— chapter 1 – about the spaces —
With a concept of work still broad, but at this point sufficiently delimited to its identity characteristics and its communicative problems, I will now comment on some questions that can be raised to help further polish the rough edges of the concept of the project and outline this thesis-model in its structures, forms and means to be used once it can be presented in the future as an artistic project and no longer as a theoretical exercise.
A question that seems fundamental to me to answer is undoubtedly the question of space. At least I think it is important to bring some basic historical concepts that will allow us to articulate a common language between whoever is reading this thesis and who raises the problem. Even more so when it has been announced since throughout this paper what is at issue are always the concepts of communication, physical spaces and virtual spaces.
What is space?
Although we can find multiple answers as various disciplines study the phenomenon of space and reinterpret it according to how it can shed some light and answers to the phenomena they try to study (psychology, physics, theatre), here I would like to address some possible answers that we find in the philosophical literature.
Two authors that will be fundamental for my understanding of space will be the Greek Aristotle and the German Immanuel Kant. The first-one, with his definition of the six great dimensions or regions of space (high-low, left-right, front and back) in Book IV of “Physics”(Aristotle, 4th century B.C.) and postulating that these will always be defined by the movement that evidences what he will call a “place”, outlines the key concepts for the latter to develop his ideas about the intuition of space.
Kant plays a fundamental role for our understanding of space, since in his postulations- whose foundations can be found mainly in his “Critique of Pure Reason” but have been published since a text written 13 years earlier called “On the First Ground of the Distinction of Regions in Space” – he sustains the question of space as a sensorial question.
We -humans- grant a quality to what we call space as we give it meaning through our way of living and interacting with it. The sensitive aspect takes on a much deeper meaning since Kant and that makes any artistic proposal that deals with space become fundamentally relevant in the matter of space, since it is in the interaction with it that we apprehend and discover it. We find new ways of understanding space and thus we can discover more of reality.
In his book on punctuation “Of stigmatology. Punctuation as Experience” (2013), the French writer Peter Szendy makes a historical and sensorial analysis of the phenomenon of punctuation. With many examples taken from artistic proposals, mainly from literature, he speaks of punctuation as a political form to not only accentuate – or punctuate – an action-movement, but as a way of apprehending an experience, incorporating it with the emphasis that makes it more salient or relevant in a story.
It is the case of cinema scenes punctuated by light: Peter Szendy makes a breakdown of the scene of the last fight in Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull” where the development of the fight is punctuated by blows and flashes of light from the photographers capturing the moment. And it is also in his analysis of the novel “Tristram Shandy” by Laurence Sterne where the symbolic load of the black and white pages allow us to understand the tension and emotions that the author wanted to highlight the story of his protagonist.
Of course, if the space can be understood only from the experience, the interaction or intuition of its deepest being according to Kant, what we can extract and contribute reading Peter Szendy in our original postulate of a work that talks about the identity of spaces, is that in order to carry it out we must find points or a way to punctuate this space which can provide us the necessary sensory information so that this space can be understood from a sensitive perspective.
“Lugarización” of the space
As Aristotle posited, this delimitation of space through movement in its regions or dimensions – an exercise that I believe is compatible with the punctuation of space that we obtain from the previous reflection – is what allows us to distinguish from an abstract space – which Kant will determine as “a priori” knowledge – versus the concept of a “place”.
It is in this sense of “place” that it is essential, in order to continue decanting the theoretical concepts offered by philosophical reflection and to approach an artistic proposal and its content, that I incorporate a concept that I find interesting to review. Coined by the Spanish geographer Professor Francisco Gonzalez Cruz in his studies on identity, dialectically with the concept of “globalisation” he postulates the concept of “lugarización”.
The concept of “lugarización” does not have a literal translation into English and is replaced in the Spanish author’s translations by the term “the local place”. I believe that this translation is not the most accurate, as it limits the concept to simply making a contrast with globalisation. While in developing and breaking down his concept throughout his work, “lugarización” is a process that operates dialectically with globalisation rather than being posed as an antithesis.
To explain the concept I think it would be more correct to use a translation that in English would be a redundancy such as “placing the place” or a much more literal translation that could be “placesization” or something like “place-making”.
Professor Gonzalez defines “Place-making”: “the enhancement of places has to do with satisfying the need for identity, both personal and communal. People seek to rediscover their own uniqueness and that of those with whom they live. To recognize themselves as unique in this “global village”, in this world where everyone is similar in their lifestyle”.
