Performativity and Sexual acts in public sphere
- Submitting institution
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Birmingham City University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32Z_OP_D0058
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.1080/20507828.2018.1528418
- Title of journal
- Architecture and Culture
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 457
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 3
- ISSN
- 2050-7828
- Open access status
- Exception within 3 months of publication
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2018
- URL
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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/20507828.2018.1528418
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
1
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This article investigates sexual acts in public contexts. It discusses how performativity can provide a framework—linked to the spatial features of cities—where boundaries can be trespassed and disorder allowed. By combining philosophy and urban studies with performance theory, the article establishes the relationships between events and spaces; investigates the perception of sexual acts in performance in order to ascertain how they become aesthetic, social and cultural interventions embodied within performative events; and demonstrates how festivals, and particularly carnivals, become a way of staging sexual acts in public spaces. This approach is in opposition to the dominant narrative of sheltering such acts in private, domestic spaces.
A specific methodology was developed in order to define the existing behavioral boundaries between performers and audiences. The methodology was used to analyze case studies drawn from internationally recognized events, including La Fura dels Baus (Barcelona, Spain) and Teatro Oficina (Sao Paulo, Brazil). The events analyzed in this article were either attended in person by the researcher or watched on video provided by the theatre companies. The performances were selected based on the subversive responses triggered in the audiences, and analyzed in order to reveal how collectiveness, in the context of a performative event, can encourage disorder in audiences.
The research is interdisciplinary in its approach to the study and definition of public spaces and the specific acts that take place in those spaces. While there has been much research on this topic within the field of gender studies, this article presents the first approach to the subject from the combined perspective of architecture and theatre studies. It looks at how collectiveness and civic spaces become essential elements of this phenomenon, and its relevance in our contemporary reality as an element of subversion of social structures.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -