The Walking Spectator: Embodiment, time and mindfulness in performance in public space

Abstract

In this thesis, I study how walking as a dramaturgical strategy invites an intensified awareness of and reflection on the body in the larger context of the acceleration of daily life in the city. I therefore discuss the movement of the spectator walking in performance in public space. These subjects are derived from two performances that are central in this thesis. 223m by the makers of production platform SoAP: Johannes Bellinkx, Rita Hoofwijk, Nick Steur, Breg Horemans and Benjamin Vandewalle, and Slow Walk by choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and her company Rosas. In these performances the spectator is positioned in the city and walks. By means of walking the spectator is the co-creator of the work and the act of walking is what constitutes the performances as such. Therefore, he spectator is a walking spectator. The first two chapters of this thesis serve as historical context on walking. Based on the writings of Rebecca Solnit, I formulate theory around walking in the city and walking as an artistic practice. I argue that the experience of walking in 223m and Slow Walk relates to a meditative or mindful experience. Therefore, I use the aspects of focus and rhythm, also present in mindfulness, in the dramaturgical analysis in the third and fourth chapter. These chapters focus on composition and spectator. By analysing rhythm and focus I will discuss how the composition of the case studies constructs an embodied form of spectatorship. In the third chapter, I apply the concepts of focalization and proprioception to analyse how the movement of walking evokes sensorial experiences that make embodied spectatorship explicit. The fourth chapter further analyses how rhythm constructs embodied spectatorship and how in these performances multiple rhythms of both the bodies and the city come together. Rhythm and the concept of social choreography as defined by Gabriele Klein assist in arguing how 223m and Slow Walk resist to the dominant orders of the city, claiming space for the body. In the fourth chapter I also present how rhythm influences the experience of time. The act of walking instigates reflection on time and the accelerated society, enabling to experience inner and clock time as defined by Joke Hermsen. In the conclusion of this thesis, I argue that these performances stimulate an internal focus on the body and the senses. They control the experience of time and motion by playing with duration and the temporal sensory experience of the walking body. Making the spectator aware and giving space to the unaugmented body.