urban emptiness

Urban Emptiness

The project suggests an interdisciplinary investigation of emptiness and silence

in three contemporary cities: Athens, Edinburgh and Brussels. The aim is to
highlight the importance of real and imaginary/hidden landscapes in the urban
environment and explore different conditions of intimacy in their understanding.
Through three main actions that involve different methodological strategies
(workshops, performative projects, open discussions and exhibitions), the project
intends to contribute to the discourse about the social, educational, financial,
ecological and cultural value of an experiential/performative understanding of
silence and emptiness in urban life. Acknowledging the significance of the
contribution of diverse groups of people in its results, this pilot study invites
students and local citizens in its actions.
 Urban Emptiness

A project with an interdisciplinary exploration of emptiness

and silence in contemporary cities.

The aim is to highlight the importance of real and imaginary/

hidden landscapes of the urban environment.

approaching silence
Through a series of actions: workshops, performative projects,
open discussions, exhibitions the project intends to
contribute to the discourse about the social, educational,
ecological, cultural value of silence in urban life.

urban emptiness
Acknowledging the significance of the contribution of diverse
groups of people in its results it will invite students and local
citizens in its actions, in a first phase in Athens, Brussels and
Edinburgh between February and June 2016.

urban emptiness
 The project explores the conditions of emptiness in
contemporary city through the examination of silence in its
embodied understanding using various narrative elements.

urban emptiness
 Combining methodologies from different disciplines (i.e.
architecture, arts, dance / performative arts, walking and new
media) this study traces the silence of empty, abandoned or
even hidden parts of contemporary cities; seeking to reveal
their particular qualities, examine and comment on their
role in the life of the local communities and suggest also
innovative ways of their mapping.

urban emptiness
The suggested performative exploration of the city draws our
attention on peoples actions and doings. Immersive
performative practices will reveal the potentiality of space,
by using participants as active producers of content and
meaning.

urban emptiness
Either human or atmospheric, silence is an integral part of an
immersive understanding of the world, being always
reciprocally interconnected to the other phenomena found
in it, such as (natural or artificial) sonorous events, human
discourse, everyday activities and so forth.

urban emptiness
 Silence is connected to the idea of emptiness in different
cultural contexts. An empty place is not a totally void space,
as silence is not a totally soundless condition. In various
parts of the city, like areas under development or
undeveloped, abandoned buildings or industrial zones and
urban voids, emptiness opens a space for silence to be
experienced and creates intimate associations.

urban emptiness
The project aims also at the creation of a wider network
between cultural and academical institutions of different
European cities that will keep exploring silence in the city
and interacting with each other. In parallel, it will be open to
citizens involvement in the suggested investigation.

urban emptiness
Workshops and actions
Edinburgh - Brussels - Athens

Performance,
sound and augmented aurality,
documentation/exploration
The international network Urban Emptiness examines the
significance of emptiness and silence in the urban landscape through
a series of actions in three different cities: Athens, Edinburgh and
Brussels. To fulfil this aim a number of workshops and their
synthesis, happening in the same city or in different countries (in
parallel or not), has been one of the key activities of the network.

The programme of these actions involved a number of interwoven

atmospheric workshops that included:

i) performance events or actions that focused on the relationship of

the body and the physical space and its immaterial realms,

ii) digital/sound mappings of the urban emptiness and silent aura

and

iii) documentation explorations of the experiential understanding of

urban atmospheres that challenge current representational
techniques.
Walking has been chosen as a key movement for the workshops. Real
and possible movement along a route results in an opening of space
that is characterised by an eccentric character. Walking is not
connected to the interaction with a centre, but to the possibility of an
adventurous wandering in which the ideas of getting lost, surprise,
and changing inner/mental maps play an integral role.

For Michel de Certeau, walking becomes a kind of travelling during

which the individual is simultaneously reading and writing an
embodied story based on his/her search for a meaningful place.

