Table-top Theatre, TML

‘Experimental Phenomenology: Memory, Identity and Place’ is the name of a collaborative project between Xin Wei and the philsopher David Morris (whose hand you can see in the photo above, pointing his finger). The aim of the work is get a sense of the connections between memory, identity and place by developing experiments.

The development of these experiments involves two axes of exploration: a substantive one, concerned with place, memory, identity, especially in relation to the body, movement and things; a methodological one, concerned with how to go about doing phenomenological experiments. Here we might note two things about phenomenological experiments: first, they would be more focused on enabling precise descriptions of experiences, from a first person point of view and tracking the dynamics of the individual experience, rather than quantifying over populations according to variables already specified by the experimenter; second, they would be more focused on arriving at the conceptual framework proper to the experience generated in the experiment, vs. constructing an experiment to fit an already given conceptual framework—or at least they would keep open this arrival.

To prepare for these explorations there are a series of orienting seminars, or reading groups. The set readings provided introductions to phenomenology (which focuses on the experiencing subject) and looked to facilitate discussion about how to engage with these ideas in a tangible manner. Experiments, David argued, disrupt the usual in order to describe differently. So here, the aim is to set up situations that complicate our usual relations. It was fascinating to see how the group (including students from both Concordia and McGill) went from the texts to something which could be done in practice. In fact, before we started talking about the readings, one of the students demonstrated an experiment-in-progress: the table-top theatre.

Above a simple white oval table was a camera, linked to a computer and a program which could modify and project on to the floor, just to the side of the table, what was happening on the table. Using a combination of time-delays and other alterations there were some really surprising effects. Everybody crowded round the table, eager to see themselves projected onto the floor. What was interesting was the remarkable difference between watching others do it, and trying yourself. I was a little bit self-conscious but I moved a pen around and watched my hand appear in two different parts of the table on the projection: the program had been changed yet again and was displaying a different time-delay for each half of the table!

I had to leave before the end of the meeting as I wanted to attend the talk that Chris Salter (whom I had met at the colloquium) had invited me along to a to: ‘Architecture, Urbanity and the Temporary’, the first public forum of a project called ‘The Ephemeral City‘.

IRHA Public Forum #1, October 8, 2009
Maison Shaughnessy
6:00PM

Architecture, Urbanity and the Temporary

Alberto Pérez-Gómez, McGill University
Chris Salter, Concordia University
Cecile Martin, Independent Artist, Architect and Curator

The 21st century city that was formerly dictated and constructed chiefly by architecture and planning models is increasingly being shaped anew daily by temporal forces: the dynamics of unstable financial markets and fluctuating economic patterns of consumption and leisure, the rise of ecological processes and practices, the transformation of public space by the methods of branding and multi-sensory design and last, but certainly not least, the dissemination of new ubiquitous technologies of surveillance and monitoring.

The first IRHA forum will investigate the ethical, political and ecological stakes in this new urban theater of temporariness, instability and transformation.

Chris and Alberto Pérez-Gómez talked about Frederick Kiesler (a really interesting figure, not least for his laboratory at Columbia University) and how we might conceive of architecture as potential new ways on inhabiting the world. Cecile Martin’s talk was equally fascinating: she discussed the work of champ libre, a nomadic organisation interested in ephemeral works. I spoke with her at the end of the evening and although she’s no longer involved with the group encouraged me to make contact with group… watch this space!