In this chapter, I shall focus in detail on the event from Karlín to Corso in which I used the motif of psychosomatic perception of space through a participatory workshop, and where the potential for further development of the work with the activation of the psychosomatic response of the participants is the most evident.
EXPERIMENT
From Karlín to the Corso
12th of June, 2021, number of participants: 5
The experiment consisted of two parts:
1. performative lecture walk – This had clearly defined roles: the transmitter and the receivers. This also had to do with our use of the tour guide’s kit: I, the guide, had a microphone and a transmitter, while the participants had receivers and headphones. This type of walk, narrated/accompanied by readings from my book, has the advantage of stimulating the attention of the participant through the use of a set of headphones, which eliminates the sounds and noises of their surroundings and precludes the possibility of communicating verbally with the other participants.
Such a leadership position is obviously hierarchical, and intentionally so, as it serves as an initiation for opening up a framework of possibilities for interpreting urban space and thinking critically about it since its perception is usually clogged with obligations, systems, education, transfer orientation, etc.
2. experimental interactive workshop – let’s say in a freestyle mindfulness of space, focusing on the perception of the surrounding space through one’s own body, which was communicated by spoken word into headphones. Participants could express their feelings through drawing and writing. They were asked for their free associations to the motifs of different body parts.
The event took place in the Karlín district of Prague, specifically walking from the VIPER Gallery to the recently developed, privately owned complex of administrative buildings with an adjacent courtyard recently created by repurposing the former ČKD factory, now known as Corso Karlín. Moving through this area served as a starting point for reading the extracts from What You See Is What You Think mentioned above, emphasizing the phenomenon of POPS and the neo-liberal conception of the city: ‘Restrictions are also caused by so-called hostile architecture (or defensive architecture), designed to discourage certain groups of people from dwelling in a given area, via a sophisticated morphology of uncomfortable design and psychological means of discouragement. The exclusion of risk groups and the marked preference for the use of public space by potential consumers corresponds with a situation where the market and public space are globally controlled by the interests of a narrow minority of investors’ (Kinterová 2020: 33).
The workshop’s aim, explored in the revitalized courtyard, was to discover, through the sketches and notes of the participants, what participants felt in relation to their perception of the body inhabiting urban space. Five respondents participated, all either employees of the VIPER Gallery or audience members linked to this organization’s activities. They were women between 25 and 50, university-educated, and long-term inhabitants of Prague.
The respondents made use of the generosity of the format of wrapping paper, using the contact of their body with the paper and the foundation surface (found on-site, such as pavement surfaces, benches, grass), working with their bodies, outlining drawings, and physically and mentally making their impressions present in space and time. This disclosure took place through guided meditation, or an attempt to engage the associations connected to individual body parts or organs in the perception of the environment and to enable, through this connection, a step out of the otherwise stereotypical frameworks of thinking about being in space.
They included intimate, subjective experiences that they represented through diagrammatic sketches of their bodies. I have written the text fragments from the drawings into subjectively composed extracts to enable translation from Czech into English. See the sample:
Summary
Based on the post-program debate, the feedback I received can be summarised as follows:
- all participants appreciated the fact that they could express feelings that were latent but important in relation to the perception and experience of space
- they welcomed the opportunity to step out of stereotyped frameworks of thinking about experiencing space through their own bodies and minds
- two respondents critically noted that the chosen location was rather welcoming, despite the controversial nature of the POPS phenomenon
- one respondent commented that attention to strange or bizarre situations could be developed more and that for challenging passages, she would recommend choosing slower reading or alternating them with even longer moments of silence
Conclusion
Bodies and spaces bring up a broad range of feelings and associations that can serve as inspirations for further reflections on public space, particularly with regard to a complex grasp of it. It must be said that this was an experimental project, on the basis of which we could search for more effective ways in which to acquire feedback from the participants and give space for new free subjective associations.
