Placeness and the Performative Production of Space

How can performance create and transform places of urban renewal and regeneration? What does performance contribute to the creation of community? These are some of the questions addressed in this study of the relationship of performance to urban space. Marrying theory with a series of international case studies of performance practice and interviews with practitioners, this interdisciplinary study examines how space is performatively produced to create a sense of 'placeness'. Offering multiple perspectives on space and place, the book investigates the connections between space and the construction of social and cultural narratives. The investigation focuses on the multiple ways performative actions produce space, including theatre, installations, site-specific work, visual arts and digital performance. Building on a clear theoretical framework that draws on the work of Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Henri Lefevre, Richard Schechner, Hans-Thies Lehmann, Lev Manovich and Slavoj Zizek, combining interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary performance, architecture and digital media studies, the study offers themed sections comprising theory, studies of practice and interviews with practitioners. Case studies include site-specific work by Catalan collective La Fura Dels Baus, Barcelona, Spain; the Prague Quadrennia; community engagement in Praza Roosevelt in Sao Paulo, Brazil; the Portland Inn Project in Stoke-on-Trent, UK; Campo de la Cebada in Madrid, Spain, besides digital spaces created by artists in India and Bosnia and Herzegovina.