Performance Research

A Journal of the Performing Arts

ISSN: 1352-8165 (Print) 1469-9990 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rprs20

Viral Institute of Performance Architecture

Aliki Kylika & Kyveli Anastasiadi

To cite this article: Aliki Kylika & Kyveli Anastasiadi (2016) Viral Institute of Performance
Architecture, Performance Research, 21:6, 87-93, DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2016.1251113

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2016.1251113

Published online: 01 Dec 2016.

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 Viral Institute of Performance Architecture
ALIKI KYLIKA & KYVELI ANASTASIADI

The economic repression and moral crisis In his teachings in the AA in London (in
of the 1970s carried out the revolutions and about 1975), Bernard Tschumi focused on
experiments of the 1960s by fusing them in the body as equally important to space and
the mainstream lifestyle, and shifted away explored, together with his students, new media
from a social universal spirit towards the rise in representing architecture; performances,
of the neoliberal ideology of the free market storyboards, photographs, films, installations
and individualism. Throughout the decade, and sketches enhanced the more traditional
performance art was solidified as an emerging drawings and models of architectural
genre that incorporated the happenings and representation. He embarked with RoseLee
other experiments of the previous years. Goldberg, a teacher at the Royal College of
The genre expanded to a wide range of very Art (RCA) at the time, into an investigation
different forms of art that equally engaged of the relationship between performance art
with live action and bodies to reflect on and architecture that inspired the formation
various themes around and not limited to of the highly experimental group of the
experience, time, sexuality, gender, theatre, London Conceptualists (Kaji-O’Grady 2008).
architecture, dance and photography. The era The activities of the Conceptualists did not
saw the emergence of several artist-led spaces always meet the approval of their architecture
that hosted performances and that in some teacher, as they moved on from objects towards
cases later evolved in the more institutional
format of museums and galleries. Educational
programmes in art and architecture schools were
also affected by the alternative spirit of the era,
experimenting with the form of the classroom
and the institution as well as the curriculum and
the core subject of the discipline.
While a number of radical educational
programmes in architectural schools have
historically introduced performing arts as part
of their curriculum (such as the modernist art
school Bauhaus, 1919–33 and Black Mountain
College, 1933–57), the cases of the Architectural
Association School of Architecture (the AA) in
London in the 1970s and the Southern Illinois
University of Carbondale in the 1960s serve as
examples where performance art and theory
infiltrated the teaching as well as the subject
of architecture, extending the practice into ■■The Manhattan Transcripts
new pathways. (1976-1981). Wikicommons

PERFORMANCE RESEARCH 21·6 : pp.87-93 ISSN 1352-8165 print/1469-9990 online 87

http: //dx.doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2016.1251113 © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

