What is the City but the people?
- Submitting institution
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Aberystwyth University / Prifysgol Aberystwyth
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 11469506
- Type
- I - Performance
- Venue(s)
- Manchester
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first performance
- June
- Year of first performance
- 2017
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
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- 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
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- A large-scale site-specific participatory event commissioned by Manchester International Festival (MIF) and originally presented as a one-off public opening event for MIF17, simultaneously live-streamed by the BBC, with a digital documentary traces of the event then publicly exhibited at the NEO Building in Manchester. This co-created project was realised within Banham’s long-term investigation and role as designer and founding co-director of the company Quarantine. The resulting public work proposed a form for the structured presentation of a curated selection of Manchester residents, on a purpose-built 30m catwalk constructed within the public space of the city’s centre – engaging local residents as both its cast and subject, and proposing a consciously theatrical frame designed to support individual presentations of self within a collective representation and consideration of the city’s population.
The project manifest and tested an exploration of how the dramaturgy and scenography of public events might engage the ethical and political issues of presence and representation, to blur distinctions between observing and participating, and to present rather than represent those choosing to perform. The scenographic and dramaturgical approaches proposed then being further explored and developed across subsequent large-scale iterations of the work commissioned and produced as the opening events of Uitfeest in Utrecht in September 2018, and Ruhrfestspiel in Recklinghausen Germany in May 2019. Preparations are ongoing for future adaptations in Germany and Australia from 2021.
Research questions include:
- How do we create the circumstances for a local public conversation at scale?
- How can a context-specific scenographic proposal integrate both epic and intimate interactions?
- How might an overtly theatrical apparatus engage and reveal the daily and intimate realities of a city and its inhabitants?
- How does scenographic dramaturgy condition and mediate the appearance of those who appear within it?
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
