Topographies of Body and Landscape

Lisbon is a city defined by topography, and by the stairs that act as infrastructures to navigate that topography. But what topographies of bodies are assumed by those infrastructures? The geometries and materialities of stairs create spaces of humanness – we still do not have vehicles that can traverse them – but a humanness that is fundamentally limited. How can these particular spaces be reclaimed by a more diverse set of bodies? How can their humanness be expanded and celebrated?

The last of three labs forming Theatrum Mundi’s Movement Forum project focuses on the theme of ‘Topographies of Body and Landscape’.

Theatrum Mundi is partnering with Lisbon Architecture Triennale and an interdisciplinary team of collaborators, consisting of the choreographer Rafael Alvarez (BODYBUILDERS), the architectural theorist Takako Hasegawa (Dancing Architects), and the architecture collective à la sauvette, to explore choreographic and embodied approaches in relation to these questions through collective reading, listening, walking, and dancing.

Movement Forum is an international mobile laboratory in London, Paris, and Lisbon, with three themes of Power and Gender, Wildness and the Non-Human, and Topographies of Body and Landscape in each city respectively. It is part of Future Architecture’s European Programme 2021.

Theatrum Mundi is a research organisation based in London and Paris interested in the staging of public life in cities and the crafts of city-making at the intersection of architecture, urbanism and performing arts.