Performing Space is an international platform dedicated to exploring the dynamic relationship between performance and space through research, artistic practice and interdisciplinary dialogue. Since its launch in 2022, it has brought together researchers, artists and practitioners from more than twenty countries, fostering exchange across architecture, performance studies, theatre, choreography, archaeology, anthropology, urban studies, landscape architecture and related fields.
Through its annual conference or symposium and an expanding international network, Performing Space promotes collaboration between theory and practice, creating opportunities for new forms of research, artistic experimentation and critical reflection on the performative dimensions of space.
Previous publications:
Performing Space 2022 (download here), Performing Space 2023 (download here), Performing Space 2024 (download here)
Performing Space 2025 (download here)
The Preferences of the Gods workshop, led by Pablo Berzal Cruz & Alba Balmaseda Domínguez. Performing Space 2026 (Photo: Spyros Kousouris)
ABOUT THE SYMPOSIUM
Performing Space Symposium 2026 is organised by the Performing Space Association in collaboration with the Department of Performing and Digital Arts and the Department of Theatre Studies at the University of the Peloponnese, together with the Department of Theatre Studies' postgraduate programmes “Creative Writing, Theatre and Cultural Industries: Artistic, Research and Pedagogical Applications” and “Theatre, Education, Society.”
Bringing together researchers, artists and practitioners from around the world, the symposium explores the reciprocal relationship between performance and space through academic presentations, performances, conversations, workshops and site-based activities.
Since its first edition, Performing Space has become an international platform for dialogue across architecture, theatre, performance studies, archaeology, anthropology, urban studies, landscape architecture, scenography and related fields. The symposium encourages critical exchange, interdisciplinary collaboration and the development of new perspectives on how spatial environments shape human experience, and how performance, in turn, redefines the meaning and use of space.
By bringing together theory, artistic practice and situated experience, Performing Space creates opportunities for new collaborations across disciplines, institutions and cultures, fostering innovative approaches to understanding and engaging with the performative dimensions of space.
Non-presenting Participants
Non-presenting participants are warmly welcome to attend Performing Space Symposium 2026.
The registration fee includes access to all symposium sessions, performances, workshops and special events, as well as a Certificate of Participation.
Advance Registration
€70 (bank transfer)
To register in advance, please contact us at info@performingspace.org. We will send you the payment instructions before you complete the registration process.
Advance registration deadline: 23 August 2026
On-site Registration
€80 (cash only)
On-site registration will be available at the symposium reception desk on the first day of the event.
Registration Form:
PERFORMING SPACE 2025 PROGRAMME
2 to 5 September at Labor Center of Nafplio, 25is Martiou 6, Nafplio, Greece
You can download the full programme
2 September
Making Space
9:00 Registration
10:30 Welcome address
Keynote Session I
Introduced by Athena Stourna
11:30 Yves Winkin — A Walk around the City I
12:30 Break
1st Session
Performing Spatial Practices. Chair: Philip Hager
13:00 Dimitrios Papachristos — Farewell, but Not Forever
13:10 Gabriele Leo — Curating Atmospheres: Performative Practices and Affective Alliances in the Re-Territorialization of a Sacrifice Zone
13:20 Attila Antal — Stories of the Streets - Invisible Performances in Urban Spaces
13:30 Francesca Schinzani & Marica Albanese — Embodying Protest: Disguise as a Device for Hyper-Visibility and Disidentification in Public Space
13:40 Discussion
14:00 Lunch
2nd Session
Performative Learning. Chair: Alba Balmaseda Domínguez
16:00 Dimitri Szuter — Reprendre Place: Experimenting the Ecosocial Revolution with the Halprins
16:10 Anna Luyten — Performance and Listening to Landscapes
16:20 Olav Harsløf — Space Tradition and Renewal: The Performance Design ‘Academity’
16:30 Leo Vukelić — The Space Between Prompt and Performance. Friction as a Generator of Narrative Space
