“From Scenography to Landscape Design and back again” – Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink (UU) and Anne Karin ten Bosch

Copyright Image: Anne Karin ten Bosch

This session is focused on an artistic research project by curator and scenographer Anne Karin ten Bosch, in which she examines how scenography can inspire (urban) landscape design and vice versa. The project is embedded in the two-year MA programme in Design at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, and specifically focuses on practices of placemaking in Rotterdam, and on learning from environments by travelling through them. Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink is involved as a dramaturg, adviser and ‘source sharer’. Both are interested in knowledge exchange beyond institutional borders, in the value of frayed edges in scenography and landscape design, and in open-ended, essayistic modes of conversation and collaboration.

In this session, the speakers will share their understanding of expanded scenography and reflect on the distinct qualities of scenographic sensitivity that may inform landscape design and urban planning, and explore how research methods derived from urban/landscape design may help to articulate and excavate scenographic knowledge. In view of these translation processes, they will address spatial affects and material relations, reflect on the role of scale and that of triviality, and explore methods of drawing, the ‘soft atlas’ and performative mapping. Ultimately, they aim to raise a discussion on the value of frayed edges in urban environments.

Participants will be actively involved in discussion and half-way in the session will also be invited to participate in a small mapping exercise, in the vicinity of their laptop with a possibility to move outside.

Anne Karin ten Bosch works as a critic, curator and coach. She studied Spatial Arts and Scenography at the University of Fine Arts Minerva in Groningen (NL) and as a scenographer collaborated with Marc Warning (at Onafhankelijk Toneel Rotterdam), Dood Paard, choreographer Marcelo Evelin (Demolitian Inc.) and many other independent artists and companies. From the start of her career, she also initiated her own projects, often crossovers between performance art and spatial installations. She was a teacher and coordinator of the scenography department at Minerva, Groningen (1999-2010). In 2012 she founded Platform-Scenography (P-S) together with Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink and others. With P-S she co-curated the Dutch entries for the Prague Quadriennial of Performance Design and Space in 2015 and 2019. In 2021, she started a new artistic research trajectory at the MA Design at the Piet Zwart Institute of Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam.

Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink is an Assistant Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies at the Media and Culture Studies department of Utrecht University. She is the coordinator of the Master’s programme in Contemporary Theatre, Dance and Dramaturgy and heads the TiM working group on Relational Dramaturgies. Her research interests include dramaturgy and scenography, spatial theory, performance ecology, new materialism, and performance philosophy. She is the author of Nomadic Theatre: Mobilizing Theory and Practice on the European Stage (Bloomsbury 2019) and has contributed with essays on contemporary scenography, dramaturgy and material thinking to (among others) Contemporary Theatre Review, Performance Research and the volumes Thinking Through Theatre and Performance (Bloomsbury 2019), Staging Spectators in Immersive Performances (Routledge 2019), Intermedial Performance and Politics in the Public Sphere (Routledge 2018). She is a co-founder of Platform-Scenography and also active as a dramaturg and artistic adviser.

Suggested Reading

• Ed Wall (2011), “Infrastructural form, interstitial spaces and informal acts.” In: (eds.) Infrastructural urbanism: addressing the in-between, edited by Thomas Hauck, Regine Keller and Volkert Kleinekort, Volker, 145-158. Berlin: DOM publishers. Access copy here.
• Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink (2019), “Borders and Breathing Spaces: The porous interfaces of urban scenography. LEA 22.4 Special Issue: Urban Interfaces: Situated Media, Art and Performance in Public Spaces, edited by Nanna Verhoeff, Sigrid Merx and Michiel de Lange.  Access copy here.
• Rachel Hann (2019), Beyond Scenography. London/New York: Routledge, 1-17. Digital copy distributed upon registration (via tim@uu.nl or Eventbrite).

This seminar is part of the Transmission in Motion seminar (2021-2022): “Practices of Translation”