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Part 2. Environmental Dialogues: Sensing Site
- University Press of Florida
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2 Environmental Dialogues Sensing Site Figure 37. Communing with site. Olive Bieringa in the Paris version of GO (2007). Photo by Thomas Greil. [18.209.209.246] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 00:52 GMT) What is it about the public sphere that intrigues the site artist? Site choreographers often assert that art in public spaces can impact the largest number of people and can help shape social and cultural dialogues. Olive Bieringa, Otto Ramstad, Leah Stein, and Marylee Hardenbergh would all concur that public spaces offer a jumping-off point for such dialogues. Yet, before vaulting into a verbal exchange, these site choreographers believe we need to be physically receptive and responsive to place. They want us to see, hear, smell, and touch—in other words, tune into the site on a sensual level. When making site work, Bieringa, Ramstad, Stein, and Hardenbergh find ways to interact with public places that activate all their senses. Then they model this approach for audiences and passersby. These choreographers do not always select public spaces that are at the forefront of a community. In fact, much of their work exists in places at the edge, overlooked places that would seem unappealing or perhaps even embarrassing for a community. Weed-filled parking lots or undeveloped plots between buildings, sewage plants or gritty city streets, these choreographers want us to notice spaces from the revered to the disregarded, connect to them sensually, and then explore our current treatment of such places. Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad began the BodyCartography Project in 1997. In their earliest works, they enjoyed inserting themselves into heavily trafficked spaces—malls, outdoor eating areas, and storefronts— altering audience perception of place by walking very slowly or incorporating blindfolds and out-of-place objects to travel through the space. More recent projects have focused on city sidewalks and the people and objects that exist along these sidewalks. Unlike many other site choreographers , Bieringa and Ramstad are not always concerned with obtaining permits to perform in public spaces. They often gather with performers in public areas, forcing city officials to ponder what is and what is not “appropriate” behavior in these places. As such, their work provokes people to consider other possibilities for interacting with and perhaps legislating public spaces. At times, their work takes on large environmental issues such as global climate change; at other times it may dive into a particular person’s understanding of a section of pavement. Yet, from their most intimate to their most expansive work, they want people to 122 Part 2 experience place in unusual ways and to consider the benefits of sensual and kinesthetic interactions with place. In chapter 6, Bieringa and Ramstad examine their interest in testing boundaries, particularly that between public and private space. They contemplate how and why our movements are controlled in various places, and they question the institutions behind such control. They also reveal their interest in liminal spaces, where nature is reclaiming the built environment. By describing their work in such spaces, Bieringa and Ramstad draw attention to the concept of the in-between in many of their endeavors. In Bieringa’s essay, “Between Landscape, Self, and Other,” she exhibits the fallout of testing boundaries as she delves into her solo GO (2005), performed on an urban sidewalk. As she interacts with shopkeepers , barbers, and homeless people, among others, she perceives her privilege of whiteness and considers the intersection of visibility and race. Her article accentuates the difficult questions that site choreographers ask of themselves and the places they inhabit. Leah Stein also probes our relationship with public spaces. Her love for the environment, both urban and wild, began at a young age, and dancing on site was a logical extension of this love. Stein began creating site work in the early 1990s, and although she has made work for rose gardens and revered parks, she finds herself returning again and again to the disregarded spaces in urban areas. She feels a certain sympathy for the overgrown parking lots or crumbling buildings of the past. Often beginning with movement improvisations on site, she encourages her dancers to explore the site and find physical and sensual ways of relating to it. As they come across odds and ends, she directs dancers and musicians to experiment with them to bring the voice of the overlooked place to the fore. In her opinion, such an approach fosters a connection and sensitivity between dancers and place that is communicated to the audience...