Experiences gained from practice that the idea of the benefits of a psychosomatic approach:
A) did support:
- it is possible to use experimental methods to report on deeper experiences related to public space and to loosen stereotypes imposed by upbringing and cultural frameworks partially;
- the participants’ ability to focus on their needs and feelings in relation to space can be developed;
- the attempt to create associations referring to physical experiences through specific parts of the body helped to articulate subconscious feelings;
- subjective experience is invisible, and there is a desire and need for this to be ventilated;
- accentuating the feelings associated with experiencing the city emphasizes the need for civic participation in an inclusive and sustainable city.
B) did not support:
- the obtained outcomes could be visually and content-wise fascinating, but not exact and thus more difficult to grasp and interpret (which could be the subject of interdisciplinary collaboration and deeper exploration in the future)
- the quality of the information in each output can vary considerably, ranging from very informative to overly brief and general.
C) can be developed in the future:
- the feedback methodology can be developed through further experiments or in collaboration with experts from other disciplines;
- to focus on the more controversial example of POPS, where the idea of the empty city could better highlight the contrast between private and public and the physical experience of certain site;
- to focus more on the psychogeographical line of possible cooperation with a specific community and to prepare a more narrowly focused research workshop/project based on a specific assignment, to develop a more precise methodology.
Cities could respond to the current needs of their inhabitants not only from the perspective of function, but also in regards the quality of life, maintaining the freedom of the individual, and societal diversity. Emphasizing the feelings of the participants can become one of the proposed tools of the holistic approach, leading – among other things – to empathy: the empathy of city designers with their inhabitants, the empathy of investors with their users, the empathy of municipalities with their citizens, and, finally, or perhaps most importantly, empathy with one's feelings. The fact that someone engages with the innermost feelings of the users of a city can bring a new level and perspective into discussions of public space, which are more often expert discussions demarcated by the horizons of the profession in question. The experimental form of the performative walk and participative workshop holds the potential to consider our surroundings differently, aiding in our search for new contexts in urbanism and our reading of the city. This practice intends to provide an impulse from a stronger bottom-up voice, to accentuate feelings connected to experiences and emphasize the need for civic participation in creating an inclusive and sustainable city.
… This is where we come to the phenomenon of POPS, we also have quite a number of these in Prague. And we can just sharpen our perception here. It’s a space that may seem pleasant to many people, somehow well-kept and cared for, but on the other hand, it raises a whole series of questions for me about what I can do in this space and how I should behave here. Exactly … I’m glad you're heading in that direction because I’m very fascinated here in whether it’s meant as an invitation or as a barrier. And I’d be happy if we understand it as an invitation …
… I’m definitely interested in the bladder. That’s such an important moment in public space where you need to resolve this situation of a full bladder and a lot of people solve that situation in quite different ways and it’s actually quite space-related – we have to go somewhere to resolve it, we have to find this place, we have to be able to do it, and so on, so sometimes, or often, I don’t know, that need can bring up a lot of spatial issues …
Video from the experimental interactive workshop From Karlín to Corso under the title We Are Public Space, 29 min, 2021, camera/editing: Oskar Helcel, subtitles: Barbora Jurčová, translation: Tereza Kovaříková, concept: Markéta Kinterová
Sketches by the participant of the workshop We Are Public Space, 2021, From Karlín to Corso (VIPER Gallery, Prague)
eyes. movement of bodies along façades. statics. I observe the tuning of the colors. repetitions of shapes and forms. ears. irritating cars. I don’t want headphones, they divide one from reality too much. mouth. I suffocate under my face mask. I only have eyes with which to share. the brain in public space. identity and yet anonymity. windows, a passage, clouds, stairs. hand. pandemic. I feel more pressed physically in public transport. I touch public handrails and doors much less. the back is a shell. protection against the gaze of others. a shield behind which no one sees. stomach. it grumbles and knots at the smell from a restaurant. bladder. the question where?! it constricts in position and urinates. the structure of grass on the sole of the foot. relief and freedom. bosom. the eyes of others stare at the chest. objectification takes place. I am in the spotlight.
