Choreographing Attention in Spatial-Relational Practices

Imagine yourself in these situations: walking backwards through city streets following a white line; floating on your back just above forest ground, watching treetops pass overhead; establishing intimate relationships with walls and architectural landmarks; repetitively crossing paths with strangers while carrying loudspeakers; finding yourself caught in a public square among strangely walking figures as mysterious sounds move around you. These are simplified glimpses of spatially focused transdisciplinary performances that center audience experience.

Performing Space Around Audience Experience

Spatially focused performance practices have been on the rise. As an artist-researcher I place myself within the growing—though not yet precisely defined—group of transdisciplinary artists working at the intersection of post-dramatic theatre, contemporary dance, sound art, and fine arts, often integrating perspectives from social and cognitive sciences. These artists create open-ended experiences that closely interact with surrounding socio-spatial realities and invite active engagement from participants. This approach differs from both traditional narrative or image-based performances and site-specific art that works directly with the historical context and stories of particular places and communities. Heightened perception and presence—states often cultivated by these works—become catalysts for participation and foster a sense of ownership over the encounter, potentially achieving what French philosopher Jacques Rancière called “the emancipation of the spectator.”

By centering the audience's attention and engagement, these artists focus on universal yet deeply personal human experiences that, I believe, open possibilities for engaging virtually any audience, regardless of age, education, or social background. Curator and academic Kersten Glandien observes: “Artists do not pass on messages that have to be deciphered by their audiences, but rather facilitate experiences, which encounterers make their own by mobilizing sensibilities developed over the span of their lives."

Artists can transform ordinary environments into sites of heightened perception by manipulating the fundamental mechanics of how we encounter what is already there.

I argue that it is possible to gradually learn and acknowledge how audiences perceive and navigate within immersive situations, and this understanding forms the basis for composing with elements of guided attention and spatial interactions. By developing an accumulated knowledge of these aspects, one can become increasingly efficient in imagining and designing experiences created for the audience, which is, in my perspective, potentially one of the most important skills in working within this field. This can also be understood as an artistic use of phenomenology—the philosophical study of direct, first-person experience and how we perceive the world around us. Therefore, the phenomenological artistic process involves choosing and researching the complex qualities of a physical-social situation, breaking it down into detailed elements, and rearranging them into an artistic form that leads audiences on a journey of heightened perception and attention toward their environment and each other.

During my PhD process at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, I explored these approaches. I aimed both to refine my artistic practice and to develop potential pedagogical methodologies. Here, I'll discuss some of these directions and examine how they manifest in both my own work and that of other artists working in this field.

Performing What Is Already There

One direction in spatial artistic practices is letting the immensely complex details of reality do much of the job of performing. As architect Bernard Tschumi defines, one function of performance art is to foreground “the mechanics of perception of a distinct space.” For performance theoretician Richard Schechner, this often esoteric process of “articulating a space means letting the space have its say. Looking at a space and exploring it not as a means of doing what you want to do in it, but of uncovering what the space is, how it is constructed, what its various rhythms are.” Belgian artist Benjamin Vandewalle emphasizes this approach regarding working in public space: “It's very interesting to not create a new reality in the theater, but to... create a new world, a new piece just by simply changing the way we look at that.”

This is often achieved by choreographing perspectives in various ways. A subtle and minimalist example of this approach is Graeme Miller’s Track. In the piece audience members are pushed along a one-hundred-meter-long dolly track, experiencing the world around them in an otherwise unachievable way.

Quite similar, but more abstract and action-packed, is Benjamin Vandewalle's Peri-sphere (2017). In this piece, audience members lie down in a custom-built, 3.5-meter-tall periscope cart wearing soundproof earpieces, and then someone carefully pushes them around in the cityscape following a pre-composed route. The pushers playfully navigate the audience towards possible interactions with the passersby, who also have the chance to look at the looker. Antony Colclough describes this experience in his review:

You swing over a group of tourists gathered around a guide toward whom all heads are angled, you swoop elliptically along their outer edge. One turns, taps another’s shoulder, and the crowd peels back. You watch them from above looking at your own prostrate body, you look down on them looking down on you.

