ABSTRACT Mobile Performance and Nomadic !eory: Staging Movement, !inking Mobility !is essay discusses the nomadic not so much in terms of mobile existence or physical displacement, but primarily in connection with the concept as a type of movement that disturbs the notion of territory, and that is intrinsically related to processes of and reterritorialization. !is particular reading of the nomadic is based on how the concept has been theorized and conceptu- alized by , partly in close collaboration with Félix Guattari. !eir nomadology serves as a lens through which to study territories-in-motion, in connection to (urban) mobile performances and relationships between theory and practice. !e essay intends to demonstrate that the enquiry into dispersed and mobilized territories is a productive tool for analyzing movement and mobili- ty in contemporary performance. Firstly, nomadism is presented as a particular attitude, connected to acts of de- and reterritorialization. Secondly, this perspec- tive is employed to explore some of the dispersed territories that form the basis of the ambulatory performance No Man’s Land by Dutch director and scenographer Dries Verhoeven. Lastly, the discussion is extended towards a mobile research symposium, !inking Scenography, which takes scenography itself as an (embod- ied) mode of thought. Here, a nomadic attitude materializes through non-hierar- chical, practice-based forms of knowledge production.

Keywords: nomadic, territory, deterritorialization, reterritorialization, (nomadic) attitude, mobility.

BIOGRAPHY Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink is a teacher and researcher in !eatre Studies at the Department of Media and Culture Studies of Utrecht University. She has published in Performance Research, Contemporary !eatre Review and in Mapping Intermediality in Performance (ed. Bay-Cheng et al, 2010). She recently complet- ed her PhD thesis, entitled Nomadic !eatre: Staging Movement and Mobility in Contemporary Performance (Utrecht University). !is PhD research led to close collaborations with the Dutch Platform-Scenography and the Research Centre Performative Processes at the HKU University of the Arts, two research platforms that both employ and study creative and embodied forms of re"ection on artistic practice. [email protected]

22 Nordic Theatre Studies vol. 27: no. 1 Nordic Theatre Studies vol. 27: no. 1 Mobile Performance and Nomadic Theory Staging Movement, Thinking Mobility

LIESBETH GROOT NIBBELINK

MOBILE PERFORMANCE marily refers to the displacement of people, objects In 2000, the German performance collective Hy- and technologies in a world that is on the move. giene Heute presented the performance Kanal Indeed, the nomadic is often aligned with physical Kirchner, in which spectators, equipped with head- movement, mobility and displacement. In Drama- phones and a Walkman, traversed the city by fol- turgy and Performance, for instance, Cathy Turner lowing instructions on an audiotape. While navi- and Synne Behrndt shortly mention the “nomad- gating the streets of Berlin, they became engaged in ic dramaturgy” of performances that take the form a story full of suspense that gradually put them into of (urban) journeys, performance walks or guided a sense of being the object of pursuit themselves. city-tours.3 !ey observe how in particular the en- Performance scholar Christopher Balme describes gagement with urban space, which allows everyday this performance as an instance of “audio theatre”.1 life to intervene anytime, even more than in other Audio theatre perhaps calls forth associations with types of site-speci$c theatre, “seems to force open a radio play. Kanal Kirchner is a radio play 2.0, so the dramaturgy of the work”.4 to say, an audio-performance that involves walking, In this essay, I will approach the nomadic not mobile listeners and, occasionally, when looking at so much in terms of mobile existence or physical related examples, includes interactive dialogue as displacement, but present it as a type of movement well. Hygiene Heute later evolved into Rimini Pro- that disturbs the notion of territory, and is intrinsi- tokoll. In 2005, this German performance collective cally connected to processes of deterritorialization presented Call Cutta, a mobile phone theatre play. and reterritorialization. !is particular reading of In this performance, single spectators embarked the nomadic is based on how the concept has been upon a journey by foot through Berlin’s Kreuzberg theorized and conceptualized by Gilles Deleuze, district, guided by a call-center employee who was partly in close collaboration with Félix Guattari. based in Calcutta, India. !e mobile phone a#ord- I use their nomadology as a lens through which ed navigation, and interactively engaged a single to study territories-in-motion, in connection to performer and a single spectator into a conversation (urban) mobile performances. My aim is to demon- about the local particularities at both ends of the strate that the enquiry into dispersed and mobilized line. territories is a productive tool for analyzing move- Balme sees walkmans and mobile phones – ment and mobility in contemporary performance. and also credit-cards – as symptoms and equip- Nomadism in my view points to a particular atti- ment of contemporary nomadism. !ey are tools tude, which manifests itself in patterns of de- and for way-$nding; prosthetic extensions of migrant reterritorialization. A territory instigates borders, bodies navigating through a di#used and decen- ownership, or property regulations. On the other tered world.2 In Balme’s account, nomadism pri- hand, a nomadic attitude is connected to a mode