Sketches by the participants of the workshop We Are Public Space, 2021, From Karlín to Corso (VIPER Gallery, Prague)
01 dirt attacks. hand. touches, handles, handrails, doors. the pandemic has made me afraid to touch my face. the stomach is looking for food. it's constantly attacked by images of food. the eyes read information. they burn. ears. they perceive all kinds of things. they can't turn off. nose. feels. mouth. gateway to the body. i want to yawn. back. the urge to lie down for a while, but I'm ashamed to do so. forgotten sex. bladder. considering the security of the toilet. breasts and buttocks. are a trouble.
02 head. terribly difficult. aching today, probably going to storm. wind. drops. rain. i usually carry at least water in my backpack. can't walk around town topless. mouth. plastic bags at the convenience store will solve it. yawn loud like a dingo. pee in the bushes, between cars, behind walls. feelings of stress, shame. In a pandemic, even more acute. arm. set up a non-dominant arm for vaccinations. back. the inappropriateness of rolling on the road. buttocks. unpleasantness and what about farting in public. bare feet. freedom. joy.
03 head most. the head is the brain. the mouth breathes, solves. to smell through the nose is an experience. too much air. power. air. hear space. ears. varied, important. the hand is somewhere off to the side, not touching. belly. tuck. I'm looking for delicacies. I'm adding chest, breasts. back. straighten. they carry a backpack, valuables... best if they don't have to carry anything. sex is with me here. butt sits where it's friendly to sit. rest. feet. good.
04 hand. restriction of touch. eyes. transformation.
head. cleanliness. home. stomach is spoiled.
So actually, our destination will be Corzo Karlín. On the way there we will be in motion, on the spot we will try to make our body present within the public space and vice versa. On the way back it will be some kind of transfer. I think we can start now, you can follow me.
Pseudo-Public Space of an Adolescent City – Our cities, planned as they are by the state from the perspective of control, place their participants in the position of adolescents, as the phenomenon was defined by the US sociologist Richard Sennett. According to him, a certain type of natural disorder must be present for a person to develop into an adult individual. Sennett draws on an analysis of the historical development of urban planning, which in his account has since the 19th century followed from “a group of assumptions of terrible simplicity”. His misgivings stem from the rise of technocratism rooted in grand-scale planning in the style of Baron Haussmann and his concept of urban planning for Paris as the transformation of a medieval town into a modern-day metropolis with broad boulevards and avenues.
This 150 year-old concept, the product of the Newtonian and Cartesian notions of science resulted in the hegemony of expert knowledge over the actual needs and desires of the inhabitants. It remains even today the most frequent vision which big cities and the fastest-growing agglomerations rush to make reality, regardless of its side effects, such as segregation, unaffordable housing, the mushrooming of slum neighborhoods, civic unrest, etc. The precedent forged by Haussmann in terms of the conception of public space (broad boulevards to facilitate the movement of troops, class stratification by district, etc.) represents a tool of control and conflict prevention. In addition, new priorities which appeared in the second half of the 20th century, such as automobile traffic, systems of utilitarian prefabricated units, infrastructure for electricity distribution and so on, gave rise in turn to an order where the human dimension is lost. From there also follows an absence of room for change and the organic functioning of society.
City dwellers and visitors find themselves in a position that offers no solution or way out. For the authoritative concept of city planning denies two fundamental attributes of adulthood – freedom and responsibility. Pascal Gielen notes the system’s efforts to keep people in the position of adolescents, prevented from testing their identity, becoming self-reliant and growing up by maintaining their ego in safe homogeneous comfort zones. In this respect it is important to note that the rules of public space in this way disregard the identity of its users. The city, as with adolescents, places a stress on homogeneity, ensuring a structure that is easy to survey, and thus facilitating control.
Since the 1970s and increasingly since the 1990s, the Western world has seen the weakening of the role of the state and the merger of the private and state sector, with the economy in general becoming more abstract. The environment is friendly to the real estate market and developers, whose projects thus easily attain space. The late 1990s saw an increased focus on the creative class (legitimized by the controversial theses of Richard Florida, criticized for favoring gentrification and social elitism).
