the connections between space and the construction of social and cultural narratives. It focuses on the multiple ways performative actions produce space, including theatre, installations, site-specific work, visual arts and digital performance.
Combining interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary performance, architecture and digital media studies, this study builds on a clear theoretical framework that draws on the work of Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Henri Lefevre, Richard Schechner, Hans-Thies Lehmann, Lev Manovich and Slavoj Žižek. It offers themed sections comprising theory, studies of practice and interviews with practitioners. Case studies include site-specific work by Catalan collective La Fura Dels Baus, Barcelona, Spain, the Prague Quadrennial, community engagement in Praça Roosevelt in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the Portland Inn Project in Stoke-on-Trent, UK, Campo de la Cebada in Madrid, Spain, and digital spaces created by artists in India and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
List of Plates Acknowledgements Foreword, Javier Ruiz Sánchez (Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain) Introduction: From Place to Placeness Chapter 1. The Performative Origins of Civitas Palimpsest and the Urban Realm Policy-making and Place-making Civic Identities Urban Curating and Public Spaces Interviews Sodja Lotker / Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design (Prague Czech Republic) Jenny Peevers / Re: connections (Birmingham. UK) Chapter 2. Spatial Dramaturgy Space and Narratives Genius Loci Embodying Placeness as a Performative Event Space for Storytelling Site – Street Theatre Interviews Group theatre La Fura dels Baus (Barcelona, Spain) Rodolfo Garcia Vazquez (Os Satyros, Sao Paulo, Brazil) Chapter 3. Placemaking and Performative Urban Pedagogies Spatial Justice and Social Sustainability in Performative Placemaking Communities and the Process of Making a Place Placeness for Collective Memories Performative Urban Practices as a Pedagogical Tool: the RSVP Cycles Interviews Collective Zuloark/ El mercado de la Cebada (Madrid, Spain) Anna Francis/ The Portland Inn project (Stoke-on-Trent, UK) Chapter 4. Digital Placeness Placeness and Social Media The Matrix and Duality of Digital Space Digital Production of Performance Space Digital Practices Digital Space as Artificial Inelegance Interviews Sumit La Roy . The Art of Facing Fear (Kolkata, India). Vladimir Vlacina. I Remember (Prijedor, Bosnia I Herzegovina) Conclusion: Post Placeness Bibliography Index
Aleksandar Sasha Dundjerovic is Professor of Performing Arts at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University, UK and and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Performative Arts (CIPA). María José Martínez Sánchez is Professor of Architecture and Associate Dean for Research in Scot Sutherland School of Architecture and Built Environment, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK.
Reviews for Placeness and the Performative Production of Space
This is a fascinating study of the interaction of performative practice and its impact on public space - a must read for site-specific artists, urban planners and curators. * Kathleen Irwin, University of Regina, Canada *
