Redesigning Public Space
Despite the obvious differences on the aspect of public space each response addresses, the common ground between them can be found in their objective: to build environments of trust between actors. We see a call for change in terms of behavior. The shift proposed in both is certainly a very challenging one and cannot stay unaffected by the hegemonic economic and political structures. Can public space be truly symbiotic in contemporary democracies defined by the capitalist system of production? Could alternative models be applied regionally based on each context?
Both bodies of research look into the ‘How [is public space (re)created]’ and experiment with shifts in relations and interactions while considering space in its physicality. They stand for finding the cracks and connections in-between towards unlearning and relearning certain behaviors.
In the case of more-than-human actors, this calls for a deeper shift from anthropocentrism. This shift can be politically or legally regulated but most importantly it has to be cultivated from early education, as human dominance goes hand in hand with how states are maintained and how the capital works. In the neoliberal turn, there is too little space left to consider publicness, let alone publicness of beings which do not actively contribute to economic relations. However, such experiments can bring significant changes locally based on each context, applying alternative models of being together, such as practices of the global south. Collectively challenging (human) superiority through art activation seems like a hopeful attempt towards a more symbiotic existence.
In the case of government procedures, tradition seems to play a major role but it is not the only factor to be considered. The distance between government and citizens, created by the strict regulatory, controlling or punitive role government assumes (which the arrangement of bodies within government spaces echoes), is by default too difficult to shorten. Again, it is the political system and the accompanying political culture cultivated from early ages that embeds certain behaviors (submissive or individualist or worst, passive) in our way of appearing or behaving in public. The Northern European context is certainly one that can test results in reinstating trust towards institutions by trying people-centered approaches, due to historical and political reasons related to citizens rights, but there are numerous problematics to be considered discussing public legal space in those and in other contexts.
To Rudi Laermans the response creates the public. The camera means ‘an eye that sees’, so the question is who sees, who responds. In Ivana Filip’s case study, the cats-responders generate publicness through the apparatus.
Arnt Mein advocates for the creation of public space through facilitation. In this, the performativity of the lawyer’s body and the performativity of the space itself are seen as crucial. For Ivana Filip, shared agency and cultivation of care strengthens publicness in common environments. Cats and humans appear to one another through daily interaction, through performing together.
A crossover is proposed: inviting cats to a courtroom to stretch the boundaries of what is considered normal. The unexpected always adopts a subversive character.
A question of ownership is also posed: Whose is the space? Does it ‘belong’ to the one who occupies it?
The second responder, Arnt Mein, researches how law is perceived by citizens and justice seekers. The focus of his research is on redesigning public legal space through tranforming the correlation of such space and the presence of citizens within. The research is conducted through investigating spatial parameters that influence legal procedures as well as the behavior of legal professionals, in order to find out what can be changed to re-instate or inspire public trust and how.
The researcher explains the transition currently taking place in the Netherlands to move from a more bureaucratic to a more responsive state, when it comes to law in the government. This transition marks a complete change of attitude and stance for Dutch lawyers working for the government as they have to move from a formalistic approach to a more solution-oriented, people-oriented approach.
In the NL public hearings take place in the town hall, in a boring typical room where you will find yourself opposed to 5 legal professionals. These professionals usually behave in a very formalistic way; this is how they were trained to behave. To citizens, such processes are perceived as incomprehensible. So, we were wondering how we can change the perception of this procedure to a friendlier one because it’s also important to strengthen public trust in the government, in the legal institutions, which is quite a big thing in the NL after the recent elections.
This research is quite challenging or threatening for legal professionals because their attitude leans towards being neutral. Mein sees potential to subvert this and adopt a people-oriented approach in redesigning the public legal space. This space will be fostered through taking into account more aspects than the legal one, social and personal, necessary in redefining the relation between state and citizens. Mentioned during the panel discussion, such a change in attitude should start from the period one is trained to be a lawyer and would go as far as changing curriculums and teaching styles of professors of law by exploring alternative performative models.
Parallel to calling for a behavioral change, a change in the physical space is under consideration. What material elements of the space can facilitate such a difference? Sound/Music, colors, furniture arrangements...
How does the performativity and materiality of public space, the arrangement of human and non-human bodies in it, impact the creation of such space?
How can different material formations of publicness contribute to the reactivation of citizens and the emergence of instituting forms of politics?