I think that right here in Karlín, there is perhaps no better neighborhood in Prague to see how gentrification is taking place and what neighborhood many of us may remember. What shape this neighborhood district took fifteen years ago before the floods and what shape it is gradually taking today and how the composition of the population is changing and much more.
As Gielen points out, control escalates into repression, and as he puts it, we are witnessing the rise of the “creative-repressive city”.
Gielen sees the tools of control in direct connection with an interpretation of global political trends such as rampant neoliberalism and the rise of neo-nationalism. Encounters with the unknown or otherness are eliminated as purposeless. Inhabitants of neighborhoods segmented on the basis of social class have little need for shared public space or participation in community politics. Where it is not necessary to question and defend one’s identity on a daily basis, there is little desire or will to contribute to events in the public arena. As a result, such functionally segregated cities push politics out of their streets, limiting it to participation in elections. Public space thus becomes entirely depoliticized. One cannot but agree with Gielen, noting that in the former Eastern Block countries the depoliticized nature of public space in terms of the active assertion of civic freedoms was caused by the Communist regime, but that even after the re-establishment of the democratic-capitalist system little has changed.
Exclusion of the Non-Consumer Pedestrian –The development of urban public space is shaped by global political and economic interests. The consequence is that public space becomes prey to consumerism,
Here, I would recommend noticing observing the various beautiful signs and notices and start taking in the architecture of the privately owned public spaces here in every detail and try to pay attention to or experience every detail.
Since the 1980s, Western Europe has seen a rise in private ownership of public space, a phenomenon attendant with neoliberal municipal policies. These consist of a long-term tendency of the rise in investment in the commercial sector and its influence, and inversely a decrease in state or public investment in public space. The resultant phenomenon of POPS – privately owned public spaces – presents a situation by definition prey to a fundamental conflict regarding their purposes and the services they are expected to provide.
This inherent conflict of interests is evident not only in looking at the globalized and homogeneous appearance of such places, but also their functioning, designed to encourage consumerist behavior. The most frequent criticism notes the rules they impose, which apart from protecting private property by imposing dominant tools of control via private security agencies, also implicitly call for the exclusion of certain social groups, not to speak of other questionable issues such as bans on assembly and public performance, which in extreme cases can border on violating basic human rights. Restrictions are also caused by so-called hostile architecture (or defensive architecture), designed to discourage certain groups of people from dwelling in a given area, via a sophisticated morphology of uncomfortable design and psychological means of discouragement. The exclusion of risk groups and the marked preference for the use of public space by potential consumers corresponds with a situation where the market and public space are globally controlled by the interests of a narrow minority of investors.
This is where we come to the phenomenon of POPS, we also have quite a number of these in Prague. And we can just sharpen our perception here. It's a space that may seem pleasant to many people, somehow well-kept and cared for, but on the other hand it raises a whole series of questions for me about what I can do in this space and how I should behave here. Exactly... I'm glad you're heading in that direction, because I'm very fascinated here if it's meant as an invitation or as a barrier. And I'd be happy if we understood understand it as an invitation.
In the introduction to the catalogue Skulptur Projekte Münster (2017), Claire Bishop describes the phenomenon of POPS as spaces owned by private persons, yet public in character (city squares, lobbies, or parks). The paradox of these spaces lies in the fact that they are even more thoroughly monitored under the social choreography of neo-liberal space, which advantages the individual who is in line with the consumerist ideal over everyone else, thus causing further alienation of socially excluded groups. This exclusion is a serious issue, affecting as it does not only certain groups of people, but also the very notion of freedom of decision regarding one’s behavior in an arena which ambiguously defines itself as a privately owned public space. What this ultimately does is to stifle public interests by manipulating people for the purpose of generating profit.
And there is also an interesting part of urban gardening, where I have actually thought about it for a long time, what this urban gardening, which can seem like a quite sympathetic activity or element in this space, actually means in reality, and again the quote by Pascal Gielen came to my mind, which I will read again: "The purposeless encounter with the unknown or with otherness is singled out." And here, actually, the range of otherness shrinks into the possibility of signing your own label. That's probably the biggest otherness that's allowed here, and it's actually much more about some appropriation of a cube of dirt here than it is about ensuring some kind of food self-sufficiency or something, because actually the amount of land here for growing is actually quite marginal, so it's much more of a PR marketing strategy than anything else.
