Architectures of play

Performance by: Lida Draganigou

WEDNESDAY, MAY 27TH | 15:00 - 15:30 | ZAAL 3

Architectures of play explores how the artist’s body inhabits space when feeling safe or when feeling at risk. By navigating narratives of childhood games, where these notions are destabilised, the performance research presentation wonders whether imagination, humour, and playfulness can deconstruct normative spatial behaviours. Through re-enacting old games,

evisiting family photo archives, and the temporary return to the childhood home, the artist approaches memory as a spatial practice and works towards identifying and mapping its spatial imprint.  

Grounding in her background in architecture, the research challenges dominant notions of urban planning, suggesting a (re)turn to the microscale and to modes of inhabitance that begin from bodies. It draws together phenomenological theory and urban studies discourse with endurance-based actions, aiming to reshape the ways space is perceived. What role can acts of re-inhabiting play in challenging inscribed spatial characteristics of structural norms of today? Could re-imagining space become an act of resistance?