This video presents very preliminary impressions from a performance research project. 'urbanflows: immersed in worlds’ seeks to capture, articulate, and document the complex networked experience of individuals navigating, via their lived experience, in relation to time and site in the city of Coventry (Warwickshire, UK). During Summer 2016, sirenscrossing began this research with two artists (Carolyn Deby and Jia-Yu Corti) and several members of the public, recruited with the assistance of Coventry Artspace Partnerships. Many more people than those mentioned in the credits, expressed interest and/or contributed their thoughts to the process. We look forward to meeting with many more individuals during the course of the project.
The artists undertook a series of immersive bodily experiences in various sites in the city of Coventry. These were devised through one-to-one consultation with local residents who were invited to share with the artists their own everyday embodied understanding of place. The research considered the body as process, as immersed in situations where acts of becoming, reflection, memory and habit move between the material and immaterial, the human and non-human, the incidental and the significant.
The pilot project culminated with an experimental 'audience experience' for several audience members who were invited to travel through the city and experience a sequence of sites, texts, images, tastes and encounters – these elements arrived at through the initial process of consulting with local individuals. This video represents a further or alternate distillation of the findings of the pilot.
'urbanflows: immersed in worlds' will continue (2017-2020) as an artistic research micro-project commissioned by Dr Nicolas Whybrow's AHRC-funded 'Sensing the City' which includes researchers from both Warwick and Coventry universities (.warwick.ac.uk/research/priorities/sustainablecities/themes/casestudies/).
For more about this project please visit: sirenscrossing.com/sirens/SIRENS_BLOG/SIRENS_BLOG.html
