Each street, each site, each moment, each encounter perpetuates new forms of exchange; new paths; routes and ways of surviving and existing in each city. We can watch, observe, experience, notate describe all we see; the pavements, the spaces between buildings, the shopping malls, the buses, the trams, the electric buses, the underground; the cars; the spaces outside of apartments; the tram stops; the empty plazas; the public statues; the bike lanes; the back streets, the bus stops, the markets; the kiosks; the street stalls. The physical infrastructure of the city, a city, this can be any city any place. The materials, which allow the city to take a form and create an image, and a specific architecture which then allows it to become individual. Then there are the people; who, in their actions, patterns, routines, exchanges; jobs, recreations; social life and temperament; collaborate and explore; create; recreate; expand; destroy, fit in to; force change upon, struggle in; ease through this physical infrastructure to allow it to become human. How can a city be revealed through movement and how far can choreography determine this movement. From the mass; heaving through the crowded under passages at 9 am; the dance of the workers; to the quiet duet of the man and the sidewalk at 3am. The city can be seen as choreography; yet perhaps this is too vague; a personal methodology. Each walk taken becomes a solo performance; noting the textures; the sounds and the spaces; How can mapping of a city reveal patterns of spatial use and explore modes of spatial encounter? We will start with our eyes closed. We will listen. Guided by a partner; a route they see; navigate and construct. A gentle duet. Becoming sensitive. Finding in our steps some new understanding of the city. Each step some new landscape. What happens when we photograph with our eyes closed? What are we drawn to by sound and sensation? The passing wind, the empty space; changes in velocity; all becoming our experience of place.

The  Duet  of  the  Body  and  the  City  A  practical  workshop  exploring  the  city  as  stimulus  and  studio.    

 A  workshop  outline:  Beatrice  Jarvis  with  Dr  Bob  Jarvis    Sunday,  October  7  2012.  10h30  to  17h00:    Meeting  point:  Rich Mix: 35-47 Bethnal Green Road. London E1 6LA.    Review  Session:  Saturday  October  13th,  2012:  1pm  Goldsmiths,  University  of  London    -­‐  Number  of  participants:  min:  12  /  max:  25  -­‐  Fee  (£40/  £35  Concession)    The  practical  element  of  the  workshop  will  be  located  around  Truman’s  Brewery  area;  exploring  spaces  of  history  and  regeneration;  spaces  of  transition  and  spaces  of  decay.  Spaces  of  beauty  and  spaces  hidden.    

ENTER THE CITY: ENTER A STREET: ENTER A WORLD: ENTER A STORY:

How can the body become a reflective mechanism for the experience of the body in the city?

How far can the city be shaped and moulded by the actions and reactions of the body?

THE CITY IS CHOREOGRAPHY OF LIFE, AND IT CAN BE USED AS RESOURCE FOR ARTISTIC PRACTICE; IT CAN FORM A PRODUCTIVE AND SUBSTANTIAL INPUT FOR THE CREATIVE MIND. THE MOTIFS OF HUMAN FORM REPEAT ON THE STREETS, TO BE OBSERVED, INTERPRETED, OR SIMPLY LEFT IN THEIR FLUX. CRESCENDOS AND DIMINUENDOS OF THE BUSTLING STREET RISE AND FALL WITH THE BREATH OF THE CITY, A LIVING ORGANISM, WHICH ONE CAN WALK UPON, IN, BESIDE AND AMONGST. This workshop explores how photography and choreography can be used as tools to map and interact with the activity of the city. Working from a series of choreographic scores; we will explore 3 sites around Truman’s Brewery and form a short series of interventions and spatial reflections forming series of photographic works collaboratively and individually. This session aims to bring together photographers, sociologists, choreographers, architects, town planners, artist, film makers and all those with a keen interest for urban space investigation for a reflective, active and constructive series of actions and dialogs. Collaboration, discourse and intellectual inquiry are seminal to this concept. Urban space will effectively become a live laboratory in this workshop to play, discover and create. To look at human movements as action signs is to conceive

the human body itself as signifier, to conceive of the body as a signifying body. What this means is that we have to conceive of human act/actions as embodied intentions and

that we have to be able to see a lived space as intentionally achieved structuring, some that has been willed or is now willed by someone or some group of

persons.’ 1                                                                                                                1  Farnell.  B  (  2001)  Human  Action  Sign  in  Cultural  Context.  The  Visible  and  Invisible  in  Movement  and  Dance.  The  Scarecrow  Press.  Maryland.  P53  

