- Venue
- http://www.performingplace.com/
- Location
The artist Gordon Flemons has produced beautiful, strange, and mesmerising animated 3D drawings as a result of his exploration of the spatial nature of the theatre of the every day.
Working with a number of community groups in Colchester and using a GPS tracking, technology Flemons constructs virtual sculptures that reveal the shape and form of communities going about their every day routines, the journeys and performances that trace out the line we live our lives along.
These virtual works represent a narrative, progressing both in space and time, exploring the character of place that arises from the interactions between the environment and people.
The works take their inspiration from recent developments in spatial theory, the emergence of performative and or practice based ontologies (Amin; Anderson; Crang; Harrison; Painter). Leaving the straight jacket of the classic vocabularies of spatial thought, such as scale, territory and boundaries, it examines the conceptual vocabularies that are able to attend to the ‘life’ of space, as part of the artist’s exploration of site as a performed place, where society does more than simply exist in space.
The works are also influenced by the work of earlier spatial theorists such as Bill Hilliers & Julienne Hanson (whose company Space Syntax was brought in to advise on the re-development plans for the St Botolph’s Quarter of Colchester) and by E.W Soja’s concept of spatial triallectics, including thirdspace, or spaces that are both real and imagined.
By interpolating the movements, tracks and interactions of Colchester’s people against time, Flemons’ work gives a unique form to the daily performance of its communities and reveals their spatial nature and interdependencies.
Making Tracks-Performing Place is an Open Space Project for Essex County Council and Commissions East.