Nordic Theatre Studies vol. 27: no. 1 Nordic Theatre Studies vol. 27: no. 1 23 of distribution that involves the occupation of a Such strategies render territory into a state of con- borderless domain, without possessing it entirely.5 tinuous variation. Similar processes are also at work in performances In one of his earliest essays on nomadism, “No- like Kanal Kirchner or Call Cutta, in which, for in- madic !ought”, Deleuze discusses (the force of) stance, the urban environment partly occupies the the work of Nietzsche. For Deleuze, Nietzsche is an theatre , and the performance in turn nests exemplary nomad because he radically thwarts the within and captures the codes of everyday life in the hierarchical conventions of philosophy. Deleuze de- city. Such patterns of distribution are not restricted scribes how Nietzsche’s unique style of thinking and to mobile theatre performances. We might also rec- writing produces a sensation of not-knowing; his ognize a nomadic attitude in deterritorialized rela- style escapes the code of recognition, and puts the tions between theory and practice, where thinking very idea (and territory) of philosophy in motion.8 and doing do not constitute an oppositional pair In their joint A !ousand Plateaus, Deleuze and but maintain a relationship of being distributed Guattari do include more stereotypical examples through one another. In order to "esh out these of nomads, amongst many others, but even when arguments, I will $rst enquire into ways in which referring to nomadic tribes roving the steppes, they the nomadic “forces us to think” and deals with the point to a particular attitude that lies underneath mobilization of territories.6 Secondly, I will explore this wandering, a speci$c mode of relating to the some of the dispersed territories that form the basis ground on which one moves. To the nomad, the of the ambulatory performance No Man’s Land by ground is a surface for movement, not a territory Dutch director and scenographer Dries Verhoeven, as it is for the sedentary. By opposing nomadism to after which I will extend the discussion to include the sedentary, draw out two a mobile research project which takes scenography diverging types of behaviour and related to this, itself as an (embodied) mode of thought. two types of spatial relationships. For the nomad, ground is not a territory; when conceived of as a surface, ground has no borders. At the most, a “IT IS FALSE TO DEFINE THE NOMAD BY nomad temporarily occupies a place, takes a place, MOVEMENT” yet this is a temporary hold, a staying in order to In daily life, the word ‘nomadic’ is quite often de- leave. To the sedentary, in comparison, ground pro- ployed to describe or evoke the idea of aimless wan- vides the foundation for building a house; ground is dering, or to qualify life in terms of a mobile and something to settle on.9 Borders emerge along with rootless existence. A similar line of thought seems to the sedentary, as well as property, ownership and, in inform the use of the term ‘city-nomads’ by (Dutch) their slipstream, inclusions and exclusions, inside/ city councils when referring to the urban homeless. outside divisions, in sum: territories. As suggested above, it is tempting to equate nomad- When observing the world in terms of territory, ism with physical movement and displacement. we cannot but notice that by far the largest portion Deleuze’s nomadology however o#ers a slightly dif- of the land in the world is organized into territo- ferent orientation. “It is false to de$ne the nomad ries. A nomadic relation to ground is the exception by movement,” write Deleuze and Guattari in A rather than the rule. More accurately: the nomad- !ousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. ic is the exception of the rule, the counter-force to According to them, it is not movement that dis- order, regulation, legislation and to that which has tinguishes the nomad, but speed.7 Speed does not grown into conceptions of normality, standardiza- imply quickness but relies on perpetual movement, tion or convention, as the result of those rules. !e continuous deferral and deterritorialization. Deter- nomadic therefore always acts against the State. !e ritorialization involves the destabilization or ‘undo- State is the territorial force, and this of course does ing’ of territories and materializes, for instance, in not only pertain to geographically de$ned areas, but acts that capture, change or escape the codes of a also to economics and $nance, political institutions, system (systems of power, systems of organization). science, sexuality, ideologies, education, or any