STRUCTURE: 10H30: LOCATION: MEETING ROOM RICH MIX 35-47 Bethnal Green Road. London E1 6LA WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION. Each participant wil l be supplied with a workshop pack, a disposable camera and a series of three movement scores and a map. The City as Studio: Introduction to workshop with Beatrice Jarvis exploring the role of urban intervention, site specific performance and street photography as means to investigate; explore and interact with the city. Presentation:  Dancing in the Ruins: Night Life as Low Impact Regeneration: A Case Study of Lipscani P (Bucharest) and ‘Old Truman’s Brewery. (London) Dr Jarvis. “The workshop will be focussed around Truman’s Brewery in Spitalfields, an area of London that has undergone radical change in recent years and is still the subject of complex and intense pressures on development. The area is also a Conservation Area and the site includes several listed buildings. All this is an area that is complex culturally, socially and economically - one of the most complex and intriguing areas of London one that after a period of decline and dereliction is now a vibrant and dynamic site - where there is still scope for change and development. To write it up would be full of current clichés of contemporary urban life– night clubs, galleries, fashion shows, boutiques and restaurants)…a different world from the industry and poverty that were the image of the area even 40 years ago. The buildings still stand – many of them little changed ‘The Old Truman’s Brewery’ as it is now branded is a rich and complex place. Surrounded by the new high capitalism of Broadgate to the west, and the new ‘Shoreditch’ London overground station (that huge concrete box is not just to keep the wind and the rain out) to the north and the conserved gems of Spitalfield to the south and intermixed with the ‘otherness’ of BanglaTown and the East end to the east ….it is on the fault line between different worlds, one of London’s ‘contested spaces’ The history of Brick Lane and Truman’s has been well documented and the way fragments of its layered past still can be traced documented in Rachael Lichtenstein’s On Brick Lane.” (Jarvis. B) 2012 Dr. Bob Jarvis is Urban Design Co-ordinator in the Department of Urban Environment and Leisure Studies at London South Bank University and has been

running urban design projects for his students on Truman’s Brewery and the area for several years. Reflecting on recent projects in Deptford High Street, Brick Lane and Elephant and Castle Heygate Estate (LONDON) and similar sites in Bucharest; we shall use the projects introduced as a means to explore the following questions in both arts practice and research:

- How far can creative urban investigative practice function as social vehicle, which can allow us to explore public urban space social ly, spatial ly and culturally?

- Can the creative arts change the policy framework for urban progress? - Can a social value be attributed to an image of the everyday? - How can the movement of a city be mapped? How can the creation of

counter cartographies enable a heightened understanding of local social infrastructures?

- Can art works highlight social life? Can movement portray a city? How do creative practices generate examples of qualitative sociological data?

- Can the body be used as a method of highlighting key concerns of locality? Can the body become a vehicle of social expression when frame through urban street photography?

- Can far the city ever be fully grasped and read like a text, danced as choreography? What are the limits of creative and non-creative urban investigation?

- How far do can creative research generate action for actual demand for spatial change?

- How far can creative activities facilitate a voice for the politically ‘unheard’?

- How far can any form of spatial regeneration satisfy local conflicts? - Can the idea of ‘social legacy’ be applied to site specific performance

intervention and time based installation in socially deprived areas and can such impact be realistically or ephemerally measured?

- Can creative practice inform a ‘tool kit’ for regeneration and policy? - Can performance be a form of social research in itself? Through a series of group exercises these questions will stimulate dialog and discourse, which will curate the experience of the day for each participant. 12h 0: The body and the city: Beginning to Embody.

