Is There a There, There? (or, Allergic to Utopias) By Dr Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X] School of Arts & New Media University of Hull, UK
Is There a There, There?(or, Allergic to Utopias)By Dr Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka
Maria X]
School of Arts & New Media
University of Hull, UK
Is There a There, There?(or, Allergic to Utopias)
1st Act.
Cyberspace:
Space or
Metaphor?By Dr Maria
Chatzichristodoulou [aka
Maria X]
School of Arts & New Media
University of Hull, UK
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
Which is the space of live(d) performance?
Pics: SwanQuake(2007) &Summerbranch (2005) by Igloo
Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)
Cyberspace. Virtual Worlds. Augmented & Mixed Reality
Environments.
Are they spaces? Or are they networks?
Are networks spaces?
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
“Cyberspace was once thought to be the modern equivalent of the
Western Frontier. It was a place, albeit an abstract place,
where land was free for the taking, where explorers could
roam, and communities could form their own rules. It was an
endless expanse of space: open, free, replete with possibility.
No longer. As with the Western Frontier, settlers have entered
this new land, charted the territory, fenced off their own little
claim, and erected “No Trespassing” signs. Cyberspace is
being subdivided. Suburbs and SUVs cannot be far off.”
Hunter, D., 2002
Is there a there,
there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
“No Trespassing” signs in
Second Life
Is there a there,
there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
SUVs in Second Life
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
Cyber-Space or (cyber)
Metaphor?
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
Duplication of spatial power
dynamics
Spatial cognitive functions
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
(Realistic) Suggestions?
A number of “code-based environmental disasters” such as
the loss of privacy, censorship, and the disappearance of
an intellectual commons are currently occurring.
Lessig, 2007
“Abandon metaphors altogether”: real-world property
assumptions are being forced onto the online
environment.
Hunter, 200)
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
“Space is neither a „subject‟, nor an „object‟,
but a social reality – that is to say, a set of
relations and forms.”
Lefebvre, 1991
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
“What is missing from cyberlaw‟s narratives about „cyberspace‟
as a catalyst for fundamental change (or as simply more of
the same old thing) is a sense of the body in cyberspace:
of cyberspace as produced by and producing embodied
experience. Cyberlaw scholars have largely ignored the
bodies in which selves and groups reside, and therefore
have overlooked literatures that might help to illuminate
networked space as experienced space.”
Cohen, J., 2007
Is There a There, There?(or, Allergic to Utopias)
2ndAct.
Space as
Social
Morphology
(Tea with
Lefebvre)
By Dr Maria
Chatzichristodoulou [aka
Maria X]
School of Arts & New Media
University of Hull, UK
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
“Vis-à-vis lived experience, space is neither a mere „frame‟,
(…) nor a form of container of a virtually neutral kind,
designed simply to receive whatever is poured into it.
Space is social morphology: it is to lived experience
what form itself is to living organism, and just as intimately
bound up with function and structure. To picture space as a
„frame‟ or container into which nothing can be put unless it
is smaller than the recipient, and to imagine that this
container has no other purpose than to preserve what has
been put in it – this is probably the initial error.”
Lefebvre, H., 1991
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
Error?Ideology?
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
• A(ny) revolution, in order to realise its full
potential, needs to produce a new space.
• A revolution that does not achieve this might
have changed “ideological superstructures,
institutions or political apparatuses”, but has
failed to change life itself.
• “To change life (…) we must first change
space.”
Lefebvre, H., 1991
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
• „newness‟ of emergent spaces
Virtual worlds
• Lack of accumulated & fixed social signifiers
Do not mean • Consequences
for networked performance practices as artistic activities?
& As social activities?
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
Living „in space‟
Living „in time‟
Movement =
inscription of time in
space
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
„natural space‟: script of natural
time„modern space‟:
time has vanished from social space
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
• Threatening to political power
Lived time
• Consumed, exhausted. It leaves no traces.
Our time
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
Space is
Bodily senses that experience
it
Gaps and tensions in-
between bodies
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
Networks become spatial when
performed as spaces.
Pic: The Endless Forest by Tale of Tales (ongoing)
Is There a There, There?(or, Allergic to Utopias)
3rd Act.
My Body‟s
Other:
Looking Into
Foucault‟s
Mirror
By Dr Maria
Chatzichristodoulou [aka
Maria X]
School of Arts & New Media
University of Hull, UK
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
Q: What occupies
space?
A: “A body –not
bodies in general,
nor corporeality, but
a specific body”
Lefebvre, 1991
Pic: TranSfera by SUKA OFF
(Intimacy, 2007)
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
“Space – my space- (…) is first of all my body, and then it is my
body‟s counterpart or „other‟, its mirror-image or shadow: it
is the shifting intersection between that which touches,
penetrates, threatens or benefits my body on the one hand,
and all other bodies on the other. Thus we are concerned,
once again with gaps and tensions, contacts and
separations. (…) space is experienced, (…) as
duplications, echoes and reverberations, redundancies and
doublings-up which engender –and are engendered by- the
strangest of contrasts: face and arse, eye and flesh,
viscera and excrement, lips and teeth, orifices and phallus,
clenched fists and opened hands (…)”
Lefebvre, 1991
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
The body as a “social,
cultural and
historical
production.”
A. Balsamo, 1995
Pic: ReiDishon (Intimacy, 2007)
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
“In the mirror I see myself there where I am not, in an
unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the
surface: I am over there, there where I am not, a sort
of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that
enables me to see myself there where I am absent:
such is the utopia of the mirror. But it is also a
heterotopia (…). From the standpoint of the mirror I
discover my absence from the place where I am
since I see myself over there. Starting from this gaze
(…) I come back toward myself; I begin again (…) to
reconstitute myself there where I am.
Foucault, 1967
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
“Utopia seeks a future that itself has no future, a
future in which time will cease to be a relevant
factor, and movement, change and becoming
remain impossible.”
Grosz, 2001
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
Bibliography
BALSAMO, A. Forms of Technological Embodiment: Reading the Body in Contemporary Culture, 1995 In: FEATHERSTONE, M. and BURROWS, R. (Eds) Cyberspace, Cyberbodies, Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment. London & New Delhi: Sage, 1995.
COHEN, J.E. Cyberspace as/and Space. Columbia Law Review 107 (210), January 2007
FOUCAULT, M. Of Other Spaces. (Tr. Miskowiec, J.). Available from: http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html, 1967
GROSZ, E. Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001
HUNTER, D. Cyberspace as Place and the Tragedy of the Digital Anticommons. Available from: http://ssrn.com/abstract=306662, 2002 [accessed 3/08/2010]
LEFEBVRE, H. The Production of Space. (Tr.: Nicholson-Smith, D.) Oxford & Cambridge MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 3rd Edition, 1991
LEMLEY, M. Place and Cyberspace. California Law Review [online], 91, 2003
LESSIG, L. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Version 2.0. New York: Basic Books, 2006
PHELAN, P. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London & New York: Routledge, 1993
SINGER, J.W. Entitlement: The Paradoxes of Property. Yale: Yale University Press, 2000
YEN, A.C. Western Frontier or Feudal Society? Metaphors and Perceptions in Cyberspace. Berkeley Technology Law Journal [online], 17 )1207), 2002
Is there a there, there?
(Allergic to Utopias)
Thank You.
Dr Maria Chatrtzichristodoulou [aka Maria X]
Director of Postgraduate Studies
Lecturer in Theatre & Performance
School of Arts & New Media
University of Hull, UK