Rethinking public space : hybrid collaborative art practices and spatial piracy in the urban realm

• It seems as if the city, its space, its future, its production, were almost exclusively the result of a series of processes and flows taking place at unreachable distance, in un-known locations, mostly determined by the interests and wills of un-localized powers, actors and flows. As if the city could no longer be produced and shaped after the desires of its inhabitants, articulating one or another form of collective will. As if the city was no longer the soul and reason of urban politics but just the mere object of a kind of witty and hygienic managing that understands built space as a market and a product, placing economy at the very center of society.Urban agendas no longer include distributive and social considerations but focus now on economic growth, competitiveness and entrepreneurship. Creative flexibility, efficiency and strategic partnership exclude dissent, conflict and radical criticism nearly foreclosing the political from the face of the city. Cityspace anesthetized. Public space today is planned, designed, defined, segregated, policed, and set up in order to be easily controlled, ‘secured’, and ‘marketized’, in ways that lead to homogenous, uninteresting, smooth and clean surfaces that differ very much from the inherent characteristics of the very idea of public.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Arkitektur (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Architecture (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Public space

piracy

collaborative practices

art

critical spatial practice

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

art (subject category)

kfu (subject category)