Moving from theoretical to practical we will then begin to place the self, our own experiences and our own bodies into the dialogs. Exploring a series of somatic based warm up exercises to develop the position of the body as an active archive container for the experience of the city we will work in small groups with some simple physical and narrative based exercises. This process gradually allows the participant to explore ideas of embodiment and lived experience of the urban terrain as stimulus. The workshop will move at a gentle and adaptive pace allowing participants to explore through movement their own perspectives of London, (journeys around the city, the familiar, the unfamiliar, places liked and disliked) incorporating their current movement vocabulary (this may be simply pedestrian, or can be more dance based, depending on the background of the participant) and using the workshop as a springboard to develop new approaches to the creation of movement vocabulary; The environment aims to encourage use of photography, creative writing and discussion to enable participants to develop their own creative map of Brick Lane area based on reflections, encounters and memories brought to life through a safe, nurturing and creative environment. The process will explore the role of improvisation as a tool of heightened urban spatial awareness; allowing through each exercise an improvisation to form which enables exchange of urban social form; as Albright suggests: The improvised is that which alludes history’ 2 The task of the participant throughout the improvisation process can be heightened by the ability to alternate between known movement patterns and to allow the nature of the task to bring the city to life: ‘The improvising dancer tacks back and forth between the known and the unknown, between the familiar/reliable and the unanticipated and the unpredictable.’ 3 13h45 to 14h00 (short break) 14h00: ENTER THE CITY; The Duet of the Body and The City. Working in small groups (no bigger than 6) we will begin a series of walks. Each group will create a series of paths or instances they wish to encounter, some may know the area well; some not at all; for some this may be the first visit. Each participant will contribute a design or idea for the process, which will be made into a route for the afternoon. Sharing the city and being alone form two simultaneously important functions in this process. We will begin taking each other on series of sensory experiences of the area; these will be

                                                                                                               2  Albright.  A.  C.  Gere.  D  (eds)  Taken  by  Surprise.  A  Dance  Improvisation  Reader.  Wesleyan  University  Press.    P4    3  Albright.  A.  C.  Gere.  D  (eds)  Taken  by  Surprise.  A  Dance  Improvisation  Reader.  Wesleyan  University  Press.  P3    

lead by three scores which each participant will be supplied with at the start of the process. Gradually meeting and separating. How do we decide where to go? Why are we going? How do we ensure we are sti l l ful ly focused in the workshop environment? How do we collect our walk? How can we collect movement? How do we use a camera and our body to collect experience of the city? The process is simple: each person presents a location within the proximity suggested on the map (we wil l work with a series of large scale maps of the area) we wil l plot al l the locations together collectively and take from this exercise a route which we wil l fol low for the duration of our walk. At 6 points on the route we wil l stop to explore each one of the three performance scores. The walk is an active process: take the time to settle into the walk; breathe; make room for the sensation of walking, let your own thoughts quieten and let the mind become clear. The aim is to a ‘bowl of water’ al low the city to become reflected in you, be a window to all that you see, without judgment and without forming sense as to what it al l needs to mean to you. AT SOME POINT ON THE JOURNEY: (NOT ALL AT ONCE) Take 24 photographs of the city and write down in a notebook what these photographs are and why you took them. Be SURE to write down what each of the images is in your notebook: or on the sheet attached: Take 24 steps and write down what a detail you noticed for each step. Be mindful as to what you are photographing Imagine each image wil l be memory of the journey you have taken and how do you wish the journey to be remembered and reflected? Think carefully as to what is inspiring you to collect each image and write down what it is that is ‘sparking you’ to collect each image.

Attempt to consider doing this with movements you have observed for 5 scenes. Allow yourself to watch 5 places carefully and take actions. Write them down with body and mind: commit these movements to memory for the return to the ‘studio’.

Each participant wil l individually fix a location, which they wil l focus on and collect materials to return to the ‘studio’ with.

AT SOME POINT: Note down three stories / narratives which you have observed on your route and place them in text form in your notebook. Note/draw as much detail as you can: for example: movement: color: sound: temperature: how what you were watching made you feel: how you saw the scene at first: who you imagine these characters might be. AT ANOTHER POINT: Write a story about your own memory a specific part of the city, which you are reminded of, on our walk.

   

Practising Space: Review of potential practice based spatial observation tool kit. Beatrice Jarvis

University of Ulster.

23

Towards Amplifying Space: Making Place. Making the city choreograph | you. 1. Arrive to location…take a long slow look around, the way people are moving, the way they come and go, the things they do, their pace and

their patterns, notice stances, postures, �����G���G�����U2. Then merge with the patterns of movement you see there…See the

people and their actions; remove them from their space; see them and their bodies. .....join in, mimic, simulate, copy, imitate what you see there, try to be unobtrusive but also be aware of what you are doing. Do this for long enough to blend

with the patterns, possibly 5 minutes or so, trying different movements and sequences if you like.3. Then from that ‘ordinary’ sequence choose one or two – a step, a stance, a gesture….and repeat that in the place you are working in. Note your feelings and if anything feels strange –are you uncomfortable?,

are you being looked at? THEN do the same with your eyes closed a few times! Consolidate this pattern and repeat until it feels exhausted; notice the point of exhaustion and repeat again. 4. Next teach yourself these movements and add to them…….turn them into a more set ‘piece’, half natural half new movements of your own, something freer and more complex perhaps than the original you have

already ‘taught’ yourself ….and then ‘perform’ that in the space, ZLWK�RUGLQDU\�XVHUV�DQG�WKHLU�

PRYHPHQWV�DURXQG�\RX� Change and modify this as you repeat them, adding improvised cadenzas and unexpected

changes. With the movement you have created; take it to a different location in the same space and try to directly apply it. How can the movement you have created become an architectural intervention or social intervention? How can the body become a means to unveil the potential ( used in the subjective realm) of the space?

