For reading the overall PhD thesis please send a request at info@annatzakou-geopoetics.com.
Geopoetics is a site-specific performance practice which examines the lived experience of a place. It does not exclude its contextual frame but prioritises its somatic experience before becoming integrated with the cultural practices embedded on site. The practice elaborates the performance / site interplay as a discipline of ‘presence’. It suspends, discloses and demystifies the ways through which the self (selves) alongside with the practices installed in space formulate the experience in situ and signify a place. It develops an experiential listening of site upon which an awareness of the processes of knowing and understanding in space is cultivated as a narrative.‘Geo’ comes from the Greek ‘-γεω’, which means ‘coming from earth’. ‘Poetics’ derives from the word ‘ποιητική’, the practice for creating an artistic product.
Geopoetics has four focal points:
- The exploration of the physical, emotional and mental experience of the body (-ies) in situ, grounded on the notion of presence as a dynamic, reciprocally active movement between the self and the environment.
- The notion of the practitioner-site interrelationship not only as an experience but also as a dramaturgy found between the body and the cultural practices of the site.
- The investigation of the urban/rural division; the approach of site not through a standardised classification but as an open-ended system of signifiers based on the experience of the present moment.
- The discovery of a place through events of relationality and connectivity; through the revelation of inter-relational patterns between the self (-ves) and the narratives of place.
Geopoetics is an interdisciplinary inquiry of a geographical and Buddhist concepts. It explores notions of ‘identity’, ‘home’ and ‘sense of belonging’ as ‘dreams of presence’ (Rose, 2006). Based on its methodology of mindfulness (sati) [1] these notions are seen as individual or collectivemodes of attachment in space which altogether co-formulate landscape’s ‘trans-historical Dreaming’. Geopoetics examines place by re-negotiating the bodily presence with the large-scales narratives of history and culture. It approaches space as a continuum within which the performance event attempts to manifest the cardiograph of a perpetual effort to ‘dream the world as a whole’.
Publications
– Looking for the Horizon: The Public Space as Mythic Dreaming of Presence, in Performing Arts in the 21rst cent. Contemporary Practices and New Approaches, E. Prousali (ed.), Athens: Evrasia Publication, pp. 232, 2023;
– ‘Embrace of the Serpent’ (or how could a landscape performance practice operate as a practice of being), in the Anthropocene, Katerina Iliopoulou (ed.), journal ΦΡΜΚ, issue 17, 2022;
– The Geopoetics Project: Performing Landscape as an Event, in 10 years Performance now, Aggeliki Avgitidou (ed.), Department of Fine Arts, University of Western Macedonia, (pp. 36), 2021;
– ‘The female gaze as a methodology of creative practice’ in Amygdalia: Four women duscuss about the awarded film of Christina Phoebe, cinemagazine, 7.3.23;
– ‘Artistic Research: Methods and Directions II – Geopoetics: a performance research practice of body and landscape‘, e-journal skene, issue no.12, 2020;
– ‘Review of Teaching Presence: Field Notes for Players’ by Lee Worley, Journal of Performance and Mindfulness, vol. 3, no. 1, pp.152, 2020;
– ‘Hiking Performance Stonelines towards a landscape performance practice of the female gaze’ in International Encounters/Conference ‘WALKING PRACTICES/WALKING ART/WALKING BODIES’, School of Fine and Applied Arts of Western Macedonia (Prespes, 2019);
–‘Walking as meditation or how-to walk-in places of emergency’ in Walking Art/ Walking Aesthetics, Interartive e-journal, 2018;
– ‘The Whole World is a Symbol: Performing thb. Hiking Performance Stonelines towards a landscape performance practice of the female gazee Embodied Landscape as a Buddhist Practice’ (2016) in Dancing with Dharma: Essays on Movement and Dance in Western Buddhism, ed. Harrison Blume, NC: McFarland;
– ‘Geopoetics: A Buddhist-inspired site-specific performance practice’ (2016) in Dancing with Dharma: Essays on Movement and Dance in Western Buddhism, ed. Harrison Blume, NC: McFarland;
[1] Specifically, the practice of mindfulness awareness(samatha vipassana). The word samatha signifies “inner stillness” (Rahula, 1974: 68) and vipassana “‘insight’ into the nature of things” (ibid.). These are complementary qualities practiced through the same technique known as meditation: sitting still in an upright posture with an object of concentration, usually the breath; each time the mind wanders, acknowledging it and returning back to the point of attention. Samatha facilitates a bare witnessing of the present moment and creates a platform of concentration where upon vipassana arises and is cultivated.
