performative urban research ensemble

 

 

      The city performs itself.
      The act of walking is to the urban system what the speech act is to language or to the statements uttered.
      Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 1984

 

connect + play + hack + re-shape the city

 
p.u.r.e. – performative urban research ensemble – is an ongoing interdisciplinary collective research and performance project, launched in 2016 by a group of international, mostly Berlin-based artists.

      how does the city shape us?
      how do we shape the city?
      what is the city we want to live in?

p.u.r.e. considers the city as a process. The urban space is constantly produced by actions and perceptions of human and non-human agents. The city performs itself.

      how accessible is the space around us?
      where can we get in?
      where must we stay outside?

p.u.r.e.’s fundamental research resource is the practice of city walks:
a sensual, performative, nonverbal and community based approach to deal with our self-in-competence and (dis)ability to act in the urbanized space. The practice stems in some respects from such artistic strategies as Situationists’ dérive or Beuys’s social sculpture, which are re-interpreted and transformed into new relational aesthetics of urban performance.

      p.u.r.e. walks are emancipatory interruptions of the public space
      and catalysts for the new playgrounds of the common city.

 

 

Contact us to join our walks. Please find upcoming walks here.
You may find our reading list here

p.u.r.e. team
Jagna Anderson (PL / Berlin)
María Ferrara (ES / Berlin)
Dodi Helschinger (DE / Berlin)
Susanne Soldan (DE / Berlin)
Karine Thomas (FR / Angers)

 
artistic collaborators
David Dunne – site-specific installation
Roberto Duarte – video
Florence Freitag – video
Ingolf Seßler – photo
Les Débutantes – performance, video
 
recommended by Theaterscoutings Berlin