(EXAMPLE  OF  ONE  (  OF  THREE  )  OF  THE  SCORE  BASED  TASKS  WE  WILL  EXPLORE)        

16H30 Return to Studio: REFRAGMENTING THE CITY On immediate return to the studio we wil l write for 12 minutes notes and memories of the walk and process. We will regroup in the studio and discuss:

-­‐ The images (24) each person took (If participants have a digital camera these wil l be loaded on to the projector, those working with fi lm can bring the developed images to the following session)

-­‐ The movements which were gathered -­‐ The responses to the scores -­‐ The use of notating the city in image and movement

We will then create a piece of movement/ improvisation/ screening as a reflection which in some way traces our movements through the city; setting a few phrases and making a series of patterns across the space. I will guide this process and it will be tailored to the material, which has emerged. Urban space within this workshop become a canvas; upon which numerous marks, symbols and lines are added to; such marks and codes constitutive of some form of spatial and movement language; how can this language be transcribed, documented, recorded and then re- told? To translate is a lie. Just as to converse and re-present scenarios of the urban encounter relies on the subjective realities of the author to generate a narrative which another then reform a presentation of. Losing all sense of meaning to cultural assemblage of language. Concept of universal language as impossible as language is shaped by geography, history. Patterning; which in the fabric of its construction lays bear the failures of communication into physical fruition of the desires of the mind in its solitude? The results of this research aim to function as creative subjective impressions initially; the weight of the task forms as to how such a subjective experiential task can bare productive social fruit; a dialog, which can further enable new methodologies as to how the space is used. We will then come together in the same way we started: a simple meditation; the city as stimulus. Then we shall have a small focus group to reflect upon how the exercise has allowed us to see the city and discuss the idea of further workshops and the idea of a simple movement work based on walking the city supported by a photographic exhibition and text installation.          

Review Session: Saturday October 13th, 2012: 1pm (Location: Goldsmiths, University of London. New Cross) Presenting an edited and refined selection of the works generated through the process of the workshop. These reflections will frame a conversation as to the role of the arts to generate innovative frameworks, which can have application within the fields of regeneration and town planning, architecture and sociology. We will discuss concepts around participant engagement. I hope we can have a dialog around the ideas of local engagement and frameworks of local knowledge; exploring the idea: ‘Local knowledge of what and cannot be visible in part and parcel of local theories of person encoded in signifying acts.’ 4 Dr Jarvis and myself will also discuss similar projects based in Bucharest and present the potential to develop a workshop exchange with participants based in Bucharest.

                                                                                                               4  Farnell.  B  (2001)  Human  Action  Sign  in  Cultural  Context.  The  Visible  and  Invisible  in  Movement  and  Dance.  The  Scarecrow  Press.  Maryland.  P197  

     In simplicity of observation we can seek understanding

The formation of space becomes personalized space. In understanding each path we walk through the city; gradually space can be understood past the maps in which we can lose ourselves. Murmuring discontent; murmuring pleasure; each path takes an expression of humanity. The city can become human for brief moments. Blurred understanding as to the nature of personal rationale and encounter; bodies becomes texts of histories never quite recorded. Wandering minds and cold hands in the winter sun, to see; to think to know; such sight can be joy, as full as empty as we desire. Memories fill each space; a careful probe of passing wonderance. The fury of Margret sat stretched on a park bench; speaking quickly in fag arome, false eye lashes, trying to understand what she might understand of herself. The bus hurtles us from one side of the city to the other; a passage for some sensitive to take. The city takes us, a vulnerable prey; victim of high peace walls, somehow still there when removed; negotiating as navigating. The map takes a human form.