24 Nordic Theatre Studies vol. 27: no. 1 Nordic Theatre Studies vol. 27: no. 1 other $eld in which certain conceptions and ways ourselves as dynamic, ever-changing globe-trot- of doing strongly dominate over others. !e nomad ters.13 De Kesel instead points to the aggressive ‘na- destabilizes the seemingly self-evident nature of the ture’ of Deleuze’s and Guattari’s nomadism. Indeed, State, through deterritorialization. it should be acknowledged that Deleuze and Guat- In his essay “Art and Territory”, Ronald Bogue tari, in A !ousand Plateaus, present the nomad as a points out that deterritorialization cannot be sep- war machine, and some of their descriptions accom- arated from reterritorialization as they are always plish what one rather imagines for an Al Quaida co-existent. He describes the process of de- and re- terrorist rather than a fashionable cosmopolitan.14 territorialization as respectively “the detachment or !is sensation of unease further increases when tak- un$xing of elements and their reorganization with- ing into account the many examples of involuntary in new assemblages”.10 Reterritorialization does not exile and social migration, or the forced displace- entail a return to a previous situation, a re-install- ments of political refugees, marked and unmarked ment of ‘the same’. !rough deterritorialization, by newspaper headlines – even though Deleuze and elements are given greater autonomy; through reter- Guattari distinguish between the migrant and the ritorialization, components acquire new functions nomad.15 Posited against this sociopolitical reality, within newly created $elds.11 Reterritorialization one can even wonder whether nomadology as a tool is similar to deterritorialization involved with acts for analysis is inappropriate, if not politically incor- of (temporary) occupation, but also relates to the rect. distribution of parts or elements of a system onto In a similar stream of thought, several theorists other systems. We may recognize such patterns as have criticized the concept of nomadism. Caren well in Rimini Protokoll’s Call Cutta. In this mobile Kaplan, for instance, argues that the idea of a per- phone play, the stage is deterritorialized, as it has petual transcending of boundaries actually repeats no centre, clear-cut borders, or $xed location: the a Western Enlightenment dream, closely connected stage ‘happens’ simultaneously in Berlin, Calcutta to a (European) history of colonial expansion and and in-between; the stage materializes in the pro- exploitation.16 Cultural geographer Tim Cresswell cess of performance rather than being a pre-de$ned criticizes the “nomadist metaphysics” of mobile territory. Concurrently, global and digital mobility theories, including those of Deleuze and Guattari, reterritorialize the theatre: by way of the mobile which not only take a world-on-the-move as their phone, the stage is distributed over several locations matter, but seek to incorporate mobility in and resurfaces on three di#erent platforms across the very structure of thought itself. For Cresswell, the globe. those theories tend to celebrate mobility for mobil- ity’s sake, while they ignore the fact that access to mobility is unevenly distributed, due to reasons of EUROCENTRIC IMAGINARIES? class, race or gender. Such nomadism tends to "at- My emphasis on the nomadic as an attitude stems ten out di#erences and fails to do justice to social from dealing with a certain problem in my encoun- inequality, and thus ignores the “racialized root of 17 ter with Deleuzian thought. !ere is nothing wrong the metaphor”. with problems. Problems generate thought and lead !ese issues are taken up by Paul Patton, in to the creation of concepts, as Deleuze and Guat- “Mobile Concepts, Metaphor, and the Problem 18 tari point out in What is philosophy?.12 But this is of Referentiality in Deleuze and Guattari”. Pat- a problem nonetheless. Is it not utterly romantic ton discusses the critique of Caren Kaplan next to to conceive of the nomadic in terms of perpetual Christopher Miller’s, amongst others, who both displacement or of being distributed onto an open, accuse Deleuze of perpetuating a (neo)colonial tra- borderless space? Marc De Kesel, a Flemish philoso- dition based on the myths of expansion and fascina- pher, critically asserts that the nomadic often serves tion for the primitive Other. According to Kaplan, to qualify postmodern notions of global citizenship, this is a repetition of the “rhetorical structures of a 19 in which the nomadic is put to use to appreciate modernist European imaginary”. Patton o#ers an

