**4. Performativity of Memory**

The notion of performativity was introduced into linguistic theory by the British philosopher John Langshaw Austin (1962) in his lecture series, "How to Do Things with Words", at Harvard University in 1955 and subsequently discussed by several authors6.

The notion of performativity has also been developed within the field of performance studies. In this sense, the concept of performativity is elaborated at the moment when the performative act takes place, where performance and life intersect, in a sequential construction of different intersections where the effects of the real and the fictional are dissolved (Fernandes 2011). It is a space and time where the particularities of fiction, developed through performance, and the understandings of social life, guided by the real, come together in a 'doing' where their imaginary boundaries are transgressed.

It can also be said that the notions of performativity consider 'the other', the spectator, as a collaborator in the performative game. The spectator, in turn, can observe and be observed, affect and be affected, configuring an aesthetic experience characterized by open and procedural actions, thus promoting a resignification of experience (von Hantelmann 2014).

Performativity also develops the proposition of the actor/performer's own body as discourse (Austin 1962). For Féral (2015), artists who engage in and carry out performative actions are first and foremost generators of energy flows that transcend the notion of representation without fixing or focusing on it. As a border art, performance highlights the performer's body in all its fragility, autonomy and often in its insubordination to a script previously conceived by the performer himself, since the experience given by the performative moment can contaminate the content of the proposal, redirecting the performer to other possible places. Consequently, the interferences (or contaminations) of space, light, sound and audience mediate the performer's experience in space, unfolding the process of performing the work live, valuing the process over the notion of a finished product. This leads to another point emphasized by Féral, the 'total involvement of the artist' (Féral 2015), in which the performer invests in a strong presence, not worrying about the formalisms of a message, but transforming his body into a discourse.

Performativity, in this sense, escapes the intention of traditional aesthetic theory, as it resists the hermeneutic disputes of understanding the work of art, falling within what Krauss (1990) has called a 'lived bodily perspective' or what Taylor (2022, p. 90) describes as "a process of becoming, of coming into being".

For Fischer-Lichte (2007), understanding the artist's actions is less important than experiencing them, crossing the proposed event. Participation in the experience provokes such a range of sensations that it transcends the possibility and effort of interpretation and the production of meaning and cannot be overcome or resolved by reflection. This is not to say that in a performance there is nothing for the spectator to interpret, but neither can it be said that the actions of the performance artist alone mean something.

The notion of performativity is linked to art as a network of exchange between artistic action and audience, guided not only by the sense of scenic representation but also by the approximation of art and life and the dilution of the boundaries that configure them (Dinis 2022). Through the mutual contamination between performer and spectator, some territories previously demarcated and/or at least thought of by the actor are dissolved for the construction of new, more uncertain territories. It can thus be said that performativity has brought about new configurations in the relationship between spectator and performance, leading the audience from matrices that operate beyond the narrative to aspects of physical proximity (Dinis 2022). The spectator is made aware of his participation in an artistic work, extrapolating the character of an observer to be framed as a co-participant.

In this way, performativity escapes the commonplace of everyday corporeality, creating mechanisms of continuous movement, diluting permanent boundaries, and seeking to destabilize the previously clear differences of everyday life, starting from the physical experience as a motto for spatial transgression (Fernandes 2011). In this sense, performativity acts through sounds and images, through plasticity, in the materiality of the interactions between the presentation space and the audience.

In the materiality of the interactions, the place becomes a resizing of the presentation space, endowed with sensations, affections and allusions to the lived experience, a place that retains within itself, its meaning and its dimensions of the movement of history in formation, as a movement of life, that can be grasped through memory, through the senses and the body (Carlos 1996).

Memories are important lived records that start from remembering and that eternalize places as references and scenarios for a constant visit to the past, bringing with them the most diverse feelings, documented and mentioned in narratives, imaginations and perceptions. Thus, as Nora (1993) points out, places of memory are places in the three senses of the word: material, symbolic and functional. Even a place of purely material appearance is only a place of memory if your imagination gives it a symbolic aura. They are therefore places that add a history full of complicities, meanings, affectivities and belonging.

Memory is stratified in place, searching for inscriptions and signs of absence that describe the memory of the place. As the place accumulates memories in layers that, when added together, form a unique profile, the place of memory emerges, where the community sees significant parts of its past of immeasurable affective value (Gastal 2002). The places of memory and the memories of the place, individual and collective, combine in the search for instruments to reinforce identity and singularity, thus strengthening the sense of belonging.

