‘A profound edge’: performative negotiations of Belfast

The lack of an overarching narrative of place for Northern Ireland, and itsterritorial conflict, have resulted in fragmented, highly localized and strictlybounded senses of place. This is nowhere more evident than in Belfast, a cityprofoundly shaped by its sectarian geographies. As a result, what theorists havecome to characterize as the relative liberty of urban space is overtly compromised,with movement through and within Belfast being restricted by the policing of itsinternal boundaries. These difficulties, and their gendered effects, are focusedhere in relation to the particular experience of artist Sandra Johnston. Johnstonmade two performative pieces in response and resistance to the spatial constraintshe had undergone on the Lower Newtownards Road, a loyalist area of East Belfast.Johnston disrupts the performance of order and control evident inBelfast’s politico-religious territories, and offers a radicallyalternative negotiation of space, which I argue is personally, communally andpolitically significant