In Johannes Bellinkx’s walking performance Reverse (2018), the usual perception of one's surroundings is literally twisted: Audience members follow a carefully marked pathway in various cities by walking backwards. This unusual direction of movement strongly limits the choice of perspective and, combined with the precisely given direction, creates the experience of an automated movement, as if one were being pulled backwards. This results in a feeling of detachment from the dynamics of the busy public space and creates a cinematic feeling, as if the perspective of a camera is moving, not the person. The altered perception of everyday spaces is recounted in the reviews of the piece:

By walking backwards, you literally zoom out. Observation takes place to a greater extent in vistas, the direct environment becomes of secondary importance.... But gradually Reverse turns out to be not only pleasing... but it does provide a fresh look at the streetscape and the crowds, precisely because you do not become part of it.

David Helbich's participatory series, Scores for the Body, the Building and the Soul (2013) features collections of instructional scores designed for self-performance in and around architectural landmarks. Each score is specifically adapted to its location, inviting participants to explore their connection with the environment through bodily engagement and sensations. The scores vary in complexity and scope, from simple movements and gestures to more elaborate interactions, such as hugging pillars or humming into obscure corners, all aimed at enhancing the participant's awareness of their surroundings and their own physical presence within it. Although the experience of this participation is rather “intro-active”—in Helbich's phrasing—for the observer these gestures can be seen as performative and can effectively question the accustomed relationship between body and architecture.

These examples demonstrate how artists can transform ordinary environments into sites of heightened perception by manipulating the fundamental mechanics of how we encounter what is already there. Rather than adding theatrical elements to existing spaces, these works achieve their impact by choreographing perspectives and spatial relations—whether through tilted viewpoints, reversed movement, or intimate bodily engagement with architecture.

Intervening in the Usual Flow of Things

Beyond revealing existing spatial qualities, artists often work by intervening in the behavioral patterns of social spaces. These approaches deliberately disrupt familiar social routines to create moments of heightened awareness and new forms of encounter. Dimitri De Perrot describes the artistic aims behind his subtle public space sound installation Unless (2018): “Extracting an interventionist theatricality from a deadlocked randomness of the [passersby’s] daily rituals and processes, thus opening up a widening view of the interstices of the supposed familiar.”

By introducing these easily surmountable barriers, the artists prompted passersby to confront their ingrained responses to authority and spatial demarcation.

According to Georg Klein, an important aspect of public space interventions in relation to sound art is “Confusion… to interrupt the everyday routine for a moment, to make people pause and assume a different perceptual attitude is the basis of every acoustic intervention.” The possible long-term effect and the broadly political implications of these interruptions is an important question. Wrights and Sites performance collective member Cathy Turner speculates that “it depends on whether you trust that being ‘woken up’ to the world will be likely to produce a positive engagement with it, or not,” while Lawrence Bradby agrees that “it might be the first step towards politics,” suggesting that such interventions could potentially catalyze broader social and political awareness.

As a first example, Ruggero and Alberto Franceschini's installation-performance Crowd Control (2018) unfolded in a narrow pedestrian street of Treviso, where performers wearing enigmatic monkey masks continuously reorganized ankle-high posts and rope stanchions. These temporary barriers created a labyrinth of nonsensical routes that pedestrians could easily step over but often complied with. By introducing these easily surmountable barriers, the artists prompted passersby to confront their ingrained responses to authority and spatial demarcation.

