1. There, there? Is There a There, There?(or, Allergic to Utopias) By Dr Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X] School of Arts & New Media University of Hull, UK

2. Is There a There, There?(or, Allergic to Utopias) 1st Act. Cyberspace: Space or Metaphor? By Dr Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X] School of Arts & New Media University of Hull, UK

3. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias) Which is the space of live(d) performance? Pics: SwanQuake(2007) & Summerbranch (2005) by Igloo

4. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias) Cyberspace. Virtual Worlds. Augmented & Mixed Reality Environments. Are they spaces? Or are they networks? Are networks spaces?

5. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias) “Cyberspace was once thought to be the modern equivalent of the Western Frontier. It was a place, albeit an abstract place, where land was free for the taking, where explorers could roam, and communities could form their own rules. It was an endless expanse of space: open, free, replete with possibility. No longer. As with the Western Frontier, settlers have entered this new land, charted the territory, fenced off their own little claim, and erected “No Trespassing” signs. Cyberspace is being subdivided. Suburbs and SUVs cannot be far off.” Hunter, D., 2002

6. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias) “No Trespassing” signs in Second Life

7. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias) SUVs in Second Life

8. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)

9. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)

10. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias) (Realistic) Suggestions? A number of “code-based environmental disasters” such as the loss of privacy, censorship, and the disappearance of an intellectual commons are currently occurring. Lessig, 2007 “Abandon metaphors altogether”: real-world property assumptions are being forced onto the online environment. Hunter, 200)

11. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias) “Space is neither a ‘subject’, nor an ‘object’, but a social reality – that is to say, a set of relations and forms.” Lefebvre, 1991

12. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias) “What is missing from cyberlaw’s narratives about ‘cyberspace’ as a catalyst for fundamental change (or as simply more of the same old thing) is a sense of the body in cyberspace: of cyberspace as produced by and producing embodied experience. Cyberlaw scholars have largely ignored the bodies in which selves and groups reside, and therefore have overlooked literatures that might help to illuminate networked space as experienced space.” Cohen, J., 2007

13. Is There a There, There?(or, Allergic to Utopias) 2ndAct. Space as Social Morphology (Tea with Lefebvre) By Dr Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X] School of Arts & New Media University of Hull, UK

14. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias) “Vis-à-vis lived experience, space is neither a mere ‘frame’, (…) nor a form of container of a virtually neutral kind, designed simply to receive whatever is poured into it. Space is social morphology: it is to lived experience what form itself is to living organism, and just as intimately bound up with function and structure. To picture space as a ‘frame’ or container into which nothing can be put unless it is smaller than the recipient, and to imagine that this container has no other purpose than to preserve what has been put in it – this is probably the initial error.” Lefebvre, H., 1991

15. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)

17. A revolution that does not achieve this might have changed “ideological superstructures, institutions or political apparatuses”, but has failed to change life itself.

18. “To change life (…) we must first change space.”Lefebvre, H., 1991

19. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)

20. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)

21. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)

22. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)

23. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias)

24. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias) Networks become spatial when performed as spaces. Pic: The Endless Forest by Tale of Tales (ongoing)

25. Is There a There, There?(or, Allergic to Utopias) 3rd Act. My Body’s Other: Looking Into Foucault’s Mirror By Dr Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X] School of Arts & New Media University of Hull, UK

26. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias) Q: What occupies space? A: “A body –not bodies in general, nor corporeality, but a specific body” Lefebvre, 1991 Pic: TranSfera by SUKA OFF (Intimacy, 2007)

27. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias) “Space – my space- (…) is first of all my body, and then it is my body’s counterpart or ‘other’, its mirror-image or shadow: it is the shifting intersection between that which touches, penetrates, threatens or benefits my body on the one hand, and all other bodies on the other. Thus we are concerned, once again with gaps and tensions, contacts and separations. (…) space is experienced, (…) as duplications, echoes and reverberations, redundancies and doublings-up which engender –and are engendered by- the strangest of contrasts: face and arse, eye and flesh, viscera and excrement, lips and teeth, orifices and phallus, clenched fists and opened hands (…)” Lefebvre, 1991

28. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias) The body as a “social, cultural and historical production.” A. Balsamo, 1995 Pic: ReiDishon (Intimacy, 2007)

29. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias) “In the mirror I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface: I am over there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am absent: such is the utopia of the mirror. But it is also a heterotopia (…). From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence from the place where I am since I see myself over there. Starting from this gaze (…) I come back toward myself; I begin again (…) to reconstitute myself there where I am. Foucault, 1967

30. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias) “Utopia seeks a future that itself has no future, a future in which time will cease to be a relevant factor, and movement, change and becoming remain impossible.” Grosz, 2001

31. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias) Bibliography BALSAMO, A. Forms of Technological Embodiment: Reading the Body in Contemporary Culture, 1995 In: FEATHERSTONE, M. and BURROWS, R. (Eds) Cyberspace, Cyberbodies, Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment. London & New Delhi: Sage, 1995. COHEN, J.E. Cyberspace as/and Space. Columbia Law Review 107 (210), January 2007 FOUCAULT, M. Of Other Spaces. (Tr. Miskowiec, J.). Available from: http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html, 1967 GROSZ, E. Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001 HUNTER, D. Cyberspace as Place and the Tragedy of the Digital Anticommons. Available from: http://ssrn.com/abstract=306662, 2002 [accessed 3/08/2010] LEFEBVRE, H. The Production of Space. (Tr.: Nicholson-Smith, D.) Oxford & Cambridge MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 3rd Edition, 1991 LEMLEY, M. Place and Cyberspace. California Law Review [online], 91, 2003 LESSIG, L. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Version 2.0. New York: Basic Books, 2006 PHELAN, P. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London & New York: Routledge, 1993 SINGER, J.W. Entitlement: The Paradoxes of Property. Yale: Yale University Press, 2000 YEN, A.C. Western Frontier or Feudal Society? Metaphors and Perceptions in Cyberspace. Berkeley Technology Law Journal [online], 17 )1207), 2002

32. Is there a there, there? (Allergic to Utopias) Thank You. Dr Maria Chatrtzichristodoulou [aka Maria X] Director of Postgraduate Studies Lecturer in Theatre & Performance School of Arts & New Media University of Hull, UK M.Chatzi@hull.ac.uk