Body Spaces were 3 site-specific installations, shown in a car park, a theatre foyer and a hospital in Manchester, UK. The work explored physicality and space, public access and intimacy, physical absence and digital presence. From ghostly video projections, stories and photographs emerged sensings of urban spaces inhabited in unfamiliar ways. Traces of previous habitations haunted the location, and the spectator was invited to engage in the visual memory of dancing bodies. Created by The Olimpias, director/choreographer Petra Kuppers, video art Sara Domville, sound art Sarah Frances/Sam Richards, in a residency with young disabled people.

Framing: Body Spaces is a meta-text about Body Spaces: it presents a new experience of the work, and invites its spectator to contemplate participatory practice, interactivity and digital presence.

How does multiple ownership show itself in the work?

What avenues of interactivity - between camera and performer, between different artists, between performer and spectator - are explored?

What is an accessible digital urban aesthetic?

What new insights emerge in these digital encounters with wheelchair-using young people, their perspectives and their stories? What is social art?

How does Body Spaces negotiate the issues of presence and absence, visuality and embodiment that haunt contemporary digital art practices?

These questions frame Body Spaces - conceptually and literally. Entry into the installation is choreographed and framed by these meta-textual questions, displayed on the walls and floors. Opportunities for spectator feedback and response is given through digital recording devices and comments books. The format of Framing: Body Spaces is chosen as a hybrid between art practice and academic practice - it opens up new spaces within the format of an academic convention.

The original Body Spaces was commissioned and exhibited as three site-specific installations as part of Digital Summer, October 2000, Manchester, UK.