AAIS

Spatial Performance & Design

The Conversation

The Architectural Association Interprofessional Studio (AAIS) brings together professionals from diverse creative disciplines to collaborate on the design of a series of interrelated projects. By creating and then challenging links between architecture and performance, AAIS uncovers an otherwise hidden set of ‘worknets’ that link multiple professions and their products. Its aim is to shape concrete projects and events using a combination of creative languages that reflect various fields of research.

In May 2014 the studio's cohort of international talent – hailing from Israel, Poland and Lebanon – launched the project with a performative installation at the Bargehouse at Oxo Tower Wharf, London. In The Conversation, a Film-Set without a Film, the AAIS worked with the dance group New Movement Collective and the music ensemble Distractfold to merge architecture, dance, music, art and fashion. The event will be followed by performances in Barcelona (June 2014) and Berlin (August 2014), which will explore and further develop the ideas emerging from this collaboration.

The Conversation, a Film-Set Without a Film is a performative playground 

of characters placed in the cityscape. The characters fulfil repetitive roles defined as hybrid creatures, partly taking the shape of film-set elements, partly regenerating the urban pattern of the surroundings. In this way, elements of the set come alive. The stage becomes the staging. The narrative becomes the film-set. The film-set becomes the actor. Awareness is raised of the reciprocal relations that bind urban elements with presentation and performance. The connections between the characters generate the synergy of urban and natural patterns, creating the performance itself.

The performance is designed to take place within the circular perimeter of the set – a highly composed performative structure that each spectator will perceive differently. The audience will move through the set: sit, eat and drink within it. Audience members will create their own story, which will unfold into a conversation and a net of relations between planned and unplanned entities. The artificial will enhance the reality of its surroundings and in turn frame it.