Nordic Theatre Studies vol. 27: no. 1 Nordic Theatre Studies vol. 27: no. 1 25 insightful answer to these and other accusations, by creation of structural coherence through squaring, arguing that these problems do not pertain to the approximation and qualitative calculation, generat- nomadic, but concern the problem of referentiality. ed by the material and the work-in-progress. !e According to Patton, the issue is not whether and quali$ed labour in nomad science is based on expe- how Deleuzian concepts refer to certain phenom- rience as it has been built up in time and is stored ena in reality, instead one ought to investigate “the as corporeal, local knowledge: “One does not repre- relationship of those concepts to their apparently sent, one engenders and traverses.”22 Engendering empirical claims”.20 In other words, the question is and traversing the work: this is a remarkably apt whether Deleuze and Guattari use the nomad as a description of ambulatory performances that take metaphor. !e answer to that particular question place in urban environments. Performers and spec- wholly depends on how one conceives of a meta- tators are not engaged in an act of constructing a phor, but for Deleuze and Guattari, the nomad is building of course, yet they are mutually involved not a metaphor. For them, the metaphor belongs to in a process of building performance. !ey traverse the realm of representation. A metaphor expresses the urban environment, while navigating and em- one thing through another one, which not only re- bodying the work. lies on the independent existence of things, but as well di#erentiates between an original and its deriv- ative. Deleuze and Guattari strongly reject such a STAGING MOVEMENT IN NO MAN’S LAND 21 representational image of thought. To recapitulate brie"y, in the above I have argued Taking Patton’s observations as a lead, the no- that the nomadic instigates a type of movement that madic in my view manifests itself in many di#erent allies with processes of de- and reterritorialization, ways, the one not truer or closer to the ‘original’ with the act of taking hold of places without claim- than the other. !e nomad in science is not closer ing ownership. In addition, nomadism surfaces in to the nomad than the nomadic tribes in the de- processes of traversing and engendering the work, sert. !erefore I prefer to speak of the nomadic as in local operations and embodied practices. Such an attitude, a particular way of doing and thinking strategies also mark the ambulatory performance that manifests itself in a range of occasions and al- No Man’s Land by Dutch director and scenogra- lies itself with strategies of deterritorialization and pher Dries Verhoeven. !e performance was orig- reterritorialization, thus questioning the notion of inally presented in Utrecht (in the Netherlands) in territory. Nomadism surfaces in (guerilla) war tac- 2008, but has been re-staged in various Europe- tics, but as well in art and philosophy. Some of these an cities since then, each time slightly adapted to practices may raise ethical questions, but however local conditions.23 When analyzing such a mobile contested these practices may be – this can hardly be performance, we might start with enquiring which a reason for disqualifying the concept itself. territories are in play, and how processes of de- and Giving consequence to this, I brie"y mention a reterritorialization are put to work in order to ques- very illuminating example of nomad science where tion these territories. In the following, I will focus Deleuze and Guattari describe a twelfth-century on two characteristic territories in the theatre: the practice of building Gothic cathedrals. !is build- stage, i.e. the place where usually the performers ing process is not based on pre-designed work present themselves to an audience, and the audito- plans, but on the embodied knowledge and expe- rium – the conventional place of assembly for the rience of the craftsmen engaged in the building spectators. process. Pre-existing templates are the instrument Verhoeven’s No Man’s Land stages an encoun- of the State; they are based on $xed models and ter between migrants and theatre spectators. !e operate through reproduction, regulation and the performance starts in the crowded hall of Utrecht generalization of labour. Nomad science instead is Central Station. Amidst the zigzagging travelers in grounded in (collaborative) experimentation, in the the station concourse, the spectators are lined up in