Memory is also inscribed over time, in the displacement between places, and the perspectives gained from immersion in these places. Places thus have a profound effect on thoughts and interpretations that arise from the way they have been felt through the body, founding the materiality of these places on aspects of representation. It is therefore a matter of giving new conceptual guidelines to the narratives of places by creating new conceptual guides.

The issue of memory and the tendency to expand its scope, considering the role of the performance of corporeal and noncorporeal practices (Hoelscher 2004), makes it so that there is a diversity of approaches and that it is observed from several areas that look at the memory and the remembrance of the remodeled place, especially through its collective forms, to give itself a coherent identity, a narrative and a place in the world (Said 2000).

In the site-specific projects developed as part of this research, we start from the theme of memory as a phenomenon that allows the present creation of an absence (Ricoeur 2004), and we assume that any work of memory seems to imply a work of representation, which is amplified by the unique characteristics of religious places. Inherent in this work of representation is also a process of remembering that precedes a process of constructing sounds and images: sounds that are imagined to have been heard, images that are imagined to have already been visualized and sounds and images that are understood as assistants in the living experience of memory construction, promoting performativity of memory during live audiovisual performances.

It is a performativity that acts through sound and image, in the materiality of the interactions between places of memory and memories, individual and collective, place and public, in performances where the most important thing is not what the work seeks to signify or symbolize but the crossing of the experience—a crossing of the experience that goes beyond the possibility and effort of interpretation and the production of meaning, beyond pure reflection or rational interpretation, in a symbolic ritual action that mediates this performativity of memory.

During the performative moments of the site-specific projects, the performative aspects of memory are emphasized, highlighting the active and constructive nature of memory that challenges the view of memory as a passive container of past events, focusing on how memory is represented, shaped and influenced by various social, cultural and spatial factors.

In this sense, memory is interpreted as a performative action, an active and performative process rather than a simple retrieval of stored information. Memory is not seen as a static reproduction of the past but as a dynamic and creative act that involves interpretation, reconstruction and (re)contextualization. Thus, memories are shaped and influenced by the present moment in which they are reminded through an embodied perception of place. This embodied perception of place, facilitated by a performativity of the memory, can have several implications for audiences and their experiences, particularly in religious places.

Religious places often have significant cultural and historical value and embody the collective memory, ritual actions and traditions of a community. The ritual and performative actions related to the memory of and in these places reinforce a shared history and help to shape a personal and communal sense of 'self'. The embodied perception of place in religious places thus evokes deep emotional and spiritual experiences, intensifying emotional connection and facilitating a sensory experience that contributes to an immersive experience in a defined space-time. So, experiences with site-specific projects become an integral part of the site-specific projects and the meaning of these site-specific projects manifests itself in an experience (von Hantelmann 2014).

#### **5. Methodology**

Research through artistic practice is a process of constant questioning because, unlike other academic research models, it generates knowledge based on the experience and practice developed by artists. In this sense, since this practice is singular, unique and particular, it must be transmitted through models that correspond to its nature and through this can make use of various discursive and representational strategies.

One of the main characteristics of research through artistic practice lies in the claim that the results of research and the production of knowledge must be realized through the symbolic language produced and in the form of the practice of researcher-artists. This makes the process of research through artistic practice challenging, as the construction of any proposed approach constitutes a kind of productive uncertainty, a zone for temporary 'constructions' of concepts and contingent thinking.

The projects, developed according to a hybrid methodology and largely executed as works in progress, can be understood as an alternative form of investigative practice, close to the recent dynamics of practice-as-research, which diverges from the context of traditional arts, driving the creation of new approaches and expanding the limits of these.

According to Witkin (2011), research is generally seen as providing important knowledge for practice, while practice can provide contextual relevance for research. However, differences in goals, language, expertise, audience and environment, among others, keep the two separate. Thus, the theme of 'practice-as-research', as adopted here, refers to beliefs and values about practice and research that create an understood gap between the current state of affairs and a more desirable panorama (Witkin 2011).

In addition to the differences mentioned by this author, three other characteristics have been presented as reasons for the separation of practice and research. These are creativity, mutability and presence. However, we defend that these characteristics can also be seen as points of convergence, as they are present in both practice and research.