This narrative is organised into a sequence of encounters between

the different components involved in the process.
 Urban body
As part of Urban Emptiness collaborations we propose to explore and deepen in the
relationship we establish among body, movement/action, and urban space
awareness/intention. Where do we come from? Where have we been? Where do we
regularly go? What do we do in the different places we frequent? What is the story
or history of those places? Who do we relate to? How does our urban landscape
determine our way of moving through space? How does it impact the way we
perceive our bodies? How does it define our ways to engage with others? How is the
city inscribed in us? How can we engrave a new meaning into the urban landscape?
During a week participants will
(1) relate to their transit habits by documenting, reflecting, and re-structuring them,
while simultaneously
(2) engaging in collective walks through the city,
(3) documenting the process and
(4) generating their own urban landscape/memory.
approaching silence
The Urban Body workshop deployed silence as a mode of
experiencing the city, aiming to explore moments of silence and
intimacy in a state of movement and transition. The workshop
introduced a series of tasks (e.g. body awareness and movement
exercises, interview-exercises, silent walks) that focused on an
embodied understanding of our everyday encounter with the city.

The role of the silent walking body as a carrier of both personal and
collective stories was illuminated through this process, exploring the
opening of (permanent and temporary) home-situations in the
urban environment, and negotiating our belonging in it.

The establishment of different degrees of intimacy between the

members of the group dynamically contributed to the workshop. Each
of the participants was acting as an individual, as a member of a pair
(decided in the first day of the workshop), and as a member of the
whole group at the same time.

Using this approach, diverse narratives were generated to witness

another reading of the city. The kind of narratives the participants
created were related to a multilayered process of recording
conditions of intimacy conditions of closeness and distancing
between cities, places in the same city and people.
By changing the walking rhythms and deconstructing everyday habits
and rituals, the participants of Urban Body engaged in a process of
immediacy with the surrounding environment, unfiltered of
thoughts.

Therefore, a staircase and its repetitive climbing are fused in a

state of intensity and accelerating heart pulses.

A city square comes to appearance through fragments of

experience, body temperature and interchange of public gazes.
 Performing silence
What happens when you shift the focus?
The leaders of the various workshops are invited to interact throughout the week by
framing situations composed of entangled rhythms, affects and sensations. It will
trace episodes of urban emptiness and silence as explored during their workshops by
providing a setting where action and time in reality and imagination may unfold
through sharing experiences. Focus will be on performative factors such as duration,
emotional predispositions and interpersonal dynamics, which are inextricable from
the way associations with a particular space are created.
The workshop will be looking into the experiences and relations formed in the direct
experiential interaction of the facilitators with the city, but also through the
narratives of the participants they are working with. Discussing how concepts of
space are constructed by tracking subtle processes of everyday activities as well as
ideas of fluidity and movement, the workshop aims to enhance the performative
communication between the workshop leaders and provide a place for creative
encounters of different perspectives.
Performing Silence. What Happens when you shift the focus? was one
of the thread-workshops, creating pauses in the succeeding
execution of the examined event. It involved interconnected actions
inviting the facilitators of the workshops to become participants
and reflect on their role and the creative process as a whole. The
workshop called for performative communication of the different
perspectives on the themes explored.

It created an environment that facilitated intuitive perceptions of

the situations being unfolded during the week and an exploration of
the developed dynamics between the facilitators (also in relation to
their workshop participants and the urban environment that they
were exploring for the first time).

These playful encounters aimed to reveal the potentiality of the in-

between, unraveling spatial sensibilities and potential emotional
responses. The framing arrangement enabled a level of spontaneity
that generated intimate encounters. Stirring is situated within these
moments of interaction, which reveal connections between
intersubjectivity and spatiality.
All tasks were devised to assist various aspects of sharing, which
created shared moods tied to a particular situation:
non-verbal encounters based on proximity and directed movement,
silence as a mode of being-together, associative games and site-
oriented imaginary encounters.

Loving Landscapes, for example, was a walk performed as a

dialogue between two facilitators, built on an intimate
contemplation on personal stories, poetry and city images.

