Sissel Lillebostad
7 Comments on Art and the Public Space

Translated into English by Martin Grüner Larsen

What is art doing in the public space? Is it doing anything at all? Do we have an expectation that something is going to happen? Is the art work also asking this same question: what am I doing here?

1
In an attempt to answer this question, I will start off with a fairly short and incoherent clarification of the historical roots of the public space. Public means common, free to anyone, available, open, general, wide-spread, accepted, official – the root of the word means that which is open to anyone.
The public space as a defined entity, as something other than the random spaces created between people and the places they live, is first and foremost a political construction. It grew into its own as an arena for power, secular or spiritual; a place for the display of law and order, and a place where power was present in the form of symbolic entities. We only have to think of the church and the church hill, or the execution ground and hangman’s hill.
So, the first public space was in some way regulated into the common and the private, as a manifestation of a power and as a response to the communal need for various meeting places. The desire for places in which to meet has also in our time become the most powerful force in shaping both the officially public spaces and those which arise in the undefined places outside of the official.

2
In Norway there is a lot of publically available space, at least if we count common land in mountains, forests, outlying areas and coastal stretches with islets in the fjords, possibly even the fjords themselves. In other words, public space covers as much as 70 % of the Norwegian territory. But that’s not really what we mean when we talk about “space” as public. Usually, these spaces surround villages, urban areas and other regions between where people live and work. What we mean by public spaces are delineated places regulated into public use. And in this regulation, there is a sort of recipe for use. There is a kind of objective attached to this type of public space. And this objective will, at the same time, limit the use of that space to the needs defined as public. One of the first needs may have been a separate space for conflict resolution – as an arena for public exchange of ideas and opinions.
The public space which is established under the formation of the civil society can be seen more as an ideal construction. It was to be understood as a neutral space, a common meeting ground set aside from the premises set by the ruling powers and the economy. A room always accessible, and a space to be shared equally by all citizens in a society. Jürgen Habermas investigated this formation in detail, and we find his analysis published in his book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society.¹ What he demonstrates, among other things, is how important the technology of the printed word was, as a medium which could rapidly disseminate information and thereby ease the exchange of knowledge and utterances. We can sense the old agora in this model for the public space: a public sphere constituting itself through debate and consensus, in which those who speak are the same as those who listen.

3
The modern public space therefore carries within it the connotation of a meeting place, a place for the exchange of experiences. Into this construction, the imaginary space – or rather: the space which someone is imagining – is added. And there are many crossed imaginings and expectations in a public space. It is perforated with various projections, imaginings, desires, need and reality. It is an equation which can be articulated in the following way: in order for public space to exist, we all need to imagine its existence. We also need to agree that we have a space which is open for everyone ².

So then maybe the question becomes where public space begins and ends? If we delve into this problem, we see that the concept of public space is based on a delineation in regard to something else: non-public space. Which means that there is space which is not open for everyone. The usual name given these spaces is private spaces. The private is an individual space – subjective and attached to the singular. A variation of the private space is your thoughts. But what if you share your ideas with friends? Are they still private? Or do they belong to the public sphere? The situation in this border area is unclear, but the public authority in most places claims that any utterance is public, giving them the right to control and insight, predicated on making the community safe. The community (the public space) is therefore something which comes in to existence between us – between the private and the individual, without us knowing whether or not we know where the borders are at any given time. And these are the borders which we tug and test. If we imagine that the public space is the space where we exchange opinions and produce ideas of how we want to interact, public spaces will constantly be changing. The public sphere is the sum of all those who participate at any given time. But we don't just participate in one place, collectively. There are many different kinds of public spaces, which encourage and approve completely different actions. One action can be meaningful in one type of public sphere, but become disproportionate, rude, repulsive and vulgar somewhere else. The social game is very much about understanding these limits. And the socialization of the individual is therefore about an adaptation to, and understanding of, how the codes of the public space work.

4
Summing up, so far, shows that the public space only exists as a theoretical entity to the extent that we leave it open (for the majority, which is to say nearly everyone). The public space is, at the same time, an idea, a vision of something democratic and available. It is, in other words, a space which is constantly in the process of being shaped. The way we think of the public space, it might still be a utopia, a free space which is chronically fighting for its territory, a struggle being waged on behalf of a public “we” against those who represent owners and interested parties who wish to use this space for something else – something which generates revenue, possibly a market place of some kind, probably with the best of intentions. But when a space or a place is defined in this way, it is also open for redefinition – or occupation, if you like. But who defines how available or open or public this space should be? Who decides that somebody’s wishes carry more weight than the neighbour’s? Is there one single power regulating the public sphere? Or are we talking about several spheres, regulated by a myriad of powers? And can we still speak of a public space when there is limited access to it?
These questions are often at the centre of artistic projects and exploration, which do not always set themselves as finished or ended, but which demand audience participation in order to be realised. Nicholas Bourriaud, in his book Relational Aesthetic⁵ , discussed several such projects. Considered as theory, the book has received a lot of justified criticism, but he also voices a view which influences the way we look at art in the public space: art has a purpose. And this purpose is decided by the following factors: art owns an autonomous, free space – a space which exists between other defined and ideologically managed ones. He uses a concept he takes from Marx which can best be translated as space between, or gap. Art can therefore speak of the things which cannot be spoken of in other places. In the space of art, the structural hierarchies do not rule, and delicate issues can be spoken of without the same costs as they carry in other contexts. But if we attempt to think of an art we can expect to find here – in the gaps between the public spaces we make for ourselves – what can it be, and what can it do? The way Claire Bishop see it, there are three agendas for this art: promoting active individuals, promoting collective creativity and promoting community and collective responsibility. ⁷