26 Nordic Theatre Studies vol. 27: no. 1 Nordic Theatre Studies vol. 27: no. 1 a row, wearing headphones. While waiting for the man’s land. !e stage lacks clear-cut boundaries and event to unfold, they gradually discover ‘another’ unfolds as the trajectory progresses. Meanwhile life choreography, in which some people are standing in the city follows its routes, ruptures and routines. still, and literally stand out against the strolling and !e theatre space and the urban space are separated hurrying commuters. !ese are the performers they by an invisible, yet extremely porous and permeable will meet in this performance – in fact, the encoun- membrane. No Man’s Land is a theatre of local op- ter has already started. A similar smoothness quali- erations and of perpetual variation, cutting across $es the stage. !e stage achieves a distributed qual- the unpredictability of the urban environment, each ity, being dispersed through the station concourse. time instigating new connections and encounters, One by one the performers quietly approach one which render each walk into a singular trajectory. of the spectators and with a friendly nod they in- During the walk, the spectator gradually discov- vite the spectator to come along and walk out of ers that the stories revealed through the headphones the station. In the second and largest part of the are full of contradictions. !is is not the story of one performance, the stage multiplies itself into twen- single migrant, but that of many. Actually the story ty parallel trajectories in which a single spectator is a collage of the stories told by the migrants who follows a migrant-performer on a walk through the participated in the project.24 Each spectator hears city. !ese walks all take place in the same area but the same story. !e performance thus plays tricks the trajectories slightly di#er. In the original per- with the spectators’ expectations because spectators formance, the spectator is guided through Lombok are tempted to project the stories conveyed through district, an Utrecht district with a dense population the headphones on the migrant-performer walking of immigrants with diverse cultural backgrounds. or standing in front of them. No Man’s Land seems !e migrant-performer leads the way, through to promise an encounter between a migrant and a busy and quiet streets, past shops, squares and park spectator. !e personal tour through the Lombok benches, as if showing the spectator around in his or district suggests that they will get to know each her habitat. Meanwhile, the spectator listens to an other. But instead of the expected encounter, the audio-track over the headphones, which conveys a performance installs a feedback loop through which range of di#erent stories and experiences, providing spectators are invited to experience and re"ect on an impression of what it means to be a migrant in their own, often unconscious ways of perceiving the Netherlands. and thinking about migrants. As a consequence Although the spatial set-up is quite di#erent of the isolation brought about by the headphones from Rimini Protokoll’s Call Cutta, No Man’s Land – amongst other strategies –, the performance re- also plays with the boundaries of the stage. Instead directs the attention to how spectatorship is the of a strict separation between the stage and the au- product of personal projections and prejudices, and ditorium, performers and spectators share the stage is in"uenced by cultural baggage. By obscuring the and traverse the work together. Instead of $xed on relation between migrant and performer and by one particular location, No Man’s Land distributes the mash-up of stories, No Man’s Land escapes the the stage over the city; the performance occupies dominant imaginary and puts the very idea of ‘the the borderless domain of urban space, without migrant’ itself into a state of continuous variation. possessing it entirely. !e auditorium as a place for !is strategy is in a way similar to Deleuze’s ac- assembly is deterritorialized, and reterritorializes as count of the work of the Italian avant-garde director twenty synchronous trajectories, running parallel Carmelo Bene. In “One Less Manifesto”, in which through town, with slightly di#erent rhythms and Bene’s work is discussed, Deleuze asks: “But might coordinates. As the performance’s title reminds not continuous variation be just such an amplitude us, a migrant’s life often is a no man’s land, a life that always over"ows, by excess or lack, the repre- in-between homes, marked by displacement, lack- sentative threshold of majority measure? […] Might ing one-ness. While traversing the streets of Lom- not theater, thus, discover a su%ciently modest, but bok, the stage as well seems to transform into a no nevertheless, e#ective function? !is antirepresenta-

