Homescapes#2 at the RCA continues the work started in Homesacpes #1, in Pittsburgh will explore the notion of home as something we carry with us; as we travel, go about the day to day, move from one country to another. Working with film, making and performance, this workshop explored what it is to arrive, move through and settle, briefly, in a place. We used movement as a way exploring the everyday rituals we associate with home.

We will consider responses to new places and how to make a new home. Home is seen as something which is carried internally, manifesting in memory, and which is externalized through what Anne-Marie Fortier, in Re-Membering Places, calls embodied movements. For our purposes these could be everyday practices: making food, playing music, dancing… wearing particular clothing; practices and performances by which we inhabit the city and re-create worlds, and via which others have inhabited before us. We consider, using fictional speculation, how these become part of the evolution of our cities through the process of cultural exchange.

We will seek to capture embodied movements, taking Laban’s Kinesphere as a point of reference we will bring gesture, making and marking together, working with the things we find. We will move and record…We will also discuss via literature, film and theatre.

Asking:

What is it like it to arrive in a new place? How long does it take to belong?

What it was like, when you arrived? Was it raining? Was it snowing? Was the sky grey or blue?... Was a storm brewing…?

We might wonder:

Why you left? What you left behind? Where you slept, that first night and if you felt safe?

Whether you:

Stayed. Made a life here. Became part of a community here.

What traces you left or will leave…

The city of London…or anywhere can become the stage for the stories we tell…