We're coming to a beautiful place, the weather is getting dramatic, I think it's going to be great. And here we could find either how everyone feels about it... and it's nice to get a feel for the space and the different activities you can experience. Like I mentioned before, this space still offers some openness or some little bit of hiding or some opportunity to be here. And we can either disperse everyone to his/her own little area that he/she likes or just whatever you want. And we could take out that paper in a minute and start recording the parts of our body, which I'll tell you in what order and what to add.
And I'm gonna read the introduction. Oh, yeah, and I also thought to myself that we could try a kind of psychosomatics of public space through the body:
The very process of entering public space can be seen as "a determination to re-enter that often uncomfortable situation of "being seen, being in plain plain sight". So it's actually a huge moment or situation where we step out of our own closed environment of, say, an apartment into that public space, and it's a moment that may have actually become stale, it's everyday, but at the same time it's accompanied by a lot of rituals - the preparation before the departure, nobody leaves the house without clothes, so it's something that's not just like that, and there's an awful lot of equipment, capital, etc., so the preparation is actually quite lengthy.When we move through the city, we give our bodies to the public and through that movement we demonstrate our fitness ability to be there (whereas a drunkard, for example, demonstrates his unfitnessinability). Most often we perceive our surroundings with our eyes. What happens when we involve our whole body in the perception of space? And when we describe their relation to public space through the presence of certain parts of the body? We will attempt a kind of psychosomatics of public space. To create a map of what is happening in us and in our body in relation to space, the public and architecture.
What is important for us now is openness and freedom. As Ivan Vyskočil says: "it is frightening how smart people are afraid of awkwardness. The threat of ridiculousness disqualifies many people from acting. They don't want to risk possible embarrassment. It's a matter of pride. We're vain and try to hide it behind objective descriptions, but it's the concreteness that brings out the natural world. It can take a long time before one has the courage to undertake something where one does not know how it will proceed, and before one reaches that recklessness. Without crossing that line of 'looking out', there can be no quality enough participation in the process." Frivolity is self-indulgent and, above all, playful. And we use it to test the mental construct that public space is not around us, that public space is us.
So now it's wrapping paper time, and since architecture starts from the ground up, often already underground, we also start from the ground up and draw our feet wherever you want on the paper. And you can do it with a shoe, without a shoe, both options are interesting enough. And then the foot, before it starts to rain, could somehow appear on the paper, and we could think about what each part of the foot feels like. So starting completely from the foot, from the ground, from what maybe we feel, what surface is there, or even in general, when you're in a public space, it doesn't have to be about the current moment, or it can be, it's completely up to you. Or it can be about how the foot feels without the shoe or in the shoe. The shoe is also an element, a tool of representation or some functional element, it can, I don't know, make it easier to move through the city or it can make it more difficult and we can notice all that here. I'm going to make a note here too. Then we'll draw a hand somewhere. Any fragment of a hand, but we're going to talk now at the beginning about the hand as such or with the fingers about how hands are a contact tool. They're the thing that most of our body interacts with the public space. And of course the feet, because they just touch the ground the most, and at the same time, a huge point of contact is those hands. And there can be an awful lot of feelings associated with hands. And it can be associated with the pandemic. Because over the last year, the whole society went through some huge social changes. And now we're gonna get into the torso, if you can draw it in there or if you can just portray it however you want, yeah. Maybe try to get the buttocks in there. That's a very interesting and important part of the body, too. Maybe we can start with the buttocks. What feelings might be associated with them. Maybe it's a neglected part of the body, I don't know. A lot of things in that space are designed for the buttocks too, whether in public transport, for sitting and so on, and at the same time it's also connected to that feeling I was describing a moment ago - being in plain sight, being seen - for a lot of people that can be a moment too, when a lot of people are trying to work with those buttocks, maybe in terms of clothing, somebody is trying to cover them up or somebody is trying to emphasize them, and it can be part of a lot of associations in that public space itself, the idea of just those buttocks. And at the same time the buttocks can be some kind of contact point with architecture and with the feelings associated with the objectification of one's own body, of course. And of course there are many other vital organs. I'm definitely interested in the bladder. That's such an important moment in public space where you need to resolve this situation of a filled bladder and a lot of people resolve that situation in quite different ways and it's actually quite space related - we have to go somewhere to resolve it, we have to find it, we have to be able to do it and so on, so sometimes or often, I don't know, that need can bring up a lot of spatial issues and interesting situations. And then there's also gender, gender can also have a lot of its own needs or pleasures or difficulties, or gender can also be terribly forgotten because it's not talked about so much in relation to public space and it can be a poor thing as such a taboo.
