ABSTRACT
This chapter critiques “The City as Performative Object,” a project researched by the authors during 2016–2018. The investigation is based on the hypothesis that the ‘move-act’ of the individual creates the city. Inspired by Judith Butler’s thinking around gender, performativity, and speech-act they approach mobility as a performative force, continuously writing, rewriting, and overwriting the city’s architecture, identity, planning, and intentions. Exploration of the city’s precarious existence occurs alongside its ongoing presence as a performative object, produced by what they define (for now) as move-acts. The chapter consists of theoretical analysis where the appropriation of Butler’s approach to gender is explored and transposed onto the city space. It will also investigate the possible lexicon which proposes a free translation of a selection of Butlers keywords, into a vocabulary that can express the performativity of city. This proposed vocabulary enables the individual to be translated to move-entity, the gender-act as move-act, gender-categories to be move-categories, and gender-drag becoming move-drag. Using three filmic examples—Inception by Christoffer Nolan (2001), News from Home by Chantal Akerman (1977), and A Collision of Sorts by PolakvanBekkum (2017), where the possibilities and richness of our lexicon are explored—move-entity, move-act, move-categories, and move-drag—in describing the spatial experience of these films. The chapter concludes with some meditations and speculations on the possible use of the described approach both in their practice, in workshops, and for the reader herself.
