By challenging the domination of walls and the domination of a performer’s body in my projects, movements of all sorts became central in the flow of the performances. In Multi-Space, audiences understood that they had their own agency in moving around, changing perceptions all the time, making photos of the reflections, turning the surroundings into the mirror as reverse space. In Out There and OVERLAPS, people were of course more bound to their seat, although one kid immediately followed me outside in Out There – literally to understand better what was going on by repositioning herself. Still, in the end of Out There, people left the room to explore the surroundings outside. Less literal movements in all projects include imagination, changing attention and redirecting focus.
Both in Multi-Space and Eye Power, I strongly experienced the audience as radiating sponges. Since I was blindfolded in the beginning of both performances, I could only hear people around me, but couldn’t see what they were doing, how many and who they were. Still, all the sounds they made felt like stones dropped in water, with their ripples drifting to me to absorb. When I vacuumed the room and started silence air playing, the space didn’t become ‘empty’, but rather full of silent radiating expectations, full of rechanged focus – while the wind was filling the space as well. When I took off my blindfold, seeing the people for the first time gave me a feeling of discovering their energies, suddenly feeling their presence in a much fuller way.
Since the surroundings and audience became such strong co-players in my projects, I came to see every action, sound, odor, energy and imagination as a sponge expanding outwards from every source, as a radiating event.1 In other words, the co-presence of the performer, audience and surroundings became noticeable through every action of each, establishing a space in which their presence meet by radiating towards each other. The wind sounds when I vacuumed the room in Multi-Space, the pressing imagination of the violin body being at risk in both Multi-Space and Out There, and the blending of sounds in OVERLAPS could be seen as examples of these radiating sponges. All these examples were ‘filling’ spaces, or rather constantly (re)filling spaces.2 All these elements only exist in the presentness of the moment, as Fischer-Lichte underscores in the example of sound: ‘Emerging from the silence of the space, sound fills the space only to die and vanish in the next moment.’3 All these expanding sponges create multiple spatialities, with overlapping radiations as overlapping layers of space.4
Of course, my radiating presence as performer was also experienced, even though I challenged that radiating power by transforming myself into an object of less attention compared with other elements in the room. My radiating presence was experienced most strongly, however, when I was blindfolded in Multi-Space and Eye Power. The blindfold made me vulnerable, by taking my visual space away, but made me powerful at the same time: my body seemed to compensate for the conscious decision of taking my eyes away. According to audience members, I was as a performer ‘filling’ space, creating power with an intense energy. One person said after Multi-Space: ‘As soon as I approached Flói, there was this really grounding thick energy there (and this is before you started playing). The space between the bow and your violin, when you started playing silently, was intense.’5 After Eye Power, someone said: ‘There was something very powerful about you, when you stood there in the beginning, blindfolded, basically filling the space all by yourself. There was an enormous power, like a promise.’6
What became clear to me in all my projects, is that investigating performance space as multi-space underscores processes of movements. If we understand performance space as the product of overlapping spatial layers, we must not think that these spatial layers are fixed: any aspect of spatiality is created by the triangle of performer, audience and surroundings and is therefore constantly changing, constantly recreated. As I have discussed in PART 1, sound is travelling, light is travelling, smell is travelling – and since our body is just perceiving overlapping layers at one point in multi-space, we keep moving our bodies and changing our perceptions all the time (even in the smallest way).7 In this part, I will first examine the different types of movements present in all my projects. By combining etymological and semantic understandings of ‘perception’, ‘attention’, ‘focus’ and ‘exploration’, I will highlight the idea of a ‘map’ as outcome of these movements. Secondly, I will analyze the co-presence of performer, audience and surrounding elements as a moving process as well: all co-players could be seen as ‘sponges’ radiating outwards. Finally, I will advocate for the use of the verbs ‘to zoom’ and ‘to navigate’ to underscore the artistic potential of all these movements in multi-space.
All these movements are quite understandable if we examine the roots of the words ‘perception’, ‘attention’ and ‘focus’ themselves. The Latin and Proto-Indo-European roots of both perception and attention show a forward movement embedded in the words.8 I wouldn’t say ‘forward’ should be understood in the literal sense, from the eyes out forward, but can be a movement all around our body. Perception is in my opinion not limited to the ‘real’ spatial layers, but through imagination, we can also try to form an imaginative perception of another point in that multi-space simultaneously. Attention is not only claimed by external actions, but can also be an act of giving yourself: by giving attention to something, we transform it more into the foreground of our perception, and therefore create spatiality.
The word ‘focus’, however, means a stillness of movement as center of our attention.9 With other words, focus puts one element in multi-space for a fixed moment to the center of our awareness, while for that moment pushing other elements to the background of our awareness.
