this space
is for you/
cet espace 
est pour toi

 

this space is for you/ cet espace est pour toi is a site-specific XR installation designed as a conceptual place and provocation for considering ‘refugia’ (renewal) and spatial reorientations for thinking and practicing the future place(s) of performance.

 

Donna Haraway defines the term ‘refugia’ as the hideaways “from which diverse species assemblages (with or without people) can be reconstituted after major events.” (2016, 159)  

We have been invited to create this space is for you/ cet espace est pour toi for the Prague Quadrennial of Performance, Design and Space (PQ 2023 edition), within the context of the Performance Space exhibition themed “acts of assembly.”

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<<Performance spaces create new realities. They allow artists to fully coalesce with the technologies and materials used. They provoke an audience to think critically, to engage in art and give artists ground to express themselves. This forum asks to consider how the post-pandemic world will treat the performance spaces as platforms enabling communication and encounter. We will investigate newly emerging virtual spaces and their effects on the communities that assemble there.>>

- Andrew Filmer, Curator Performance Space Exhibition PQ23

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With this space is for you/ cet espace cet pour toi we draw inspiration from what Elizabeth Grosz refers to as ‘virtuality’ (Architecture from the Outside, 2006) - an interruption of the habitual relationship between bodies and environments (i.e stages/ venues we perform on, audiences and publics we interact with), and with mixed reality as a “pluriversal” worlding (Escobar 2020).

 

By drawing from the concepts of worlding and ‘unworlding’ (Halberstam 2022), with this space is for you/ cet espace cet pour toi we also bring focus to the possible queer orientations (Ahmed 2006) of performance space that XR technologies can stage. Reorienting XR technologies towards scenographic and performative practices (rather than solely as immersive experiences and interactive design tools) foreground, as Lucy Thornett argues,"the porous boundaries between different orders of world, and between bodies and worlds" (2020, 103).

 

Our research creation process engages  with archival materials, site-specific methods (attuning our selves to the spatial history of our site), and the dramaturgy of technologies of capture; 3D scanning processes (with applications such as Polycam), and the use of volumetric video capturing (DepthKit). this space is for you/ cet espace est pour toi will be experienced with a Varjo-XR3 headset.

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Our work is supported by Zù + Concordia University's Creative Research Residency, with funding from the Office of the Vice President, Research & Graduate Studies, and the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC).

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