URBAN PERFORMANCES

AND THE PERFORMATIVE CITY

Kristine Samson, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Performance Design,
Dept. of Communication, Business, and Information Technologies
Roskilde University, Denmark

PERFORMATIVE AESTHETICS IN URBAN SPACE

How architecture and design shape the social and how the social intervenes in and transforms architecture
and urban design
Conclusion
Performative aesthetics occur as a spatial co-functioning of design, social actions and human relations.
Thus urban space must be regarded as socio-material assemblages rather than either design or social
actions

THE HIGH LINE

THE HIGH LINE

AFFECTIVE PRODUCTION OF
SPACE

THE PERFORMATIVE CITY

THE PERFORMATIVE CITY

1. APPROACH URBAN STUDIES
The City is a theatre of social action:
The city fosters art and is art; the city creates the theater and is the theater. It
is in the city, the city as theatre, that mans more purposive activities are
focused the physical organization of the city may, through the deliberate
efforts of art, politics and education make the drama more richly signiLicant
The urbanist Lewis Mumford in 1937

THE PERFORMATIVE CITY

2. APPROACH DELEUZE
The affectivity of art and performances
The Deleuzian concept of affect or becoming holds great promise for the analysis of how
performance impacts upon an audience, offering an alternative to the over-emphasis on
interpretation and the construction of meaning that derives from Performance Studies
embrace of semiotics, critical theory and psychoanalysis. (...). Where was the body and
feeling in such debates? Why did none of this theory explain the vital, visceral and electric
pulsations of my autonomic response to the arts?
Laura Cull, in Introduction to Deleuze and Performance, 2009
Affectivity, vitalism and an autonomic response to the arts

URBAN PERFORMANCES
3. APPROACH EVERY DAY PERFORMANCES
The urban vernacular - Performing the City
Performance (broadly conceived) gives form to space.
The performance itself is architectural. It depends more on repetition, reenactment, and
renewal than on permanent materialization.
Kirschenblatt-Gimblett : Performing the city: Re7lections on the urban vernacular 2005

URBAN PERFORMANCES
Performance art in public space - Site speci<ic performances
Tyler Ashleys dance performance Half-Mythical, half Legendary Americanism on
the High Line, New York during Performa
Urban events
Distortion is an annual street festival in Copenhagen with the objective to distort
the functional city
Social movement and tactical occupation of urban space
Occupy Wall Street is an example of activist appropriation of space
Temporary urban design staging urban develeopment and social life through an
affective scenography. For instance temporary installations at the Carlsberg

PERFORMANCE ART IN
PUBLIC SPACE

...by means of performance art

Tyler Ashleys dance performance Half-Mythical, half Legendary Americanism on the High Line, New
York during Performa

URBAN EVENTS
DISTORTION

Distortion is an annual street and electronica festival in Copenhagen with the objective to distort the
functional city

URBAN EVENTS
DISTORTION

Evental tranformation of functional spaces - for instance buses, infrastructure and every day design

URBAN EVENTS
DISTORTION

THE BODY BECOMES AN AFFECTIVE INTERFACE

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND SPATIAL

OCCUPATION

Tactical occupations of representational space by means of

nomad tactics

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND SPATIAL

OCCUPATION

Performance as communication: Zizeks performance and media event in Zucotti park

New ways of spatial and bodily communication: the human microphone

TEMPORARY SPACES
THE CARLSBERG CITY IN COPENHAGEN

URBAN PERFORMANCES
AND THE PERFORMATIVE CITY
NEW WAYS OF RECREATING THE CITY?

How can urban performances contribute to urban design and planning?

URBAN PERFORMANCES
AND THE PERFORMATIVE CITY
NEW WAYS OF RECREATING THE CITY?

Performance design?
The co-creation of urban space with urban designers, planners,
architects, artists and citizens as co-actors on stage.