Responders:
Ivana Filip, multidisciplinary artist, more-than-human activist, PPS alumni
Arnt Mein, professor Legal Management, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
Moderator:
Danae Theodoridou, docent MA Performing Public Space, Fontys Academy of the Arts
Ivana Filip responds to the panel’s questions through presenting and reflecting on her artistic research project focusing on free-roaming cats in her hometown, Split, Croatia. The artist is interested in the fair distribution of resources and the co-creation of space and time with more-than-humans. Her research which resulted in the production of a film, a manifesto and a book of interspecies communication investigated more-than-human movement in public space in collaboration with 8 free roaming cats. The artist visited the cats in their specific territory in public space to get to know them and try to help them through art activation. As an assembly, they worked on cultivating mutual understanding and developing feelings of care through performative experiments.
We were getting together in more or less choreographed performances where I was led by their agency and willingness. I proposed but they decided.
The material environment hosted the interaction and created a space of shared agency where trust, proximity and vulnerability were challenged and practiced. Daily interventions allowed a reconfiguration of the space. Interestingly, the artist did not need an official permission for these interventions as the law didn’t recognize the small assembly in the making as a public gathering.
When is a gathering public? What constitutes a public body?
To the artist, the publicness of cats is contained mostly in their physical space but it is hardly protected or regulated, as is the one of human bodies. This led to the emergence of the following questions: How can we contribute to a better position of these beings? How can they gain agency and be recognized by citizen’s as inhabitants of public space and be granted the appropriate rights?
During her project, she saw public space becoming activated by the constant interaction among cats, citizens, architecture; the ongoing dialogue between bodies and structures.
The strongest agent was the camera when filming the cats. It became an apparatus for activation, as it was set on the eye level of the city cats pointing at them as protagonists. It allowed them to activate it, at the same time activating passers-by and the space itself in a serendipitous performance.
The event took place on Thursday, February 22, in a small amphitheatre inside Mindlabs in Tilburg and was organized by the Fontys Professorship Artistic Connective Practices, the Master Performing Public Space and the Academy of Journalism. Participants included artists, researchers, educators, and higher education students. The gathering was structured in four panels centred around four distinct but closely interrelated topics, re-approaching and reflecting on publicness:
- on the materiality of public space
- on disrupting the public
- on the construction of public space and time
- on public speculation
At the core of each panel were two responders from different disciplines: art, law and journalism. Each responder presented their work and views on the topic and was followed by a question-led discussion further unpacking the topic.
During the discussions, it becomes clear that the panels’ topics spill into each other. Their points of convergence were found in the way they approached notions of publicness but also alternative models of behaving and being, regardless of discipline or professional position. Amongst the concepts that were intertwined in the variety of practices presented, time, normality, and ownership kept coming back. The above concepts were always in question, as producing the effects modulating social and political public reality. Trust, unlearning, and connecting were the common concepts that were re-emerging in the discussion when imagining the not-yet. These notions were presented as crucial towards understanding and proposing alternative social, political and environmental models through research.
| This exposition features an introduction to the gathering, documentation of each individual panel followed by reflective texts as well as stills from the day |
The second responder, Matthijs Bosman, creates installations and projects in public space aiming to disrupt everydayness and traditional ways of being through humour. Critique is here communicated with playfulness. To him, creating disruptions to the collective truth is a rebellious act.
I was invited to do a sculpture or an intervention at a castle, a piece of Dutch heritage because nobody was visiting it. I decided to pretend I live there, that I inherited the place. And we made national news, there were cameras... I moved in with my family. Everyone believed the story. So I found myself in a sort of public space. We were having breakfast and a guided tour would happen. At the end I had to tell the truth. It was followed by disappointment as our presence reanimated a dying heritage.
Bosman sees inflitrating, being embedded, as a tactic to disrupt. He chooses to intervene in such social contexts as a neutral observer between government and civilians. He does not directly point at a social pathogeny but tries to create the conditions for such problem to reveal itself. In his Castle project, he was embraced by a very nationalist group of people who thought they gained another member. Coming clean about his lie exposed the outdated ideas of community they were holding on to.
What alternative practices could disrupt established institutional operations in public space most often imposed by state or other forms of power in hierarchical, authoritative ways?
Responders:
Conni Holzer, transmedia artist, art therapist, artistic researcher
Matthijs Bosman, public space artist/designer, artistic researcher at Fontys readership Designing Journalism
Moderator:
Danielle Arets, professor Designing Journalism, Fontys University of Applied Sciences/School of Journalism
Conni Holzer’s research focuses on the development of alternative creative methods to disrupt the function of monuments in public space. Monuments are perceived as representations of power, structures reproducing hierarchical and patriarchal forms of social control, built to construct collective memory and national identity.
What do we perceive as so normal that we even do not notice outside and what messages do we silently accept by just passing by and ignoring the monuments?
