Performative Urbanism Lab for Spatial,
Social, and Scenographic Experimentation
situating critical performance
design practices in the city
As part of the Performative Urbanism research platform, Situating Critical Performance Design Practices in the City is a two-year pilot interuniversity and international research initiative inquiring into how performance design – as an expanded notion of scenography – can be harnessed for examining an aesthetic shift that is responsive to the political, social and economic realities beyond the prescribed stage, specifically the spatialization and politicization of our experience of cities.
The project brings together interdisciplinary artist-researchers and scholars, located on four continents (North America, South America, Europe and Oceania), who work across the fields of Performance Studies, Architecture, Urban Planning and Scenography. This project is funded by a Concordia University Research Chair and a Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council Insight Development Grant (2018-2021).
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Research Associate and workshop coordinator:
Joanna Donehower (HUMA PhD)
Research Assistants:
Eduardo Perez (MA Communications and Media Arts
Mira Baba (MsC Geography and Urban Planning)
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collaborators
Dorita Hannah, PhD, is a trans-disciplinary researcher, artist, performance designer and theatre architect whose practice includes designing and curating live events, installations and exhibitions, while focusing on performance space and spatial performativity. She is Adjunct Professor with the University of Auckland (NZ), University of Tasmania (Australia) and Aalto University (Finland). She writes on the intersection of the visual, spatial, performing and culinary arts, especially in relation to the event as a driver of experience. Publications include Performance Design (2008) and Event-Space: Theatre Architecture & the Historical Avant-Garde (2018).
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Kristine Samson, PhD, is an urbanist and associate professor at Performance Design, Roskilde University, Denmark. She has written articles on performative and situated practices in urban space with an interest in how informal practices intervene in, and potentially transform the city. In the Performative Urbanism projects, she explores how we can work with a sympoetic and collaborative approaches to engaging non-humans, multispecies and the yet unknown.
Rodrigo Tisi, PhD, is an architect and holds a Masters in Architecture from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (1999) and a Ph.D. on Performance Studies from Tisch School of Arts, New York University (2011). He has collaborated in several multidisciplinary projects crossing boundaries between art and architecture. In 2010, and during the chilean bicentennial, Tisi was the curator of SCL 2110, a project of art, architecture and performance that for the very first-time integrated collaborations between art, architecture and performance in Chile. He recently was the creative director and curator of special projects for the XX Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism of Chile: "Unpostponable Dialogues" realized at the Cultural Park of Valparaíso, 2017. Rodrigo Tisi is currently an associate professor and director of creative research at the Design Lab of Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez – UAI.