To confirm this convergence, a series of site-specific research projects have been developed in religious places through artistic practice, under a format and with their language of expression, to analyze and develop functional methods and strategies linked to the development of artistic creations and the proposition of forms of their presentations. This research, through artistic practice, is developed around two main elements: the process of approaching the context of the place and the (de)construction of the sense of place, according to the approach developed by Dinis (2022).

The process of approaching the context of the place began by interacting with the places to apprehend and understand them and was carried out through permanence and several movements in them. In this sense, the site-specific projects developed in religious places are seen as a practice of memory, through which sound and visual narratives have been constructed, effective for the formulation of their corporeality and that of those who observe and receive them in the performative moments.

As a practice of memory and the materialization of this memory, each site-specific project is the result of a systematized methodology, at different times, in the approach to the place, evaluating the different levels of permanence and modalities of access to information, the relationship established with the place and the objectives defined by each site-specific project.

The methodology adopted fits into a process of research through artistic practice, since it is the practice that guides the research, and the research involves practical knowledge that can be particularly demonstrated in practice—that is, knowledge that is a matter of doing, rather than being conceived in the abstract and therefore able to be articulated only in words through a traditional research approach (Nelson 2013). This knowledge grows out of a mixture of practical and observational engagement with the beings and existences around (Ingold 2013), and its research involving works of art or artistic practice inevitably reflects an empirical dimension (Nevanlinna 2002).

This view is reinforced by Nelson (2013) when this author argues that the process of research through artistic practice involves a research project in which practice is a key method of investigation and, concerning the arts, where the practice is presented as substantive evidence of research.

Taylor (1985) suggests that these practices are semantic spaces that are indistinguishable from the language that is used to describe, invoke or perform them. These forms of research differ from the conventional methodologies traditionally recognized by the academy, precisely to be able to welcome and elaborate on questions that are intrinsically linked to the object of research and that go through several paths of formulating a hypothesis for its subsequent confirmation or refutation.

It coincides with the idea of exploring what emerges, adding that the process of research through artistic practice transcends and interweaves 'place', 'self', 'body', 'experience', 'mind', 'sensation', 'analysis', 'articulation', 'memory' and 'argument', often in idiosyncratically created structures.

This idea is also reinforced by authors such as Haseman (2006), Barrett and Bolt (2007), Kershaw and Nicholson (2011), Bonnenfant (2012), Leavy (2015) and Bala et al. (2017) when

they argue that because this artistic practice is individual, unique and particular, these models of research through artistic practice can be adapted using different approaches, as in a process of artistic research all aspects are often in motion and development (Arlander 2012). Thus, there is no general form of research that the researcher-artist can attempt to approximate, just as there is no universally accepted concept of art on which to base art-based research (Arlander 2012).

The research-creation projects of this research develop two components, the process of approaching the site-specific and the (de)construction of the sense of place, following a research approach through artistic practice (Dinis 2022), which is anchored in a 'discoveryled' research methodology (Rubidge 2005) and in concepts such as 'the undermind' (Claxton 1997, 'primary consciousness' (Edelman and Tononi 2001) and 'extended consciousness' (Damasio 2004).

The process of approaching the site-specific began with the interaction with the three religious places (Tree of Life Chapel, Chapel of the Immaculate and Church of Cedofeita) and was carried out through permanence and movements within them. The slow pace of these two actions allowed not only their registration but also the assimilation of the sensations of discovering the places, which were ordered from the memories of the places, thus highlighting the dimension of sensitive and affective experience (Jackson 1994). Observing the physical and digital records of the two actions carried out during the fieldwork, we noticed that they did not involve a subjective organization of the place but an intervention in the order of the elements presented. Thus, in this permanence and these movements, there is an intention to reorder the place and to create new local narratives, permeated with emotion, in a strategy of observing and assembling the atmosphere.

The site-specific projects focused on these three specific places, the Tree of Life Chapel, the Chapel of the Immaculate and the Church of Cedofeita, and started from the identification of elements of the context of the place, focusing on their ability to testify to symbolic aspects of the place, to inventory its memory and to reconstruct experiences of the place itself—memories and experiences that were used as guiding elements of the performative moments carried out in this research.

The process of research through artistic practice is understood by us as part of the temporal cycle of the work of art, in which its integral parts are thought together in a continuous iteration of research and action that we tend to consider appropriate to the performativity that we wish to substantiate (Dinis 2022).

