“Urban Landscapes, Theatrical Encounters: Staging the City" (2002)

The contemporary genres of site-specific-theatre and immersive theatre insert the narrative in the architectural process transforming space into architectural scripts. This is not new to architecture as it has previously engaged with its syntax through the movement of Deconstructivism. Through Deconstructivism architecture engaged with its process, its language and theory and became performative. It composed spaces in order to speak. An elemental part of the architectural syntax is the wall, which bears heavy significations within the spatial composition; it acts upon the human body in enclosing it or excluding it from space, it forms the imagery of the urban space and bears textual symbols, historical notations and human traces. Architectural facades are therefore communicative surfaces of urban history. The urban space is better experienced in the practice of walking, which is a spatial activity that translates into flows (De Certeau,M: 1988). Flows are the modern condition for our globally networked society, and can be spatially represented in architectural diagrams of nodes and networks. Contrary to this, the flows of urban walkers cannot be graphically represented as such without erasing the very essence of walking as a dynamic appropriating tactic in the urban space. The performativity of the urban space is understood as the interaction of humans and the built environment within the familiar scale of everyday life. In turn, this affects the shape of the city through the longer cycle of historical time. To experience this performativity, one needs to participate in the performance of its becoming. ‘Performance Cities’ is a platform for the intersection of space, urbanism and theatre. The core activity of the practice is the creation of performances about the history of cities. These performances take the form of live-installations where the urban map is built live on stage by the participatory activity of performers and audience alike.

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Platform postgraduate eJournal, 2008

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2018

This research aims at investigating the theoretical basis, the role, and the regularities of performing arts in the urban environment. References to theatre and dance are abundant in urban studies, but they serve almost exclusively as metaphors. Investigating the specificity of performing arts will also allow clarifying the performative aspects of every artistic intervention in urban space. Indeed, from ancient rituals to contemporary street theatre, an intentional and staged action plays a central role not only in the processes of sense giving and community building, or in what is today called "placemaking," but also in the "production of space." Three main conceptual tools are identified: the rhythmanalytical method, as sketched by Lefebvre; the trialectical logic, as elaborated by the Situationist International; and the category of liminality, as defined by Turner. The second section of the work, called "Atlas," while working as a repertoire of case ...

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cloud-cuckoo-land, 2019

/Users/Efrat/Desktop/Mimesis of types Abstract.pdf

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This paper examines the complex role which the urban landscape plays in the representation and transmission of social meanings. Whilst the city resonates with memories of past events and symbols of cultural beliefs, its public spaces are also a medium, a stage which frames actors and audiences. Places constantly gain new meanings because spatial context is a part of such performances of meaning. The paper focuses on those social practices through which “the imagination seeks to change and appropriate” the ‘representational spaces’ of a city (Lefebvre, The Production of Space, p. 39). The paper draws on observation of social rituals and informal play behaviour in Melbourne’s public spaces. It describes a broad range of gestures through which people reproduce, refract and refute the social meanings that are embodied in built form. The paper focuses on examples of three different kinds of spatial behaviour: celebratory parades, bodily engagements with public artworks, and posing for wedding photos. These activities all illustrate a dynamic tension between the reproduction of accepted cultural meanings through participatory ritual; spaces of spectacle where meanings are consumed passively; and active interventions through which new meanings are written onto the urban landscape. The paper draws together concepts from a range of social theorists, to explore the interrelation between built form, representation public performance, and social identity.

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2018

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Performance and Civic Engagement, 2017

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