Her artistic research project called ‘Femonumental (stands for feminist monumental) Transformance (stands for transformative transmedia performance) aims at disrupting this passing-by process, revealing the patriarchal structures of the monuments and last, transforming them into intersectional, queer feminist monument practices.
The whole process is defined by creating loops of reflection. Holzer’s artistic process, involving artistic experiments with participants but also individual, is designed to offer a deeper image of the power structures triggered by the monuments in order to unlearn set by step towards the creation of counternarratives. Reflections from the whole process produce responses to patriarchal thoughts that arise.
I did this workshop with a group of performers in Stuttgart; we did a performance, an installation. There was also a table where audience members could write what they would like to have in place of the Schiller statue. My impulse for discussion is how to first detect the hierarchical structures that are behind these established monuments in public space and how to transform them.
To unpack monuments, the artist poses the following questions:
What do you see in the monument? What is written about it? Are genders equally represented? How do you feel with your own identities in relation to this monument? What are the symbolisms you detect?
The research project questions what is normal, what is perceived as normal, in order to understand gender representation. Through materials, colors, and discussions, the aim is to collectively question: if we perceive this as normal, what does it say about our society?
Tactics for Disruption
Both alternatives practices presented as responses challenge beliefs of excluding character, thus being diruptive as much as disturbing to certain social groups. Conni Holzer directly addresses a long standing system of oppression with violent characteristics, responsible for maintaining the status quo and with direct connections to economic, political and environmental control and oppression. Matthijs Bosman disrupts everyday situations which are influenced by such systems but without direct reference to them. He designs the disruption to keep it open to interpretation.
They both deal with the notion of normality: what is normal and how can we disrupt it in order to understand it? Working on the appropriation of the existing and asking ‘what if’, they contain a speculative aspect. They are disrupting a collective truth towards new ways of learning.
Holzer is using language, structures, materials. Her work is designed to allow materials to interact with bodies. Collective reflection, dialogue, playfulness with paint and performance techniques really seem to challenge the rigidness of the solid structure of a statue that has roots much deeper than its physical shape. Opening up such processes can surely change the perspective of participants in how they experience public space and collective memory constructed within.
Bosman chooses inflitrating as his main tactic. It is about positioning himself at the core of social situations he cares to critique and disrupt. In his response, the performative process seems rather individual, not collective or didactic. It is the artistic outcome of his actions that offers insights into the context disrupted and the reactions to such disruption. In sich creative work, it is interesting to consider for whom is the intervention happening and what does it leave behind for reflection.
How can public space but primarily ‘public time’ (Castoriadis, 1997) be activated again in the western context?
What are the challenges and potential in the way each discipline constructs public time?
Responders:
Julia Chryssostalis, principal lecturer Westminster Law School, Law and Theory Lab
Danielle Arets, professor Designing Journalism, Fontys University of Applied Sciences/School of Journalism
Moderator:
Thijs van den Houdt, lecturer/researcher Ethics and Live Journalism, Fontys University of Applied Sciences/School of Journalism
To Rebecca Schneider politics is appearing to others as others appear to me. We have this publicness generated in public space (demos, ecclesia and the spaces in between) but Castoriades says this is not enough if people do not have time to be in these spaces. So he defines public time as the time given to a community or the time it takes to reflect in its past actions and codesign its future based on this reflection.
- Danae Theodoridou
How do journalism and law construct public time today?
Chryssostalis begins her response by stressing the space generating dimension of disruption. Disruption invites participation, it is thought provoking, it brings about a re-working of the limits of the space or perceptions of the space. The broader issue is what do we do after the disruption? Perhaps something has been generated but how can this be somehow made retrievable, transmitted, maintained?
Arendt says that for polis, law is the memory of the political experience. What law does is preserve this experience, and make a certain repetition possible.
The province of law is understood as a space which is not separate of the space of political action but overlaps with it. Law is also deforming political action as it takes that excessive or disruptive element in order to preserve. Law can be responsive and contribute to the grounding of the new space generated but, at the same time, law is tradition. It preserves, maintaining but also restrains. To respond to that, news ways can be found in order to keep the law mobile. As law grounds you, how is it possible to think of the domain of law in a humbler way?
Daniele Arets starts her response by commenting on Arendt, the past and the future being interconnected; an aspect we tend to forget. Talking about public time, it is very important to consider the societal aspect of Hartmut Rosa’s concept of resonance. Today progress has been linked to acceleration, living and moving in faster paces. Slowing down becomes an act of resistance. To the researcher, a slower pace or the lack of movement is an option for being collectivity to emerge; about relating to each other even if we disagree.
In journalism we have the so-called news cake. Every day we get a new piece of news and we forget about the thing connected to it. In journalism time is always the now. To challenge time perception, we need to go back to the roots.