What I like about this concept is that, as it is not only a counterpart of the phenomenon of globalisation, it is also an invitation to know our spaces-places within the same phenomenon and simultaneously. When understood dialectically with globalisation, it allows us to understand both positions as relevant phenomena for the different human cultures and shows how one can be derived from the other and how both are always present when studying our identity.
It is in this sense that for me, making a work that allows for communicating spaces, in its sensitive dimension, has necessarily to rescue the place factor (and therefore punctuating) of this communication and understand the spatial and sensory reality of the connected places. I believe that in this sense the communicative experience that technology allows us should point towards the exercise of talking about bodies and the history of spaces: punctuating the experience of these places rather than just concentrating on the possibility of communication.
I believe that this quality is mainly developed today in multimedia pieces that take place as site-specific artworks. In museums, historical monuments or different public spaces. Works (from different art branches of art: murals, dance, multimedia works, etc.) make a commentary so that the audience takes a position and actively understands something of the place that the artists put in relevance through their art.
Some Examples
As pointed out at the end of the previous chapter, there are several art forms that highlight characteristics (which may be social, historical or physical) of a specific space-place. I quickly think of some multimedia pieces (and even “only” musical ones strictly speaking) that can fulfil this place-making function of art and I present some of them below:
Ferry Play (2015)
This-is-not-a-theater-company’s “Ferry Play” is a site-specific play. Erin Mee, the play’s director, calls it “a smartphone play.” It mixes sounds and a narrative voice with the vast view of New York´s Harbour, experienced from a boat and the natural sounds of the city and its passengers.
According to the director, the play aims to generate awareness for the audience of those who are around them. To think about their stories, motivations and details of all the lives we come across on these boats and in this city.
Berlin Rosenthaler Platz (2018)
Similar to the previous one, “Berlin Rosenthaler Platz” is a musical theater piece by Kirsten Reese and David Wagner.
The main difference with the play of the company “This-is-not-a-theater-company”, lies in the fact that this play does include some scenic performative elements along a route in a specific neighbourhood of Berlin.
The background however is similar: “to build a portrait of this place – a highly frequented place in the 19th century and center of Jewish life in the 1920s. It also develops the history of the GDR. The audience is not only given information about routes and places to stop, but it also demands that they take their own actions.”
To give a twist to this style of recorded audio works that allow a sonic “walk” through a specific site, I would like to highlight here a couple of works for multiple ensembles and whose focus and commentary on the site is about its acoustic qualities.
4’33” (1952)
First of all, I think very instantly of John Cage: not only due his works which were meant to happen in specific spaces like “ASLAP” (1987), but even in his most famous work (at least the work that has been most popularised) 4’33” it is the sound of space the one that takes the most preponderant role along this minutes.
Particularly, and taking into consideration the prelude pointed out at the beginning of this thesis about the Chilean social outbreak, I would like to point out that this work was presented in Chile during the 2019 protests by the Sebastián Jatz. Then during 4’33”’ what could be heard was not the silence of a concert hall but the central streets of Santiago de Chile: with the people and the police cars.
I‘m sitting in a room (1969)
Another work that is exceptionally for its focus on the physical characteristics of the space in which it is performed is “I am sitting in a room” by composer Alvin Lucier, which, by the way, was presented this year in the Issue Project Room season to commemorate the composer’s 90th birthday.
This work tells us about the dimensions of a specific room by repeating with loudspeakers the same text narrated by the composer until blurring it with the frequencies that generate the most reverberation in that specific room.
Roomtone Variations (2013)
Finally I would like to refer to the work of the composer Nicolas Collins: “Roomtone Variations”. Using and taking Alvin Lucier’s concept in depth, Nicolas Collins talks about concert halls as real instruments that should be used for their resonance capacity.
Thus he develops his series of pieces/variations in which ensembles of different orders and sizes play and improvise using the frequencies that generate the most resonance in a concert hall. This is calculated by means of a software designed by the composer that at the beginning of the piece is projected and sent digitally as a score to the musicians of the ensemble that is going to present it.
About this work I would like to mention that I was able to see it in person at a concert organised by the composer Prof. Dr. Georg Hajdu in which we participated as a multimedia composition class of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg in 2019 and which took place in the Old St. Pauli Tunnel in Hamburg.
To think about where the artistic phenomenon occurs, can be understood as exercise of democratisation. That is why I am very interested in spatial works where the audience can experience not only a sensory phenomenon that includes interaction with space, but also through that interaction the active auditor can become more involved with reality and understand from experience some phenomena that constitute and make unique the space where these works occur.