Introduction
The exposition focuses on artistic practice oriented toward the public space of cities, especially in the Czech Republic. Based on performative lecture walks often followed by interactive workshops, my intention was to find and test new rhizomatic ways of looking at public space, including privately owned public spaces (POPS). I aimed to do this within a framework of critical thinking about public space that would enable a deeper focus on the quality of experience of the space's users. Currently, the project serves as an experiment that can provide some starting points for future thinking about a critical revision of certain places and locations, or as inspiration for participatory inclusion in development planning, feedback gathering, etc.
Artistic Approach
In my artistic practice, I am interested in what public spaces are trying to tell us, drawing links with fields such as urbanism and sociology but also considering the temporarily changing surfaces, made up of marketing and other visual communication surrounding us. My aim as a visual artist is to provide a different kind of sensitivity and a broader perspective on the issue, critically assessing the ideology present behind various organizations connected to the topic of public space. I have selected the motifs of POPS and corporeality in relation to space, as areas in which the contrast between the private and public escalates and is, therefore, clearly visible. I aim to reverse the position of the participants of the space as receivers to the position of those who are aware of their feelings and knowledge, can articulate them, and become the creators of its form.
The basic context for me is psychogeography, the ideological basis of Situationism, and the work of its main exponent Guy Debord and also Ivan Chtcheglov. For me, the exploration of the psychological effects of the urban environment and their artistic representation provides fertile ground for my own political and artistic statement in response to the post-capitalist system and the dictates of urbanism.
I have realized performative lecture walks under the title Eyes Wide Open for the City in the following cities: Tábor, Prague – from Karlín to Corso, Leipzig, Pardubice, Prague – from Florence to Florentinum, Brno, Prague – Stromovka in the years 2020–2022. Not all of these lecture walks included interactive workshops.
My aim with the performative walks was to map what occurs in our bodies concerning space, public spaces, and architecture. And also to experience, in a different modality, a divergent and present-moment perspective on the perception of space and our internal processes through individual body parts and free associations connected to them.
Each of these performative walks was based on an interaction with a given site, for which I quoted selected extracts from my book of artistic research, What You See Is What You Think (2020). In order to consider the specific sites of each walk in a new light, I chose a trajectory through three chapters that evoked the atmosphere or specific issues connected to the site in question, from focusing on the interpretation of the environment around us in the ‘Reading the City’ chapter, with its analogy of the city as a book, through a development of this foundation using the findings of Richard Sennett and Pascal Gielen (2015: 277) in the chapter titled ‘The Pseudo-Public Space of the ‘Adolescent City’’, which compares road users to adolescents, who are impeded from becoming independent and mature by the hegemony of the state and consumption. In the chapter titled ‘Scattered Attention’, I focused on the excess of visual information, whose quantity pushes the phenomenon of deep attention out of public space, instead emphasizing emotion and the ephemeral, momentary associations and needs of the individual.
All the performative lecture walks lasted approximately 20-30 minutes. The words spoken were based on readings from my artist‘s book[1]. I selected individual passages in relation to a particular location. During the walk I alternated reading from my own commentary with moments of silence.
In the case of certain walks, a workshop followed. Its purpose was to obtain, by various methods, opinions from the participants about the spaces we visited.
Ethical Concerns
The performative lecture walks, including planned and announced interaction with the audience, were attended by respondents who volunteered to participate, based on their interest in the program provided by the institutions hosting the events. They were informed that it was an experimental art project and that they could leave the lecture walk and the participatory workshop at any time and follow the instructions only if they were comfortable. Also, that the walk would be documentd, which all respondents agreed to.
Role of artist:
- walk: to lead, to read, - workshop: to perform, to lead psychogeographical meditation / to moderate discussion
Role of participants:
- walk: to follow, to listen, - workshop: to concentrate, to formulate emotions
Sketches by a participant of the workshop We Are Public Space, Eyes Wide Open for the City – Pardubice, (Think Thank of Public Space, Gallery Gampa), 2021
Recording of participants' answers (in the Czech language) to the question: What is your opinion of the environment we are experiencing at the moment?
Diagram
head. constantly searching for paths and possible obstacles, but also an autopilot in established paths.
ear. the non-stop noise is quite deadening. I escape to where the noise is smaller.
eye. I try to remind myself to lift my head up even on the street I’ve walked a hundred times and find something I’ve never spotted before. look at the sky. find a detail on a façade.
lungs. heavy air.
hand. I often touch plants more than handrails, even in the city, and even in an artificial environment, I often look for a relief. a structure.
stomach. often anxious from the omnipresent noise, non-stop movement, particularly in the center. greater focus on danger.
sole of the foot. unlike movement in the landscape, nature, it is pressed into not always comfortable footwear, it does not perceive the details of the ground, it does not feel a connection with the earth through the often isolating concrete and paving.
Questionnaire
1 – From my childhood, I remember a greater freedom of movement in the city than I feel now, particularly regarding the amount of traffic.
2 – I helped out with the flowerbeds in Tyršovy sady [a park in Pardubice]. As part of the flowerbeds, I felt a little invisible and extracted from the usual operation of the city around me and the other users of the park. A pleasant and different mode of perception.
3 – An increased perception of the number of people around me and their proximity, particularly at the beginning of the pandemic. Perception of a significant decrease of noise, traffic in the city, more fragrant air, more legible bird sounds, finer sounds of leaves, trees.
– for me, as an introvert, it was a massive improvement in living space.
Note: Many participants agreed on the negative influence of noise, the problem of objectifying one’s own body, and the poor availability of toilets. There were neutral to positive responses to the possibility of perceiving one’s surroundings and relatively positive responses to the calming down of cities during the pandemic.