“Dimensions of public and non-public spaces.

Understanding of the
performative activism.”

Natalia Kozakiewicz
Dance and Diversity or Diskurse zu einer diversitätssensiblen diskritimierungskritischen
Vermittlungspraxis
MA DANCE MEDIATION – summer semester 2023

Prof. Sevi Bayraktar

 Some spaces seems to us to be more accessible than others, aren’t they? Something
like, placed a bit closer to our private lives, accompanying our activities, supporting the
processes of life happening in between structures. And on the other hand, some others seem to
have so many limits that we almost can’t enter them, they are so far from our small, daily
realities, that almost untouchable, sometimes even unsuitable to our daily basis. For both what I
find quite interesting is, how they could interact with each other, how they are mixed, where and
how, they slide in between each other, finally combined to create the spaces where we live. How
spaces called “public” affect our “private” lives, how they shape our actions, behaviors and lead
us to particular decisions. And also the other way around, how we, with our “private” activities,
are constantly changing spaces where we live.

Speaking about those, I don’t mention only basic daily actions that we take, moving
throughout the city and outside-city spaces: it’s not only about walking and how the path walk
create our routes. And not only about stopping when the red lights turn on at the crossroads. It’s
also about, how those and many more structures determine the way we think, which actions we
allow to happen to us and what kind of interactions we allow ourselves to go with.

Let’s create an image of a simple action happening in the city space. Let’s treat as an
example a wide, crowded street near the big shopping mall on the Friday’s evening. People
walking around quick, often in a rush, taking their bodies through the space without looking
carefully what’s around. They push their bodies to move forward, to get through the crowd and
reach the goal of buying. They seem to pass through each other without paying attention to what
they see. Their bodies walk straight, their eyes avoid gazes of other’s, reaching out something
they think they need at the moment. Depend on how wide is the street that they are walking
through, they touch from time to time each other’s arms, backs, chests, barely hitting. They walk
but they seem blind. And so their bodies – behave as they don’t bother about the surroundings,
pushing through each other to move forward. If we could look at them from above (let’s create
the image of a drone flying above), they follow specific paths, they create patterns on the street,
co-creating and determining patterns of the others at the same time. Through the way they
move, that is already determined by the specific arrangement of the space and the system of
rules how to move in between them, they form the space they are in.

This way of perceiving the spaces we call “public” I would like to adapt to the wider range
of cases, to many examples of the spaces we share as humans. Therefore, to go further with the
thesis that spheres where we live are determined more by the actions that we take in them than
just their landscaping. And that this assumption can be applied to many different kinds of

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movements, recalling those like daily-basis activities, social interactions but also dance and
performance.

Quoting one of the most recognizable choreographers and current dance-guru for the big
part of the contemporary dance world, Ohad Naharin: “Dancing is a really private act that we
make public”, I would like to presume that we create our dance environments base on the
process of sharing our private dance acts with others. We move, express, expose ourselves to
the outside, staying in the state of receiving what we see, feel, collect. We create through
exchange and mesh of layers of our private dance acts. The similar rules applies to the spaces
that are not directly connected to dance – spaces where we work, eat, sleep, where we share
our - not necessary including dance - private acts of existence – spaces that we call “public”.

This sharing aspect of the spaces called “public” is defined quite well by Setha Low and
Neil Smith as “the range of social locations offered by the street, the park, the media, the
Internet, the shopping mall, the United Nations, national governments, and local neighborhoods.
“Public space” envelops the palpable tension between place, experienced at all scales in daily
life, and the seeming spacelessness of the Internet, popular opinion, and global institutions and
economy”1. It shows that what is calle “public” could go through the border of the physical space
and cross into the abstract sphere of, for example, social relations or economics. What they also
mention as an important aspect of the public spaces that applies more and more nowadays is
daily movement, which may be local, regional, or global. So to say, public space could “happen”
in different spaces and as the more important factor would be considered the daily aspect of
motion, actions happening, more than particular structures where they happen.

The similar conclusion came out of the small survey that I conducted few weeks ago in
between the dance students of the master of dance mediation from the University of Music and
Dance in Cologne, Germany. The survey consisted of three basic questions around and about
our perception and understanding of the public space. Except the first general question about
the common meaning of “the public”, I put two others, aiming to try to define more precise what
this public could mean to us – and then, asking what we can, are allowed to do in public and
what is not permitted to do there. Going through some answers from the first one, mentioned
there were, among others: reproducing, imitating, transform, meet, relate, gather, explore, walk –
and – not everything. But, what also appeared in this survey is – not everything. And then,
following the theory that we can describe phenomenon talking about their limitations – I would

1
S. Low and N. Smith “Politics of public space”( Taylor & Francis group, New York 2006) p. 3;

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take some of the answers from the second part of the survey – what actually we can’t do in
public spaces. And here stands: be private, own limitations, have control, be invisible.

Without putting a direct comment on this survey, I would go a bit further with the multi-
layered explanation of the public space, taking into consideration the inner and outer self of the
body, dividing the spaces for those directed more to ourselves as particular human beings and
those aimed at the communities as a whole structure. In this case one can say that the private
space is quite directly connected to the individuals’ minds - thoughts, feelings, desires and the
spheres they create around those and around their individual physical bodies. Thus, the
accessibility of the spaces called “private” is quite limited and depends on the individuals’ limits
of access. And on the other hand, what is usually called “public” seems to be accessible to
everybody, easily reachable and with the possibility to interact with. And then, taking both of
those, I would define the spheres that we differentiate as “public “ and “private” depending on the
level of their common access. So to say, public as a sphere easily accessible for many and
private as an accessible for the particular.