Head. There are a lot of senses on it - it's a nutritious chapter, just with the space, so of course the eyes - it's proven that 80% of perception is taken up by visuals. What can the eyes sense now or in general? What do you think about often in terms of, for example, the combination of sight, looking at that space and in terms of sort of analyzing that space. If you perceive the sounds of that city and if those sounds affect you in some way. If some of them make you uncomfortable or if some of them attract you or stimulate you, and also what all your ears might experience in the space. There may be tools or technology involved, if you use headphones for example, if headphones can be a kind of well-intentioned barrier for you from that space or the perception of it, that can be a significant moment too - headphones. The mouth is one of the gateways into the body directly and it can also be associated in public space with the pandemic, obviously with the facemask and all that, that it's hygienically just that gateway into the body, so I wonder if that's changed anything for you in the last year through the sensations of that mouth or if you want to keep it in general terms regardless of the pandemic. And about the ears. The ears can't actually be closed, unlike the mouth. And what those mouths do in the public space, whether we are all influenced by our upbringing and keep our mouths shut or whether we would like to disrupt that and maybe yawn significantly, or smack lips, or spit, or just leave our mouths open and maybe the facemask can have an effect on all of that or some of that and can bring some relief or it can be a restriction and something terribly unpleasant. And finally, it could be the brain, the last part of the body here in the workshop, an organ. That's a huge chapter of course and now if you would try to somehow compare in relation to space what is happening to you in there and what you think of as maybe the first thing that comes up in relation to your brain and space. And sort of that planning of moving around the space, navigating it, self-control, maybe even a huge self-control to actually playing a role and affirming an identity in that public space. All of that can be there.
Moving through the city, each of us sees different things, and each sees these things differently. Perception is by definition subjectively selective. Many people believe themselves to be at least partly immune to visual messaging. Advertising strategies, however, specifically target perception on the subconscious level. Walking around the city, one automatically becomes a reader, confronted consciously or unconsciously in the day-to-day traffic of the city with forms of text which he or she decodes. Based on Henri Lefebvre’s interpretation, Jaime Iregui observes that: "people read and interpret the city through the text built by the State and the town planners." It is this text that I am concerned with here. What is our urban public space telling us?
It is not my aim, however, to discuss marketing strategies. Rather, I am going to focus on the interpretation of public space, mechanisms of control and dividing attention. One of the perspectives that offer themselves is to see this space as unhealthy, suffering from a host of maladies of affluence. Some symptoms of these woes have a rather close bearing on the issue of public space. A direct connection to a concept of public space which exploits people’s consumerist behavior with the aim of encouraging instant gratification can be seen in the issue of obesity, as its main cause is “excessive food intake due to high accessibility of food, availability of time and appetite (not hunger) leading to excess intake of calories (overeating)”.
Paranoia, a mental disorder, can be also read as one of the symptoms of excessive control of state and corporations over public life. Paranoia is defined as “suspiciousness and a tendency to twist and misinterpret neutral or friendly behavior of others as hostile.”
So now that if I go over the top, in some cases, sometimes often, I would describe public space as paranoid. Thanks for sticking it out. I'm completely wiped out.