As discussed in PART 3.2, the energy flow and therefore the movements of shifting attention and focus changed a lot in Multi-Space. Certain moments, like the moment that I vacuumed the room, people turned all focus towards me: they stopped moving, pushing the other elements in the room to the background of their awareness. Later, the projection wall claimed the focus for many audience members. Fixated to the screen, they didn’t even turn towards me when I stood next to them or looked to them from behind the glass window.
In Multi-Space, I also got very strong feelings of being explorer as performer. When taking off the blindfold, I literally felt as if I was looking for the first time again, having to turn around to discover who was in the room with me. Moving around with the GoPro and with a whole shoulder bag full of extra batteries, made me feel like an alien that landed on a new planet, discovering and documenting new spaces.
The feeling of exploring and mapping out was very strong in Out There: the binoculars created a feeling of being explorers, discovering elements that are invisible with bare eyes. This happened first with an existing map: my instructions to watch to the mountains, the fog and the field as co-players created points on the map as anchors. At the same time, the trajectory of my walk into the fields became a new explorative line on the map, both for myself as performer and for the audience. Even while having a map in my mind where in the field I wanted to be, I felt the need for exploration myself during my performance, because my surroundings were constantly changing – the fog disappeared to give way to sunlit mountains. On invitation, some audience members started exploring the surroundings themselves at the end of the performance, without any instruction where to go. One person in the audience said afterwards: ‘Binoculars [were a] fantastic tuning-in tool, playful, reverent, recalling a quieter time in recent history.’10
The combination of movement and stillness, by constantly shifting perception, attention, and focus, creates the ground for exploration which was central to all my projects.11 The roots of ‘exploration’ not only imply another movement forward, but also underscore a creative process: actual sensory perception is fed with imaginative and thus creative perception.12 Wilkie compares exploration as journey, both to find new spatial layers as to define spatial layers that might be left:
‘Imagine a theatre practice that begins with a journey: encountering new spaces for itself and treading lightly or firmly in those sites as a means of testing, subverting or renewing their spatiality and its own ‘theatreness’. Or consider, rather, the practice that embarks on its journey not so much in a sense of exploration as escape: defining itself always in opposition to that space it has left. Perhaps, instead, we might imagine a theatre that does not wish to travel (even to the theatre building), beginning rather from the space it already inhabits and enjoying its ‘everydayness’.’13
The product of this journey could be a map. Wilkie has suggested that performance space shouldn’t be regarded as a map, because that might take away the movement forward, that might take turn the space into a static place again.14 However, I would advocate that a ‘map’ always implies a movement outwards as well. The map is a documentation of ‘found’ spaces and elements in multi-space: found before, or during the performance and therefore a documentation of the ongoing process of exploration. At the same time, a map can provide a tool for future exploration, with a strong emphasis on questioning the status quo: it invites a user to move around, to experience, question and subvert the ‘found’ spaces themselves, and or to discover ‘hidden’ spaces that are not yet on the map.15
Because movement – as shifting perception, attention and focus, as imagination, as exploration and as (re)filling – became central in all my projects, the concept of multi-space should be understood as outcome of all these movements. To underscore the potential of all these movements by the performer, audience and surroundings as co-players to cross, subvert and create overlapping spatial layers, I would like to advocate for the use of two verbs that together best describe these processes: ‘to zoom’ and ‘to navigate’.
The verb ‘zoom’ was first used in 1886 in echoic settings to describe proximity and distance in sounds, gained popularity after 1917 in aviation settings to ‘quickly move closer’, and finally found its way in photography and video from 1936 on.16 The comparison with photography and video proves especially interesting in our analysis of multi-space: a picture contains all elements simultaneously, while zooming in/out with a camera on details manipulates elements into a narrative ‘unfolding [in] time’.17 Of course we shouldn’t compare the moving, fluid multi-space with a static 2D picture, but the act of zooming in/out can play with the simultaneousness in an exploring, unfolding way. By zooming in/out, we can create different meanings, different frameworks, different narratives to tell. By zooming in/out, we can establish a web of lines crossing different spatial layers (a web of lines from source to source, from sponge to sponge, from any participant to any other element in multi-space). By zooming in/out, we can become aware of the multiple spatial layers that are constituting performance space: even inside a contained space with dominating walls around. By zooming in/out, we can discover hidden spatial layers, question spatial boundaries, investigate our bodily relation with a specific element in multi-space. Therefore, the act of zooming in/out has a performative role in creating the existence of performance space as multi-space.
In Out There, binoculars enabled the audience members to literally zoom in/out: the binoculars literally turned me from an imagined, hidden performer into the center of their focus. For my performing partner Bergþóra, the binoculars became a tool to make a duet from afar possible. By crossing the boundaries of acoustically separated spaces, as if visually and physically pulling the spaces together, we extended existing spatial boundaries and made the audience become aware of them. At the same time, zooming in/out didn’t only happen through the binoculars, but also with shifting attention, focus, exploration, imagination and the feeling of radiating elements – as was demonstrated by the example of my violin body being in risk outside, a thought that was ‘pulling’ the audience through spatial layers.
