Kinds of Place at Bore Place: Site-Specific Performance and the Rules of Spatial Behaviour

2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Wilkie

Following her survey of site-specific performance companies and their understanding of their work and its circumscriptions in NTQ70, Fiona Wilkie here proposes that places as such can be characterized in terms of differing sets of rules in dialogue with one another. She examines one place in particular in order to suggest some principles for approaching site-specific performance. Various spatial experiences – visual, physical, and mythical – are read through a range of attempts to theorize our relationships with space (including Foucault's heterotopia and de Certeau's pedestrian tactics). Moving away from more mundane examples of site ‘dos’ and ‘don'ts’, Fiona Wilkie expands the notion of spatial rules to develop two related concepts – the repertoire and the inner rule – that offer complex ways of imagining and articulating the rule-bound site. Finally, she suggests that site-specific performance meanings emerge out of a process of negotiation between three sets of rules: those of the site, the performance, and the spectators. Fiona Wilkie is currently completing a PhD thesis (provisionally entitled Constructing Meaning/Performing Place: Site-Specific Performance in Contemporary Britain) at the University of Surrey, from which article is drawn.

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 355-368
Author(s):  
Victoria Bianchi

This article explores how performance and character can be used to represent the lives of real women in spaces of heritage. It focuses on two different site-specific performances created by the author in the South Ayrshire region of Scotland: CauseWay: The Story of the Alloway Suffragettes and In Hidden Spaces: The Untold Stories of the Women of Rozelle House. These were created with a practice-as-research methodology and aim to offer new models for the use of character in site-specific performance practice. The article explores the variety of methods and techniques used, including verbatim writing, spatial exploration, and Herstorical research, in order to demonstrate the ways in which women’s narratives were represented in a theoretically informed, site-specific manner. Drawing on Phil Smith’s mythogeography, and responding to Laurajane Smith’s work on gender and heritage, the conflicting tensions of identity, performance, and authenticity are drawn together to offer flexible characterization as a new model for the creation of feminist heritage performance. Victoria Bianchi is a theatre-maker and academic in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow. Her work explores the relationship between space, feminism, and identity. She has written and performed work for the National Trust for Scotland, Camden People’s Theatre, and Assembly at Edinburgh, among other institutions.


2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Wilkie

Who is producing site-specific performance in Britain? Who sees it? Where do these performances occur, or, more particularly, ‘take place’? What tools are used to construct a performance of place? Why is the site-specific mode chosen? And, crucially, how is it variously defined? Drawing on a survey of British practitioners conducted between November 2000 and December 2001, Fiona Wilkie sets out to explore these questions. While pointing to the wide variety of practices that might be delineated by the term ‘site-specific’, she analyzes the implications of such generalizations as can be made – about the types of performance site chosen, the effects of funding policy on the character of work being made, the possibilities for identifying a ‘site-specific’ audience, and the debates surrounding the terminology itself. Fiona Wilkie is currently completing a PhD at the University of Surrey, on which this article is based, which aims to develop a theoretical model for site-specific performance, with particular reference to the spectatorial role.


2010 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Kloetzel

Site-specific performance relies on the terms space and place as markers for discussing a performance's engagement with a site. However, practitioners and researchers are often disgruntled by the limitations such terms impose upon site-specific performance – as was Melanie Kloetzel, in the creation of The Sanitastics, a site-specific dance film created in the Calgary Walkway System. In this article, Kloetzel examines how theorists have struggled with space and place in the last four decades and how bringing in the perspective of the body allows us to reassess our assumptions about these terms. As she analyzes her creative process, she discovers the restrictions as well as possibilities in space and place, but she also notes the need for Marc Augé's idea of non-place to clarify her site-specific efforts in the homogenized, corporate landscape of the Walkway System. Kloetzel is an associate professor at the University of Calgary and the artistic director of kloetzel&co, a dance company founded in New York City in 1997 that has presented work across North America. Her site-specific films have been shown in Brazil, Belgium, Canada, and the United States, and her anthology with Carolyn Pavlik, Site Dance: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternative Spaces, was published by the University Press of Florida in 2009.


2004 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-191
Author(s):  
Scott Magelssen

This essay is a reflection on the site-specific performance You are Here, created by Charles Campbell and Steve Epley on the roof of the University of Minnesota Tate Lab of Physics in May 2002. Scott Magelssen treats the production within the context of the previous site-specific work of Campbell and Epley, and their Minneapolis-based theatre company Skewed Visions, exploring the project's themes of knowledge-production and memory, the company's unique use of space, and the actor-object mode of performance. Scott Magelssen is Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts at Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, where he teaches theatre history and dramaturgy, advises the student-run experimental theatre group, and occasionally directs productions. His current research focuses on the performative and historiographic practices employed by outdoor ‘living history’ museums in Europe and the US.


