Space Espace

— Caption

Definitions

Short definition of key terms in order to provide a framework of their theoretical and disciplinary scope

Quotations

Author citations that propose consensus-building definitional elements from bibliographic sources

Perspectives

Texts written by artists and researchers, based on experiences in their field of study

Bibliography

Bibliographic citations for further reading

Definition

Defined by the dimensions of height, width, and depth within which animate and inanimate objects exist and move, space is also, by extension, any expanse of free, continuous appearance. However, in contrast, it is also a zone or singular, well-defined place, such as the stage on which actors and dancers move about, or even the cosmic outer space where celestial bodies and astronauts move about.

Cite: “Space”, Performascope: Interdisciplinary Lexicon of Performance and Research-Creation, Grenoble: Université Grenoble Alpes, 2021, [online]: http://performascope.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/en/detail/177559

Category :

Created : 2021-06-08.

Last modified : 2022-06-29.

Licence Creative Commons
All of the texts with the exception of the quotations are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License.
Print this term

Perspective

Quotation

Bibliography

« Je peux prendre n’importe quel espace vide et l'appeler une scène. Quelqu’un traverse cet espace vide pendant que quelqu’un d’autre l'observe et c'est suffisant pour que l’acte théâtral soit amorcé. »

Peter Brook, L’espace vide, traduit par Christine Estienne et Franck Fayolle, Paris : Seuil, 2001 [1977], p. 25


« Le théâtre par son côté physique et parce qu'il exige l'expression dans l'espace, la seule réelle en fait, permet aux moyens magiques de l'art et de la parole de s'excercer organiquement et dans leur entier, comme des exorcismes renouvelés »

Antonin Artaud, Le théâtre et son double, Paris : Gallimard, 1938, p.96, [en ligne] : https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Le_th%C3%A9%C3%A2tre_et_son_double/VIII (09/06/2021)


« L’espace de notre vie n’est ni continu, ni infini, ni homogène, ni isotrope. Mais sait-on précisément où il se brise, où il se courbe, où il se déconnecte et où il se rassemble ? On sent confusément des fissures, des hiatus, des points de friction, on a parfois la vague impression que ça se coince quelque part, ou que ça éclate, ou que ça cogne. Nous cherchons rarement à en savoir davantage et le plus souvent nous passons d’un endroit à l’autre, d’un espace à l’autre sans songer à mesurer, à prendre en charge, à prendre en compte ces laps d’espace. Le problème n’est pas d’inventer l’espace, encore moins de le réinventer (trop de gens bien intentionnés sont là aujourd’hui pour penser notre environnement…), mais de l’interroger, ou, plus simplement encore, de le lire. »

Georges Pérec, Espèces d’espaces, Paris : Galilée, 1974

Geography
Felix de Montety, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Sciences Po Grenoble, PACTE, 38000 Grenoble, France

My research focuses on the epistemology and modern history of geography in Europe, Turkey and Central Asia. I am particularly interested in linguistic issues and translation, as well as in the contribution of narrative, visual, sensory, and non-representational approaches to contemporary geography.

I think that multiplying scales, angles, and ways of apprehending the notion of space is the essential part of what I do in my research, and contributes to structure both the way I work and the way I perceive the World on a daily basis, when discovering a place, a landscape, a performance, or a form. I do not know whether this is the sign of an occupational distortion or of a quirk that has become my profession, because there is something in the notion of space that fundamentally defines the geographical approach and at the same time that must be shared with other scholarly and creative practices.

Study of concept’s multiple linkages – between space and territory; space and landscape; space and identity; or even space and mapping – shows us to what extent it is constructed, negotiated. Space exists because it is experienced. In my current work, I take up this perspective to explore the idea of a “space of languages,” that is to say both the way in which languages vary and circulate – how they are continually fixed, mixed and redefined – according to the spaces where they are practiced, and the way in which language is used to construct space, to explore the World in order to say “I am here, I’m going there, I know and belong to this here and that there.” It is certainly possible to draw up geographies of the spatial variation and diversity of languages – to spatially analyze for instance toponyms, accents, loanwords, and hybridizations. It is from this perspective that I am trying to initiate, in collaboration with linguists, hybrid methodological approaches that allow us to question the way in which humans put language at play within space in order to identify themselves, to appropriate what surrounds them – both close and far-off – and to challenge themselves individually and collectively.

Fieldwork continually changes the relationship that we might have to the concept of space, because while it is a central notion for the human sciences, it is also an extremely present term in common language. When we conduct field research in human geography, we naturally come into the work with our own space as professionals obsessed with the concept of space. But we are then confronted with other uses of this same word, and other conceptions of what space signifies in other people’s lives, other representations, other ways of building up individual worlds. In this respect, space is not necessarily the extremely broad and encompassing notion that we would want in vain immodesty to try and define. Rather, it is a mirror that we can hold up to both the world and to ourselves, moving us to reflect on the ways in which it is possible for us to move about in space, to exert action on our surroundings, to better understand the World that we will come to know, step by step.

Cite this item: Felix de Montety, “Space”, translated by Caroline Schlenker, Performascope: Interdisciplinary Lexicon of Performance and Research-Creation, Grenoble: Université Grenoble Alpes, 2022, [online]: http://performascope.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/en/detail/177559

Gaston Bachelard, La poétique de l’espace, Paris : PUF, 2004 [1957]

Roger Brunet, Robert Ferras, Hervé Théry, Les Mots de la géographie. Dictionnaire critique, Montpellier-Paris : GIP Reclus-La documentation française, 1992, pp.193-195

Sophie Gravereau, Caroline Varlet, « Théâtre spatial et spatialité théâtrale », in Sociologie des espaces, Paris : Armand Collin, 2019, pp.196- 208, [en ligne] : https://www.cairn.info/sociologie-des-espaces--9782200624729-page-196.htm (01/07/2021)

Gay McAuley, Space in Performance: Making Meaning in the Theatre, Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 1999

Frédérique Toudoire-Surlapierre, Florence Fix, Un théâtre en quête d’espace ? Expérience scénique de la limite, Dijon : Editions Universitaires de Dijon, 2014

Yi Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1977