16:40 Discussion
17:00 Break
3rd Session
Performative Devices. Chair: Eirini Sourgiadaki
17:10 Angeliki Bara — Inside Gaddafi’s Tent: Performing Postcolonial Diplomacy Between Kitsch and Symbolism
17:20 Asimina Tsarouchi — The Kaross in the Courtroom: Mandela’s Sartorial Performance and the Disruption of Apartheid Architecture
17:30 Gabriella Kiss — No Common Ground, Only a Shared Hill: Human–Dog Translation as a Performative Situation of Agonistic Publicness
17:40 Discussion
20:30 Akronafplia Festival: Antigone at Akronafplia
Performed by the Department of Theatre Studies, University of the Peloponnese
3 September
Performing the City
Keynote Session I
Introduced by Athena Stourna
9:00 Yves Winkin — A Walk around the City II
10:00 Discussion
10:20 Break
Keynote Session II
Introduced by Dorita Hannah
10:30 C. Nadia Seremetakis — SENSING THE EVERYDAY. Intervention performances in space and time
12:00 Break
4th Session
Performing Belonging. Chair: Christina Zoniou
12:10 Laura Dreyer — One Horse at a Time
12:20 Argyris Angeli — Democracy on Stage
12:30 Shauna Janssen — This Space is for You: Performing Palimpsests and Atmospherics of Radical Hospitality
12:40 Eirini Sourgiadaki — Post-Spiritualities, Tourism and Contemporary Archaeologies
12:50 Georgia Kanellopoulou — Whose Space, Whose Identity? Bad Bunny and the Spatial Politics of Puerto Rico at the Super Bowl LX Halftime Show 2026
13:00 Discussion
5th Session
Performing Archaeology. Chair: Maria Mikedaki
13:30 Andreas Skourtis — Performing Ancient Tenea
13:40 Konstantina Chavaki — Archaeology for and with Children: Performance as a tool for understanding the obscure archaeological world
13:50 Discussion
14:00 Lunch
6th Session
Performing Assemblies. Chair: Antonia Vasilakou
16:00 Dorita Hannah & Alya Abed Ali — DIWANIYAT AL-MADINA: A Regional Urban Assembly Space Re-Spacing Assembly
16:10 Christina Zoniou — MAZI Student Arts Festivals: Performing Belonging in Public Space
16:20 Alexandros Alexiou — Live-Action Roleplaying (Larp) Festivals as Democratic Spaces
16:30 Discussion
16:50 Break
7th Session
Performing Landscape. Chair: Maria Chaniotaki
17:00 Alexandrina Fleming — Three Countries: Memory, Landscape and the Body as Archive
17:10 Elias D'hollander — Faire Écouter. The Accordance of Choreography and Architecture in Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s and Radouan Mriziga’s collaboration 3ird5@w9rk
17:20 Αngela Fragkou — Witnessing as Spatial Practice: Sea Light Arc – Kythera / Observer-Dependent Phenomena
17:30 Rafaël Magrou — Emphasizing Links between Education and Research. The Full Moon Theatre Experience
17:40 Discussion
20:30 Opening Party
4 September
Memory, Power and Belonging
8th Session
Performing Ecologies. Chair: Ioanna Tzartzani
9:00 Lydia Xourafi — Somatic Notation: Mapping Posthuman Spatial Relations through Choreographic Practice
9:10 Greig Burgoyne — We are elsewhere’
9:20 David Bassuk — Spatial Narrative and Embodied Performance
9:30 Elena Stamatopoulou — From Collective Creation to Performative Ecosystems: Reimagining Space through Mycelial Practices
9:40 Discussion
10:00 Break
Invited Session
Introduced by Pablo Berzal Cruz
10:10 Mateo Feijóo & Apostolia Papadamaki — Making Performance Space: A Conversation
11:40 Break
9th Session
Spaces of Power. Chair: Pablo Berzal Cruz
11:50 Ülfet Sevdi — Turning as Spatial Knowledge: Sema, Dynamic Embodiment, and the Performance of Sacred Space
12:00 Maria López — Space, Symbolism, and the Performance of Power: Alcázar of Segovia
12:10 Pinar Özayan — Performing the Washhouse: Seasonal Rituals and Everyday Spatial Practices in Mudurnu’s Communal Irmak Buildings
12:20 Andrei-Călin Zamfirescu — A March to the Beat of Yet Different Drummers. Contemporary Reframings of Shamanic Ceremonial Sites as Communal Performance Spaces
12:30 Burcu Bostancı & Berke Can Malkoç — Performing Community in Mudurnu Arasta
12:40 Discussion
12:50 Break
10th Session
Performing Inclusion. Chair: Athena Stourna
13:00 Tony McCaffrey — The Ends of Theatre? Disability and Performing Space
13:10—13:20 Stella Sofokleus — Between Light and Shadow: An Arts-Based Research Project with the Community 18 ANO on Strefi Hill
13:20 Discussion
14:00 Lunch
11th Session
Performing Spatialities. Chair: Maria Konomi
16:00 Paul Allain & Angeliki Varakis-Martin — When Space Puts on a Mask: Physical Theatre, Mask and the Production of Performance Space.