Connecting all of those assumptions and taking as a base for the further reflection the
thesis that we create the spaces where we live in through the actions that we take, I would go
with the final definition of the public space as a common creation of physical and abstract
spaces of the various interactions happening in between individual bodies and minds. And
saying so, I would like to mention also the performative, dance actions that we take in public
spaces – meaningful and enriching for our public-private co-creations.

I used to perform in public in my country of origin, in Poland. And the most vivid memory
that I keep out of those times is connected to the chain of manifestations called Woman’s Strike
that happened between October 2020 and 2021. Me and my friends decided to create a
contemporary dance, mostly improvised, 8-minutes long performance as an act of protest
against the government’s proposals to apply the complete abortion ban for woman, not
depending on the circumstances of the conception of a child or a condition of a fetus. We were
dancing barefoot, dressed up with the red kimonos, to the slow-beat techno music on the
monument in the middle of the city. In the context of performing and public spaces that I want to
go deeper with, what seems to have importance now is, how this performance, us dancing in this
particular place affected the surroundings. And how our dance, our actions added another factor
to the co-creation of the city space those times.

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 We were performing on the surface of the huge statue that stands in the middle part of
the city, that was build up in 1980’s in memory of the Polish soldiers fighting for freedom during
the World War II. The shape of the monument I would described as an abstract, minimalistic and
brutal, consists of the big flat platform, placed parallel to the ground and going out of and
through it huge metal spikes. The whole surface of this monument is big enough to walk on it,
some parts are more flat and easy to access, some others more like slopes, encouraging to slide
on them. During the performance me and my friends decided to use both – flat and sloped
space, exploiting them as partners and co-creators of our movements. We became in a way,
innovators of the space, decorating and fulfilling the surfaces with our dancing bodies. Via our
improvised, modern-dance based performance, the monument gained a new meaning layer, in
some way becoming a part of our manifest. And I could say with confidence that it changed the
perception of this space also for the watchers that were present during our performative actions.
Four young woman, dressed up in red, looking as young warriors, performing on the statue in a
memory of the soldiers from the previous age – the sanity of this place became even stronger.
And what was also clearly noticeable, was that, the shape of the monument indeed shaped the
movement of our bodies and our interactions with each other. Slopes, rough edges of the
monument decided instead of us how our bodies should move, how we can express, moving
through those particular surfaces, what we want to convey with our performative actions. We
were sliding, sometimes not on purpose, falling down along the slopes and bumping into each
other. But what that created was the feeling of the even stronger powerlessness, connected to
our reactions and lack of solutions for the threat of restrictions of woman’s rights. The monument
became another factor, another partner of our demonstration.

What I would like to point out through this description of the performative action is that,
the space that we perform in could have a strong impact on our actions. The space could
change the way we dance and we can change the meaning of the space and sometimes even
the space indeed, through our performance. Similarly to the way we create the public spaces
through our daily-base actions, we can also create the spaces through the way we dance in
them, we perform, we show our acts of visibility.

Placing the dance in urban spaces is one of the trademarks of the American
choreographer, William Forsythe, well known not only from his ballet-based works with the
Frankfurter ballet but also, modern installations with the use of the digital media and visual arts.
In his essays put under the title “Choreographic Objects” (that became later on also a title of the
serious of the installations in the city spaces) he claims that through many aims that he has as

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an artist is also to stimulate people to pay attention to the surrounding environment, “to engage
the public with the choreographic, and often political, question of how the body moves and how
bodies in space are organized”. Forsythe approves that through the various spatial and
architectural art constellations he’s trying to insert the spectators/visitors of his exhibitions under
the conditions in which they can experience their impact on the creation of the art space and
also, how in specific space arrangement, the body could be felt and seen differently. In one of
his most recognizable choreographic works “City of Abstract” (2000) he put the installation
consisted of a videowall able to alter the reflected images of the passers-by into the urban
structures of the city. Installation allowed the visitors to see themselves with a motion delay on
the screen and at the same time to interact with their own artificial , often deconstructed bodies.
The construction, placed in between the city space, became a part of the urban architecture -
“the citizen's movement composes the screen’s content […]. In this way, the choreographic
object plays like a dispositive to perform a democratic dance materialized as a living architecture
within the urban environment”.2

Another view on the topic of the bodies co-creating public spaces puts the Austrian artist,
Erwin Wurm. His idea of “One-minute sculptures”, that has been realized since 1988 as a
serious of photographs, videos and performance works flashes particular positions of bodies
acting in spaces. Different artists, anonymous participants, performers, curators were and are
taking part in Wurms’ try-outs of the various body positionings in spaces and going into
interactions with the objects such as clothing, buckets, balls, doorframes, bicycles and
perishable goods. Instructed by the artist, participants tested themselves in different, often really
uncomfortable and unconventional positions, engaging their bodies to interact with not only the
particular objects but also their surroundings, holding the specific pose for the, mentioned in the
title, one minute. What makes those works so rich in the context of bodies acting in public
spaces is the two-sides view on the human figure posing in an absurd or silly way during the
interaction with the casual daily life objects, for example: a man holding a chair on his head,
standing or a woman with the hanger with the shirt on it, hanged out of her mouth. So to say,
combination of the abstract and the casualty at the same time. And in those ways, those
particular human bodies, by means of the common objects, are becoming a part of the public
architecture, firstly as a short-time sculptures, secondly – as an absurd but alive human

2
L.G. Monda “Choreographic architectures: “When dancing designes the urban environment”; online access
through:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373026208_Choreographic_Architectures_When_Dancing_Designs_the
_Urban_Environment;

6
creatures. Through their unusual or even weird poses they change the surroundings, being a
part of the public composition and questioning the role of us as humans with the daily based
interactions, both with objects and broader – with the society view of how our presence in
spaces could be shown.

The concepts of putting bodies into public spaces didn’t grow recent years or decades
but are present on the European dance scene since almost a century - grounded in Laban’s
works about bodies and architecture and developing by, through many others, Pina Bausch and
her theatre. Pina in her, especially later works, taking as one of the examples the only movie that
she directed “The Lament of the Empress”, used to put bodies also in the outside spaces,
creating a dialogue between people’s feelings and emotional states and the ways that they are
expressed to the outside, how they cooperate with the surroundings or how they oppose to the
environment in which we reveal them. Thanks to Pina’s work and her engagement with the
community of the city of Wuppertal, the town became a significant point on the map of the
contemporary dance scene in Germany and until now is a source of some crucial works for the
German and also European, dance theatre.

Last season the directorship of the theatre was taken over by French dancer and
choreographer, Boris Charmatz, whose main ideas about the development of the company are
focused on opening the theatre for the wider range of performers and audiences and connecting
those with the environment. Putting attention to the heritage of the city of Wuppertal and
speaking through his own words – Charmatz wants to create the “dance house without the roof
and the walls”3. And one of the projects from the recent months is a good example of the actions
that could lead the theatre to grow into this direction and at the same time shows how the
performance puts into the public space – in this case into the spaces in-between the city of
Wuppertal – could affect the perception of the public.

Wundertal.Sonnbornerstrasse was a performative creation of almost 200 dancers,

performers, actors and amateurs from the city of Wuppertal with the members of the Pina
Bausch ensemble, combined out of two weeks common rehearsals and the final performance-
happening, that took place on the big Wuppertal’s street, directly under the Schwebebahn’s
tracks. Both professional dancers and amateurs were performing on the main street of the city,
reframing the perception of how the dance theatre could look like when we take it closer to our
daily lives (assuming that it’s not close enough). On the Sunday afternoon, through almost the 4

3
about Pina Bausch Theatre official page; https://www.pina-bausch.de/de/2/das-tanztheater; access: 10-09-2023;

7
thousand spectators, participants were running, screaming, partying and reciting poetry during
the 3-hours long happening, exhausting themselves in front of the audience but expressing at
the same time their desire and love to move, for some of them, also with the meaning of giving
an honor to the city they live in and its artistic heritage of the Pina Bausch Theatre. The methods
that Boris Charmatz and his assistances were working with during the rehearsal process I would
describe as a folk dance theatre – not in the meaning of their connection to the German or
French tradition but more in the consideration of adapting dance to the environment of the
people with various dance and movement backgrounds. Simple movements and experiences,
mostly taken from the daily life, became through the engagement of the performers and the
arrangement planned by the directors, something strongly marked in between the buildings of
Sonnbornerstrasse. Our habits, taking as an example small gestures that we do every day, such
as collecting the hair, zipping up pants or shrugging the shoulders, exaggerated, became
performative. Speaking from the position of the participant of Wundertal. Sonnbornerstrasse, I
would point out the power with which the whole happening appeared on the street. With the use
of colorful paints on our moving bodies and precise structure of the whole performance
(including counting the movement, runs in between the designated stations and very specific
positions) our dancing bodies became disfigured and dehumanized but at the same time,
incredibly alive. What did that make to the space though? The actions that we took on
Sonnbornerstrasse? How did they shape – did they – the space of the city? Taking a look at the
almost 200 people performing on the main street of the quite quiet and green city, that makes
the surroundings definitely more dynamic and provokes the reaction from the outside – and what
I mean is, for the citizens, passers-by, tourist and others, all of the Wundertal’s visitors, watching
or partly participating in the happening has made the space where they live shaped differently,
used in another context and at the same time, richer with another, historically and artistically
meaningful layer. What was also quite interesting, during the performance a lot of audience were
watching the street from above, occupying the Schwebebahn station. I can presume that for
some of them the view of this street from this particular point were never taken before. During
the happening-time all of the cafes and restaurants around were open – and visitors, enjoying
their coffees or ice cream could at the same time participated in the outgoing actions, what
makes it, if we see it as a combination of a performative and non-performative public space,
more accessible for art and this kind of expression that we are maybe not brave enough to
reveal in public. Going further in this direction – all of the screaming, hard runs, fake
demonstrations and acts of self-love that was shown during this Sunday afternoon were just an
increased version of the casual actions that we, as human beings, takes in our daily life – and

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shown this way revealed how expressive we can be also in public (what we even though usually
don’t do because of many of the social habits and rules of our societies). The 200 participants-
happening that we were part of has created a new, performative space in between the
Wuppertal buildings, adding another layer on the heritage of the Pina Bausch theatre.