2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 665-666
Author(s):  
Mirosław Chorazewski

Abstract It is with great sadness that we inform our readers about the recent death of Professor Stefan Ernst. Stefan Ernst was born in Piaśniki, Upper Silesia, on November 03, 1934, to parents of Polish-German descent. His primary education started during the war at a German-speaking school in Wirek and continued in Olesno, where he also got his secondary education. As chemistry studies were not yet available at the University ofWrocław in 1953, he started studying biology and switched to chemistry a year later. He received his master’s degree in chemistry in 1959, as one of the first graduates in that major. Then, he started his work on application of thermodynamics and molecular acoustics in investigation of liquid phases under the guidance of the Prof. Bogusława Jeżowska-Trzebiatowska. On 28 November 1967, he defended his PhD thesis entitled “Association-Dissociation Equilibria and the Structure of Uranyl Compounds in Organic Solvents” at the University of Wrocław. Professor Stefan Ernst was a linguist, a polyglot, a renowned thermodynamisist and a researcher of molecular acoustics. With great regret and shock we have learned of his sudden and unexpected death on August 03, 2014, in a hospital in Kraków.


2005 ◽  
Vol 81 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 148-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Lynn Wood ◽  
Carl G. Enfield ◽  
Felipe P. Espinoza ◽  
Michael Annable ◽  
Michael C. Brooks ◽  
...  

2005 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 367-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Hunter

In this article, Victoria Hunter explores the concept of the ‘here and now’ in the creation of site-specific dance performance, in response to Doreen Massey's questioning of the fixity of the concept of the ‘here and now’ during the recent RESCEN seminar on ‘Making Space’, in which she challenged the concept of a singular fixed ‘present’, suggesting instead that we exist in a constant production of ‘here and nows’ akin to ‘being in the moment’. Here the concept is applied to an analysis of the author's recent performance work created as part of a PhD investigation into the relationship between the site and the creative process in site-specific dance performance. In this context the notion of the ‘here and now’ is discussed in relation to the concept of dance embodiment informed by the site and the genius loci, or ‘spirit of place’. Victoria Hunter is a Lecturer in Dance at the University of Leeds, who is currently researching a PhD in site-specific dance performance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (46) ◽  
pp. 45-70
Author(s):  
María Konomi ◽  

This essay will investigate a series of performances in Greece that showcase the theme of crisis discussed through the particular frame of their expanded scenographic strategies as dramaturgies of crisis. This expanded scenography is not restricted to politics and aesthetics of scenographic representation extending well beyond traditional staging paradigms to aspects that reinstate the emergence of social realities and a fundamentally social conception of space. Indicatively, this includes strategies like introducing various charged elements from lived experi-ence and contemporary visual culture, as well as conflictual aesthetics of the crisis and visual and spatial dramaturgies of the precarious. Sce-nographic dramaturgies of crisis seem to thrive on new spatial perfor-mance forms that directly interact with social realities and real spaces (like site-specific performance), while they mobilize a renewed address to found, shared public space putting to use strategies of participation. In this context of the crisis, the widespread multimedia idioms and the proliferation of video and cinematic idioms are also notable. Perfor-mances that thematize aspects of the crisis, such as Revolt Athens (2016), and the twin site-specific performances built with a core topographical address, Tea Time Europe (2014-15) and Eat Time Europe (2016) will be an-alyzed as key case studies to exemplify and further contextualize their scenographic approaches as content and context-oriented formulations, as visual and spatial dramaturgies that provide us with an entryway into performing crisis.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brooke Brandewie ◽  
Injoo Kim ◽  
Myoung-Ok Kim

Purpose This study aims to suggest opportunities for enhancing the police uniform design with consideration to the emotional and physical satisfaction of the wearers, by assessing the wearing experience. Design/methodology/approach University police officers at a University in the Midwestern region of the USA were surveyed to examine both psychological and emotional aspects including performance, comfort, professionalism and empowerment, as well as their satisfaction levels with fit, fabrics, aesthetics and functionality. Findings The study found that the wearing experience was poor, and not surprisingly, fabric satisfaction ranked the lowest of all factors. In regard to color, results showed that the uniforms should be in colors that are suitable to the university context, which in this case the wearers preferred the University athletic colors of black and red. It is easier to consider these colors, as they are a part of their organization and also enable the police to stand apart from municipal police, contrary to previous research demonstrating dark colors have negative connotations. Findings suggest that the university police uniform should have an athletic style with a regular fit, using specific performance fabrics that allow for stretch and breathability. Originality/value This study assesses the police uniform design and wearing experience and suggests design details to enhance how well officers physically perform in their role and also to inspire them to feel proud of their job and organization.


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