Dancing on the peripheries: Performative architecture and cultural diversity in the city of Barcelona today

Abstract

The relationship between architecture and ritualized performance is intimate and complex. New cognitive science and ecological psychology understandings of the body-mind-environment connection and role of the body and senses in meaning-making have influenced interdisciplinary dialogue, with the concept of performative architecture explored through fields such as phenomenology, geography, and performance studies. This paper studies the relationship between space, ritual, and event, in performances by ethnic minority communities in Barcelona, examining the phenomenon of regularly occurring dance sessions by resident groups of Filipino and other cultures, in semi-public outdoor spaces throughout the city. Although the choice of these spaces may appear arbitrary, they are in fact carefully considered by users in terms of their physical and social affordances. The methodology used to uncover common factors among the studied spaces includes analysis through the lens of enactive-embodied cognition and perceptual affordance theory, ethnographic study, and observation based on site visits. The aim is to gain a better understanding of why certain spaces lend themselves to specific actions and ritual events, how peripheral urban spaces can support self-organizing performative actions and creative cultural expression and play, and how architecture and urban form can ‘perform’ cultural diversity in the city. The outcome, in the last instance, is a reinterpretation of the history of old cities from an innovative dialogical perspective that can help build a new sense of place for co-living.