The shaping of space includes the possibility of influencing its inhabitants. This is a fundamental axiom of urban planners, architects, and engineers as representatives of technical disciplines and elites dominating the final form of cities. Similar reasons can be applied to art in public space, including intangible subtle artistic media such as intervention, performance, etc.
What goes on in the heads and hearts and other organs of the bodies of the participants in the traffic of cities? What does public space communicate to us? The intention of this exposition is to open up to critical thinking and to get a perhaps harder-to-grasp but feeling-based subjective response from the participants that could inspire the shaping of the form of cities in the future.
The central principle of the artistic practice is an attempt to accentuate subjective experiences focused on our bodies and on making them consciously present in public space. Both layers are a significant component of the performative lecture walks and workshops, based on which I introduce the results of interactions with the respondents.
The last part is a theoretical reflection on the issue of urban public space and on the thesis that public space does not have to be only around us but that we are public space, and we are those who experience it. Finally, I shall attempt to describe what cities looked like during the pandemic and consider whether these scenes might be a model for the future. Are we to expect further experiences of empty cities?
