Phantom stages: floor plans as affect machines

In June 2017, I presented a performance lecture called Phantom Stages at the gallery Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin. The lecture formed part of a research programme and group show called Hidden Lines of Space that explored the historical developments of the architectural floor plan and their practical implications, readability, and effects. The project invited artists and researchers to consider the representation of space in the floor plan; both how it operates functionally on the one hand and as a free artistic conception and thus as an expression of future design on the other. The project explored the crossovers between theatrical production, theatre (and non-theatre) architecture and visual arts practice. I went armed with magicians’ flash paper, a remote control car, the plastic skull of Yorick, neon pink spike tape, a vase of roses and a fully loaded cap gun. I had images of Lars Von Trier’s Dogville, the original 1949 production of Death of A Salesman, John Cassavetes’ Opening Night, and multiple pictures of Laurence Olivier as Hamlet. The following artist pages attempt to restage fragments of the lecture on the page, to find a place for this material to settle by evoking further speculations about the phantom life of the theatrical floor plan.