16:10 Paula Andrea Olmedo Latoja — Gesture Before Form: Terpsícore, the Interwoven as a Performative Condition of Space
16:20 Zeynep Tibet — Choreographing Space: Twice-Behaved Performance in Architecture
16:30 Višnja Žugić — Performative Spatialities: Between Phenomenology and Social Reality
16:40 Rodrigo Tisi — Adverse Performativity and the Fragility of Public Common Spaces
16:50 Discussion
17:20 Break
Featured Session
Introduced by Alba Balmaseda
17:30 Andrés Garcés Alzamora & Manuel Florencio Sanfuentes — Ha Lugar: The Phalëne and the Performing Space in the Valparaíso School's Seventy-Year
18:00 Phalëne Giving Place Poetry. Amereida & Open City
5 September
Reimagining Space
12th Session
Performing Memory. Chair: Athena Stourna
9:00 Jayne Thompson — Performing Commemoration: Creating Alternative Spaces
9:10 Philip Esch — Speculative Evidence: Interweaving Documentary and Speculative Choreographies
9:20 Vicky Spanovangelis — Situated Autoethnography & Ancestral Storytelling in the Locality of Nafplio
9:30 Alexia Kalogeropoulou — When the Forest Burns: Researching and Performing Eco-Trauma and Ecological Mourning
9:40 Discussion
Keynote Session III
Introduced by Dorita Hannah
10:00 Jon McKenzie — Perform Design Act: Plato Enters the Mosh Pit
11:30 Break
13th Session
Performing Domestic Space. Chair: Visnja Žugić
11:40 Georgie Hook — Home/Bodies: Using participatory scenographic methods to explore embodied experiences of home
11:50 Bernadett Jobbágy — KITCHEN: When Space Becomes a Collaborator _ Reflections on the Shooting Process of a Short Choreographic Film
12:00 Athena Stourna — The Table as Performance Space: A New Kind of (S)Cenography?
12:10 Özlem Gezgin — Scenographic Affordances and the Emergence of Movement: A Choreographic Analysis of Spatial Agency in The Madman and the Nun
12:20 Discussion
12:30 Break
14th Session
Building Worlds: Chair: Katerina El Raheb
12:40 Pavlos Panagiotidis — Directable Scenography: Rehearsing AI-enabled Performance Spaces
12:50 Elina Roinioti & Eleana Pandia — Stages No Body Can Enter: What We Learn from AI Companions about Performative Space
13:00 Dimitris Baltas — Augmenting the Site: AR Methodologies for Site-Specific Dance
13:10 Elina Roinioti et al. — Embodying Protest: Disguise as a Device for Hyper-Visibility and Disidentification in Public Space
13:20 David Bassuk — BUILDING WORLDS, NOT STORIES
13:30 Discussion
14:00 Lunch
15th Session
Shifting Spatialities. Chair Elina Roinioti
16:00 Helen Robertson — Somewhere Between Two Movements
16:10 Yannis Mathioudakis — Reconstructing Space Through the Lens of Exile: A Case Study of ME/DEA
16:20 Nico Angiuli & Katerina El Raheb — I Was Bitten by a Robot Dog!
16:30 Discussion
16:50 Break
Keynote Session IV
Introduced by Maria Mikedaki
17:00 Joseph Maran — Mycenaean Citadels as Performative Space: The Case of Tiryns
17:30 Closing Roundtable — Performing Space Futures
Featured Session
19:00 Apostolia Papadamaki & Dorita Hannah. Sunset Ritual
20:00 Closing Party
6 September
Closing Session
9:00 Joseph Maran — Field Visit to Tiryns
Keynote Speakers & Invited Contributors
Joseph Maran. Professor of Pre- and Protohistory, Heidelberg University.