Another performative actions that could be taken as examples of how we can change,
manipulate and co-create spaces that we are living in were and are conducted by the LIGNA
collective – cooperative artistic group whose founders and members at the same time are 3
independent artists: Ole Frahm, Michael Hueners and Torsten Michaelsen. As they describe the
group on their website: “In shows, urban interventions and performative installations since 2002,
[we] have been exploring the possibilities of action of dispersed and temporary associative
collectives. […] The audience becomes a collective of producers. The result is an association
that produces unpredictable, uncontrollable effects that challenge the order of space”4. In one of
their most recognizable actions, radio ballet, first organized on the main station in Hamburg in
2002 and repeated one year after in Leipzig, they invited participants (visitors of both of the train
stations) to listen (and as a result of a project also follow) the movement instructions put on the
radio station. “The radio program proposes a choreography punctuated by reflections that
explores the gray area between "allowed" and "forbidden" gestures – such as between the
gesture of reaching out and the gesture of holding out the hand (to beg). […] For the duration of
the performance, the station was transformed into an eerie space that opened up to those
displaced by the house rules”5. Through performing the moves that are often perceived as “not
allowed” in the spaces of common use such as train station, participants and at the same time
performers of the play opened up the new space in between the walls of the building, new (or
maybe just forgotten) sphere of physical expression, adding to walking, turning and evading
gestures naturally connected to our daily lives, just separated from them in the process of
defining the rules of the “public” areas. Another performative action which authors are also
members of LIGNA collective – The Walking Museum shifts the focus on the construction of our
modern museums. Do they exist only inside the specifically adapted buildings? Or are they
performed through the social-constructed behaviors? In the action predicted for the young
audience the LIGNA-members prepared an audio that, put on the canal in the headphones,
leads children and young people to construct their own museums in space – to freeze into
exhibits, become sculptors, collectors or viewers. And through the constantly changing

4
About: LIGNA performative group: https://www.ligna.org/ueber/; access: 12-09-2023;
5
About: radio ballet : https://www.ligna.org/2003/07/radioballett-uebung-in-nichtbestimmungsgemaessen-
verweilen/; access 12-09-2023;

9
arrangement of the museum space, the young performers experience how on their own they
could create the space and at the same time becoming the objects placed in it. Taking play and
experiment as points of departure, they can create each time completely new surroundings, not
depending on the physical space that they are in. And thanks to this constant change of roles
and perspectives, the reality that surrounds them becomes more alive, dynamic and adaptable.

Through the actions that we take in the spaces we call “public” we can shape them, add
new meanings, sometimes even new structural elements that co-create them. Being in the
constant change we can moderate the surroundings, on the daily base and also performatively.
On the other hand, we are constantly shaped by outside spaces, the environment that we live in
and the people that we share the spaces with. The neighborhood or the city that we placed
ourselves in determine also many aspects of our lives, giving an influence on our private
realities. Which of those factors then is stronger? The impact that we have on creation of the
spaces through our actions or the phenomena of the spaces shaping us in our activities?

Coming back to the example from the beginning of this reflection let’s take a look again
at the busy street in the big city, observing people walking in a rush near the shopping mall. But
this time let’s direct the gaze more on the surroundings and how the structure of the city
determines the paths and movements of the citizens, how the arrangement of the space shapes
the way people move or interact with each other. Imagining a drone drifting above the street, it’s
visible how the paths of the people from the crowd moving through the street are shaped by the
elements like benches, street lamps and curves in the road, how the construction of the
crossroads push walkers to stop on their paths in the specific places and through those,
changing their ways. Even the placement of the doors of the shopping mall and their showcases
– their locations decide when people would stop, where they would direct their eyes and,
concurrently, where they would go leaded by their look. Even considering their physicality,
specific shapes of the buildings in the surroundings – their flat walls or clear edges either
encourage people to walk close to them or to avoid particular constructions. Zooming that out for
the even broader view, the whole architecture and planning of the city and the spaces outside
the urban environment decide about how the movement through the space would happen, the
positioning of the streets, pathways and green areas creates the maze that we walk or drive
through.

Talking about the impact that surroundings have on our movement we can notice not only
how those create our paths in space but also, how the specific reactions, body positions and
gestures change depending on the outside. Saying so, to mention how, depending on the space,

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we express ourselves through our bodies, how the “public” setting creates the ways our physical
bodies reveal our emotional states and thoughts, how far we can go with expressing ourselves in
those spaces we call “public” and how much we are stopped to move and behave freely. Taken
in the other words – how big is the influence that public sphere has on us as not only physical
but feeling and thinking human bodies.