Nordic Theatre Studies vol. 27: no. 1 Nordic Theatre Studies vol. 27: no. 1 27 tional function would be to trace, to construct in ter, each building up to a sense of shared space and some way, a $gure of the consciousness as shared time. each one’s potential.”25 For Deleuze, perpetual variation points to a process of continuous di#erentiation, which is not THINKING SCENOGRAPHY a repetition-of-sameness or re-presentation, but in- Deleuze’s and Guattari’s analysis of the building stead a threshold of potentiality. Perpetual variation process of twelfth-century cathedrals reveals that points to things in a state of change, to the option knowledge may manifest itself as and within situ- of the always-otherwise. In No Man’s Land, it is not ated, local and embodied operations. In fact, many only the stage that is put into a state of continuous of the examples in their Nomadology chapter in A variation, the notion of ‘the’ migrant is deterritori- !ousand Plateaus might be regarded as a way of alized as well. !e spectator is invited to realize that ‘thinking through practice’. Nomadology address- getting to know someone perhaps requires some- es and negotiates the boundaries between theory thing else than listening to stories of asylum pro- and practice, and facilitates the thinking of theo- cedures, dreams of ‘the West’ or experiences of still ry through practice and vice versa. Such patterns of being called a migrant even after living in the Neth- de- and reterritorialization materialized as well in a erlands for 22 years – however relevant these reports mobile practice-as-research conference, organized in itself are. Processes of de- and reterritorialization, by the HKU University of the Arts, called !inking thus, capture the dramaturgy of this performance as Scenography – Shifting Layers of Disbelief that took well. !e performance deterritorializes stereotypical place in September 2014. !is mobile conference conceptions of the migrant, and reterritorializes the investigated contemporary strategies of representa- expectation of the spectator by challenging habitual tion, and in particular sought to revisit the dramatic assumptions. Instead of organizing a ‘true encoun- convention of the suspension of disbelief, not by ter’ with a migrant, the performance directs the at- re"ecting on these issues in paper presentations or tention to another mode of encounter, namely that panel discussions, but by actively engaging the par- of collaboratively traversing and engendering the ticipants in changing, shifting and encapsulating work. Performers and spectators navigate the streets environments. Instead of re"ecting on the subject of Utrecht’s Lombok district, meanwhile traversing matter from the distanced position of the observ- and engendering the paradoxes of a migrant’s life in er, the participants – consisting of scenographers, 26 the Netherlands. dramaturges, designers and publicists – were invited !e separate stage-trajectories join coordinates to traverse and physically experience contemporary at the end of the performance, when all couples ar- suspensions of disbelief themselves. rive at an empty $eld near Utrecht Central Station, !inking Scenography was curated by the Dutch covered with a silver beach, where twenty small Platform-Scenography (P-S), an open source move- beach houses stand erected. Each migrant-spectator ment that seeks to increase the visibility of the sce- couple enters one of the houses, where the head- nographer’s profession, and to provide insight into phones are taken o#. !e migrant sings a song for the idiosyncratic qualities of spatial design. P-S is the spectator, and then leaves. When the spectators founded on the experience of a number of (Dutch) step out of the houses a few minutes later, they $nd scenographers, who observe that theoretical re"ec- the $eld empty. !e migrant-performers have dis- tion on scenography often does not capture the ma- appeared into town, as suddenly as they popped up terial-discursive vocabularies that are practiced by in the middle of the crowd in the station concourse. scenographers ‘on the "oor’, in particular because Dries Verhoeven’s scenography of encounters cuts many of these scenographers work within a context across a range of spaces, deterritorializes the station of postdramatic theatre and within public space.27 concourse and the streets of the Lombok district, In that sense, there is a wide gap between (sceno- and reterritorializes on the intimacy of the (beach) graphic) theory and practice; they seem to be two house, to explore di#erent modalities of encoun- distinct territories. P-S starts o# from the standpoint

