Playing in the City: Practice and Poetics of Reclaiming Urban Space

Περίληψη

Drawing from Henri Lefebvre’s line of thought regarding the search for an other form of urbanity, as developed in his text The Right to the City, and aspects of Richard Schechner’s theory on performativity, this article aims to process performative field actions as social and artistic practices of renegotiating the relationship with urban space and time. The study approaches key ideas from Henri Lefebvre’s explorations concerning the city as a space of claiming a new urbanity, such as the transformative powers of art, playfulness and the imaginary, working on their intersections with Schechner’s approaches to the concept of performativity, which identify play and ritual as inherent to every expression of performance. The proposed framework is utilised for the analysis of two case studies of artistic performative practices in public space: Children’s Games (Francis Alÿs, 1999-ongoing) and Revolution Bodies. Walking in the Centre of Athens (Diana Sabri, Eleni Tzirtzilaki, 2014). The very nature of such practices — oscillating among daily life, art, social practice, and activism — is perceived and explored as a transitional space, necessary for unleashing the imaginary and engaging with other spatialities and expressions of the possible. As a result, they emerge as practices that encapsulate the transformative potential Lefebvre seeks in the context of reclaiming urban life, thus providing a research field rich with material for further elaboration and potential expansion of the discourse around urbanity.