Trying to sustain a relaxed but constant emotional engagement with

the other persons experiences, they created a multi-layered
experience of rhythmical emotive interactions. Building upon the idea
of interrupting a sequence of events, the workshop paradoxically
brought them together.
approaching silence
 Reading silence
Questioning traditional mapping techniques the action explores the reading of
urban emptiness and silence, emphasising the documentation of bodily experience
and narrative in it. Focus will be on the exploration of the performative or eventual
qualities of drawing, writing or even modelling transpositions of an event, situation
or performance that is happening or has (just) happened. A sketchbook is designed
for this purpose and will be distributed to participants of the different walking
workshops to use it as a kind of a diary of their experience.
Re/Reading Urban Emptiness and Silence questions the stability and coherence of
the narrative of these transpositions.
An indoor workshop will took place after the different events on their
documentation through studio work on the sketchbooks and other media. Besides the
flexibility of its design, the sketchbook will be part of a design process during which
the participants are asked to create a post-narrative of the city read during the
workshops. Re-arranging them, destroying parts of them, using moving images,
complementing the material with sound and projections on it, working with their
blank pages or even re-writing on them will give the opportunity to the participants
to redefine the process of reading urban landscape, adding layers of interpretation on
it.
Video
Re/Reading Urban Emptiness and Silence was the other thread-
action, addressing both the participants and the facilitators of the
different workshops.

A number of sketchbooks were distributed to be used as a reflective

device during the event. The sketchbook was designed as a site-
specific piece, taking into consideration the ideas of pause and
interruption and translating them through the combination of
different kinds of paper, different extracts of texts, and suggestions
of short actions/tasks to its user.

The sketchbook worked as a choreographed device inviting the

users to step back and use it in silence. Personal stories, common
actions and the material transferred by the sketchbook were involved
in a dialogue, traces of which can be found on the pieces themselves.
video sketchbook
The sketchbook followed a narrative that was interrupted. A line of
quotes described two crack moments in the urban development
of the city. The vagueness of the changing urban atmosphere and
the exploration of silence in it, set in action a process of de-
construction of this narrative. Actual holes on the papers and
suggested actions were included: Close your eyes. Listen to a
sound. / Collect a thought. / Write a moment.
In the returned sketchbooks we find a dialogue between the texts,
the pause actions and an almost diary-like recording of the
individuals experience.

In some cases, this is limited by the use of the pages as white

surfaces and less as a field of interaction between the designer/
leader and the participant.

Either through immediate responses to the activities or reflective

revisits of the experience the sketchbook proved to be an effective
way of collecting material (thoughts, memories, imaginations).
While in workshops such as the Urban Body, the silent walk was part
of the process, in others such as the Impossible Inaudible Soundwalk,
the sketchbook seems to have allowed pauses in it, when the
participants had to stop and write or sketch something, either during
its execution or afterwards. Stirring different voices, the workshop
allowed for intangible qualities of the atmosphere to be expressed in
a shared space carried by the individuals:

A final session gave us the opportunity to merge all the experiences

and synchronize thoughts and process. This common lab is a great
place for interactions and meta-analysis of the entire process. I
think it can be potentiated and more structured so all the workshops
facilitators and participants can share in a more concrete way their
experiences.
 The impossible inaudible
soundwalk
Drawing on sound studies, sound art and walking as research method and artistic
practice, this workshop presents the theory and practice of creating a soundwalk.
Participants will be introduced into the cultural aspects of sounds and the complexity
of the act of listening in a defined place. This workshop invites participants to
question!the conceptions of silence and noise!and discuss the idea of!urban voids and
emptiness through collaboration and the application of innovative methodologies.
We will use!noTours, an open-source software platform for creating site-specific and
interactive artworks with the use of locative media technology. The goal is to create
a sound map of an area that is understood as an urban void and to compose a
soundwalk with the use of mobile phones and GPS that will augment the sensorial
dimensions of the experience of the city for the participants.
The Impossible Inaudible Soundwalk workshop explored silence,
narrative and intimacy in the composition of an audio walk in
Edinburgh using the locative media platform noTours.

Listening to the city, recording its sounds and its inhabitants stories
and choosing the areas in which these sounds were going to be
placed aimed to the formation of a sonorous environment to be
listened while walking.

Improvisation played a key role in the process. While prefigured, it

involved the possibility of change and re-orientation. Monitoring and
editing the sounds and the creation of the audio walk was decided
over the map of Edinburgh narrating the participants interpretation
of the city.

Measuring walking times, testing itineraries and documentation of

features of the landscape (physical, aesthetic, social, mnemonic or
otherwise) led to the final result. A route was decided and a
soundwalk was composed and installed in mobile phones to be
activated by the individual during future walks.