28 Nordic Theatre Studies vol. 27: no. 1 Nordic Theatre Studies vol. 27: no. 1 that scenographic practice itself is a particular mode where distinctions between nature and culture are of thought and, in taking this stance, allies with obscure. !e bus takes o# with the curtains closed, strategies of de- and reterritorialization. Scenogra- asking the participants to open them while the bus phy thinks, through the analysis and dissection of drives over a four level tra%c square. !is opening material, visual, temporal and spatial structures or of the curtains, accompanied by a tension-building phenomena, and by way of drawing, composition, audio-score, frames the "y-over as an enormous orchestration, transformation, mutation, framing, spectacle, a super-stage in open air. After installing or staging. Scenography is to a large extent a prac- this perspective, subsequent urban and industri- tice of embodied thought as the knowledge of scen- al landscapes become equally part of an ongoing ographers is not often put into words, but instead scenery – a scenography of perpetual variation. materializes in actual design and design problems, Meanwhile the tour itself is organized as a guaran- in patterns of visual association or in the sensory teed adventure: the members of the expedition are archives of practitioners. P-S locates scenography’s provided with new experiences, but simultaneously territory not only in the theatre, where it manifests they are shielded from ‘outer’ reality, safely seated itself in the design of space, costume, light, audio- within a mobile cage. Yet in order to investigate this visual projections or soundscapes, but notices that type of adventure, the travelers are also taken o# the scenography reterritorializes on games, advertising, bus, where they are confronted with spaces in which $lm, architecture, public space, interaction design, the di#erence between the natural and the arti$cial fashion and more. is equally hard to distinguish. !ey learn that the Both P-S and !inking Scenography challenge "y-over is destined to become a nature park, they the boundaries between theory and practice, and discover a forest in the middle of an industrial site, deterritorialize these domains by rejecting the idea and pause on a huge beach that until two years ago that theory and practice are two distinct $elds of was not even there – a man-made beach seezed from expertise. !inking Scenography was conceived as an the sea. “exposium” – wedged between an expedition and a By placing the participants within the situations symposium – taking the participants on a bus tour and phantasmagorias that the exposium wishes to through the Netherlands in order to explore and explore, while also disrupting these encapsulating conceptualize ways in which designers, architects, environments, !inking Scenography o#ered a ma- urban planners and scenographers create environ- terial-discursive way of exploring the many fashions ments that in one way or another allude to the idea in which the natural and the staged merge and feed of “garantiertes Abenteur” (guaranteed adventure). into each other. In Dramaturgy and Performance, !is term calls upon the imaginary and often im- Cathy Turner and Synne Behrndt remark that in mersive worlds that promise new experiences and contemporary practice, the real and the represent- encounters with the unknown, yet do so by adopt- ed no longer are opposites but have become modes ing the already known, by ful$lling our expectation of reality: “While remaining ambivalent towards of the estimated adventure. Guaranteed adventures representation, contemporary performance seems produce manageable and pleasant experiences. Such interested in exploring the range of ways in which phantasmagorias can be found in theme parks, ‘reality’ can be produced, explored and understood, shopping malls or augmented reality games, but […] the ways in which ‘make-believe’ is made be- also in stylized suburbs, zoos, luxury o%ce-build- lievable.”28 We may also observe, then, that these ings, or social media networks. deterritorialized areas have become materials for Scenography can be understood as a mode of artists to work with. As the bus tour progresses, the writing with and of (theatrical) spaces, through various sites and spaces form a series. !ey become which the notion of the stage can emerge. !is is links in a chain of visual arguments, revealing that illustrated by the mobile scenography of the bus scenography is not only to be found in the thea- tour. !e bus tour is composed in such a way that tre, but is distributed as much over contemporary the urban environment is rendered visible as a stage, movement-spaces. Together, these staged move-

Nordic Theatre Studies vol. 27: no. 1 Nordic Theatre Studies vol. 27: no. 1 29 ments build towards an increased sensibility for the symposium-expedition !inking Scenography equal- layers of (dis) that constitute our daily reality. ly challenges strict distinctions between theory and On the second day of the exposium, the par- practice, between thinking and doing. By actively ticipants assembled in a theatre, only in order to engaging participants in the project, this research mobilize thought in a di#erent way. !ey were in- project exhibits scenographic practice as a form of vited to propose topics for discussion or to devise thought and theorizing as a mode of performance. activities that addressed design problems. !e ex- !inking Scenography thinks scenography by doing posium thus explored the potential of collaborative scenography, and renders re"ection into a collabo- dialogue and non-hierarchical, practice-based forms rative, non-hierarchical a#air. In both these mobile of knowledge production, also as part of a larger re- performances, movement is very much involved. search project initiated by the Research Centre Per- A movement that conveys a particular attitude, a formative Processes of the HKU University of the mode of thinking and doing that we may call no- Arts. All in all, the exposium explored a variety of madic. An attitude which does not take territories movement-spaces, by thinking, doing and design- for granted, but instead explores $elds of potenti- ing mobility – both literally (day 1) and in relation ality. to hierarchies of knowledge (day 2). In this way, !inking Scenography deterritorialized theory and reterritorialized practice by presenting scenography as a particular mode of embodied thought.