German performance collective Ligna’s Radio Ballet (2002) was a radio-transmitted participatory performance premiered at Leipzig's main train station. During the performance, approximately five hundred participants were invited to enter the station equipped with portable radios and earphones. Through these devices, they listened to a radio broadcast consisting of choreographed suggestions for both permitted (standing still, looking at the distance in an exaggerated manner) and forbidden gestures (such as begging, sitting, or lying on the floor), which they performed collectively and simultaneously. Zheng Wan observes the mechanism of the piece:

During a radio ballet performance, participants both comply with public order through silence and create a new order through certain gestures and movements that manifest the visually contradictory parallel existence of the architectural space and the acoustic space.... They simply use slow movements—movements unexpected in that place—to present differences, disrupting the rhythm and timing of the public setting and focusing attention on it.

In my public square sound-choreography Drift (2019) fifteen performers carrying hidden speakers disrupt the normal flow of urban space through subtle walking patterns. The piece unfolds over fifty minutes across five sections, gradually shrinking from using the entire square to concentrating in the smallest possible area. This creates an intensifying arc from barely perceptible strangeness to a transcendent whirlpool of bodies and sound. I developed this choreography working with observations gathered after studying pedestrian movement patterns with anthropologist Dániel Makkai, identifying what sociologist Émile Durkheim called "social facts"—those invisible rules that govern our social interactions. In public spaces, these manifest as unspoken behavioral norms such as: People need clear purposes for moving from A to B, choose efficient routes, and maintain proper distances. As Durkheim observed, these social facts remain invisible when we follow them but become strikingly apparent the moment we step outside expected behavior.

The choreography of Drift deliberately violates these unspoken rules through simple deviations: walking in seemingly purposeless straight lines, stopping unpredictably, moving at "wrong" speeds for their apparent age or situation. Spatial manipulation is key. Performers start scattered across the square doing “ping-pong” walking (straight lines with ninety-degree turns at obstacles), then compress into smaller areas with added running bursts, then form repetitive pathway loops that create moving obstacles for passersby. The final sections shift from pedestrian abstraction to spiritual circumambulation through collective circular movement that naturally draws curious bystanders to join, culminating in an inward spiral around a central point.

The drone music emanating from hidden speakers creates mysterious, moving sound zones that envelop the square before people even identify the performers. This spatial sound design makes the everyday choreography of public space suddenly visible and strange. What fascinates me is watching the interaction between the three groups present: intentional spectators, confused passersby, and those who are performing the score—each with different knowledge and power positions within this disrupted urban space. Dance critic Dorottya Albert described the atmosphere created by the piece: “This is a beautiful, immersing, mesmerizing dance, which we can perceive not with our eyes, but with our ears, bodies and self.”

These interventionist works reveal how public spaces are governed by invisible social codes that we unconsciously follow until they are deliberately disrupted. By violating the unspoken rules of public behavior—whether through nonsensical barriers, forbidden gestures, or altered movement patterns—these works transform everyday environments into laboratories for examining social conformity and spatial control. Again, the power of this approach lies not in grand theatrical gestures, but in subtle deviations that make the familiar suddenly strange.

Spatial Relationalities as the Core of Participation

The activation of the audience is a complex and highly current topic, with an increasing number of artists experimenting with various forms of participation. These endeavors often involve breaking the conventional organization of the audience, making spatial relationships a crucial aspect of the process. As Boróka Lipka puts it, “Control over space is achieved by controlling the bodies within it. Traditional theatre audiences are passive; they sit, watch and listen.... In the absence of a norm, control of the spectator's body and movement is a central problem.”

The level of audience participation can be understood as the degree to which audience members can influence or shape the development of a performance. This participation exists on a spectrum, ranging from the ability to choose one's position and perspective within the performance space to becoming an active performer in the piece. The extent of participation affects not only the individual audience member's experience but also the overall dynamics and outcomes of the performance. Therefore, within the frame that the artist has created, the piece becomes a shared responsibility. The more freedom and genuine responsibility audience members have over their experience and its impact on others, the higher the stakes become.