PR 21.6 On Radical Education.indd 87 28/11/2016 11:25


■■Photo Lawrence N. Shustak,
courtesy of Margo Shustak
88
PR 21.6 On Radical Education.indd 88
performative actions, installations and texts,
conceptualizing architecture and focusing on
experience. One of the projects that Tschumi
produced with his students in the studio is the
Manhattan Transcripts (1976–81). In the words
of the teacher himself:
The Transcripts’ explicit purpose was to transcribe
things normally removed from conventional
architectural representation, namely the complex
relationship between spaces and their use, between
the set and the script, between ‘type’ and ‘program,’
between objects and events.… The dominant theme
of The Transcripts is a set of disjunctions among
use, form, and social values; the non-coincidence
between meaning and being, movement and space,
man and object was the starting condition of the
work. (Bernard Tschumi Architects 1981)
On the other side of the Atlantic, a decade
earlier, the brief in its existence, but highly
experimental Southern Illinois University of
Carbondale (1955–70) exercised performance
methods within its core structure and
programming, and a performative approach
to its own spaces. Industrial designer Harold
Cohen, as the first director of the school, set the
pace for a highly explorative and experiential
programme. ‘Isolated survival exercises’
involved the students in a performative study
of the human and spatial condition, in order
to initiate them in the understanding of the
impact of design:
The first exercise called ‘Who Are You and What Are
You Thinking?’ simply dropped them [the students]
off in the isolated wilderness for three days with
just $10 and an emergency whistle. The idea was
P E R F O R M A N C E R E S E A R C H 21·6 : O N R A D I C A L E D U C A T I O N
to understand through their absence the human
extensions that they would be designing for the
rest of their lives. (Wigley 2015: A20)
A dominant teaching figure of the school
was the pioneering architect Richard
Buckminster Fuller, whose unique concept
of architecture and educational forms found
a fertile ground for application. Abandoning
traditional configurations of a classroom
space, the influential professor adopted his
geodesic dome structures to hold classes
inside – the domes were to be ‘understood as
information gathering, visualizing, extending
and broadcasting machines’ and the university
itself as a ‘brain’, ‘a giant information
system’ (2015: A20). In his own teaching
model, Fuller performed a parasitic model as
a nomad professor across a number of existing
institutions, thus expanding the physical space
of a university into a spatial network formed by
his own physical presence in teaching.
This collaboration that started between
architecture and performance art is revisited
today under the new prism of performance
architecture. Since the initiation of the term
almost ten years ago in 2007 simultaneously
by the New York practitioner Alex Schweder
and the Portuguese architect Pedro Gadahno,
performance architecture is seen today as an
equivalent of what performance art is.
THE FOUNDING OF THE VIRAL
INSTITUTE OF PERFORMANCE
A RC H I T E CT U R E (V I PA)
In June 2015, the Viral Institute of Performance
Architecture (VIPA) launched in the ‘Shared
Practice’ event of the International Federation
for Theatre Research (IFTR) in the Prague
Quadrennial 2015. VIPA is a transient and fluid
international assembly of architects, designers,
artists, choreographers, performers, dancers
and academics that was initiated by Kyveli
Anastasiadi, Aliki Kylika and Alex Schweder. The
group investigates ways that architecture can be
expressed, made, perceived, taught and thought
through, using the human body as its principal
tool and focus.
28/11/2016 11:25
 Already within its founding members three
very different threads of what performance
architecture is co-exist, according to different
perceptions of what performance as well as
what architecture are.
Kyveli Anastasiadi finds in performance
architecture a platform of expression for
designing space and experiences. She drives
her inspiration from the fields of cognitive
science, process art and dance theory and works
with drawing scores, three-dimensional (3D)
sketches and film to produce methodologies
for spatial designs based on understanding the
body as a tool for thinking, drawing and making.
Aliki Kylika applies the theory of
performativity and focuses on the constant
interaction between architecture and humans.
Borrowing tools from the performance practices
(improvisation, play, participation, storyboards
and theory of chance), she designs or curates
actions as a performative method for producing
ever-evolving spatial formations.
Alex Schweder approaches the term from
a performance art perspective and considers
architecture as a psychological condition that
can be explored through a variety of media,
such as spatial structures, filming activities and
performance actions.
In the founding of the institute, Kyveli, Aliki
and Alex came together to form a general
understanding of performance architecture,
and presented it as an emerging idea whose
boundaries are yet unknown. It describes
the expansion of the architectural discipline
towards elements, practices and the theory
of performance. Following from performance
art, performance architecture incorporates
dynamically, actively and organically the human
body in the production of space and places it
as the principal tool for designing. Within this
practice, architecture becomes a process, an
improvisation that can be recorded in space and
