Nomadic scenography and fictional space-body

Abstract

The chapter examines a one-person Nomadic Scenography (2020) research project that focused on the phenomenon of distance as a starting point for scenographic expression and on wandering as a place for making a scenography. It explored the space between the present and the absent as a peripheral intermediate space, but also as a porous boundary that attracted artistic expression to various border crossings and interactions. The project included a series of scenographical hikes in Finland, in Päijät-Häme, around the Päijänne National Park, in an archipelago surrounded by a wide body of water, where the borders formed by nature caused resistance and friction to movement and thinking. The project experimented in practice with how scenographic work can take place while wandering and not committing to one place, and what the constant change in space-time relationship brings to scenography and its methods. Nomadic scenography engages in a dialogue with philosophies of being and theories of vibrant matter and trans-corporeality. The research highlights how scenography changed by the wandering is not a material object in one location, but a network of relationships liberated by porous boundaries.