Paper short abstract:

An examination of urban temporalities through a closer interpretation of urban atmospheric workshops held in Edinburgh and Athens between February and May 2016 that seeks to contribute an alternative way of understanding the temporal aspects of a city's inhabitation.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores the embodied understanding of urban temporalities in a series of performative workshops in Edinburgh and Athens in February 2016 and May 2016 respectively. Being part of the actions of the International Network Urban Emptiness (http://urbanemptiness.org/), the workshops traced the temporality of urban inhabitations by deploying the ideas of emptiness and silence as tools of performative explorations. Silent walks, repetitive actions and practices of changing rhythms were combined to investigate the dynamics of intimacy (diverse shades of belonging) in the dwelling of the city and suggest a multi-layered narrative made of personal and group stories. Past, present and future were interconnected in this narrative to unfold hidden and imaginary qualities of an embodied urban topography. From their briefing to their performance and creation of the outputs (texts, choreographies, mappings, installations, performances etc) these actions suggested alternative temporalities of the city, fostering conditions of place experience that add a new way of experientially interpreting the rhythms of urban environment.