time, like a dancing ‘score’.
Architecture is therefore understood and
taught as an experience; it is expanded into
a state of mind, body and soul and becomes
a fluid composition of actions in space and time.
Performance architecture is therefore a tool
KY L I KA & A N A S TA S I A D I : V I RA L I N S T I T U T E O F P E R F O R M A N C E A RC H I T E CT U R E
PR 21.6 On Radical Education.indd 89
for experimentation and critique. Its role is
to give a perspective and change perceptions
for equally the practice, the concept and the
discipline of architecture. Recognizing the
hegemonic role of the discipline (Bryony 2015),
performance architecture can be applied with
respect to the political and social power of
architecture and emerges as a movement with
socio-political correlations in the architecture
of the twenty-first century: by placing emphasis
on the active bodies in space as the tools
and focus of design, it becomes possible to
collectivize architecture, empower the user and
unfold in the process the respected relations
at hand.
Choosing the title of an institute, VIPA
engages with the concept of performance
architecture to propose another model of
practicing knowledge and information, one
that is based in the bodies of the contributing
members, and therefore transforms the space
of the institution into a viral network. VIPA
participates as a body in the contemporary
scene of pseudo-institutional artist-led
schools and initiatives that have emerged
in the last decade as a response to the
increasing restrictions and the extended
commercialization of the art and architecture
education (Thorne 2012). VIPA is seeking
to infiltrate a performance-led perspective
(in practice and theory) within the formal
educational curriculum of architecture schools,
as well as independently, in running workshops,
events and small projects.
E D U CAT I O N A L PA RA L L E L S
In its educational programmes, VIPA is inspired
by the paradigms of many educators who
experiment with the medium of performance in
teaching architecture. In the University of Chile,
architect Rodrigo Tisi ran the comprehensive
project ‘B + S + P + T + PL + M’ where he applied
performance practices and theory to execute
with his students a series of small design
projects. Through this process Rodrigo Tis
seeks to achieve for his students a tangible
understanding of different architectural
89
28/11/2016 11:25
 ■■Placing Space, Maryland
School of Architecture,
Planning and Preservation,
2008. (top) Photo Jackie
Crousillat, courtesy of Ronit
Eisenbach. (below) Photo Ronit
Eisenbach, courtesy of Ronit
Eisenbach
90
PR 21.6 On Radical Education.indd 90
aspects that one should consider in the design
process: body, space, programme, time, place
and material.
Performance Studies expands the ‘preoccupations’
of architects from the speculative (designed)
and finished (constructed) artifact to the effects
generated (performed) after different modes of
occupation. This posits an open, fluctuating, and
continuous paradigm in which a conjunction
between material and immaterial performances
makes a space for the live as the final ‘other’
important element active in architecture.
(Tisi 2008: 75)
Respectively, Architecture Professor Ronit
Eisenbach of the University of Maryland School
of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
together with choreographers Dana Reitz
and Bebe Miller, designed ‘Placing Space’. In
this project, dance and architecture students
collaborated to ‘increase understanding of the
reciprocal relationship of space and movement’.
Eisenbach’s custom ‘lab’ enabled participants
to research embodied spatial experience
directly. The environment allowed for ‘the
manipulation and study of spatial, temporal
and movement relationships at full scale and in
real time, supporting an exploratory pedagogy
based on dialogue, experimentation and play’
(Eisenbach 2008).
P E R F O R M A N C E R E S E A R C H 21·6 : O N R A D I C A L E D U C A T I O N
E D U CAT I O N A L E V E N T S
Following the conversation around performance
architecture, VIPA initiates events that focus
on different topics involved within the wide
spectrum of performance architecture. Such
events are educational equally for the attendees
and the organizers: They raise questions
and concerns, and openly share thoughts
for discussion, inviting the contribution
of everyone.
On 7 May 2016, VIPA, in collaboration with
architectural tutor Orsalia Dimitriou from
Central Saint Martins College of Arts and
Design – University of the Arts London (UAL),
organized a day of discussions, presentations
and workshops around the subject of ‘(re)
Presenting architecture’. The event took place
in the 1970s structure of the Futuro House and
celebrated a multidisciplinary participation
of both students and professionals. The topic
of discussion was the variety of media used
to (re)present architecture, and their relation
to performance and the human body. In
a critique of how architecture is objectified
in advertising photography and 3D-rendered
images, the day unfolded in presentations
of alternative uses of photography that
engage with space and the human presence,
28/11/2016 11:25
 as well as the uses of other media, including
film, graphic novels and performance. Every
session was followed by an open discussion.
In assisting the audience to feel safe, to focus
and be active in the conversation, the day
opened with warm-up exercises tailored to the
theme of representation and led by theatre
and architecture academic Juliet Rufford.
As part of the day Alex Schweder ran a one-
