Surge, Sway, and Yaw: Mooring Performances in the Boat Project and A Room for London

Abstract

This article examines performances at moorings in The Boat Project and A Room for London, two projects which both involved performances on and around a boat. In so doing, it advocates 'mooring performance' as a critical contribution to discussions on mobility and performance. In their editorial for the first issue of the Mobilities journal (2006), Hannam, Sheller, and Urry argue that mobilities need to be understood in combination with moorings, although this perspective has not been fully explored elsewhere. Where Hannam et al. propose that moorings sustain mobility and the flow of capital, this article understands moorings as acts and places of performance, which temporarily bring together people and places. It discusses songs written for The Boat Project and recorded essays in A Room for London that reflect on actual, remembered, and imagined experiences of journeys. It considers the significance of location in these mooring performances: The Boat Project at coastal harbours and A Room for London on London's South Bank. The article concludes that, faced with climate change and economic crisis, mooring performance offers a creative, generative, and adaptive engagement with intersections of land and water, people, and place that is a negotiation with, as much as a prop for, mobility.