An example is given through context analysis on the famous expression of Angela Merkel: We can do this. In this expression, which had to do with the refugee crisis, it is necessary to question who the subject is. At the time the ‘we’ was Europe. As the narrative evolves in time, the expression turned to ‘We Germans can hardly deal with Syrian refugees.’ This evolution is pivotal for journalists, to challenge temporality and to be aware of continuation in time at political discourse, as it forms public opinion and affects society at large.
She continues by presenting a smart tool designed by the Fontys Journalism Department to help journalists connect past to present. The tool works as a search machine: the user can type in any keywords and have connections to past news appear, seeing a narrative evolve in a timeline manner. The tool is part of a research into the politics of time in journalism and what kind of knowledge can be implemented by challenging ‘the now’. How can narratives be disrupted based on happenings of the past? The tool was also transferred in museum exhibitions as an installation. Through a time slider placed next to screens, visitors could see how they relate to past events.
During the discussion that follows, alternative approaches to both disciplines are mentioned as ways to render them both valuable in contributing to social change. Live journalism is addressed as holding the potential to open up the discipline in time; to give time to the otherwise momentary encounter with the news. For law, it is adopting a feminist standpoint. Attending to the materiality of law is a feminist practice in the sense of inhabiting the position of power and critique.
Public time is also reflected upon based on economic parameters. It cannot be independent from the economic model of organization. People who can make different uses of their time in public, to intervene and disrupt, usually have an excess of it, they have the necessary time.
Revisiting Disciplines
The search for alternative models in both disciplines shows that the way they so far construct public time may be in urgent need of revisiting. Due to their proximity to the centers and systems of decision-making and their role in maintaining the status quo, journalism and law often tend to be mistrusted. There are however shifts happening and a will to subvert such reality, starting from the academic level.
In journalism, it has to do with resonating with evolving narratives or exploring forms like Live Journalism, capable of playing with the idea of time and expanding it. In Law, it is about exploring different angles like the feminist one. As law preserves but also deforms the memory of a political moment/decision/action, new ways have to be found to enhance its fluidity without compromising its role. The feminist standpoint, one that favors horizontal approaches and questions the distribution of power in decision making, can potentially offer new insights in constructing or orchestrating public time from an institutional perspective.
Drawing from Castoriadis’ view on public time, in contemporary societies communities are given limited (or in cases no) time to truly reflect on their past and codesign their future. The economic conditions and the way each state functions are again indicative of the function of public time and who has access to it. There is a need to reflect on who is excluded from political, public time and why. To respond, we first need to reflect on what is public time and how it differs in each context.
How can we move towards more speculative, imaginative (instead of normative) ways for when constructing public space, so that we open space for alternative (to capitalism) social configurations that are more communal?
Responders:
Florinda Camilleri, PPS Alumni, Dance Artist, Community Pharmacist
Kamila Wolszczak, visual artist, PPS alumni
Moderator:
David Limaverde, docent MA Performing Public Space, Fontys Academy of the Arts
Florinda Camilleri responds to the question from a posthuman feminist standpoint. Camilleri’s cited dance practice explores the boundaries of what it means to be human in the context of public space, using body, site, and camera as her main tools.
The artist was inspired by the term ‘Affect Aliens’ introduced by Sara Ahmed, and used it as a device for speculation during her research for the production of the ‘Affect Aliens’ exhibition last year in Malta: When you are alienated by virtue of how you are affected, you are an affect alien.
An Affect Alien is noticing the unnoticed by being alienated, an outsider to normality and normativity. During her experiments, the concept inspired the artist to go towards the wrong things, to stay open and curious like an alien landing on a new terrain wanting to feel, to touch. Based on the feeling of touch, she attempted to apply her body as a tool of knowledge making to move away from more traditional anthropocentric perspectives towards more posthuman ones.
The artist connects her device for speculation to the conceptualization of the human body proposed by Rosi Braidotti for deeper exploration of distinct components of public space. She views the body not as a single human entity but as a network of diverse components within a continuum of zoogeotechno matter. This notion suggests that the interconnectedness of the biological (zoo) the geological (geo) the technological (techno) and the material (matter) became the posthuman lens to be applied and lead to decision making.
[Braidotti’s concept] became generative for me in the context of public space because, starting from my body, I was experiencing all these angles/components and was becoming much more aware of them.
