“The Meeting” — “The Apartment” — “Conversations”: Politics of space in an inclusive project

The article discusses the political (J. Ranciere) potential of inclusive art in Russia on the basis of the example of a St. Petersburg project that at various times was called “The Meeting” (2014—2016) — “The Apartment” (2017—2019) — “Conversations” (2019 — present). To back up her arguments, the author enters into a dialogue with the authors of the collective volume Performance and the politics of space: Theater and topology (2013), especially with one of its editors, Ben­jamin Wihstutz. She also draws her attention on Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopy and Claire Bishop's theory of participatory art. The development of the project is observed throughout several peri­ods, from the search for the space of utopia (Foucault) in the territory of repertory theater to the self-organized space “The Apartment”, in­dependent from official institutions. After that the “diffusion” of the spatial presence of the group takes place. Finally, the company re­turns to the theatrical stage, ready for working with the politiciza­tion of differences. The methodological proposal of the article is to expand the boundaries of the performance or theatrical event and re­fuse to fix them. The author thinks of the entire space-time duration of the projects “Meeting”, “Apartment”, “Conversations” as a single procedural performance “Meeting — Apartment — Conversations” (2014 — present), which has a number of intermediate results in the form of performances, media events, concerts, lectures, rehearsals and, in some cases, other events occurring in between.

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