Space + Performance

[spaceandperformance-blog]

Stages of Decay (2000 - current), Julia Solis

[spaceandperformance-blog]

Kara-za (1987), Tadao Ando

[spaceandperformance-blog]

Mother Courage (1974), The Performance Group at The Performance Garage

"The fullness of space, the endless ways space can be transformed, articulated, animated - that is the basis of environmental theater design. It is also the source of environmental theater performer training. If the audience is one medium in which performance takes place, the living space is another."

- Richard Schechner, The Environmental Theater, p. 2.

[spaceandperformance-blog]

Supersurface-Life (1972), Superstudio

“It is an image of humanity wandering, playing, sleeping, etc., on this platform. Naked humanity, walking along the highway with banners, magic objects, archaeological objects, in fancy dress ...”

- Superstudio Manifesto in: Jencks, Charles ed. Theories and Manifestos of Contemporary Architecture. West Sussex: Academy Press, 2003. p. 229.

[spaceandperformance-blog]

Inflatables (1971), Ant Farm

[spaceandperformance-blog]

Small Skyscraper (1991-2001), Chris Burden

Small Skyscraper is a quasi legal structure that exploits a loop hole Chris Burden discovered in the Los Angeles County building codes. This loop hole allows small out buildings, like green houses and sheds, to be built without a building permit if they stay within 400 square feet and under 35 feet high. Small Skyscraper uses these legal size restrictions as a point of departure. The total structure, four rooms stacked one on top of the other, measures 400 square feet and rises 35 feet in height. Even though Small Skyscraper strictly adheres to the County’s spatial requirements, it continues to push the legal and physical parameters of architectural construction because of added design features, such as a low roof parapet, and because it functions as a domestic dwelling.

[spaceandperformance-blog]

What My Dad Gave Me (2008), Chris Burden

"He said he saw his engineering pieces as part of the same tradition. “These are structures that are performing themselves in their forms,” he said. But by 1975 he had turned away from body-based performance, in part because of the kind of attention it was attracting.

“It became very misunderstood,” he said. “I wasn’t doing it to be some kind of stuntman.” (He said he bore no physical infirmities from those years; one of his worst injuries came only a few years ago when he wrestled a coyote to the ground after it latched onto his dog. The coyote then latched onto his left hand and almost tore off part of a finger.)"

- Chris Burden in NY Times article: "An Artist's Vision: Building With Toys, but on a Grand Scale" by Randy Kennedy June 8th, 2008

[spaceandperformance-blog]

Cinerama Dome, Hollywood (1993), Hiroshi Sugimoto's Theaters

 "I'm a habitual self-interlocutor. Around the time I started photographing at the Natural History Museum, one evening I had a near-hallucinatory vision. The question-and- answer session that led up to this vision went something like this: Suppose you shoot a whole movie in a single frame? And the answer: You get a shining screen. Immediately I sprang into action, experimenting toward realizing this vision. Dressed up as a tourist, I walked into a cheap cinema in the East Village with a large-format camera. As soon as  the movie finished, I clicked the shutter closed. That evening, I developed the film, and the vision exploded behind my eyes."

- Hiroshi Sugimoto

[spaceandperformance-blog]

Empty Stages (2003 - present), Hugo Glendinning & Tim Etchells

Empty Stages is an on-going photographic project cataloguing empty stages in a variety of contexts - pubs, conference centres, amateur theatres, church halls, city theatres and working men's clubs. Through these temporarily deserted locations for performance, the work explores stages as spaces of imminence and expectation - inviting the viewer to imagine the different kinds of events that might take place in these locations.