Site-Specific Theatre and Political Engagement across Space and Time: The Psychogeographic Mapping of British Petroleum in Platform's And While London Burns

Abstract

This essay focuses on Platform's audio-walk And While London Burns (2006), which generates a new map of London by means of the "carbon web," or the complex network of companies and supporting industries on which British Petroleum (BP) relies. The production—and its message about the urgency of halting climate change—has since accrued additional layers of meaning, given the disaster of the Deepwater Horizon oil-rig explosion and spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Addressing the shifting historical and political frame of reference that has surrounded the production at three different times, I analyze the production's use of psychogeography to render critical thinking into physicality through a self-motivated, multi-sensory engagement with the cityscape that generates a visceral response. And While London Burns deploys the paradox of forcing participants to perform changes and make their own decisions in spite of the potentially isolating and personal medium of the audio-walk.

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