5
Let us begin with the first one:promoting active individuals. Active as what? As citizens, as consumers, as football supporters, as workers – or as the complex composition most of us are, as individuals, where we can be all these characters? One question is whether or not we can be active as, for example, a consumer. We can obviously be very active in the shopping mall, throwing out quick decisions, but does that mean the same as being active individuals? Do we surrender something (other than money) do we make statements, utter opinions? I have to admit the question makes me uncertain. There is a claim that we shape society precisely through what we purchase and sell. But I do not experience that as adequate for feeling like an active individual. Is it in relation to the art works that this activity appears? In order to clarify what can be the meaning of this concept, I look through the work of philosopher Friedrich Schiller. He says that it is only art which can accept the daunting task of promoting humanity, an assignment he claims cannot be solved using other methods. Mankind is bound up in its work, its little part of the world, and only develops fragments of its potential which, if we stop to think, is actually pretty overwhelming. Art should not primarily function descriptively but point to a future possibility, which lies in the complete human, he says. And, as Schiller argues, art can point to something else, something we still do not know about, exactly because it is “between truths”. We find some of the same line of thinking in Bourriaud. The future possibility cannot be agitated for, it must be discovered. A discovery only comes as the result of an engagement. Something which bring the audience – you and me – in as an active participant.

6
And so, to the next points: promoting collective creativity and promoting community and collective responsibility. YES is my immediate response. Of course we like collective creativity. At times it is what is keeping us alive. And many fun things happen when we become collectively creative. I have been to local dances which had in them strong creative forces operating on a collective level. But (to briefly put aside this not quite serious tone): what is it about art and the promotion of collective creativity?

Collective creativity can open for something uncontrollable, something unruly. It doesn’t just show what is, but also what is yet to be. But how do we know what is missing? Is it first when we receive something that we realise that we missed it? Perhaps we can rephrase the statement: art should participate in the shaping of the space which is constantly becoming – where our contemporary culture is constantly being produced and reproduced – with ideas and suggestions, with whims and digressions. Or as Gro Kraft, the director of Public Art Norway (KORO), said at the conference Organising Art: “the art of ideas could have more to add to our common spaces than the physical art work.” But what is meant by “the art of ideas”? Is an idea the opposite of a physical object? If we imagine that art is a participant in the space of action – the common space which shapes possible coexistences – and that it here takes part through investigations, tests, makes mistakes and provides incomplete solutions, art becomes a conversation partner. One with as much of a right to being temporary, becoming outdated or changing our opinions as we do, even if it articulates itself as physical objects. At the same time, we have to be attentive to the fact that a monumental installation in a public space has a tendency to establish a kind of ownership of that space. The ownership could be positively charged, as a marker of an area, like a centre around which the rest of the space revolves, giving the place a kind of identity. One example could be the Blue Stone at the Ole Bull Square in Bergen. It is a gathering point, perhaps especially for young people, but also a place for spontaneous play and meetings in an urban space, set within the rules which the space allows, of course. The ownership could also be negatively charged, where the area gets clear ideological imperatives or limits placed on the free and open use of the space. As a thoroughly discussed example of such a function, I would like to draw attention to Richard Serra’s monumental Tilted Arc, a 3.5 meters tall, curved steel wall at the Federal Plaza of New York. There was trouble from day one, especially from workers in the surrounding buildings, who complained that the sculpture prevented them from freely crossing the square. A public hearing in 1985 ruled that the artwork should be removed and converted to scrap metal. The strength of Tilted Arc is that it demonstrates how neutral space is something we may very well want, but which hardly exists: public space is a construction put together of wishes and ideas being voiced at different volumes.

7
To finish off with the same question I started with: if we have an expectation that something is going to happen to art in a public space, the answer might be contingent upon whether or not it is something we want to happen. And the question art is asking itself: what am I doing here? You can only answer that question for yourself. Art is open, available, and it comes in all shapes and sizes, but it is not necessarily public at all times. Sometimes it wants, as most of us do, to pull back, to avoid the hard, public gaze and become invisible. Then the conversation it is in the middle of becomes intimate and private. This type of art, too, has its place in a public space. If we remember that the emotional life is not the same all the time. That we too have been thin-skinned and insecure, but that we have also felt joy and fiery glimpses of happiness – and if we remember that all the others, too, carry these feelings – then it could happen that we could see the other as our responsibility. See that we are part of a community. As I say, it could happen.

FOOTNOTES:
¹ Polity, Cambridge, 1992
² As Miwon Kwon puts it: “As many have said before, the public sphere is always necessarily an ideal, an idealized construction (fantasy), insofar as it imagines a possibility and potential of overcoming social differences to debate issues of common concern.” I “Public Art as Publicity”, In the Place of the Public Sphere, B_Books, Berlin 2005
^{3 (5)} Les Presse Du Reel, 1998
^{4 (7)} www.koro.no, april 2008