- Florinda Camilleri
The device influenced all decisions, from choosing collaborators to designing the experiments. With her first collaborator, they worked with zoo and techno matter as bread dough and digital media. They worked at an art center which used to be a mill so the bread dough stood for an extension of the flour mill into a material form. With her second collaborator, they chose to work with polaroid photography using a technique called lifting. They lifted images of her body moving in the space onto objects we found in the space, while also playing with time. The objects were placed back in public space for a few weeks to see what can happen, creating a layer of matter and time. With her last collaborator they worked with clay, a material giving a completely different sense of time. Materials like clay can modulate our sense of time:
Whenever I’m working with it, I have to go at the speed of the clay. Sometimes it resists, it slows you down, other times you need to be ready for a snap movement. We gathered traces of the space, picking up and leaving bodily matters behind. Kamila transformed these archives to sculptures. And like bread dough, the clay is a co-creator, interlocutor and facilitator of kinships, a modulator of imaginaries and a new informer of other ways of doing things.
To respond to the question, Kamila Wolszczak draws from her ongoing project ‘Relations of Matter on Desire Paths’. The visual artist works with a variety of media and participatory processes and produces works that reflect on human and non-human presence in public space. She reads the surroundings of urban public space as a scenography of human traces and non-human signs waiting to be translated. Her focus is on imaginaries that act as social tools for new possibilities to emerge.
Her device for speculation, the Eccentric Wanderer, moves through space with a magnifying glass. It is central in a counterpractice to normative ways of constructing common spaces. The aim is to explore the creative potential of eccentric practices in public space and to re-approach communication in society through movement. The Eccentric Wanderer is inspired by the ancient Greek concept of time ‘Kairos’. Kairos, the patron of time of action and opportunity is linked to the possibility of getting lost and looking at new directions; towards a shift from anthropocentrism to eccentrism, to move to more speculative imaginative ways of thinking and creating.
To be eccentric is to view the world through a completely different perspective, to explore and be revolutionary. Wolszczak combines speculative forms fostered within the visual arts to walks, hikes, and games of exploring which render her and participants to her experiments archaeologists and explorers of past and future.
During her tactile walks, participants walk separately or in pairs to discover new perspectives. A guide for exploring is to place ceramic fingers as an interface, navigator, extension and protection for real fingers. The person wearing the fingers guides the companion through their own point of view and curiosity which helps understand differences of perception of the same place. Role play is also used to help participants let themselves be carried away by imagination. Touch leads to moments of discovery or sensing the undiscovered through Recording traces, objects, materials and organic matter found on the ground, trees, surroundings.
The artist uses the practice of witnessing to position herself as a mediator in her performative walks. Each of her ‘walk-shops’ begins in a circle with participants, a start designed to work with proximity and trust. The tender walk that follows focuses on listening, to give enough space and time to for new stories to be heard.
Using the Greek Kairos, holding the wanderers magnifying glass and practicing witnessing, we are exploring our own path next to each other. This creates a new eccentric symbolic space. It leads to new storytelling.
- Kamila Wolszczak
Devices for Speculation
Both responders find the space for speculation in the cracks in-between. The devices used for speculation, Affect Alien and the Eccentric Wanderer stand for being open and curious, exploring lenses and forming new narratives. A point of encounter is the use of the body as a tool for knowledge making. The senses are seen as central in constructing public space, uniting bodies into a collective one through exploration. The potential for alternative, more communal ways of being is found in the ‘unknown’. The unknown creates the symbolic space in which meaningful connections of care can come up and lead to new possibilities that move away from normativity. Interestingly, both devices can be applied in a variety of contexts and disciplines.
When asked to unpack the terms Affect Alien and the Eccentric wanderer, as tactics for social speculation, the two artists responded as follows:
For me the Affect Alien gives all of a sudden a speculative form to an experience that I have. So I feel alienated and by that feeling I can take an alien character. In a practical way I ask what are the qualities of the fictitious alien that has such a wide span and how can I apply that? The alien landing in a new place is curious, it has a certain naivety because is is in a new place, not aware of risk so you go based on your primate curiosity. Also, in another layer which I didn’t go into, you usually have a mothership. In my exhibition, the old building in the very busy urban area was my mothership. It was my base were I felt safe and for there I had my meetings, and we would go out and explore, be alien. The crossing of that threshold was our ritual.
-Florinda Camilleri
My eccentric wonderer is about walking together and bringing that diversity. It is not a closed explanation, it is still evolving in my practice. During my MA Performing Public Space studies, I did research on invisible matter on desire paths so in general I was investigating everything that was peculiar to me in public space. In the past I explored dust and dirt. Later on it was broken artifacts as representations in public space. To dive into all that I need to walk, to bring my body to the landscape and that brings me to this walking practice.
-Kamila Wolszczak
I was thinking maybe we need an affect alien in our public hearing. Maybe these tools could help inspire legal professionals.
-Arnt Mein