Going a bit out of our daily realities and zooming in onto the art creations that are
connected to the topic of how public spaces shape our bodies, I would like to mention two short
dance movies that were created in a similar times but are showing the body in the surroundings
in totally different ways. Both of them are mostly focused on the relational aspect of two people,
two bodies interacting in the space but those bodies behave differently, regarding in what kind of
environment they are placed. As a first case let’s recall “DANCEN. A mesmerizing culture clash
dance film” directed by Corina Andrian and realized in the city of Wuppertal , finished in 2021.
The action of this movie is happening (excluding the last part happening inside one of the
buildings) in the outside city spaces. First few scenes on the train station – the well-known
Wuppertal’s Schwebebahn – and the rest on the crossroads or track bridges. At first two, later on
four dancers are going through the city, adapting their bodies to the particular city structures. We
see, for example, two woman standing in front of the traffic lights that just turned red. One of
them is completely passive, her body seems to have no energy to interact, just passively waiting
until the light would change and she would be permitted to cross the street. Another one,
standing behind her, stays in motion but we can see the tension on her face, a grimace of
impatience while waiting for allowance to go. Both of them don’t act naturally, staying under
dependency of the outer factor to let them make a move, their bodies stay in unusual positions,
completing the city surroundings. Another scene from the same creation – four dancers are
going through the bridge above the road. They travel in a line, one after another, walking straight
similarly to the structure of the bridge. Their movements are abstract and seem to not fit to the
way the walk but are full of tension and limited by the space in between the moving bodies. They
legs walk straight and so we can see the straight lines in their arms and corps too. The dynamic
of all of their movements is similar to the tempo of the walk and leaded by one specific direction.
What I would like to point out through both of those descriptions is, that the crucial elements of
the city like traffic lights or train tracks differentiate the movement of the bodies, the way we, as
humans living in the cities, can move in them, is influenced by those structures and it could be
seen on our faces, in our corps or even in the distance that we take between each other moving
throughout the architecture of the city. Through this quite abstract, but also quite close to our
usual lives example – which of us does not now the tension while waiting for the green light, that

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we can feel in all of our body? – I would like to say that all of those factors can also create the
influence on our minds, first of all having impact on our physical existence but second of all,
determining most of our behaviors. And to make it a bit more visible, I would go with the second
of the mentioned creations that we could take as representatives of the freedom or lack of
freedom in the ways of how bodies move in spaces, this time taking place in Latvia, in the middle
of the field, by the seaside.

“SEPA” is the short dance movie described by the director, Viktorija Vrublevska as “A
poetic short film exploring a process of separation between mother and daughter through the
use of contemporary dance and music by Mark Pritchard”6. The whole action is happening either
in the middle of the field or on the seaside, the main view is even though on the mother-daughter
duet, moving in an improvised dance in front of the camera. What’s coming fast to mind when
we observe the way they move in space is their freedom and fluentness of the movement.
Setting aside the aspect of the relation between those two (which is at some point crucial for the
movie but not for this analysis), we can take a more precise view on the way their bodies interact
with each other and how that suit or not to the environment that they are in. Quite visible is the
delicacy of the movement that is happening, small and bigger circles that dancers’ hands, arms
and corps are drawing in space. The dynamics of the movement that happens is also particular
– based on impulses and swings, making an impression that movement is not planned at all, just
appears spontaneously. What we can notice watching mother and daughter in this contemporary
duo is that this kind of movement really suits the space they are in. The open field full of grass
moved by the wind, the seaside in the background, waves coming to the side, accompanying the
flow of the dancers complement the creation of the duo performing in nature. Also the faces of
mother and daughter are quite relaxed, what makes an impression that their movement is based
on release and allows the body to express freely. The whole landscape of the fluent, emotional
bodies moving in nature seems to be perfectly composed, not only from the artistic point of view
but also, considering how we, as living usual human beings act in spaces like field, sea or other
based outside the cities. Do we walk straight, following one path and keeping our arms and legs
straight? Or rather do we allow our bodies to swing to the sides, slide, cross the steps and
collapse? In the open spaces like that one described above we usually allow ourselves to move
bigger, more released, often also more spontaneous too. We allow our bodies to create ways of
expression without the strong outside factor of the strict structures that surround us. And

6
About: SEPA- short dance movie: https://directorslibrary.com/10/2020/latest/short-films/dance-short/sepa/;
access 9-09-2023;

12
allowing more organic, as we can say, movement, to happen, often we also allow ourselves to
act in a more natural way and to free our bodies to react the way that is more connected to us as
physical human beings than us as creatures shaped by civilization.

Not only our daily or casual movement is shaped by the space that it is surrounded by
but also, performing in public, in the opposition of the previous view of co-creating the space
though various performative forms, could change and adapt depending on the space.
Sometimes even the space indeed becomes a source and at the same time the field that the
performance is happening on. Choreographers such as Trisha Brown or Meredith Monk were
one of the first dance artist that started to perceive performing in the outside spaces not only as
a way of going out of the theatres and making dance more accessible for the wider audience but
also, they started to point out how the space could build a completely new context that the body
is performed in, how the structure of a site could guide the structure of the performance. In the
“Man walking down the side of a building”, created by Trisha Brown, the length of the
performance is dictated by the tempo that the dancer takes to move along the building, not by
the expectation of the choreographer how long this process should last. So to say, the specific
side-location provides rich fodder for the work in themes of aesthetics, significance and so on in
Trisha’s concept. The other choreographer, Meredith Monk went even further with the
conclusions about how space can influence the outside performance. She claims: “[w]hat
satisfied me most about working in nontheatrical space was the process became a dialogue
between an environment that already existed and me. My task was to listen to what a particular
space was saying to me. I liked that I was not constructing a reality that would be the same no
matter where I went7”. So through building up the different contexts of the work and through the
dynamic dialogue the same action taken in various locations could get a new meaning and at the
same time, becomes more, not even appropriate, but actual and accessible regarding particular
circumstances. Same as the spaces around us are modified all the time, same our ways of
performing in them could change in the adaptation to all of those.

Reflecting about the spaces and especially those we can call “public”, I would like to shift
a bit to another sphere of our daily and performative activities, the sphere that right now seems
to create another world of exchanges between our bodies and minds and physical and mental
states of others and to which we can also apply previous questions about how we shape
spheres that we are living in and how those spheres are shaping us in our lives.