My participatory sound-choreography Mandala (2016) exemplifies this approach. In the piece twenty audience members become the performers, carrying portable speakers along pathways I've drawn on the floor using basic shapes and colors. The concept emerged from wanting to create an ant farm-like, moving soundscape that balances the symbolic reenactment of everyday movement with a contemplative, yet playful action.

Participants follow individual pathways—combinations of circles, rectangles, triangles, and lines—that intersect regularly, creating opportunities for myriad non-verbal encounters. The spontaneous dramaturgy of the piece unfolds in how people negotiate this shared space. They begin cautiously following their assigned path, but the real piece emerges at the intersections—those moments when pathways cross and people have to decide how to relate. Some become polite, others playful, some dominant.

The simple geometric constraints create a laboratory for spatial behavior. People often connect this aspect of the piece to their daily commuting routines or broader questions about how we navigate shared spaces. The repetitive pathway-walking becomes a metaphor for life trajectories—whose paths cross with yours, who remains distant, how we create territories within collective space.

Drawing inspiration from Éliane Radigue's Buddhist-influenced drone-ambient compositions, the accompanying soundscape unfolds across twenty individual layers, one for each speaker. This creates a hypnotic acoustic environment where the moving sound sources generate slowly shifting harmonics and deeply vibrating tones that naturally draw participants to bring their speakers close to each other's bodies, creating immersive, resonant encounters.

The piece always ends with a collective sharing of experiences, during which participants often reflect on these aspects in deeply personal, yet surprisingly universal ways. Their reflections reveal the work's impact:

• “So when you come into it, you think, ‘OK, I am following the shape.’ But it’s not about you at all; it’s about everyone else around you. That is fascinating. It’s a surprise.”
• “This is also like life. Certain people meet with each other and they do something. And other people over there create their own village. And still, we are like one composition.”
• "It felt like, well, I'm the speaker myself. I'm just one part of the sound creation. The first moment someone gave it on my body, the sound was such a strong experience."

Artists should be supported and encouraged to cultivate simple, live, embodied artistic practices that deliberately slow down and expand our spatial-relational awareness.

I've adapted the piece for various environments: forests using color-coded trees, abandoned buildings, even integrated sessions for participants with visual impairments, hearing impairments, neurological disabilities, and wheelchair users. Over one hundred performances across fourteen countries have shown me that this simple framework is able to create situations of deep connection, reflection, and contemplation across diverse cultures and contexts.

For me, this demonstrates that such approaches are effective when they find the right balance between guidance and freedom—offering clear parameters that support rather than constrain interactions and allowing participants to become active agents who collectively shape the work's unfolding. I suggest that creating participatory frameworks can shift the artist's role toward generating conditions that enable participants to discover forms of shared attention and connection, rather than directing predetermined narratives or spectacle.

Final Thoughts

Through a variety of examples, I have presented methods for working with what I call "spatial-relational composition"—artistic approaches that treat the organization of space, attention, and social dynamics as primary creative material that can be systematically developed and deployed. The works discussed here demonstrate that some of the most profound theatrical experiences can emerge not from complex narratives or elaborate productions, but from carefully orchestrated conditions that allow audiences to discover their own capacity for awareness and connection.

I believe that in our increasingly alienated world, distanced from physical presence and mindful attention, activating these embodied spatial elements holds crucial importance. Marxist urban geographer David Harvey describes the modern condensation of temporal and spatial distances through his concept of "time-space compression"—the way capitalism accelerates and shrinks our experience of space and time. As an attempt at "time-space decompression" I advocate that instead of fully embracing digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI) in art and performing arts, artists should be supported and encouraged to cultivate simple, live, embodied artistic practices that deliberately slow down and expand our spatial-relational awareness.

Although my analysis has primarily focused on performance and installation contexts, spatiality remains a fundamental aspect of any situation involving human presence. Hence the use of these approaches could find valuable applications across disciplines such as architecture, urban planning, community organizing, or any practice where the thoughtful choreography of spatial attention proves essential.