Space and Place

Since Henri Lefebvre’s groundbreaking analysis in The Production of Space (1991) scholars and artists from an array of disciplines have continued an interrogation of space and place. This volume of Extensions continues this exploration in terms of performance, taking on both space and place as they are implicated in performance as well the performance and performativity of space and place themselves. The current volume seeks to continue the investigation of issues of presence in performance begun in our last volume, "TempoRealities of Performance," by inquiring into contemporary understandings of space and place, and how they are produced and inflected by everyday performativities, performance practices, and theatricality.

In the current issue, Lisa Jackson-Schebetta scrutinizes the roles of place and placed-ness—including the somatic place of human bodies—as well as that of theatrical space in Jonathan Holmes’ documentary theatre piece Falluja. Artist Nancy Popp explores urban landscapes in a work of “performative subversion.” Jiayun Zhuang investigates Factory 768 as a site of nostalgia which stages a spatial relationship to China’s past. Sara Wookey and Justine Shih Pearson move through the city-spaces of Los Angeles and New York, respectively, exploring the experience of space through practice, considering pedestrian practice in an urban context and probing, in Shih Pearson’s words, “the messy interrelatedness between time, place, and bodies.”

Our extraordinary gratitude goes out to the contributors who remained patient with us as we wrestled with personnel changes and disrupted timelines in the production of this issue. While the journey that produced it has been a rough one, we are pleased to welcome you to volume five.

Lindsay Brandon Hunter, David Gorshein and Heidi R. Miller, co-editors

December 2009

About the Contributors