7 T. D. Arendell and R.Barnes “Dance’s duet with the camera”, Motion Pictures, p. 23;

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 Digital media accompany us in many ways and in almost every field of our lives. We are
constantly surrounded by screens, that take our attention to the online-world. We re-direct our
interest to those and more and more often substitute real (physical, live) interactions with the
digital ones – texting, exchanging photos, creating online reels and so on. We move our, could
be described as private, worlds to the more accessible, digital sphere sometimes at the same
time separate ourselves in a way from our physical realities, giving a contribution to the co-
creation of the virtual reality. Regarding this particular way of how the online-sphere is created
and how it grows more and more, powered by our media activities - do the same rules apply to
the virtual public sphere similarly to the physical one? Is that another dimension of the “public”
that we can take a look on from the perspectives of how is it created by us and how we are
shaped by the digital sphere that accompanies our lives? And how do then the dance and
performance art appear on-line?

Following the actual statistics about the usage of the social media (data for April 20238),
there is around 5.18 billion internet users worldwide and of this total 4.8 billion users of social
media – so taking those into percentage points – almost 65% of population connected to the
internet and almost 60% attached to the social media world. Even if we distance ourselves from
the statistics as a source of the vivid knowledge, those counts say a lot about how accessible is
the digital world for us and how often we connect usage of the global network with our presence
in the virtual social realities.

This shift from the physical reality to the digital world became even more notable during
and after COVID-19 epidemy. What could have been+ noticed during this time was direct and
strong switch in-between our physically isolated private spaces and the newly born virtual living
spheres. The actions that we use to take in parks, on the streets or in the art studios were forced
to minimalize to the size of our flats and rooms. Common activities in which we used to have a
chance to share our feelings, words and experiences had to be re-shaped and re-created online.
Staying locked in our houses, we started to arrange the outside reality through and in-between
the digital sphere. So to say, we shifted the “public” zone of the common exchange from the
physical outside to the virtual.

During the first few months of the pandemic, in 2020, I was participating in the “DIARY”
project. As a member of a contemporary dance school located in Poznań, Poland and participant
of the classes that use to happen live in the studio, I got a proposition to join the action that was

8 https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-world; access 12-09-2023

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predicted to substitute the live format of the upcoming choreographic premiere. In the framework
of the project, we were asked to record ourselves in the daily dance practice – however we
understand those. Short video, the best recorded more less the same time each day and
expressing how we feel in this particular moment. The videos weren’t published freely but we’ve
had an opportunity to share them in between our dance group. And what did that make to us as
a community, as I’ve heard from some of the participants and what I also noticed for myself, was
that through this routine and through the virtual exchange of our moves, words, music just as
views on our beds, floors and kitchens, we initiated the new structure, a net of a small dispersed
worlds linked in the abstract-digital sphere. And this net was really alive – with the recordings
sometimes placed in bedrooms, kitchens or gardens with the accompany of the pets or
members of the families. So to say, some of the really private aspects of our lives this time were
opened to the community, they became public physically staying inside of the walls of our
houses.

“The Centre for the Less Good Idea, based in downtown Johannesburg, South Africa, is
a physical and immaterial space to pursue incidental discoveries made in the process of
producing new work”9 – that’s how the authors of the Long Minute project described the space
that was the origin of the digital performative action organized between April and October 2020.
Hundreds of videos were published on the #thelessgoodidea social media platforms, with the
material from artists sharing their one-minute art experiences from their COVID-isolations. “The
Long Minute was the Centre’s direct response to the removal of our ability to physically be with
one another. The Long Minute sought to find virtual strategies of pursuing incidental discoveries
and processes of sharing and responding to one another collectively and collaboratively”.
Through the publications of the short glimpses of COVID-isolated realities of particular artists the
digital art network started to arise. And taking its origin in the global pandemic-circumstances it
also slowly became a separated, digital space for the worldwide performative exchange. Initiated
with the chain of posts on social media platforms, the Centre for the Less Good Idea grown as
also a source of online art works, becoming an online-art gallery. So, bypassing the corona
conditions, it created also another dimension of the art-space, collecting the artists from all
around the world into one, abstract but broadly accessible sphere. The broad range of different
views on private spaces and home-creations appeared through the project curated by Bronwyn
Lace – coming out of the recordings made in beds, in the different stadiums of alienation or

9
About: the Long Minute project: https://lessgoodidea.com/the-long-minute#/the-long-minute-1/; access: 10-09-
2023;

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depression, through the home-landscapes of layers of the toilet paper, both those and many
others showing the fragile aspects of participants’ pandemic lives, allowing the continuity of their
usual art-creations to go on and at the same time, giving a contribute to this co-created through
sharing virtual public space.

Coming back to the previous questions about the factors that shape the spaces called
“public” and questioning the way they are constantly shaped by us and we are constantly
shaped by them as participants of our modern communities, we can find a lot of tools that
creates the paths in-between our physical realities and the digital worlds that we contribute to.
Online social media platforms are just one of many examples of the ways how we interfere into
the virtual world on the daily basis, directing the reelsifrom our private lives to the global social
cloud – but there is also a wide field of other tools that we use to build bridges between the
sphere of our physical presence and the space of digital creations.