In Multi-Space, I found a way to narrow and widen performance space in the room (to challenge the domination of walls) by zooming in on certain elements and enlarging them in our spatial awareness. I was inspired by Live, in which the camera sometimes zoomed in on the wrists of the ballerina, making them more prominent on stage. I applied the same technique: for example, when I was filming a broken mirror, the projection wall displayed this broken mirror. While the mirror had been just a small element, maybe even in the dark or ‘hidden’ for some audience members, it suddenly became a main element dominating the screen. This felt for me like a molding process: by enlarging a certain element in our spatial awareness, other elements in space seemed to get forgotten and get smaller. In Eye Power, I applied the same process: by framing an energy socket on the wall with duct tape, I suddenly drew focus to that element, transforming the socket into the main performance stage, while the rest of the room seemed to go further away. In Multi-Space, I applied the same strategy the other way around as well: when I moved out, I turned around to film Harpa – in which the installation room was just a small part. This way of zooming out to the complete building helped me to question Harpa’s relation with the surrounding city, hotel and 66° North store by constructing narratives of materialism and voyeurism.18
This molding process of zooming in/out, as if pulling certain spatial elements or layers to the forefront while pushing away others, helps to understand the concept of multi-space. In my view, multi-space contains uncountable possible smaller performance spaces by zooming in to details and transforming them as center of attention/focus, while multi-space is at the same time part of uncountable bigger performance spaces by zooming out to surrounding spatial contexts.
The verb ‘navigate’ originated in the Latin navigare (‘to sail, to steer a ship’) consisting of navis (‘ship’, derived from the PIE root *nau-, ‘boat’) and agere (‘to set in motion’, derived from the PIE root *ag-, ‘to move’).19 The meaning of moving on water in ships proves particularly useful as framework to understand the movement through multi-space. In my opinion, all ways of understanding movement within performance discussed above are embedded in the idea of navigation.20
First, moving a ship on water resembles the active moving agency of steering the performance through multiple layers of space, and thereby activating these layers as moving, unstable elements. In this way, we should see the water not just as one surface, but as a surrounding fluidity coming from all sides, in proximity and distance. Boundaries can’t be drawn on water, but by crossing waters we become aware of distances and invisible boundaries on the way. Second, this steering movement is a combination of intended and unintended actions and a combination of collaborative and individual actions: the ship’s movement is not fully controlled by someone’s actions alone but controlled by more people and all spatial surrounding elements at the same time. It can even be argued that all participants experience the ship’s course in their own way, or that all participants are in fact on different ships, influencing each other’s course on their way. Third, the act of radiation and zooming in/out is clearly linked with the nautical origin of navigation, especially since the use of radar systems. Fourth, navigation implies the active use of a map: not only to anchor ‘found’ spaces of the past, but to maneuver around in the present, to use our imagination and explore ‘hidden’ spaces that are not yet on the map. Last, since navigation always happens between things and not just move someone from A to B, navigation contains the act of negotiation, subverting, questioning and testing the status-quo as well.21
In Multi-Space, I made the tape recording to create awareness of the surroundings and of our agency in testing the boundaries of spatial layers. The tape recording ended with ‘to navigate around, to navigate’: in this way, I wanted to invite the audience to understand their exploration through the room as navigation between a sea of mirrors, the harbor, and the surrounding seas. That the performance was steered as a ship by the triangle of performer, audience and surroundings became clear by contribution of the snowstorm and by the energy flow of the audience, confused by the lack of guidance from me as performer. One quote, already discussed in PART 3.2, clearly describes how everybody was on different ships, navigating in an unknown space: ‘Everybody was on their own, Stijn was on his own, everybody was doing something for themselves, in the same room but all managing differently.’22
In OVERLAPS, I put the words ‘zooming in/out’ and ‘navigation’ on the score, as an invitation for the musicians to investigate their process of movement between each other, the other duo, and the surroundings. Not all performers could relate themselves to these words in their improvisation process though: some didn’t pay attention to these words at all, others tried to understand the meaning of these words within the graphical score, but felt distracted or confused by it.23 In a later version of the score, I can leave those words out. However, the outcome of the piece was exactly underscoring the processes of these verbs: an unstable conversation, improvised interplay between the two rooms came into being, in which both performers and audience were zooming in/out and navigating to move through the blended sound material of overlapping acoustical layers.
Zooming in/out and navigating not only became central in the actual performances, but also in the artistic preparation process towards the performances. I discovered that my artistic process directly became site-specific by zooming in/out and navigating around the place where my performance was going to take place. By mapping out the surroundings as potential co-players, I let all spatial layers decide the final form and content of my ideas. By visiting the room, by walking around possible routes I could walk, all elements of that room and its surroundings became co-players in the artistic process of generating ideas. Seeing multi-space as a concept to play with, literally opened my eyes, ears and other senses in a site-specific preparation process.