Feminist Performative Architectures: making place in and with public space

Bringing together concepts of performativity from feminist theories and methods from architecture, performance and art practice, this thesis sets out to develop an interdisciplinary multi-modal performance-based practice research methodology that researches how particular public spaces are performed. Led by an enquiry which stems from and includes my own interdisciplinary practice, itself located in-between architecture, performance and socially engaged art, it investigates in what way this methodology might interrogate recently developed public spaces, or those situated within regeneration frameworks, in order to address how dominant power relations are reproduced in, by and through these spaces. Central to this thesis is a critique of the current context of undertheorised notions of performativity in architecture alongside a ubiquitous neoliberal glossing of public space. In order to address both concerns, this thesis reframes performativity as both feminist research methodology: an emergent, performance-based yet situated practice, and research subject: a way of thinking critically about or through the place of public space. This implies a reviewing of the performative position of the researcher, examining how this position changes and occupies multiple sites that influence spatial production, and a reviewing of public space, examining in what way public spaces might be equally multiple.

Through the practice research this thesis extends Judith Butler’s performative theories on social constructions of gender, Rosi Braidotti and Donna Haraway’s embodied and situated accounts of subjectivity and Karen Barad’s posthuman performativity. These theories are placed in dialogue with key thinkers and practitioners in public space, performance and participation. These include Sophie Wolfrum’s ‘performative urbanism’; Teresa Hoskyns and Doreen Massey’s critiques of public space; Cathy Turner, Juliet Rufford and Dorita Hannah’s investigations into crossovers between theatre, architecture and performance; Doina Petrescu’s research into socially engaged participatory practices in architecture and Sarah Pink’s reflexive ethnographic methodologies. In order to develop the implications of these references for a feminist approach to repracticing public space, they are also considered alongside feminist performance, art and architecture practices, including those of Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Celine Condorelli, Thandi Loewenson, Sophie Handler and feminist collective ‘taking place’.

With reference to Barad in particular, rather than designing solutions the practice research methodology developed through the thesis proposes that ‘feminist performative architectures’ generate topological spaces; ‘situations’ developed through emergent outcomes, interaction, dialogue and provocation with other people, places and politics that include the non-human. Ultimately, this thesis expands the spectrum of practice-led research methodologies and modes of researching public space. It critiques objectified accounts of ‘placemaking’ by extending understandings of public spaces through making visible their performativity in ways unavailable to conventional architectural research methods. Finally, in creating relational and situated spaces that embrace difference, it argues that ‘feminist performative architectures’ themselves generate alternative public spaces that open up ‘other’ possibilities formerly repressed through layers of sedimented social practices and material presence.