Late April this year, as a student of the dance master program on the Cologne University
of Music and Dance, I was participating in the collaborative one-week seminar that took place in
the Ecole supérieure des Arts in Brussels and was meant to initiate to re-work the connections
between the movement studies and visual arts. As performers - participants of the project we’ve
got the chance to explore and experiment with the variety of the digital tools to create new forms
on the border of the physical and digital reality – such as VR-glasses, green screen, 3-D scanner
and live streaming, taking elements of our own practices or artistic creations and confronting,
combining and re-working them in the connection with the virtual world. Staying inside the
studio, we were expanding our artistic stages into the digitality, placing the movement at the
same time on the physical theatre floor and in the sphere of the digital abstract. Each of the
mentioned tools allows to create another dimension of the virtual space. With VR-glasses we
have a chance to put the dancer/mover into the half real-half fake world – the manipulation of the
camera with the view for the mover and at the same time the possibility for both the operator and
the dancer to travel in space creates a reality that combines the vision of the abstract from the
camera with the physical sensation of the real surfaces that the other person is moving on,
through the visual manipulation is possible to create completely new sphere of perception.
Thanks to the 3-D scanning, on the other hand, we have an access to compose totally abstract
realities but with the usage if the real shapes that we know – so almost like in the video-game,
we can edit our surroundings and, in the performative context, also put movement there. Green
screen, as another tool, gives us the access to put our real, moving bodies to the abstract space
of our choice, keeping the authenticity of the physical dance in another dimension. And at the top

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of that, live streaming is a method that provides the on-going connection between the actions we
take in our physical surroundings and the virtual network, creating two parallel realities – the
physical and the digital one, both happening simultaneously but in different spheres. And what
all of those allow us to do is opening another sphere where we can not only report what is on the
tables of our private lives but also, create completely new dimension of dance, performative art.
Giving a short glimpse of what appeared during the Brussel’s project: the group dance
improvisation that took place on the stage of the theatre was recording and at the same time
manipulated through the visuals put on the screen and combined with the moving bodies. The
bodies were changing because of the visual projections but also, the projections were changed
because of the decisions of the dancing people, in reply for what they see on the screens. Those
physical-virtual cooperation was happening on the border of the two spheres but at the same
time in the completely new sphere – “in-between”.

Implementing into this reflections also the questioning about public spaces, mentioning
again that the public dimension of them is often determined by their accessibility and that we
create those “public” spheres through the actions that we take, I would go with the conclusion
that the virtual space is for now, or maybe becomes more and more, equal when we consider
the diversity of the actions that happens in public. So to say, the digital world becomes the
constantly growing public field that is also created by our actions, just shifted to the on-line. And I
find it quite hard to say If we are more the creators of those digital spaces or they influence us
more than we have power to create them. But what I would take for granted, is that the virtual
world is spreading more and more and the dance, performance scene is spreading into this
digital world too. We perform in our physical public spaces and at the same time we put our
bodies into the broadly accessible online public spheres.

The accessibility of all of the digital tools that allows us to create in the virtual space is
growing more and more, becoming not only an exclusive supplement but, over time, ordinary
element of our modern lives. Putting as an example that there are multiple possibilities of getting
the VR-glasses and having them at home (in our western European civilizations that I would
refer to) or the fact that 3-D scanning app is available to download on many Apple iPhones and
tablets, we can notice how all of those technologies interfere into our lives, how they start to
accompany our activities in a casual way. And this process also applies to art and dance studios.

Few years ago, also as a result of the covid-pandemic, under Berlin’s DOCK11 initiative,
consisting of dance and performative space both located by the Berliner Kastaniealee, came out
a new branch of the project called DOCKdigital. In the framework of the new department of the

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Berliner’s art studio the space gained a wide range of technical equipment that allows to
experiment with, among others, motion captureii, ARiii and the concept of mixed realityiv. In the
actual offer of the digital department of DOCK11 we can find proposals that combines movement
techniques and visual art with the usage of the specific data to create interdisciplinary art works.
Participants of the formats such as “mocap movement research workshop” or “craft coding
dance”, thanks to the offer of the studio, can on their own explore the possibilities to combine
their dance, movement or any other art practices with the virtual reality and create through those
a new dimension for art spaces. So, taking a look at how available are proposed formats to the
wide range of receivers, it seems appropriate to say that they open the virtuality to the “public” in
multiple ways, allowing both artists and people not directly connected with the art scene to put
their own contribution to the creation of the virtual part of the public space.

The public virtuality seems to take over many areas of our casual and artistic lives, does
it then dominate spheres of our lives in the modern times? In the article “Material and digital
dimensions of urban public spaces through the lens of social distancing”10 published in the
framework of the “Cities” magazine in November 2022, the authors consider how during and
after COVID-19 epidemy we, in our social structures, started to explore the possibilities of digital
technologies to replace the material space or urban grid and which impact does it have on our
communities. They put few questions, through them also one if the virtual spaces become
competitive for out-of-home public spaces. They mention examples of how the particular digital
techniques affect our perception of the outside-home spaces, also pointing out that the
development of the parallel-virtual reality is not as new as we may think – since the beginning of
the 21st century digitality started to rapidly infect our lives and many of our urban experiences
are defined by media till now. Does then digital space become already a parallel universe for our
city lives? If we can put our bodies, equipped with the VR-glasses into completely new
dimension of sensing and seeing the surroundings and we can project our physicality into the
abstract world through the mocap, do we already go into the direction of full human digitalization
and shift our spaces to the virtual? In another text, published on the website of the Geography
Compass Magazine, also focused on the digitalization of our modern communities11, it stands
that our perception of “public” should not be taken only in the context of the digital spheres that

