Loponen-Stephenson, Eija (2024) Urban Choreographics: Tracing the Extralinguistic Pedagogies of Montreal’s Underground Metro System. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
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Abstract
In North American cityscapes commuters must perform a specific set of gestures in order to efficiently move through and around public architectural spaces. The mass adoption of these gestures represents a form of extra-institutional learning facilitated by the choreographic characteristics of everyday architectural spaces. The urbanite’s quotidian movement through the built environment may then inform their understanding of what normative movement looks and feels like. The purpose of this research-creation thesis is to investigate how adult human cognition and epistemic formation is affected by bodily movement through contemporary urban architectural spaces. Locally there are few spaces where the procedural nature of city architecture is felt more than when using the underground public transportation network. For this reason, the Société de Transport de Montréal’s (STM’s) subterranean metro stations are the focal site of this inquiry. Using ethnographic (experimental field recordings and naturalistic observation) and arts-based methods (inconspicuous public performance and long-exposure film photography) this performance ethnography identified and analyzed recurrent patterns and rhythmic structures of Montreal’s underground architectures which cause these spaces to be propulsive for some and disabling for others. The findings of this qualitative study emphasized the hypervisibility of those whose bodies are dissociated from the rhythms of “normative” movement in these spaces. Though further studies are needed to draw a causal relationship between human cognition and the public spaces they inhabit, this thesis demonstrates the potential of arts-based research to create an output which mediates metric measurement and one’s embodied experiences of space for the purposes of research and critical reflection.
| Divisions: | Concordia University > Faculty of Fine Arts > Art Education |
|---|---|
| Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
| Authors: | Loponen-Stephenson, Eija |
| Institution: | Concordia University |
| Degree Name: | M.A. |
| Program: | Art Education |
| Date: | 15 March 2024 |
| Thesis Supervisor(s): | Thompson, M.J |
| Keywords: | pedagogy of place, movement-based learning, urban architecture, performance ethnography, research-creation |
| ID Code: | 993631 |
| Deposited By: | Eija Loponen-Stephenson |
| Deposited On: | 04 Jun 2024 14:05 |
| Last Modified: | 04 Jun 2024 14:05 |
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