to-one hour-long workshop on Skype with
a volunteer from the audience that was openly
attended by everyone else. The workshop
explored modification and performance as
a form of renovating space: it addressed
the issue of representation in questioning
‘How can we modify the space around us to
represent our needs in a constructive and
supportive way?’ On the closing of the event,
a series of open questions and examples for
re-presenting architecture had been shared,
including the questions ‘Should architecture
be re-presented?’ and ‘Which is the un-
represented architecture?’
Following up from this event, new ideas for
projects that explore and develop the topic
were drafted, to be taken aboard by VIPA in the
nearest future.
E D U CAT I O N A L WO R K S H O P S:
S T R U CT U R E, TA S K S A N D O U TCO M E
In its educational programme, VIPA undertakes
a number of workshops for universities
(University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2015),
galleries (arebyte gallery, 2016), groups
(Anastasia Papaeleftheridadou’ s dance group,
ongoing), and individuals (re-Presenting
KY L I KA & A N A S TA S I A D I : V I RA L I N S T I T U T E O F P E R F O R M A N C E A RC H I T E CT U R E
PR 21.6 On Radical Education.indd 91
Architecture, 2016: workshop by Alex
Schweder). The content and intention of these
workshops differs according to the respective
threads of VIPA.
As illustrated in the event ‘re-Presenting
Architecture’, Alex’s thread is applying
performance architecture as a process to
reflect and resolve deeper psychological
needs. The workshops run as an extended
discussion between Alex and each participant
to understand spatial habits of the individual in
everyday life. Such habits reveal a subconscious
relation of oneself with the surrounding
environment and suggest the power of space
to express as well as influence a person. In the
conclusion of each discussion the participants
have identified personal problems they face
that are related to space. In response, Alex
recommends a series of actions/performances
that change each person’s habits, challenge
their relation to their environment and alter any
preconceived notions of what certain spaces are.
In the case of the ‘re-Presenting Architecture’
workshop the volunteer participant was given
specific tasks to undertake in the future in order
to ‘renovate’ his living room.
On another thread of VIPA, performance
architecture can offer a methodology for
designing space, in a more literal understanding
of both performance and architecture.
Within this methodology two main principles
of performance are applied: Improvisation
Architecture and Process Architecture.
The latter references process art, as it was
established in the 1960s and 1970s: the focus
is placed in the process of formation of the
work, turning into the artwork the application
■■‘re-Presenting
Architecture’, Futuro House,
Central Saint Martins –
University of the Arts
London (UAL), 2016. Photo
Aliki Kylika, courtesy of VIPA
91
28/11/2016 11:25
 itself of methods such as gathering, sorting and
patterning, as well as collations, the initiations
of actions and their unfolding in time. Within
improvisation, the process that the participant
intuitively follows is equally important with the
outcome of this process.
The method in these workshops follows
a clear structure:
■■ Warm-up exercises prepare the participants
physically, mentally and psychologically to engage
with the subject at hand.
■■ The participants are encouraged to look at their
body as a spatial form in itself and use it as a tool for
thinking, drawing, sculpting, measuring, improvising
and representing architecture, being invited to
survey and inhabit their environment alone and in
groups. The body becomes an active place maker
and database that can further inform a design
process and a design form. All actions during this
process are documented in film and photography.
In this part of the workshop several references
from the field of performance art are sometimes
provided for support and for educational
purposes, according to the respective audience,
and they include the examples of: Rebecca
Horn’s ‘Arm Extensions’ (1968), Trisha Brown’s
‘It’s a Draw/Live Feed’ (2003), Matthew Barney’s
‘Drawing Restraint 6’ (1989), Will Dorner’s
general body of work and William Forsythe’s
‘One Flat Thing Reproduced, Synchronous
Objects’ (2006).
■■ Having actively experienced space with their
bodies, the participants are invited to translate this
information into two-dimensional (2D) drawings
on paper.
■■ Abstract sketches of human figures, spatial
journeys or a combination of elements appear to
shape spatial configurations on a 2D canvas,
presenting a series of notations of movement and
time, just like ‘scoring’ in dance performances, or
storyboarding in film. From a performance
architectural perspective, these are considered to
be architectural drawings.
■■ Moving forward from 2D to 3D, the participants
are encouraged to ‘sketch’ their design proposals in
1:1 scale with the use of different materials (for
example string, cardboard, tape, tension wire). This
process stretches the drawing out of the 2D limits
of paper into a 3D structure that involves body,
tactility and materiality.
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PR 21.6 On Radical Education.indd 92
At this point, the terms ‘notational drawing’,
‘notational space’ and ‘physical thinking’,
borrowed from the discipline of dance, are
taught as a method to physically think of
a design through bodies and draw it on
a spatial 3D canvas. This physical process
allows the students or participants to
