The Enabling Conditions. : The Emergence of Performance from the Halprin Fountain to the Bridges of Venice

Περίληψη

Theatre is where architecture happens. Since the dawn of history, humans have identified those specific conformations that characterise performance spaces.

One can read the definition of performance space ambiguously: performance can be understood as arising at times from the capacity of the place to activate human action and interaction, at times from human action activating the characteristics of the place.

In accordance with Gibson's theory of affordances, the complementarity of the human being with the environment is recognised: specific spatial characteristics, duly interpreted, can constitute the proper circumstances for transforming a common environment into a performative space.

This contribution aims to investigate the conditions enabling performance both in spaces conceived to generate instinctive choreographies and in spaces that human interpretation has made into stages.

Halprin's Keller Fountain or Thomas Saraceno's aerial installations are architectures designed to provoke sensory stimulation: the flow of water, the differences in altitude, the winding paths of the former, the sensation of vertigo and instability of the latter, lead the body to move, explore and perform in space.

Nonetheless, even the common space of a bridge can become a stage: in 17th century Venice, the war of the fists took place on a bridge that had the characteristic of not having parapets: the very absence of this element, which can be interpreted as a spatial idiosyncrasy, created the enabling condition for the inhabitants of the two islands divided by the canal to challenge each other from September to December, in a battle where the faction that would throw the most opponents off the bridge would be the winner. For the event, the surrounding palaces, bridges, canals became stalls and galleries from which to observe the warrior-actors. The street was transformed into a stage, the city became a theatre, the space recovered its original concept of chora.