Keynote Lecture & Field Session
Mycenaean Citadels as Performative Space: The Case of Tiryns
Joseph Maran is Professor of Pre- and Protohistory at Heidelberg University. Since 1994, he has directed the excavations at the Mycenaean palatial centre and UNESCO World Heritage Site of Tiryns (Greece) on behalf of the German Archaeological Institute. From 2013 to 2017, he served as Director of the Heidelberg Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context.”
His research explores transculturality, changing lifeworlds, the relationship between architecture and social practice, and the role of material culture and social memory in Copper and Bronze Age societies at the Mediterranean interface between Europe and Asia. He recently co-edited the volumes Ambivalent Times: The Mycenaean Palatial Period between Splendor and Demise (2023) and Rituals, Memory, and Societal Dynamics: Contributions to Social Archaeology (2025).
Jon McKenzie. Professor of Design | Theorist | Artist
Keynote Workshop
Perform Design Act: Plato Enters the Mosh Pit
Jon McKenzie is Director of StudioLab, a critical design lab at Cornell University whose interdisciplinary teams connect researchers, designers and organisations working in education, healthcare, and environmental and human rights. His research moves between the disciplinary paradigms and performative desiring-machines of cultural, organisational and technological performance, exploring their perfumative emissions and the AI atmospherics of everyday lifedeath.
His transmedia work includes the books Perform Design Act: Provocations in Performance Design (with Dorita Hannah and Olav Harsløv, 2026), Transmedia Knowledge for Liberal Arts and Community Engagement: A StudioLab Manifesto (2019), and Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance (2001; new edition, 2027). His creative work also includes the experimental play Lifelines: Blavatsky Freud Experience and the films The Revelations of Dr. Kx4l3ndj3r (2012), Lifelines: Jaroslav Mokosh Experience (2024), and S/CARE PACKAGES: Crises of Care of Self, Community, World (with Ana Vujanovic, featuring Bernard Stiegler and Daniel Ross, 2021). His essays, videos, comics and workshops can be found at labster8.net and studiolab.world.
C. Nadia Seremetakis. Professor of Anthropology | Author
Keynote Lecture
Sensing the Everyday: Intervention Performances in Space and Time
C. Nadia Seremetakis is Professor of Anthropology, an award-winning author, and one of the leading voices in the anthropology of culture, memory, and the senses. Her books and articles, written in both English and Greek, are based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in rural and urban Greece, as well as comparative research in different parts of the world. Her work has been translated into several languages and has been widely taught in the Humanities, Cultural Studies, and Fine Arts for more than two decades.
Born in Greece, she studied and taught in New York, where she lived for twenty years, before returning to Greece to teach for a decade. She continues to lecture internationally and has also designed and organised public participatory multimedia and interdisciplinary initiatives focused on regional cultural development. Her full Bio at www.seremetakis.com
Today, she divides her time between Europe and the United States.
Yves Winkin. Professor | Communication Scholar
Keynote Walk
A Walk around the City
Yves Winkin is a Belgian educator and communication scholar who synthesized several strands of American social science into the ethnographically grounded anthropology of communication, introducing this approach to the French-speaking world. He has been Professor at the University of Liège, the École normale supérieure de Lyon, and the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers in Paris. He was the founding Director of the French Institute of Education (2010–2012) and later Director of the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris (2015–2019). His most recent book, From Erving to Goffman: A Work in Performance? (mediastudies.press, 2026), explores the life and work of Erving Goffman. His forthcoming book, co-authored with Sonia Lavadinho, Micro-liens: Entretenir la ville relationnelle au quotidien (Apogée, 2027), examines everyday forms of urban sociality.
Dorita Hannah. Professor of Performance Design | Architect | Scenographer
Special Performance
Sunset Ritual (with Apostolia Papadamaki)
Dorita Hannah is a New Zealand-born architect, scenographer, writer and Professor of Performance Design at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her work explores the intersections of architecture, performance, scenography and urban space, examining how spatial environments shape embodied experience, social interaction and public life. Bridging creative practice and critical research, she has led numerous international collaborations, exhibitions and performance projects that investigate the performative dimensions of architecture and the transformative potential of spatial design.
