Teaterøen Field School publication launch

In May 2019, 12 students from the departments of Theatre, Studio Arts, Design and Computation Arts, and Geography, Planning and Environment participated in a 17-day field school in Copenhagen, Denmark. Shauna Janssen, assistant professor in the Department of Theatre and Concordia University Research Chair in Performative Urbanism, led the intensive interdisciplinary course on the topic of urban scenographies.

Students took up residency at Teaterøen (Theatre Island) located on Refshaleøen, a deindustrialized man-made island across the harbour from Copenhagen proper. Their host, Peter Kirk, founded Teaterøen in 2012, with the aim of creating cultural activities on the island by repurposing a number of former ship and repair buildings into spaces for artistic expression and performance.

Embedded in this post-industrial ‘island’-scape, students undertook performative mapping and site responsive assignments that critically engaged with a rapidly gentrifying landscape, its past present and futures, posthuman ecologies, themes of community, borders, and memory.

4^TH SPACE is hosting the launch of the book documenting the reflections, arts projects and performances conducted by the students during the Teaterøen Field School. A small exhibition showing a scale model of the site where they held the field school will also be on display.