Short Abstract:

This laboratory explores the notions of place focusing on via a sensibility towards the human and non-human relations that construct and remake environments. We seek to explore the conceptual and theoretical possibilities of place-making through an exploration of ethnographic form and function. Preregistration required.

Long Abstract:

This laboratory seeks to explore the notions of place focusing on via a sensibility towards the human and non-human relations that construct and remake environments. Together we seek to explore the conceptual and theoretical possibilities of place-making through an exploration of ethnographic form and function. As Edward Casey (1998: 336) has argued “an event, place accomplishes what is begun in the body: it possesses an inclusiveness that does not exclude anything but reaches out to everything, that is, to all constructed as well as natural things.” We ask participants to identify an example from their research that represents place as performance. We invite participants to step outside of the usual conceptualization, form, and practice of their research and instead embrace the notion of a laboratory to explore performance and place with a goal of collective empirical play as we challenge ourselves to reconsider the sensibilities and artifacts of and in fieldwork. Participants will bring a representation of such a performance: artifact, picture, recording, performance, poem, dance, sketch, map, or theory. Each lab contributor will then be given five to seven minutes to present their object. Following these presentations, we will collectively explore and construct snapshot vignettes in textual forms to create a collaborative archive of performing place. This lab asks: How is performance rooted in place? How is place rooted in performance? What are the limits of performing place?