Transformative power of spatial memory: an interdisciplinary approach to space as performance

ABSTRACT

‘The Quest: Performing with the Ghost’ was an interdisciplinary four-day workshop that took place in the abandoned school of Nova Strašnicka Škola, in Prague, under the aegis of PQ 2019. It was mentored by three architects, two directors and a dramaturg and playwright, sharing different approaches to explore and develop performances based on the specific properties of the space. The workshop was prepared in advance, based on discussions and the sharing of ideas and concepts. Each mentor was allowed to present their approach with the participants and the end result was an interdisciplinary exhibition. This interdisciplinary approach promoted the discussion of different spatial methodologies and raised the awareness of the participants to the different physical, material, sensorial, phenomenological, emotional and performative approaches to space. In this article, we propose to systematize and present some of the different methods employed in the workshop. We will briefly give the theoretical framework of each exercise undertaken by the participants, and discuss their potentialities as tools for exploring, transforming and performing spatial events, allowing space to be seen as a performative agent, an inspiration, a tool or an event.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jorge Palinhos is a writer, dramaturg, scholar and researcher based in Portugal. His artistic works have been presented in Portugal, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Netherlands, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland and USA. His research interests have been Narrative, Drama, the intersection of Space and Drama, Social Practice and the intersection between performance, audiovisual and Digital Arts. He has been teaching at several higher education establishments on the topics of Dramaturgy and Writing.

Miljana Zeković, PhD, is an architectural design and theory professor at the University of Novi Sad, with her research interests in spatial design and practices, spatial phenomenology, transdiciplinary curatorial practices, and the interdisciplinary experiments in the domain of architecture and correlating disciplines. Her PhD thesis deals with the ephemeral and liminal phenomena.

Višnja Žugić, PhD, is an architect and a co-founder of several organizations focused on spatial design and research. She is working as an Assistant Professor in Architecture, at the University of Novi Sad, with her research interests in spatial performativity, site-specific practices and interdisciplinary methods of exploring and articulation of space.

Attila Antal is a freelance theatre and film director, composer and author. He has collaborated on performances and film with various theatres and artistic groups in Hungary, the former Yugoslav region, Romania, Germany, Sweden, Czech Republic and Pakistan. He received several awards as a director and composer in various festivals. He is currently working on his doctoral thesis “Political in the Post-Dramatic theatre: Comparative Study of Theatres in Hungary and the Former Yugoslav region” at the University of Theatre and Film in Budapest, where he is a lecturer since 2019 of the courses Viewpoints in Action, Devised Theatre and Bodies Naked, Politics Revealed.

Eric V. Dela Cruz is a transdisciplinary performance-maker and workshop designer. He is a faculty in the Theater Program in Benilde and a senior Artist-Teacher of the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA). He is the founder and Creative Navigator of TAXI (Theater. Applied. Experiential. Immersive), a transdisciplinary collaborative platform exploring innovative storytelling practices by engineering audience experiences to deliver unique theatrical experiences. His current research interest includes site-based sensorial performances, and theatre for inclusive and sustainable community development.

Notes

1 Ephemera Collective is a group of architects and spatial designers, based in Novi Sad, Serbia. See http://ephemeracollective.org/about/.

2 Defined by Miljana Zeković and Višnja Žugić in Zeković, Konstantinović and Žugić (2015, 153).

3 Understood both as a human characteristic and as a spatial capacity, memory of space is a starting phenomenological point of Ephemera’s interdisciplinary research. By claiming that ‘space remembers’, it is emphasized that once the action has taken place in a particular spatial framework, regardless of its inscribed ephemerality, it permanently changes that space.

4 Anthropomorphic measuring is a physical exercise in the delayering chain. Participants engage with space with their bodies in an attempt to determine all its dimensions through bodily constellations.

5 The stories were written in an educational context and are presented here in their original form. Thus, the identity of the authors is not revealed.

6 Since most shootings took place after nightfall, creative use of artificial light was encouraged in order to discover new qualities of the spaces.

7 Tarkovsky (1989) writes about time as the most significant component of film that makes it a specific and independent art form, and sculpting of time the most important job of the filmmaker. Using his thoughts from the opposite angle, the exercises address this inherent characteristic of moving images, thus we can observe and explore the action, the space, and the interaction between them.