Choreography and the Expanded Subject

The residual tensions between the Enlightenment and Romanticism are perhaps mostpronounced when discussing performance. The typical measurements of performance incontemporary architecture—the calibration of efficiency, optimization, or endurance, forexample—often describe the negotiation between architecture and the dynamic factorsof the physical environment. This reading of performance aligns itself more closely withthe evaluation processes of the engineering disciplines, and by association privileges thejudgment of architecture’s raison d’etre through quantitative data. At the same time, theetymology of the term performance as an “accomplishment,” “a thing performed,” or an “action of performing a play”1 implies an engagement between divergent forms of expressionand a collective audience. Evaluation, in this case, does not reside within the seeminglyobjective metrics of quantitative data but rather in the subjective judgment of thequalitative aspects of a performance. Indeterminacy is engendered in both of these readingsof performance — from either the fluctuating qualities of physical environment or theindividual subjective expressions emblematic of a diverse public realm. Subjective expressionand the dynamic qualities of the physical environment engendered in these two simultaneousreadings of performance embody larger characteristics that we are witnessingin the contemporary urban territory — as a field of indeterminacy, contradiction, andheterogeneity.

Volume Editors
Julie Larsen & Roger Hubeli