10
Kotus, Jacek, Michał Rzeszewski, and Artur Olejniczak. 2022. “Material and Digital Dimensions of Urban Public
Spaces through the Lens of Social Distancing.” Cities 130 (November): 103856.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2022.103856.;
11
De Freitas, C. Alex. 2010. “Changing Spaces: Locating Public Space at the Intersection of the Physical and Digital.”
Geography Compass 4 (6): 630–43. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2009.00312.x.;

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replaces the physical structures but more as a fluid, abstract image that combines both: virtual
and physical realities, both seen as equal not inter- but intra-sections. Especially taking into
consideration how the social activities shifted last years from the on-line areas of fascination to
nature and our physical surroundings, seeing how our focus leads us more to come back to our
organic roots and more ecological ways to approach our development as a human civilization, I
would agree with the conclusion that our “public” modern days should be placed in-between
virtual and real world, even if we could easily create a phantasy about our fully virtualized future.
Even if we constantly create the digital surroundings in our physical locations, keeping the
ongoing network of the digital social relations and being linked on a global scale, we are still
present in what we call physical public areas, still our bodies are physically placed in spaces and
still they would act in those spaces, going into interactions with physical “others”. And that’s why
I would target our attention on development those both, intra-secting public spheres.

This intra-secting structure of virtual and physical public sphere, this co-creation of both
of those worlds, described as fluid and abstract image of the public that we are living in, seems
to be dynamic and adaptable, similar to an elastic net that we can shape and stretch in many
directions. And what I find interesting and quite important about this structure is that, it’s alive
and without constant changes that we, as participants and co-creators of those, are initiating, it
would not exist. As humans, members of communities and artists we are spinning this “public”
web around ourselves and shaping it again, again and again. And even if all of the surroundings
that live in has a strong impact on us, determining what kind of a social background we have and
which things are perceived as “appropriate” for the particular structures and which of those we
avoid or protest against, still I would put more attention to the ways how we can interact in-
between and through our public space structures, putting attention to how big impact we have on
the environment that we live in.

The founding father of the GAGA movement language, mentioned at the beginning of
this reflection, Ohad Naharin, used to say that as long as we are moving, we are alive -
movement stops only when we die. And the same could apply to our public and non-public
spheres. Either if they would change into completely digitalized realities or come back to our
organic roots in the upcoming future, we would still have the responsibility for their design –
same as through our daily activities and through our performative activism. And that gives us not
only the burden of how we prepare them for the coming generations but mainly a lot of power in
the context of “public”, allowing to add new layers on the already existing structures, define them

19
differently and make them even more suitable for ourselves. And that would be our choice in
which direction all of those changes would go.

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REFERENCES

Arendell T.D. , Barnes R. “Dance’s duet with the camera”, London 2016, Palgrave McMillan;
Beyes T., Leeker M., Schipper I. “Performing the digital. Performance studies and Performances
in Digital Cultures”, 2016, Columbia University Press;
C. Alex de Freitas, “Changing Spaces: Locating Public Space at the Intersection of the Physical
and Digital”, Geography Compass; first published in June 2010;
Kloetzel M., Pavlik C., “Site Dance. Choreographers and the Lure of alternative spaces”, USA
2009, University Press of Florida;
Kotus J., Rzeszewski M., Olejniczak A., “Material and digital dimensions of urban public spaces
through the lens of social distancing”, November 2022, Cities Volume 130;
Low S, Smith N., “The politics of Public space”, New York 2006; Routledge – Taylor &Francis
Group;
Madanipour A. “Public and private spaces of the city”, USA and Canada, Routledge 2007;
Monda L.G. “Choreographic architectures: “When dancing designes the urban environment”;
Moroni S., Chiodelli F. “Public Spaces, Private Spaces, and the Right to the City”, 2014,
International Journal of E-Planning Research 3, 51-65;
Thomas H. “Dance in the city”, New York 1997, St. Martin’s Press;

LINKS

https://www.pina-bausch.de/de/2/das-tanztheater

https://directorslibrary.com/10/2020/latest/short-films/dance-short/sepa/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-4ggPqdzFY&t=522s

https://www.ligna.org/projekte/

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i
reels – term used in the social-media culture; -form videos that can be up to 90 seconds long; users can record,
edit, and clip videos and photos together, set them to music, and share [..]. Reels is [..} available in the United States
and 50 other countries;

ii
motion capture - the process or technique of recording patterns of movement digitally, especially the recording of
an actor's movements for the purpose of animating a digital character in a film or video game; source:
https://languages.oup.com/;

iii
AR (Augmented Reality) - the real-time use of information in the form of text, graphics, audio and other virtual
enhancements integrated with real-world objects; it is this "real world" element that differentiates AR from virtual
reality; AR integrates and adds value to the user's interaction with the real world, versus a simulation; source:
https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/augmented-reality-ar;

iv
mixed reality - a hybrid of augmented reality and augmented virtuality where virtual objects interact with real-life
objects in the physical space; examples: Instagram or Snapchat filters, virtual makeup applications, virtual furniture
fitting; source: https://learn.g2.com/mixed-reality;

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