DETERRITORIALIZING THEORY AND PRACTICE !e examples discussed in this essay do indeed in- volve movement. But the heart of the matter lies elsewhere. !ese practices make an art out of pro- cesses of de- and reterritorializaton. No Man’s Land mixes and merges the auditorium and the stage and distributes the theatre space over the urban space. !is performance, just like the exposium discussed above, can be regarded as an instance of ‘thinking through practice’. No Man’s Land questions spec- tatorship and invites awareness of how spectators are addressed by and positioned within this per- formance. By inviting the spectator ‘on the stage’, the role of the spectator itself becomes an object of attention – exempli$ed by the feedback loop that challenges the spectators’ expectations. As such, a performance like No Man’s Land may be regarded as a practice that theorizes the theatre itself. !e per- formance advocates an understanding of theatre as a practice that is (literally) deeply embedded within society and engages with a world in motion, and in particular investigates those lives that are marked by movement (sometimes involuntary). A theatre performance, then, is not only an object for theo- retical re"ection, but a thinking practice itself. !e

30 Nordic Theatre Studies vol. 27: no. 1 Nordic Theatre Studies vol. 27: no. 1 NOTES AND REFERENCES Problem of Referentiality in Deleuze and Guattari” in 1 Christopher B. Balme, “Audio !eatre: !e Mediatiza- Metaphoricity and the Politics of Mobility, Maria Mar- tion of !eatrical Space” in Intermediality in !eatre and garoni, E%e Yiannapoulou, eds., Rodopi, Amsterdam, Performance, Freda Chapple, Chiel Kattenbelt, eds., Ro- New York 2006, pp. 27-46. dopi, Amsterdam, New York 2006, pp. 117-24. 19 Ibid., p. 40. 2 Ibid., p. 119. 20 Ibid. 3 Cathy Turner, Synne K. Behrndt, Dramaturgy and Per- 21 Ibid. formance, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke 2008, p. 22 Deleuze, Guattari, A !ousand Plateaus, op. cit., p. 410. 197. 23 In 2014 for instance, the performance was restaged in 4 Ibid. Athens and München. See also www.driesverhoeven. 5 Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, A !ousand Plateaus: Cap- com. A few short trailers are available on the Internet. italism and Schizophrenia, translated and introduced by 24 !is text is slightly adapted in each city, in connection , Continuum, London 2004 [1980], pp. with the local context and to the migrant-performers 389-90. participating in the performance. 6 !is phrase is taken from Deleuze: “Something in the 25 Gilles Deleuze, “One Less Manifesto” in Mimesis, Mas- world forces us to think. !is something is an object not ochism and Mime: !e Politics of !eatricality in Contem- of recognition but of a fundamental encounter.” Gilles porary French !ought, Timothy Murray, ed., !e Uni- Deleuze, Di"erence and Repetition, translated by Paul versity of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1997 [1979], pp. Patton, Continuum, London 2004 [1968], p. 176. 253-4. 7 Deleuze, Guattari, op. cit., p. 420. 26 For a more extended discussion, see my PhD !esis 8 Gilles Deleuze, “Nomadic !ought”, translated by Mi- Nomadic !eatre: Staging Movement and Mobility in chael Taormina, in Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953- Contemporary Performance, Utrecht University, Utrecht 1974, David Lapoujade, ed., Semiotext(e), Paris 2004 2015. [1973], pp. 252-61. 27 See www.platform-scenography.nl and http://www. 9 Deleuze, Guattari, op. cit., pp. 419-22. pq.cz/en/exposium-thinking-scenography-shifting-lay- 10 Ronald Bogue, “Art and Territory” in !e South Atlantic ers-of-disbelief.html. Quarterly, vol. 96, no. 3, 1997, p. 475. 28 Turner, Behrndt, op. cit., p. 188. 11 Ibid. 12 Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, trans- lated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchill, Verso, London, New York 1994. 13 Marc De Kesel, “Ze komen zonder noodlot, zonder motief, zonder ratio. ‘Nomadisme’ in Deleuze en in het deleuzisme” in De Witte Raaf, vol. 119, 2006, pp. 1-4. 14 !e full title of the Nomadology chapter in A !ousand Plateaus is “1227: Treatise on Nomadology – !e War Machine”. 15 Deleuze, Guattari, A !ousand Plateaus, op. cit., p. 419. 16 Caren Kaplan, “Transporting the Subject: Technologies of Mobility and Location in an Era of Globalization” in PMLA, vol. 177, no. 1, 2002, p. 35. 17 Tim Cresswell, “Introduction: !eorizing Place” in Mobilizing Place, Placing Mobility: !e Politics of Repre- sentation in a Globalized World, Ginette Verstraete, Tim Cresswell, eds., Rodopi, Amsterdam 2002, p. 18. 18 Paul Patton, “Mobile Concepts, Metaphor, and the

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