An ongoing symbolic and visual research in collaboration with political scientist Daniel Urey and designer Isabel Mager into the physical and performative mechanisms of the podium; the formal site upon which a speech act takes place to address ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson, 1983).
By acknowledging the central historical role of podia in the communication and cultivation of ideologies, social principles, and cultural values, we articulate key moments and sites within in the culturalisation of Europe. The research aims to deconstruct systems of meaning embedded in a programming of the podia as an historical and contemporary phenomenon and considers how repeated patterns of design are used to articulate power.
Within this framework, the body is central; itself interpreted as a technology for knowledge production through gesture & posture, orientation & action, voice & the art of rhetoric. Sign & symbol, design & technology, gender & performance are punctuated as spatiotemporal logics and as social orientation devices bound to this site.