For  more  information  about  my  practice  please  see  below:      BEATRICE  JARVIS    Choreographer  |  Performer  |  Researcher    Beatrice  is  an  urban  space  creative  facilitator,  choreographer  and  researcher.  She  utilizes  key  concepts  of  choreography  and  visual  arts  methodologies  with  the  intention  to  develop,  original  doctoral  research  on  the  connections  between  choreography  and  urban  cultures.  She  is  currently  undertaking  her  practice  based  PhD  funded  by  DEL  titled;  The  Choreographic  Apparatus|  How  Far  can  Choreographic  Practice  be  used  to  Develop  New  Methods  to  Explore  and  Offer  Insights  into  a  Range  of  Urban  Contexts.    Her  practice  merges  essential  techniques  in  a  sociological  framework  of  critical  perspectives.  Beatrice  is  currently  a  visiting  lecturer  at  various  town  planning  and  architecture  departments  in  London  developing  a  platform  for  the  conceptual  and  physical  integration  of  urban  planning,  sociology  and  choreography  leading  to  practical  social  creative  implementation.  As  a  dance  artist  she  works  in  Romania,  Gaza,  Germany  and  Northern  Ireland  to  generate  large  scale  choreographic  works  underpinned  with  a  sociological  inquiry;  exploring  the  social  power  of  movement.      Beatrice  is  keen  to  create  platforms  social  interaction  using  urban  wastelands  and  reflections  on  urban  habitation  as  a  creative  resource;  her  research  currently  focuses  on  how  far  choreography  practice  can  develop  a  new  methodology  to  interrogate  a  range  of  inner  city  conflict  zones.    Beatrice  has  recently  initiated  a  new  urban  forum:  Urban  Research  Forum  for  artists,  architects,  urban  designers,  cultural  researchers,  sociologists,  anthropologists  and  all  with  an  urban  interest.  This  is  conducted  through  seminars,  workshops,  performances  and  exhibitions.  Collaboration,  discourse  and  intellectual  inquiry  are  seminal  to  this  concept.    The  city  with  her  practice  becomes  a  live  laboratory  for  social  and  spatial  research  of  urban  space  use  developing  from  this  research  innovative  and  interactive  future  space  use  programs  through  creativity    Current  research  funded  by  DEL.    (    Dartington  College  of  Arts  2005-­‐8  Choreography  and  Visual  Arts  BA  hons  First  Class,  MA  Goldsmiths’,  Centre  of  Community  and  Urban  research,  AHRC  Funded;  PhD,  Ulster;  Architecture  and  Art  and  Design,  DEL  funded)      For  further  information  about  my  practice  please  see  the  following  links:  

• Creative  City  life:  http://beatricejarvis.com/  • Urban  Research:  http://issuu.com/urbanresearchforum  • Documentation:  http://www.blurb.com/user/bj87  • City  as  Studio:  http://urbanorganics.cultura3.net/Resources/media/promo.mov    

Work  Examples:      Heygate  Estate/Elephant  and  Castle:  http://vimeo.com/26177151  password:  city  and  http://issuu.com/urbanresearchforum/docs/towards_embodied_methodology?mode=window&viewMode=singlePage      Deptford  Study  for  Steven  Lawrence  Centre:  http://issuu.com/urbanresearchforum/docs/exhibition_catalouge_practising_space/3  and  http://www.practisingspace.com/events-­‐and-­‐exhibitions.php  Bucharest  Study  for  local  government  AHRC:  Dansul  Objectul  din  Bucuresti  LaBomba    http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/1015638/a8bd37a9fad73767cb13edef857dba7d      Northern  Ireland  Cartography  Project:  AHRC:  CollectingTrails  http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/1002909/405ee1c548a4b9718763503e118327cc              

 

The body in the city acts as vessel; to carry, contain and interact; forming routes and navigations through the

immediacies of its encounter. The body in the city becomes a means to extend the discourses of the mind and architecture to a frontal physical plane. The experience of the body as it moves through its decided and undecided

routes of the complex labyrinth becomes synthesis; forming in such modes of encounter a reflection as to the physical landscape it temporally habits. Exploring the

passage ways of the body through the city can function as means for discourse as to the nature of affect the city may have on the psychology of urban human behaviour and simultaneously affords insight as to how the city is formed and cemented by the very patterns which human

occupancy projects. This mutual dialectical relationship becomes synonymous to concepts as to how far cities are designed for people and how people essentially redesign and augment the fabric of urban texture. The embodiment of the urban experience by the human form becomes focus for this research; how far can the body enter a state of conscious reflection as to its use and positioning within

the built environment to observe and how can such conscious observations be then potentially be reapplied to generate shifts in land use patterning and generate possible realms of progress within discourses of spatial

planning.