Presentation

This symposium will explore the artistic physical practices (dance, circus…) taken out on to the street – a generic and metonymical term used to designate another performance space, the town and its pavements, its roofs, its pedestrian areas, its squares, its markets, its walls, its waste wastelands, its gardens, etc. Not only these artistic propositions shift the usual codes, norms and artistic values, but they also question the place of the body in the urban space or, more specifically, in the public space. What influence does the “proud power of the body in action”, to which Denis Darzacq¹ refers, have on the public space and what does this space changes in the artistic action ? In other words, it seems that the corporealities produce images, which would then perform in the space they are being produced.

If the street is perceived as a space of freedom, it also exists within a specific, functional framework, within specific rules as a functional space referring to the organisation of the city. Outdoor arts as a project aims to question the organisation of a peaceful coexistence turn the street into a space for experimentation, getting round the rationalisation of its use. Physically speaking, the street allows use the environment and the constraints while confronting the noise, the cluster, the weather.

¹ http://www.denis-darzacq.com