The site-specific projects developed in this research were unfolded in a series of fundamental elements related to their design and realization7. We also consider that other information available for reading and viewing<sup>8</sup> is an integral and fundamental part of this essay. In addition to providing access to recordings and images of each of the creations, their consultation presents additional documentation on the process of the design, research, presentation and reception of each of the projects. Taken as a whole, these materials deepen and illustrate the paths of research through artistic practice and are therefore materials inherent to creative making itself, rightly understood as reflective practice. These three projects guarantee the thematic, temporal and spatial heterogeneity of the practical work developed within the conceptual framework of this research.

The site-specific projects were developed in two phases, the fieldwork and the creation of the sound and visual components, and followed a conceptual model of approach to place (Dinis 2022). The fieldwork covered the research process, which included reading and analyzing bibliographies about the places, interacting with these places, capturing and perceiving their environment, writing down sensations and local atmospheres, recording routines and activities in photographic and video media, sound recordings and visual recordings, and elaborating on the conceptual guide for the sound and visual component. The creation and production of the sound and visual component took place in the studio.

In the performative moments, the artist/performer is considered not only as an operator of the media that constitute, in this case, sound and image, but also as a mediator, as a creator and, consequently, as a narrator who constructs the sound and visual narratives. At the end of each performative moment, a conversation with the audience was facilitated to get feedback on the performance and the development of the site-specific project.

From the implementation of the conceptual model of approach to place (Dinis 2022), in each of the religious places the meanings of the site-specific projects were found. These include the themes (activators of performativity) of each of the religious places chosen for the fieldwork, namely shelter (Tree of Life Chapel), humility (Chapel of the Immaculate) and fragility (Church of Cedofeita).

Inside the Conciliar Seminary of Saints Peter and Paul in Braga is the Tree of Life Chapel, a place that appeals to the senses and emotions, the result of the joint work of seminarians, teachers, architects, artists, sculptors, goldsmiths, painters, carpenters and masons. It is a wooden shelter in which the various embedded beams create a fascinating play of light and shadow, giving the chapel a luminous appearance. The public presentation of the performance9, entitled *the slowness of waiting and echoing*, took place on 20 December 2022 in the Tree of Life Chapel of the Conciliar Seminary in Braga (Figure 1).

**Figure 1.** *The slowness of waiting and echoing* (20 December 2022, Tree of Life Chapel of the Conciliar Seminary, Braga).

A small forest gives access to the Chapel of the Immaculate, located in the Minor Seminary of Braga. Passing through this forest, one reaches a clearing that serves as the entrance to the assembly. All the elements of the assembly create an atmosphere of humility, conducive to introspection. There is also a 'body of light', a white marble panel suspended from a steel structure, through which an abundance of natural light floods the space, creating a qualified luminosity. The public presentation of the performance10, entitled *the wander that aggregates and contains*, took place on 3 March 2023 in the Chapel of the Immaculate of the Seminary of Our Lady of the Conception in Braga (Figure 2).

The Church of Cedofeita is a monumental and brutal concrete structure that highlights the use of raw materials such as stone and wood. A space where time, silence and materials promote the complementarity between authenticity and fragility, and which seeks to respond to the main variables of space, time and silence, materialized in a place where autonomy and dialogue meet. The public presentation of the performance11, entitled *the delay in searching and meeting*, took place on 2 June 2023 in the Church of Cedofeita in Porto (Figure 3).

**Figure 2.** *The wander that aggregates and contains* (3 March 2023, Chapel of the Immaculate of the Seminary of Our Lady of the Conception, Braga).

**Figure 3.** *The delay in searching and meeting* (2 June 2023, Church of Cedofeita, Porto).

Given the constant overlap between the themes of the site-specific projects (shelter, humility and fragility), the observation of the residual artifacts produced as part of the public presentations and the public feedback, we undertake that religious places are shelters for those seeking refuge, as they provide a space where one can find consolation, peace and a sense of spiritual connection, creating an atmosphere conducive to spiritual contemplation and inner reflection. These places can serve as a reminder of the importance of humility in a spiritual approach, fostering an attitude of openness, surrender and willingness to learn and grow spiritually. They are also places that inspire reflection on the fragility and impermanence of human life, inviting people to transcend their fragility and connect with something greater and more enduring, throughout the performative moments.
