Emerging between urban research and choreographic experimentation, ODYSSEY THIS IS BOAT exposes the body as an archival medium across shifting landscapes. The work evokes a visceral and oneiric echo between migration and spatial power.

Situated along the Thames riverfront, the project engages with a landscape marked by histories of labour, migration and redevelopment. Rather than reconstructing these histories, it examines how spatial structures exert invisible pressure upon the body and shape the perception of power.

The investigation unfolds through sound and movement rather than language. Performers inhabit transitional and marginal zones such as bridges, disused docks and covered waterways, responding vocally to their acoustic surroundings. The sounds are non-verbal, including breaths, hums and fragmented tones. As the process evolves, sound is often absorbed, distorted or silenced by the architecture, revealing the agency of space and its capacity to regulate presence and audibility.

Through this process, the notion of site shifts from a neutral backdrop to an active collaborator. Space determines rhythm, proximity and the bodily negotiation of visibility. The resulting dynamics of movement and perception echo Lefebvre’s notion of the social production of space and Taylor’s understanding of performance as an embodied archive of knowledge.

The performers’ bodies are approached as living archives. Each body carries traces of migration and labour, yet continually generates new perceptual records through the act of performance. Drawing upon the gestures and postures of manual work as movement prototypes, the piece develops an embodied form of archiving that materialises invisible histories through breath, friction and echo. The archive thus emerges not as a static document but as a dynamic negotiation between body and space.

Within the field of theatre practice, this approach proposes a shift in directing methodology from interpretation to investigation. Performance becomes a site of spatial inquiry where directing operates as an embodied method for sensing and understanding power rather than as a mode of representation.