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One Square Foot: Thousands of Routes

One Square Foot: Thousands of Routes ONE SQUARE FOOT Thousands of Routes Deirdre Heddon ORIENTATION uring the summer of 2003 my most familiar and inhabited terrain became  a  single  square  foot.  The  One Square Foot project,  a  creative  partnership  between the University of Exeter, echo-arts (Cyprus), and Theatre Alibi, was  a practical research enterprise initiated and managed by Dorinda Hulton, a professional director and part-time lecturer at the University of Exeter Drama Department.  Within this project I was one of three actors, each given the initial task of choosing  a square foot and then working with a team of artists from different disciplines to  devise a series of solo performances in response to and for that location. Hulton, long  interested in developing models that facilitate the actor’s creative practice, proposed  One Square Foot as a means to explore the impact of different creative methodologies  on the actor’s craft. As her program note states,  the project places the actor at the heart of generating material for performance. Stories, images and memories associated with a square foot chosen  by each performer have found their forms through a series of interactions  with creative artists working in different fields. Hulton had specifically invited me to be a performer-participant in the project because  of my critical and practical interest in autobiographical and site-specific work and  their  inter-relations.  This  reflection,  then,  is  not  on  the  entire  creative  process  or  even on the outcomes of One Square Foot, but rather on a particular set of concerns  activated by enfolding autobiographical and site-specific practices. GROUND (WORK) Moving  to  Exeter,  Devon  in  1998,  I  encountered  for  the  first  time  the  work  of  Wrights & Sites, creators of The Quay Thing (1998), and the more recent Mis-Guides,  imaginative guide books that prompt you to see familiar places in new and unexpected  ways. Wrights & Sites introduced me to the term “site-specific performance,” and  their enduring focus on site has prompted me to take my work on autobiographical  performance in a new direction by considering the relations that exist between site  D 40    PAJ 86 (2007), pp. 40–50.  © 2007 Deirdre Heddon and autobiography. I have begun to explore this through deploying the term “autotopography” that I use here to reflect on the performance devised for One Square Foot. Before turning to autotopography, though, it is useful to rehearse the related  but more familiar term autobiography. Auto: from the Greek, for self, same, one’s own; Bio: from the Greek, bios,  for life course, or way of living life; Graphy, from the Greek, graphein, to  scratch, to draw, to write.  A  common-sense  understanding  of  autobiography  is  that  it  is  the  account,  or  recounting, of one’s own life. The life is lived and then the story is told about that  life. Life, then, would appear to precede its autobiographical telling and functions as  the foundation for that telling. From this perspective, the singular and coherent self  exists and can therefore tell the story of this self. However, poststructuralist theory  prompts us to turn this commonsense conception of autobiography on its head by  reminding us that there is no “self ” prior to its performance. The self is a performative,  reiterative  act,  inescapably  bound  up  in  the  social  and  cultural  discourses  that permit certain notions of self to exist (while making other selves inconceivable  and/or  “unreadable”).  Autobiography,  a  creative  act  of  selecting,  of  ordering,  of  editing, of forgetting, of embellishing, of inventing a life is part of this iteration or  reiteration of a self. A self is constructed through the construction of the life-story.  This,  of  course,  is  both  the  potential  and  danger  of  autobiographical  production;  while  it  may  be  a  useful  and  powerful  tool  of  self-determination  (particularly  for  marginalised or oppressed persons) it also functions as an equally powerful apparatus  for the cultural reproduction of normative ideas about what constitutes a “proper  subject” (and a proper subject of autobiography). The practitioner of autobiography  needs to keep this political instability (as both potential and risk) in mind each time  they perform a specific self. Topography: Topos, from the Greek, for place; graphein, to scratch, to draw,  to write.  My use of the term autotopography should be distinguished from its application by  art critic Jennifer González. Where González uses it to refer to personal objects—such  as photos, tourist memorabilia, etc.—arranged by a subject as physical signs that spatially represent that subject’s identity, I take the topos more literally.1 Autotopography  resonates richly in the context of site-specific practice since to add auto to topography is to admit the self that writes every place. Topography, like autobiography, is  a creative act of interpretation, of perspective, of location. While the myth of place  might be that it simply exists, is fixed and knowable, places, like selves, are made.  As geographer Tim Cresswell writes, “places are constructed by people doing things  and in this sense are never ‘finished’ but are constantly being performed.”2 I write  place according to who I am as much as where I am; in fact, where I am is also as  much to do with who I am as anything else. But then who I am is predicated on  where  I  am,  since  “I”  am  always  somewhere.  I  am  plotted  in  and  through  place  HEDDon  /  One Square Foot    41 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art MIT Press

One Square Foot: Thousands of Routes

PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art , Volume 29 (2) – May 1, 2007

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References (2)

