Visiting Experts: Beth Weinstein
US- and France-based architect, researcher, performance-installation maker and educator Beth Weinstein explores the intersection of architecture and choreography.
Beth Weinstein will introduce the field of archi-choreographic experiments and present ideas that emerged through researching this topic for her monograph, Architecture + Choreography: Collaborations in Dance, Space and Time (Routledge 2024).
Architecture + Choreography examines interdisciplinary encounters and performed events generated through collaborations between architects and choreographers. The book’s forty case studies spanning four decades give evidence of the range of motivations for embarking on these creative endeavors and the diverse conceptual underpinnings, generative methods, objects of inquiry, and outcomes. Architecture and Choreography builds theories through which to examine these works; the contexts within and processes through which the works emerged; and the critical questions they raise about ways to work together, sites and citations, ethics and equity, control and agency.
Biography
US and France-based architect, researcher, performance-installation maker and educator Beth Weinstein’s practice and research move between textual, material, spatial, performative, choreographic, and graphic modes to render sensible (dis)appearances and (in)visibilities related to critical issues such as climate catastrophe, historic injustices, states of exception, invisible labor, as well as creative processes.
Weinstein has synthesized nearly two decades of research on the field she calls archi-choreographic experiments in her monograph Architecture + Choreography: Collaborations in Dance, Space and Time (Routledge 2024) and previously curated the Collaborative Legacy of Merce Cunningham exhibition (2011-13). She has broadly published on performativity in and of public space, theater architecture, and scenography, including chapters in “Performing Architectures” (Methuen, 2018); “Critical Practices in Architecture” (Cambridge, 2020); “The Routledge Companion to Scenography (Routledge, 2017); “Architecture as a Performing Art” (Ashgate, 2013); and “Disappearing Stage” (The Theater Institute, 2012); plus articles in the Journal of Architectural Education, the Journal of Artistic Research, Performance Research and Places.
Her current investigations, employing forensic architectural and other methods, focus on rendering sensible a razed space of internment in France—the Centre d’Identification de Vincennes. This has led to her co-founding an international and interdisciplinary research group RéSI (Remembering Spaces of Internment).
Her work has been supported by the Graham Foundation (USA); FACE Foundation/Villa Albertine, Academie d’Architecture and Cité Internationale des Arts (F); Casa de Velazquez (E); Bundanon and Rosamund McCulloch/UTAS (AUS) residencies.
Beth Weinstein (BFA, M.Arch, PhD) is Professor of Architecture, Chair of Object and Spatial Design in the BA in Design Arts & Practices, and faculty affiliate of the School of Art, of the Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory GIDP (SCCT), and Arizona Institutes for Resilience (AIR) at the University of Arizona (UA). She has taught at several design schools in Paris, as well as Columbia’s GSAPP, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Pratt Institute, and Parsons/The New School for Design in the US.
The upcoming open lecture is part of the Visiting Experts series where international experts in the arts and sciences, invited by Uniarts Helsinki’s Theatre Academy, share their knowledge.
Beth Weinstein will introduce the field of archi-choreographic experiments and present ideas that emerged through researching this topic for her monograph, Architecture + Choreography: Collaborations in Dance, Space and Time (Routledge 2024).
Architecture + Choreography examines interdisciplinary encounters and performed events generated through collaborations between architects and choreographers. The book’s forty case studies spanning four decades give evidence of the range of motivations for embarking on these creative endeavors and the diverse conceptual underpinnings, generative methods, objects of inquiry, and outcomes. Architecture and Choreography builds theories through which to examine these works; the contexts within and processes through which the works emerged; and the critical questions they raise about ways to work together, sites and citations, ethics and equity, control and agency.
Biography
US and France-based architect, researcher, performance-installation maker and educator Beth Weinstein’s practice and research move between textual, material, spatial, performative, choreographic, and graphic modes to render sensible (dis)appearances and (in)visibilities related to critical issues such as climate catastrophe, historic injustices, states of exception, invisible labor, as well as creative processes.
Weinstein has synthesized nearly two decades of research on the field she calls archi-choreographic experiments in her monograph Architecture + Choreography: Collaborations in Dance, Space and Time (Routledge 2024) and previously curated the Collaborative Legacy of Merce Cunningham exhibition (2011-13). She has broadly published on performativity in and of public space, theater architecture, and scenography, including chapters in “Performing Architectures” (Methuen, 2018); “Critical Practices in Architecture” (Cambridge, 2020); “The Routledge Companion to Scenography (Routledge, 2017); “Architecture as a Performing Art” (Ashgate, 2013); and “Disappearing Stage” (The Theater Institute, 2012); plus articles in the Journal of Architectural Education, the Journal of Artistic Research, Performance Research and Places.
Her current investigations, employing forensic architectural and other methods, focus on rendering sensible a razed space of internment in France—the Centre d’Identification de Vincennes. This has led to her co-founding an international and interdisciplinary research group RéSI (Remembering Spaces of Internment).
Her work has been supported by the Graham Foundation (USA); FACE Foundation/Villa Albertine, Academie d’Architecture and Cité Internationale des Arts (F); Casa de Velazquez (E); Bundanon and Rosamund McCulloch/UTAS (AUS) residencies.
Beth Weinstein (BFA, M.Arch, PhD) is Professor of Architecture, Chair of Object and Spatial Design in the BA in Design Arts & Practices, and faculty affiliate of the School of Art, of the Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory GIDP (SCCT), and Arizona Institutes for Resilience (AIR) at the University of Arizona (UA). She has taught at several design schools in Paris, as well as Columbia’s GSAPP, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Pratt Institute, and Parsons/The New School for Design in the US.
The upcoming open lecture is part of the Visiting Experts series where international experts in the arts and sciences, invited by Uniarts Helsinki’s Theatre Academy, share their knowledge.