Placing performance into a distressed space: the case of San Berillo

This chapter aims to locate performance within the conceptualization of space and to argue, through a case study, how its transformative dimension requires both being incorporated into the material space and into the capacity of the subjects to activate a variation in its relational assets. The appropriation of space as producing the uniqueness of a place cannot come about without the space or space-related actions of which the space itself is the pre-condition. When space is seriously decomposed, performance becomes a representation that will struggle to transform the given conditions in which it unfolds and produce processes subjectively oriented towards change. The unravelled space is subject to domination because it does not allow transformative performance defined as such as it is rooted in space.