Publisher
MIT Press
Copyright
© 2007 Deirdre Heddon
ISSN
1520-281X
eISSN
1537-9477
DOI
10.1162/pajj.2007.29.2.40
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

ONE SQUARE FOOT Thousands of Routes Deirdre Heddon ORIENTATION uring the summer of 2003 my most familiar and inhabited terrain became  a  single  square  foot.  The  One Square Foot project,  a  creative  partnership  between the University of Exeter, echo-arts (Cyprus), and Theatre Alibi, was  a practical research enterprise initiated and managed by Dorinda Hulton, a professional director and part-time lecturer at the University of Exeter Drama Department.  Within this project I was one of three actors, each given the initial task of choosing  a square foot and then working with a team of artists from different disciplines to  devise a series of solo performances in response to and for that location. Hulton, long  interested in developing models that facilitate the actor’s creative practice, proposed  One Square Foot as a means to explore the impact of different creative methodologies  on the actor’s craft. As her program note states,  the project places the actor at the heart of generating material for performance. Stories, images and memories associated with a square foot chosen  by each performer have found their forms through a series of interactions  with creative artists working in different fields. Hulton had specifically invited me to be a performer-participant in the project because  of my critical and practical interest in autobiographical and site-specific work and  their  inter-relations.  This  reflection,  then,  is  not  on  the  entire  creative  process  or  even on the outcomes of One Square Foot, but rather on a particular set of concerns  activated by enfolding autobiographical and site-specific practices. GROUND (WORK) Moving  to  Exeter,  Devon  in  1998,  I  encountered  for  the  first  time  the  work  of  Wrights & Sites, creators of The Quay Thing (1998), and the more recent Mis-Guides,  imaginative guide books that prompt you to see familiar places in new and unexpected  ways. Wrights & Sites introduced me to the term “site-specific performance,” and  their enduring focus on site has prompted me to take my work on autobiographical  performance in a new direction by considering the relations that exist between site  D 40    PAJ 86 (2007), pp. 40–50.  © 2007 Deirdre Heddon and autobiography. I have begun to explore this through deploying the term “autotopography” that I use here to reflect on the performance devised for One Square Foot. Before turning to autotopography, though, it is useful to rehearse the related  but more familiar term autobiography. Auto: from the Greek, for self, same, one’s own; Bio: from the Greek, bios,  for life course, or way of living life; Graphy, from the Greek, graphein, to  scratch, to draw, to write.  A  common-sense  understanding  of  autobiography  is  that  it  is  the  account,  or  recounting, of one’s own life. The life is lived and then the story is told about that  life. Life, then, would appear to precede its autobiographical telling and functions as  the foundation for that telling. From this perspective, the singular and coherent self  exists and can therefore tell the story of this self. However, poststructuralist theory  prompts us to turn this commonsense conception of autobiography on its head by  reminding us that there is no “self ” prior to its performance. The self is a performative,  reiterative  act,  inescapably  bound  up  in  the  social  and  cultural  discourses  that permit certain notions of self to exist (while making other selves inconceivable  and/or  “unreadable”).  Autobiography,  a  creative  act  of  selecting,  of  ordering,  of  editing, of forgetting, of embellishing, of inventing a life is part of this iteration or  reiteration of a self. A self is constructed through the construction of the life-story.  This,  of  course,  is  both  the  potential  and  danger  of  autobiographical  production;  while  it  may  be  a  useful  and  powerful  tool  of  self-determination  (particularly  for  marginalised or oppressed persons) it also functions as an equally powerful apparatus  for the cultural reproduction of normative ideas about what constitutes a “proper  subject” (and a proper subject of autobiography). The practitioner of autobiography  needs to keep this political instability (as both potential and risk) in mind each time  they perform a specific self. Topography: Topos, from the Greek, for place; graphein, to scratch, to draw,  to write.  My use of the term autotopography should be distinguished from its application by  art critic Jennifer González. Where González uses it to refer to personal objects—such  as photos, tourist memorabilia, etc.—arranged by a subject as physical signs that spatially represent that subject’s identity, I take the topos more literally.1 Autotopography  resonates richly in the context of site-specific practice since to add auto to topography is to admit the self that writes every place. Topography, like autobiography, is  a creative act of interpretation, of perspective, of location. While the myth of place  might be that it simply exists, is fixed and knowable, places, like selves, are made.  As geographer Tim Cresswell writes, “places are constructed by people doing things  and in this sense are never ‘finished’ but are constantly being performed.”2 I write  place according to who I am as much as where I am; in fact, where I am is also as  much to do with who I am as anything else. But then who I am is predicated on  where  I  am,  since  “I”  am  always  somewhere.  I  am  plotted  in  and  through  place  HEDDon  /  One Square Foot    41

Journal

PAJ: A Journal of Performance and ArtMIT Press

Published: May 1, 2007

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