PERFORMING SPACE 2025 WORKSHOPS

PERFORMING SPACES: NARRATIVE SPACES AND SCENOGRAPHY

Maria Chaniotaki with the collaboration of Eleni Palogou

6 July

Workshop objectives: To explore imagination when it is grounded in reality and a real space.

Duration: One day / 4 hours. A short Introduction in scenography and narrative spaces, workshop with participants and short performances presentations.

Profile of participants: Anyone interested in scenography and narratives of space.

Number of participants: 10 (minimum) – 15 (maximum)

How can a place narrate dramaturgically and become one of the most poetic elements of Scenography? This workshop offers an approach to Expanded Scenography and Performance Design. How do we "read" the narratives that are already embedded in a space in order to bring them to light? How can we inscribe new narratives into a room, a street, or any place around us? We will focus on the spaces around us, including public spaces, where we will wander in search of qualities and elements that hold dramaturgical perspective. We will examine examples from Expanded Scenography, Performance, and Visual Arts, focusing on the methods they employ. Through artistic techniques that explore spatial perception, we will experiment and pose questions about how spaces carry functional meanings, how they can tell different stories each time, and how we position the audience in relation to these narratives.

Workshop leaders:

Maria Chaniotaki is a civil engineer (BA), pianist and stage designer (MA) who has been working as a theatre and costume designer since 1996 and has presented her work as a visual artist in several exhibitions. She has been the founder and director of the Athens Scenography Laboratory (LSA) since 2000. She has published several books and has repeatedly participated in the Prague Quadrennial of Design and Space as a curator and set designer. She is a member of the Society of British Theatre Designers (SBTD), International Institute of Theatre (ITT), Greek Chamber of Fine Arts (EETE), Hellenic Costume Society and Greek Theatre Designers Association.

website: www.mariachaniotaki.gr      blog: https://maria-chaniotaki.tumblr.com/

Eleni Palogou is Greek architect, set designer and visual artist, currently studying for a master's degree in Applied Clinical Sociology and Art. She has collaborated with several theatre companies and artists, designing sets for theatre productions, short films, art installations and performance projects. She has curated and designed for group exhibitions and festivals such as the Prague Quadrennial of Design and Space. Combining her background in architecture, scenography and sociology, her artistic practice focuses on the dynamic relationship between reality and perception, while being deeply rooted in space, representation and audience experience.

https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1072454/1072455 

THE PREFERENCES OF THE GODS: SPATIAL PERFORMATIVITY REVEALEAD

Alba Balmaseda Domínguez and Pablo Berzal Cruz

4 and 5 July

Workshop objectives: Consider Mediterranean Spacing through site-responsive group actions. 

Duration: Two days /4 hours

Number of participants: 10 (minimum) – 25 (maximum)

Fifty stades, I conjecture, from Temenium is Nauplia, which at the present day is uninhabited; its founder was Nauplius, reputed to be a son of Poseidon and Amymone. Of the walls, too, ruins still remain and in Nauplia are a sanctuary of Poseidon, harbours, and a spring called Canathus. Here, say the Argives, Hera bathes every year and recovers her maidenhood. This is one of the sayings told as a holy secret at the mysteries which they celebrate in honour of Hera. (Pausanias, II.38.2)

Spatial performativity is the relationship between the sensory stimuli produced by an environment and the cognitive and behavioural responses they cause in its occupants. Sacred space, places inhabited by the gods or places that human beings connect with the divine, is distinguished from the rest of the environment by establishing itself as a centre that organise the territory. In sacred places, spatial performativity is very intense, so even if the ritual activity and its traces have faded away, it is still possible to detect the places preferred by the gods, as spatial performativity persists. In this workshop we propose how to discover the spatial performativity of a place without the constraint of cultural load and current uses through conscious performance. To do so, we propose to transform ourselves into performative detectives to try to solve a mystery that Nafplio holds about its most ancient sacred places: where were the Sanctuary of Poseidon and the Fountain of Canathus mentioned by Pausanias in the 2nd century AD? Using different techniques of focused attention, letting emotions emerge and allowing the body to express itself to the sensory stimuli produced by the environment, we will carry out a performative investigation of ancient Nafplio and its surroundings, in search of its lost sacred places.

Workshop leaders:

Dr Alba Balmaseda Domínguez is a Spanish architect. She combines architectural practice with academic research and teaching. Her work focuses on public spaces, the relationship between body and space, and architectural materiality, approached through design, performance and full-scale construction. Her work is internationally recognised and has won several competitions. In 2022 she was nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award for her project La Mejicana. She is co-founder of the research project Performing Space and the group OFF SEASON, where she explores her interests in a transdisciplinary way through lectures, seminars, publications, exhibitions and workshops.

Dr Pablo Berzal Cruz is a Spanish PhD architect, landscape architect and performer. Since 1994 he has been combining his work as an architect, performer, curator and teacher. He has designed and curated several exhibitions, performed in different contexts, won several awards in competitions and published his work in different media. His research focuses on the study of performativity in ritual space, and his most recent postdoctoral thesis (2024) is Performing Epidaurus: Spatial Performativity at the Asclepieion of Epidaurus. In 2022 he founded the research project Performing Space, of which he has been director since then.

M E D I T E R R A N E A N   S P A C I N G   2.0 

SITE-RESPONSIVE ACTIONS EXPLORING NAFPLION’S SPATIOTEMPORAL PERFORMATIVITY

Dorita Hannah

4 to 7 July

Workshop objectives: Consider Mediterranean Spacing through site-responsive group actions. 

Duration: Four days /4 hours; 1) gathering/sharing; 2/3) exploring/making, 4) activating/feasting

Profile of participants: From varied disciplines/cultures who are interested in site performativity.

Number of participants: 10 (minimum) – 25 (maximum)

Commensality can be defined as the exchange of sensory memories and emotions, and of substances and objects incarnating remembrance and feeling. (C. Nadia Seremetakis)

Performance is action-in-space and site is space-in-action– together cohering as performative spacing.

However, our globalised worldview still regards time and space as separable and absolute, generally oblivious to spatial dynamics in daily environments. In Event-Space, I maintain that, as a performative entity, “space precedes action—as action”. This requires a relational understanding of place that recognises the fluctuating relationships between objects, people and environments they inhabit, all charged with meaning within the cultural territory of the site, requiring spatial attunement. This 4-day collaborative workshop thereforeinvestigates the relationship between performance and site through embodied exploration. Recognising location as an event in itself – resonating with environmental performativity at macro and micro scales, interdisciplinary groups will explore Nafplion to consider “Mediterranean Spacing” with specific reference to commensality; engaging with the socio-politics of the table. This leads to a series of site-responsive actions, ending with a shared feast in the landscape.

Workshop leader:

Prof Dorita Hannah is a New Zealand-based designer and independent academic whose practice and research – operating across the architectural, performing, culinary and visual arts – focus on performance space, spatial performativity and performative spacing. Her scholarship and international projects address the public realm's dynamics, politics and intermediality. Hannah has published on Performance Design and Event-Space, while designing, curating and directing exhibitions, installations, performances, feasts, symposia and workshops. She regularly exhibits at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design & Space, for which she has been Design Director, Architecture Commissioner and Theory Curator.