In 2009-10, we hosted, as part of a Winchester research centre, a series of seminars and symposia on the theme, ‘Architectonics of Performance’.
We were awarded funding from the University of Winchester to support this series.
Details of the seminars are listed below:
Professor Elinor Fuchs, Yale School of Drama,
The World of the Play: Landscape for Imagination
Professor Fuchs will be discussing ideas related to her article, ‘E.F.’s Visit to a Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play’ (Theater Vol 59, No 34, 2004, pp.5-9), with reference to Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Caryl Churchill’s Far Away.
Elinor Fuchs, a professor at the Yale School of Drama, is the author of major works of criticism, including The Death of Character.
May 19th, 2010, 4.00, St Edburga 1, University of Winchester
Past Events:
Architectonics of Performance 1: Rahma Khazam and Oren Lieberman
14th October, 2010
In exploring ways that we might both borrow from architectural concepts to understand performance and performance making processes, and ways in which architecture can be performance (and vice versa), this first session brought together two figures who have undertaken unique explorations across how architecture and performance interface, with particular attention to two thematic areas: sound as architecture and architecture and performativity. Guest Rahma Khazam discussed her experiences with exploring the relationship between sound art and the architectural, and her particular interest in approaching sound as architecture. Guest Professor Oren Lieberman discussed his innovative work on the notion of radical spatial performativity and how, through actual transformation of spatial conditions, habitual and customary practices can be questioned and destabilised.
Biographies
Rahma Khazam is a Paris-based art critic and curator who writes about sound and contemporary art. She is the editor-in-chief of Earshot, a journal addressing, among other topics, the relations between sound and architecture and a curator of Architectones, an annual symposium on sound, art and architecture. Information on the last symposium, in French and English, can be found at www.architectones.net.
Professor Oren Lieberman has been Head of the Canterbury School of Architecture since 2005 as well as course leader for the MA Spatial Practices: Art, Architecture, and Performance (University for the Creative Arts). He previously founded the architecture/art practice INDEX in Germany, and has taught extensively, including at the Bartlett, the Technische Universität Berlin, and Strathclyde University. One focus of his research has been on how acts of changing space can be integrated in the design process in art and design education. In another area of related research he reconfigures the figure/ground, using it as a ‘theorial object’ to mark out spaces of discourse and to enact singular events.
Architectonics of Performance 2: Augusto Corrieri, Synne Behrndt and Cathy Turner
Reading the Theatre Space
28th October, 2010.
Cathy Turner and Synne Behrndt had been working with artist Augusto Corrieri to examine the regime of signs represented by the theatre space. The project involved a range of dramaturgical, creative and scholarly strategies, but its principal methodology was embodied and experiential. This performance presentation included texts, images and performance arising from and reflecting on this collaborative project.
Biographies
Synne Behrndt is a dramaturg and a Senior Lecturer in Performing Arts at the University of Winchester. Synne is founder member of performance company Secret Hotel, based in Denmark. In this context Synne has worked as curator, producer and dramaturg on projects ranging from Site-specific and Live Art performance events, exhibitions, dance theatre performances to music theatre productions. She has also worked as a dramaturg for various directors, choreographers and performance companies in Denmark and the UK. She has recently published Dramaturgy and Performance, co-written with Cathy Turner (Palgrave Macmillan) and is contributing to the forthcoming book on devised performance Making Theatre Happen: Documentation and analysis of interactive devising processes, edited by Jackie Smart and Alex Mermikides (Palgrave Macmillan).
Augusto Corrieri (UK/Italy) is a performance artist presenting new works for theatres and festivals in the UK and Europe. His productions are characterised by a playful approach to complex questions concerning the mechanism of theatre and our place in the world today. In the attempt to uncover the codes and conventions of theatre, the works experiment with reversing the roles of performers and spectators, light and darkness, music and silence, movement and stillness, the visible and the invisible. Since 2006 Corrieri has been a supported artist at The Basement (Brighton), and the performance projects have been funded by Arts Council England South East, with ongoing support from the Nightingale Theatre (Brighton). Other supporting organisations include South East Dance (Brighton), La casa encendida (Madrid), the B-theatre (Birmingham), and BAC (London).
