Colloque

Performing Space 2024, Napflio, Greece, 3-6 juin 2024

Communication

"Exploring Performative Liminality", with Dr Dimitri Szuter & Rennie Tang

Abstract

In a quest for Performative Urbanism we believe performativity can uncover new tools and processes for the urban regeneration of liminal spaces qualified as “latent urban resources". In Performance Studies “liminality refers to any 'betwixt and between' situation or object, any in between place or moment, a state of suspense, a moment of freedom between two structured world-views or institutional arrangements (...) liminality opens the door to a world of contingency where events and meanings - indeed 'reality' itself - can be molded and carried in different directions". Turner describes liminality as a fundamental characteristic of performance, as a field of “pure possibility". Furthermore, Abenia uses liminality to define the ambiguous and elastic space-time that lies between the abandonment of a place and the moment of its reclassification, as a state of “pure potentialities.” Van Gennep’s performative rites of “passage” constitute the life of a human being, in which the “liminal rite” is an in-between stage marked by uncertainty and ambiguity.

The liminality of the Los Angeles River lies in its current transitional status, seeking to become a renaturized public amenity while maintaining its function as a flood control channel. Working along a stretch of the river in Frogtown, we developed a pedagogical experiment as part of a landscape design studio. Using “scores" as methodological devices for guiding the students, we developed a site specific performance as a liminal rite, a “performative” space-time of appropriation and transformation for instigating a process of urban regeneration. Our collaborative research demonstrates that “performativity” can serve as relational and transitional tools for activating both spatial affordances and social empowerment8 as necessary for the transformation of liminal sites. Through this work, we propose Performative Urbanism as a process of ongoing creation, in which scores as methodological devices operate to reveal the ecological and cultural richness of liminal sites.

Workshop "Mediteranean Spacing"