Widely published in the fields of performance studies, architecture and design, her research focuses on performance design, spatial dramaturgies, temporary architectures and the politics of public space. Through both scholarship and practice, she has made a significant contribution to expanding the dialogue between architecture and performance internationally.
Mateo Feijóo. Artistic Director | Curator | Educator
Invited Conversation
Making Performance Space: A Conversation (with Aposotolia Papadamaki)
Mateo Feijóo is an artistic director, curator, educator and performance maker whose practice brings together artistic direction, curating, teaching, and the creation of performance and choreographic works.
Throughout his career, he has directed major cultural institutions and projects, including the Escena Contemporánea Festival (Madrid Regional Government), Teatro de La Laboral (Gijón), and Naves Matadero – International Centre for Live Arts (Madrid). As an international curator, he has collaborated with leading artists such as Marina Abramović, Elena del Rivero and Cristina Rodrigues, among many others.
He currently combines his artistic and educational practice with Flipas – Urban Cultures Laboratory and A Casa do Pozo, a project dedicated to connecting contemporary artistic creation with rural contexts.
Apostolia Papadamaki. Choreographer | Theatre Director | Performance Artist
Invited Conversation
Making Performance Space: A Conversation (with Mateo Feijóo)
Special Performance
Sunset Ritual (with Dorita Hannah)
Apostolia Papadamaki is an award-winning choreographer, theatre director, performance artist, and founder of Anamnesis, an internationally recognised methodology for site-specific, participatory and ceremonial performance. For more than three decades, her work has brought contemporary performance into dialogue with Ancient Hellenic traditions, creating transformative experiences in archaeological sites, museums, theatres and public spaces presented at more than forty international festivals.
Over the past twenty years, her artistic research has explored performance as a living act of remembrance, integrating mythology, philosophy, ecology, ritual and embodied practice. Through her performances, ceremonies and participatory works, she invites audiences to experience art not only as an aesthetic event, but also as a shared process of presence, transformation and collective renewal.
Organisation and Committees
Executive Committee
Director
Dr Pablo Berzal Cruz
Performing Space Association
General Coordinator
Dr Athena Stourna
University of the Peloponnese
Coordinators
- Prof. Dorita Hannah — University of Newcastle, Australia
- Dr Christina Zoniou — University of the Peloponnese
- Dr Alba Balmaseda Domínguez — University of La Rioja
Scientific Committee
Honorary Member
- Prof. Dorita Hannah — University of Newcastle, Australia
Chair
- Dr Christina Zoniou — University of the Peloponnese
Members
- Dr Alba Balmaseda Domínguez — University of La Rioja
- Dr Pablo Berzal Cruz — Performing Space Association
- Greig Burgoyne — University for the Creative Arts (UCA), Canterbury
- Maria Chaniotaki — Independent Researcher
- Dr Katerina El Raheb — University of the Peloponnese
- Dr Tyrone Grima — Malta College for Arts, Science and Technology
- Dr Philip Hager — Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
- Dr Maria Konomi — National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
- Dr Maria Mikedaki — University of the Peloponnese
- Dr Elina Roinioti — University of the Peloponnese
- Dr Eirini Sourgiadaki — Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK)
- Dr Athena Stourna — University of the Peloponnese
- Dr Ioanna Tzartzani — University of the Peloponnese
- Dr Antonia Vasilakou — University of the Peloponnese
- Dr Višnja Žugić — University of Novi Sad
- Dr Miljana Zeković — University of Novi Sad
Symposium Support Team
- Dr Alba Balmaseda Domínguez — University of La Rioja
- Dr Pablo Berzal Cruz — Performing Space Association
- Dr Katerina El Raheb — University of the Peloponnese
- Katerina Liapopoulou — University of the Peloponnese
- Dr Elina Roinioti — University of the Peloponnese
- Dr Athena Stourna — University of the Peloponnese
- Dr Antonia Vasilakou — University of the Peloponnese
- Dr Christina Zoniou — University of the Peloponnese
ORGANISED BY
Performing Space Association
University of the Peloponnese