Cathy Turner is a Reader in Performing Arts at the University of Winchester. She is joint author, with Synne Behrndt, of Dramaturgy and Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Other academic writing includes journal articles on performance writing and site-specific practices. She is currently working with Deirdre Heddon to examine the work of women walking artists in the UK. Cathy is also a core member of Wrights & Sites, a group of artists whose work is concerned with our relationship to place and space. Key artists’ publications are A Mis-Guide to Anywhere (2006) and An Exeter Mis-Guide (2003). Recent work includes Mis-Guided in Fribourg for the BBI Festival, Switzerland (2008): Stadverführungen in Wien for the Vienna Festival and Tanzquartier Wien (2007), Possible Forests for the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (2007) and the 4 Screens series, shown at various conferences and exhibitions 2005-7. For further info see www.mis-guide.com.
Architectonics of Performance 3: Yvon Bonenfant and Inga Bryden
Haptic Architectures: Urban Writings and Reaching Voices
25th November, 2010
This seminar explored the notion of an ‘architecture of sensation’ in relation to interfaces between light, sound and space, and textual and cultural responses to urban space.
Biographies
Yvon Bonenfant is a Senior Lecturer in Performing Arts, University of Winchester
Dr Inga Bryden is Head of Research and Knowledge Exchange, Faculty of Arts, University of Winchester
Architectonics of Performance 4: Professor Jane Rendell
Site-Writing: Art, Architecture and Criticism
January 28th, 2010
‘Site-writing’ was first initiated as a pedagogic tool through site-specific writing courses at the Bartlett from 2001, and then as a mode of spatializing writing in texts and projects published from 1998 onwards, and now brought together in a forthcoming book: Site-Writing: The Architecture of Art Criticism (London: IB Tauris, 2010). In this lecture, Professor Rendell discussed this book, with some background, emphasizing the relationship between spatiality, subjectivity and textuality in writing practices, and describing a project within it.
Biography
Professor Jane Rendell BA (Hons), Dip Arch, MSc, PhD is Director of Architectural Research at the Bartlett, UCL. An architectural designer and historian, art critic and writer, she is author of Site-Writing (forthcoming 20010), Art and Architecture (2006), The Pursuit of Pleasure (2002) and co-editor of Critical Architecture (2007) Spatial Imagination (2005), The Unknown City (2001), Intersections (2000), Gender Space Architecture (1999) and Strangely Familiar (1995).
She is on the Editorial Board for ARQ (Architectural Research Quarterly) and the Journal of Visual Culture in Britain. She has been a member of the AHRC Peer Review College (2004-8) and chair of the RIBA President’s Awards for Research (2005-7). In 2006 she was a research fellow at CRASSH (Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities) at the University of Cambridge and received an honorary degree from the University College of the Creative Arts. She has been a recipient of AHRC funding in 2005 for the collaborative project Spatial Imagination, and in 2008 for research leave to complete her Site-Writing book.
Architectonics of Performance 5: Philip Stanier
A Constellation of Stars and Vermin: Potential and the Yet to Come in performance.
February 10th, 2010
Time and duration in performance are often considered in relation to the current moment and its passing. However, the experience of Potential and the Yet to Come (or future) also play a significant part in the temporal architecture of performance. In this research seminar Philip Stanier drew on a range of theories, practices, and examples from his own work with the Strange Names Collective, both past and in development, to explore the relation of these two terms to each other, and their function within performance.
Biography
Philip Stanier is Programme Leader for the Performing Arts Degree at University of Winchester, and Artistic Director of the Strange Names Collective. www.strangenamescollective.co.uk
Architectonics of Performance 6: Daniel Belasco Rogers
The Daily Practice of Map Making
Mar 17th, 2010
The adventures of two performers in the data stream.
Since 2007, Sophia New and Daniel Belasco Rogers (plan b) have traced everywhere they go, whenever they can get reception on a GPS. They have a full archive of every text message they have sent each other since 2006. Alongside performances that reflect this collection of data, such as shouting a year’s worth of text messages across a football stadium, they find themselves drawn to embody and present some of the data that they are by no means alone in generating just by carrying out normal, daily activities.
About to embark on a years residency with the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham, Daniel Belasco Rogers presented the shape of some of the journeys that have led plan b to be Berlin-based but London-born performers, attempting to cope with their own private data mountains.
Biography
Daniel Belasco Rogers was born in London in 1966. After a foundation at St Martin’s College of Art, he studied Theatre Design in Nottingham between 1986-89. In 2001, after many years working in experimental theatre in the UK, he started making solo lecture performances that investigate personal history through accidents and the process of the projection of one city onto another. In 2002 he formed plan b with his partner, Sophia New. Together they have made performances, gallery installations, new media and audio pieces in the UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Belgium.Since April 2003 he has collected every journey he has made with a GPS, exhibiting maps of the resulting drawings and making performance lectures about this activity. In 2007 Sophia joined him in this practice.
More information on www.planbperformance.net/dan