Attending Spaces

This book presents a selection of four site-specific move­ment performances that architect/performance maker Elin Eyborg choreographed and staged between 2012-2017. These performances intended to activate the over­lapping field between architecture and performance making. Elin's attention is directed at the movements of our everyday tasks: movement art as task making, perceptible and pur­poseful. Gestures of the performances speak directly to our feelings. Movements connect real people with their surround­ings and activate public engagement in our built environment. Elin's performances use waste materials as demanding props: props that impose a resistance, which in turn influences how the dancers move. The dancers transform the waste materials through their movements. In particular, construction waste has increasingly become the predominating material of Elin's de­manding props. By volume, surplus construction materials are the largest source of waste material in our cities. An emerging circular economy will need to efficiently activate the material flow from building sites into useful purposes. Consequently, Elin's practice has focused on performances within building sites. Elin sees her role as an activator of new collaborations between people engaged in architectural design and the built environ­ment. For that purpose, she has established P-Arc Agency: a collaborative platform for individual agents. The task of an agent is to initiate personal projects that transform idle time into moments of exploration and experimentation. The book was initiated in collaboration with late architect Will Alsop, her mentor and friend who taught her not to jeopardise collab­oration for what we produce. In his spirit, her performances celebrate the productive collaboration between real people, shaping our environment with commitment and joy.