organically conceive a design and express it in
performance architecture.
This type of workshop has taken place on
many occasions. In one such, VIPA was invited
by choreographer Anastasia Papaeleftheriadou
to help her dance group design their set. During
the workshop the performers were guided
through a process of task-based exercises that led
them to design and built the set design for their
performance. On the comments of the dancers
themselves, ‘this is a much preferred process, as
we can immediately associate the design with
our movement, rather than trying to get used to
a set that is designed separately from us’.
THE PRACTICE OF PERFORMANCE
ARCHITECTURE
Outside of schools, the VIPA members are
attempting a practice for the emerging genre
that equally respects the different threads
recognized. It can be seen as a form of practice
research that creates a portfolio for the institute
and the discipline of performance architecture.
In a more traditional sense of the
architectural discipline, the ongoing project
‘Anavasis/Ascent’ is applying improvisation and
the methodology from the above workshops to
design a house in Dryopi in the Peloponneese
in Greece. Working with the client and in
collaboration with dancers, tools such as
interviewing, improvising thinking-bodies,
filming, wire models and installations have
been applied to produce some first drafts for
the design of the house, suggesting a highly
exploratory and intuitive process of work.
Phase I of the project was presented with
a video, wire models and an installation in the
Royal British Society of Sculptors (RBS) in 2015.
For Phase II we are hoping to further develop
these into more solid spatial formations.
28/11/2016 11:25
 In another thread of performance
architecture, the discipline is extended to
bring people together for a common cause.
Architecture taken back to its roots is created
by a community of people with material that
is found in nature. This primal architecture
is also inherently connected to performances
in the form of rituals and festivities. In
collaboration with individual practitioners
and eco-communities (Off-Grid in Wiltshire,
UK, and IO collective in Euboia, GR), VIPA has
been working towards creating their communal
and sustainable spaces. Revitalizing the DIY
cultures of the 1960s and 1970s, each project
is designed and executed within a few intense
weeks of work, involving people of different
skills and backgrounds who celebrate together
an organic way of being in solidarity. Within
this process the main principles of performance
find application: participatory performative
processes, playful tactics, collaboration,
improvisation with materials towards new
design modules, focus on the process rather
than on the outcome, site-specificity and dérive.
In addition to this, reclaim-reused materials,
cob buildings and permaculture highlight
a low/zero-impact architecture, a more
inviting, social, sustainable, responsible and
interactive discipline.
Spanning for a period longer than VIPA’s
existence, the work of Alex Schweder
illuminates another perspective of performance
architecture: how space affects our
performance. In the project ‘In Orbit’ (2013),
Alex, together with artist Ward Shelly, lived
for ten days straight in a kinetic structure
of a wheel. The work belongs in a triptych
of other projects that investigate ‘social
relationship architecture’.
As VIPA continues the research practice
of performance architecture, more ideas
for future projects emerge, which will be
exploring the element of chance, timeframes,
participation and various media for
communicating architecture (storyboards,
text, film, performances, collages and so
forth). It remains an open question of what
performance architecture is: the different
KY L I KA & A N A S TA S I A D I : V I RA L I N S T I T U T E O F P E R F O R M A N C E A RC H I T E CT U R E
PR 21.6 On Radical Education.indd 93
threads of VIPA suggest that it can be as wide as
both performance and architecture separately
are and we prefer it to remain so. The limits of
performance architecture are yet unknown.
REFERENCES
Bryony, Roberts (2015) ‘Looking for the outside: “How is
architecture political?’’’ The Avery Review 5 (February),
www.averyreview.com/issues/5/looking-for-the-outside,
accessed 30 May 2016.
Eisenbach, Ronit (2008) ‘Placing space’, Ronit Eisenbach,
www.roniteisenbach.com/#Placing_Space, accessed 8
January 2016.
Golldberg, Roselee (1998) Performance: Live art since
1960, London: Thames and Hudson.
Kaji-O’Grady, Sandra (2008) ‘The London conceptualists:
Architecture and performance in the 1970s’, Journal of
Architectural Education 61(4) (May): 43–51.
Thorne, Sam (2012) ‘New schools online’, www.frieze.com/
article/new-schools, accessed 7 November 2016.
Tisi, Rodrigo (2008) ‘B + S + P + T + PL + M, six ways to
approach architecture through the lens of performance’,
Journal of Architectural Education 61(4): 69–75.
Bernard Tschumi Architects (1981) The Manhattan
Transcripts, www.tschumi.com/projects/18/#, accessed 7
November 2016.
Viral Institute of Performance Architecture (2015) ‘V.I.P.A.
launch performance-lecture’, www.performarch.wordpress.
com/2015/06/28/vipa-launch-performance-lecture/,
accessed 7 November 2016.
Wigley, Mark (2015) ‘R. Buckminster Fuller, Southern
Illinois University of Carbondale, Radical Pedagogies’,
www.radical-pedagogies.com/search-cases/
■■‘‘Building Man’, Wiltshire,
a20‑buckminster-fuller-illinois-university-carbondale/,
accessed 30 May 2016.
2014. Photo Edmund Morriss,
courtesy of Drawfire
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