Book Description

A collaboration between dancer/somatic practitioner Ira Ferris and artist/scenographer Elia Bosshard, SPACE BODY HABIT is a transcription of conversations and experiences that unfolded during a two-week research residency at Frontyard, a multipurpose creative space in Marrickville, Sydney. Set to explore the many ways we perceive, or fail to perceive spaces, the book comprises a series of spatio-somatic and phenomenologically-driven exercises, followed by in-depth discussions on themes as varied as: first impressions and knowing space by heart, body as a space and supremacy of vision, care for spaces and observing spaces from the more-than-human perspective, posture and perception, repetition and choices, comfort and entrapment, sharing spaces with others and dissolving boundaries between spaces, creativity and mental space, language and the agency of spaces, memory and habitual pathways, structures and flexibility, physical and psychological spaces, voids and empty spaces, belonging to a place and knowing others through their spaces, designated spaces and liminal spaces, contracts and trust, boredom and perseverance... With the starting premise that interaction with space is often habitual and perception of space often unconscious, the book explores ways to deepen and enhance our awareness of space and its impact on our day-to-day life. What else might we open ourselves to if we challenge the ingrained relationship to space and inhabit familiar spaces in new ways? The ​​exercises and conversations were inspired and informed by reading texts on space/place and the body, including: Rhythm Analysis by Henri Lefebvre, The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram, The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard, The Memory of Place by Dylan Trigg, Bodies of Water by Astrida Neimanis, Escapism by Yi-Fu Tuan, and Bertolt Brecht by Meg Mumford. The authors wish to acknowledge that this research residency and the writing of the book took place on the unceded land of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora nation. Their care of the land, their respect for the lineage, their reciprocity with the place, are to be our inspiration as we find ever better ways to be in spaces and pass them on to others.