Documenting landscape performance

Henry, Andrew Robert (2017) Documenting landscape performance. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

In this thesis, I make use of phenomenologically-inspired theories of landscape to define a particular subset of site-specific performance which I am calling landscape performance. I argue that these performances are distinct from other site-specific performances in the ways that they include their audience in the creation and embodiment of landscape. The project investigates what strategies are employed to document this kind of work and what issues may arise both in the method of documenting and in the documentation itself.

This work starts from the position that landscapes are unfixed, in flux and contested, and explores the ways that performance documentation, adds to the complexity and helps to create representations and manifestations that resist fixed meanings. Through an analysis of specific documents, this work aims to explore the multiplicity of meanings that can be drawn from the documentation of specific landscape performance works.

The findings of this thesis are dependent on three case studies exploring the work of prominent producers of landscape performance: NVA, Simon Whitehead and Wrights & Sites. The aim is to scrutinise each documentary methodology, draw attention to the multiple, intertwined and often conflicting ways that the documentation presents both performance and landscape and to discuss the implications of these documents and the documentation of this kind of work in general.

This work has applied a mixed methodology involving the interpretative analysis of performance documentation such as photographs, drawings, sound recordings, videos, and blogs, as well as the context in which they are presented. I also undertake reflective analysis of my own interaction with the makers of the work or the documentation itself. This process reveals the different ways that landscape performance documentation can affirm or disrupt understandings of landscape and uncovers fresh conceptual frameworks for performance documentation thereby providing a contribution to scholarship on the relationships between landscape, performance and documentation.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: Theatre, performance, site-specific, landscape, documentation.
• Subjects: N Fine Arts > NX Arts in general
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Culture and Creative Arts > Theatre Film and TV Studies
• Funder's Name: Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
• Supervisor's Name: Donald, Professor Minty and Price, Dr. Victoria
• Date of Award: 2017
• Depositing User: Dr Andrew Henry
• Unique ID: glathesis:2017-30968
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 01 Nov 2018 10:56
• Last Modified: 03 Jan 2019 16:58
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/30968