Public Culture for all: Urban Art and Public Space

Activist intervention in San Francisco against NO SIT/LIE in Public Spaces Law, 2012

Public Space and Urban Art

Agreeing on some definitions What is the City? What is Urban? What is Public Space?

Public Culture and Public Space Shared urban spaces Collective Spaces Subverting the Status Quo: Urban Tactics

URBAN ART : Re-claiming Public Space for all

@flixflix5

What is a City?

Mexico City, Pedro Pablo Luz

The city is the geographical locus in which is established the politico-administrative superstructure of a society that has reached that point of technical and social development (natural and cultural) at which there is a differentiation of the product in the simple and the extended reproduction of labour power, culminating in a system of distribution and exchange, which presupposes the existence of: 1. A system of social classes

2. A political system permitting both the functioning of the social ensemble and the

domination of one class

3. An institutional system of investment, in particular with regard to culture and technology

4. A system of external exchange. (Castells 1977, pp.11–12)

What is Urban?

The city, according to Oswald Spengler, stands for intellect and wealth: “what distinguishes a town from a village is not size, but the presence of a soul (Sennett 1969, pp.65–66). The “soul” of the city is equivalent to the language of culture, and given that culture is city-bound then all thinkers of culture belong to the city even if they may reside physically in the country (Sennett 1969, pp.65, 68). The term urban, according to Manuel Castells (1977, pp.10–11) has been commonly used to refer to “a particular form of the occupation of space by a population”, a definition too abstract to be able to develop a concrete analysis of cities. Castells provides a set of characteristics, very similar to Weber’s, to define the urban features of the cities of the past:

“the existence of non-productive specialists working full time (priests, functionaries, 'service workers'); a population of sufficient size and density; a specific art; the use of writing and arithmetical figures; scientific work; a system of taxation that concentrates the surplus of production; a state apparatus; public architecture; external trade; the existence of social classes.” (Castells 1977, pp.11–12)

What is Public Space?

Public space encompasses parks, beaches, riversides as well as publicly funded institutions such as museums, libraries, civic centres and swimming pools, urban spaces that are owned collectively, but beyond the issue of funding or ownership, Stevenson proposes that public space should be understood as any shared urban space, whether publicly or privately owned, where large groups of people congregate for a wide range of purposes and where daily encounters with difference takes place (Stevenson 2013).

Public Culture and Public Space Who Owns Space, Owns Culture?

Zukin understands Public Culture as the process of negotiation of images that are commonly accepted by large groups of people, in which public space plays a fundamental role, as it is the place where strangers come together and where the boundaries of urban society are negotiated (Zukin 1995, pp.10, 270). However, the creation of a public culture requires the manipulation of public space for certain kinds of expected social interactions and creating a particular visual representation of the city (Zukin 1995, p.24).

Recent theorists like Manuel de Solà-Morales have felt the need to fine tune it by pointing to the phenomenon of collective space to refer to those meeting-places in the city which, though privately owned and in some respects exclusionary, continue to form the scenes for various public activities: places like the shopping mall, the sports stadium, the theme park, or the grand café 1992:6).

Subverting the status quo: Urban Tactics

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” Buckminster Fuller

Pre-figurative Interventions direct actions that enact in the here and now the world we actually want to live in. It provides a glimpse, a “temporary utopia” in the midst of the present city, whether by acts of civil disobedience, the staging of urban actions or urban pranks, or the formation of alternative communities. Tactical Urbanism quick, often temporary, cheap projects that aim to make a small part of a city more lively or enjoyable. These small-scale interventions are characterized by their community-focus and realistic goals. Artivism “The artivist (artist + activist) uses her artistic talents to fight and struggle against injustice and oppression—by any medium necessary. The artivist merges commitment to freedom and justice with the pen, the lens, the brush, the voice, the body, and the imagination. The artivist knows that to make an observation is to have an obligation.” M.K. Asante in It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Hip Hop Generation (2008)

Re-claiming Public Space and Public Culture

I WANTED A PARK, Flix, Caracas 2010 I WANTED A PARK by FLIX, Caracas

Rebar Group PARKing DAY: Providing temporary public open space . . . one parking spot at a time.

San Francisco, USA, 2005

Santiago de Chile, Chile, 2009

Caracas, Venezuela, 2010

Saskatoon, Canada, 2013

Re-claiming Public Space and Public Culture

CIDADE CINZA, Sao Paulo, 2013

JR Women are Heroes, Kenya

(2009)

CANDY CHANG I Wish This Was (2010)

CANDY CHANG I Wish This Was (2010)

Reimagining Public Culture Manshiyat Naser (Garbage City), Cairo, Egypt

BASURAMA - Project USW (Urban Solid Waste)

interventions in Cairo, 2012