Just some thoughts I have been mulling over about space, particularly regarding performance space and it's affect on the performance events.
It is first of all important to recognize space as nonexistent. How is space defined? It can only be defined in negative: The walls make the room, not the space. No space can be defined positively- for example: an apple is a round bulbous red, green, or yellow fruit with a stem and seeds. This thought can possibly be continued indefinitely until the apple is ultimately defined, and it is defined for what it is. Space cannot be so defined. How would one do so? “Space is everything other than definable objects?” Not only is this stated within the negative, it is probably not true. Quality, as explored thoroughly in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, is also indefinable. So how is space explained? One can only say some of the things it is not. Given infinity, one might say everything that it is not, but one would still not be able to positively identify what it is.
What, then, can be said about any given space so far as it’s qualities and effects on events? Not much- but much can be said of context. The context of any given space is definable only for short periods of time and in relationship to society. The context, therefore, is totally subjective- it depends upon the subject to help define it. Thus, a concert hall is for concerts, not because of anything particular about that space, except that it is used for concerts. Two hundred years later, that same space may be used for a whore house or a church, or anything in between and there is no cosmic explanation for the relationship. Concerning context, the subject helps to decide the qualities of the object.
This is not to say that a certain contexts are not better suited to certain activities, given a subjective understanding of good and bad, and with no intention of inflicting a moral good and bad on the conversation. The context of a concert hall might lead it to be better suited to concerts in ways that affect the space. The knowledge of the potential audience that the building houses concerts does not affect the space, except possibly concerning certain types of energy which I will not discuss at present- but the fact that the walls have been engineered for optimum acoustics does affect the space in very certain and real ways. This engineering changes the interaction of art and space, creating a reverberation of sounds aesthetically pleasing, given culture. So, here too, the space is not limited, except by culture, which in this instance may be seen as societal preference. And though it can be said in the microcosm of current cultural ideologies that the space is therefore ‘better’ for holding concerts (or other such sound based events), this idea cannot hold. Only the perception of correct usage can be interpreted (due to the context), and therefore the space is left indefinable and independent of such interpretations. That’s like saying Swiss cheese is better than American cheese- the idea is based on personal preference, and can therefore never even be argued, let alone be proven.
So let it be said for the time being that space in unknowable, but that context, which is confined to space, can affect events, at least culturally.