
this space
is for you/
cet espace
est pour toi
Conceived by
Shauna Janssen
Creative director and dramaturgy:
Shauna Janssen
Creative team & research associates:
Kévin Pinvidic, digital scenography
Olivia McGilChrist, Unity and Depth Kit consultant
Ricardo Morejon, Depth Kit consultant
Leslie Baker, movement and viewpoints
Véronique Levert, technical advisor (ZùMTL)
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.”
<<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
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.
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).
Volumetric video capturing workshop with DepthKit @ ZUMTL February 2023
Site - Veletržní palác, Prague
The Performance Space Exhibition program for PQ23 will take place at the Veletržní palác. Site-specific content for our virtual performance space features the functionalist architectural style of the Veletržní palác (constructed in 1928). Formerly used as Trade Fair Palace, since 1995 the building has been home to Prague's National Gallery and the exhibition of modern art. The site is also host and haunted by contested spatial histories. In 1949 the site was occupied by the Nazis and as a location to hold Jews before transporting them to concentration camps. In 1974 the building burnt down.


3D polycam scans of Veletržní palác by Kévin Pinvidic @ 2022

