Performing place, recalling space: a site-specific installation/ constellation in London

Abstract

Cultural geographer Doreen Massey (2005) and critical thinker Walter Benjamin (1940) both use the image of the constellation in their writings to describe place and history respectively. By drawing on their theories and bringing into play the concept of the constellation as a useful and multi-faceted metaphor, this paper will suggest one way of negotiating the politics of place to document a site's history without fixing or limiting it. My discussion will culminate in the account of a single case-study, a site-specific installation that I created in April 2008 at the Camden People's Theatre in London in collaboration with fine artist Elinor Brass. In the following paper I will introduce a practice of making place-specific work that I have developed which involves engaging with a site's history while trying not to restrict or reduce it. My methodology begins with, and takes seriously, the idea that 'places remember events' (words that James Joyce scribbled in the margin of his notes for Ulysses in 1919). I argue that to view a building as an entity that can remember, to approach site as embodied, can lead to creative and ethical forms of engagement and documentation. In my work, I thoroughly research particular buildings and their surrounding areas before using installed objects, sound and/or place-writing to reanimate the sites, or re-perform them, often in-situ if I can. It is a practice that has developed alongside investigations into the writings of cultural geographer Doreen Massey and critical thinker Walter Benjamin in particular, who both use the image of the constellation in their writings to describe and unfix the notions of place and history respectively. The paper will culminate, by way of illustration, in the account of an installation I created (Hampstead Road, 2008) where these ideas were clearly made manifest.