The Centre for Culture, Sport and Events at the University of the West of Scotland is delighted to launch its Online Seminar Series – CCSE TALKS. This inaugural talk presents an exciting online event: “Places and Spaces: the relationship between leisure, physical spaces and movement”. Join us for a discussion on how our surroundings impact our leisure activities and physical movements. Don’t miss out on this insightful conversation!
Speakers
Dr Louise Platt (Reader in Place Experiences, Manchester Metropolitan University)
Processions as peripatetic architectures
The etymology of ‘procession’ comes from ‘procedere/processio’: to move forward. It is a linear form of walking, with a route marked out either on a map or in the minds and bodies of those that walk. The relationship between the physical space and the collective movement of the bodies maybe seems clear-cut. The route is decided, the roads are often closed, and a group of people (usually with a common purpose) move in relative harmony, one foot in front of the other through this space (although it must be acknowledged that walking is never simple or, indeed culturally neutral, see Edensor, 2010). So, despite a procession having a seeming beginning and end (i.e. as a discreet event), if we shift attention to processions as movements of walking bodies over space and time, we enter the event in the ‘middle’ a procession can be viewed as a DeleuzoGuattarian refrain – a repetition with difference (Platt and Medway, 2022). Processions in public spaces with witnesses have the power to reinforce and celebrate religious, socio-cultural, political, gender, and sexuality positions. Marin (2001) positions processions as deeply connected to rites and rituals, suggesting that their narrativity contributes to social memory and the shaping of urban space. They are mobile dwelling practices (Platt, Medway and Steadman, 2021). I posit a view that processions are a form of peripatetic architectures whereby the interactions of people with urban spaces and the built environment, through iterative movement, can determine the present and future nature of place.
Jeremy Hawkins (Poet, researcher, educator, and Doctoral Candidate in creative writing and spatial design, University of Glasgow)
Deambulating Poetics: Itinerant Performance, Affective Reconfigurations, and Placemaking
Recent forms of walking practice have ranged from the artistic to the activist, from the inscriptive to the receptive, with a common theme in French literature concerning the potential for walking to support and enact spatial re/appropriation, particularly in urban spaces, with articulations made between both individual and social dimensions (Augoyard, J.F.; Biserna, E.). Across these diverse practices, walking can be understood as a poetics, productive of space and collectivity (Lefebvre), creating new formations via the performativity that enacts or innovates its subjects. Particular practices, such as those developed at the School of Architecture of Valparaiso by Godofredo Iommi, have attempted to further leverage these aspects of walking by embedding poetic performances within an itinerary, with the aim to transform spatial relations, and, in the case of Iommi, to solicit participation that would break down boundaries between performers and spectators, between specialists and the general public (Andrade Castro). Drawing on the field of poetics, we can read these acts in terms of both direct and triangular address (Culler), with the figure of address not just “motivated by the desire to unmake distance” (Keniston), but capable of enacting a novel reconfiguration with consequences far beyond the imaginary (Robertson). Drawing on this background, I have created and helped to create situations in which walking practice combined with poetry performance has simultaneously reshaped spatial relations and created new forms of collectivity, first in Tampere, Finland, in the context of a fieldwork session on grassroots urban practices, and then within a pedagogical situation at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Deflt, in the Netherlands. In these cases, both a Situationniste-inspired derive and a planned itinerary were punctuated by performances of poetry and song lyrics, producing novel affective configurations relating space, performers, and spectators. Though time- and site-limited, these performances produced novel collective groupings and new spatial knowledge for participants, with longer than anticipated consequences in terms of placemaking and community building.
Register for this free event here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ccse-talks-places-and-spaces-the-relationship-between-leisure-physical-spaces-and-movement-tickets-1015993222077?aff=oddtdtcreator
Dr Briony Sharp and Marlene Zijlstra
Chairs, Centre for Culture, Sport and Events – UWS
