University of Chichester

Research News

stylecurve

Performativity/Space

A one-day symposium exploring relationships between performativity and space – October 30th, 2008 at the University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury

We have been performing, and have been performed by, the performative turn for quite some time. Through the work of numerous practitioners and thinkers, including Austin, Searle, Derrida, Lyotard and Butler, the term has become integrated into the vocabulary of an array of disciplines including linguistics, philosophy, geography, cultural theory, sociology, psychology, anthropology, fine art, performance studies, and architecture. It is used to support diverse epistemologies and methodologies, and techniques; indeed, the performative could be said to have an ontological status. Whether performativity plays a significant role in either our lived spaces or our discursive enactments of them is not a contested issue.

'Space' shares performativity's status as a powerful concept for many practitioners and thinkers; the spatial turn has been integral to a multitude of new trajectories in as many disciplines and practices.

However, it would be wrong to say that such ubiquitous presence in thought and actions across bodies of knowledge and practices dilutes neither performativity's transformational power nor space's usefulness as an enunciator of a complex, relational world. People continue to engage in work which seeks to expand upon, question, or destabilise any momentary fixity of either terms or their relationships with one another.

In this symposium, these continually evolving and indeed 'working' relationships between performativity and space will be addressed through presentations by speakers from the fields of fine arts, performance, geography, and architecture.

Presenters include:

  • Dr. Juduth Rugg, Reader in Fine Art, University for the Creative Arts, Canterbury
  • Prof. Nigel Thrift (geographer, Vice Chancellor Warwick University),
  • Prof. Sarah Rubidge – choreographer, digital interactive environments, School of Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Chichester
  • Prof. Gavin Renwick – artist/architect, Visual Research Centre Dundee
  • Brandon LaBelle – artist/writer working with sound and the specificities of location, based in Berlin
  • Yvonne Dröge Wendel – artist working across various media, and with things in space as performative objects, based in Amsterdam
  • Prof. Oren Lieberman, Head of the Canterbury School of Architecture, Course Leader MA Spatial Practices: Art, Architecture, and Performance, University for the Creative Arts

This symposium is set within the special context of the Canterbury campus (University for the Creative Arts) which is shared by Fine Art and the Canterbury School of Architecture. The day's theme resonates with interests embodied in the university's Critical Spatial Practices research 'cluster' based at Canterbury and in the masters course Spatial Practices: Art, Architecture and Performance, which offers graduates from disciplines such as fine art, architecture, performance, geography, and anthropology the opportunity to develop individual practices within an interdisciplinary framework.

The symposium is curated by Oren Lieberman

registration and information

For registration and further information visit: http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/index.cfm?articleid=21306