Scenographies of site-writing and critical spatial practices across the Americas
Scenographies of site-writing and critical spatial practices across the Americas was a five-day residency that explored scenography as a lens and method for undertaking critical performance-making practices in urban environments. The residency was inspired by Jane Rendell’s concept and the practice of ‘site-writing’ as critical spatial practice – “to spatialize the concepts/processes/subjects of writing through an exploration of the relationship between the material/cultural/political qualities of the site, the associated sites remembered/dreamed/imagined by the writer, and the spaces of writing itself.” (Rendell 2009 – https://site-writing.co.uk) Scenography or ‘skenographia’ refers to its Greek origins: skene and grapho, meaning ‘scenic writing’ – to describe, stage or build a scene, or bring objects/ materials/ space into representation through perspective (Aristotle’s Poetics).
The overarching theme – scenographies of site-writing – aimed to explore the potential of an expanded writing as a way of relating with the spatial politics of urban “sites” / environments, and how to approach scenography as an orientation of feelings of place (Hann, 2019) and/or how scenographics might operate as place orientating methods and acts of transmissibility and replicability.
How does site-writing through localized political experiences of space connect us to other spaces, and unmoor us from feeling isolated and/ or understand and make legible how we are connected?
Borders are colonial tools. How might transborder (hemispheric) practices and perspectives (re)orient us with a more embodied understanding of making space and how we relate across spaces/ locations/geographies? Where are the edges?
How might an expanded approach to scenography and what it does (rather than what it is (Hann, 2019)) help with reorienting and understanding our positionality in relation to other sites – thinking in a transborder way towards unsettling colonial Western mappings that have certain political effects/ affects?
The PULSE residency was conceived by Shauna Janssen, programmed and curated by Adela Goldbard and Shauna Janssen, and produced in collaboration with Hemispheric Encounters: Developing Transborder Research-Creation Practices which brings together scholars, artists, activists, and community organizations from across the Americas to explore hemispheric performance as a methodology, a pedagogical strategy, and as tool for social change. One of the goals of the collaboration is to understand and critically engage with unsettling dominant western and colonial ways of being in and understanding space, and thinking about and exchanging different methods of doing that: through site-writing and performance practices, performative writing about site, within and in relation to site.
The residency took place at 4TH SPACE, Concordia University, Montreal, from November 7th to 11th 2022, and will included two roundtables on the resignification of public space and the built environment through feminist/anticolonial/anti-monumental practices, workshops facilitated by scholars and artists and that explore the performative potential of site writing, a curated art exhibition, and a half-day symposium for graduate students.
The PULSE residency was co-sponsored by the Concordia University Research Chair in Performative Urbanism, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society in Culture, Concordia University, the Hemispheric Encounters (Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council Partnership Grant), and SBC Gallery, Montreal.
Find the full program on the PULSE website.
