Nov Issue - Public Art Review

Issue 47 • Ab

out Place

issue 47 • fall/winter 2012 • publicartreview.org

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Cambodia’s vibrant public art scene Washington D.C.’s new 5x5 festival Mixing past and present at the Golden Gate Charles Landry on city making

The Internat ional Award for Public Ar t : Meet the Finalis t sThe Internat ional Award for Public Ar t : Meet the Finalis t s

ABOUTPLACE

Putting art at the heart of placemaking

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PUBLIC ART REVIEW | VOL. 24 NO. 1 • ISSUE 47 | PUBLICARTREVIEW.ORG

Conversations with five artists who

think deeply about how public art

can shape our experience of place

PLACE

CAN DY CHANG:Making Cities Comfortable

New Orleans–based Candy Chang creates simple, analog messaging systems that allow strangers to share—anonymously and in public—their thoughts, memories, and dreams. Before I Die featured a fill-in-the-blank chalkboard affixed to an abandoned house—an invitation to passers-by to chalk in their bucket list; I Wish This Was used removable vinyl stickers to collect suggested uses for abandoned storefronts in New Orleans. The spirit of these anonymous commentaries may mirror the loose anonymity of Web-based communities, but the similarity stops there. Their physicality makes them a site-specific, collaborative intervention.

Public Art Review: What’s your working definitionof placemaking?Candy Chang: I think it’s a fancy word for a place that is cared for and is caring.

How do you personally go about the process of placemaking? What tools and techniques do you use?There are a lot of ways the people around us can help improve our lives. We don’t bump into every neighbor, so a lot of wis-dom never gets passed on, but we do share the same public spaces. So over the past few years I’ve tried out ways to share more with the people around me in public space, using simple tools like stickers, stencils, and chalk. They’re accessible to anyone walking by and they’re not very expensive, which puts you in an open-minded mood to keep learning, questioning, and experimenting, with low pressure.

Some of my small interventions have led to better-informed big ones. I Wish This Was became a prototype for Neighborland, a hybrid online/offline tool to help people join forces, build on ideas, and improve their communities together.

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What are some of the challenges of orchestrating thesepublic exchanges?Public spaces are for everyone, and it’s important to try and respect all the other people who care for them, too. Depending on the project, I either partner with local organizations or I’ve asked for permission from the people who I think would care.

For the Before I Die project, I wanted to make it on an abandoned house in my neighborhood. I talked about it with my neighborhood association’s blight committee, who were supportive and put me in contact with the property owner. I talked about it with the property owner and the residents on the block, who were supportive, too. When I found out I had to get a permit, I went and got a permit from the city government.

ABOVE: Chang’s Before I Die walls have been made in countries around the world, including Kazakhstan, South Africa, and Argentina. Each wall reflects what’s important to people in that place.

OPPOSITE PAGE: Neighborhood residents used the removable vinyl stickers of Candy Chang’s I Wish This Was project to suggest uses for abandoned storefronts in New Orleans.

The processes to improve things in public space are often not very clear. If they were easier, it would enable more people to try things out in creative and productive ways. It’s good to start with who you think would care and to see if they think anyone else would care.

Has your thinking about place changed over the years? I used to think of sharing with my neighbors for very practical reasons, but it’s changed into something much more personal. The projects I make come from questions I have. They started out quite practical: How much are my neighbors paying for their apartments? How can we lend and borrow more things without knocking on each other’s doors at a bad time? How can AR

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we share more of our ideas for our vacant storefronts? They’ve become more emotional as I’ve become consumed

with personal well-being and what it means to lead a fulfilling life. And this has made me look at my neighbors differently. We’re not just neighbors in a place, but we’re also neighbors in making sense of our lives. How can we share more of our hopes, fears, and stories? We struggle with a lot of the same issues. How can we help each other see we are not alone?

In an environment where taping a flyer to a lamppost is illegal while businesses can shout about products on an increasing number of surfaces, we need to consider how our public spaces can be better designed so they’re not just reserved for the highest bidder. With more ways for residents to share with one another, the people around us can not only help us make better places, they can help us lead better lives.

DE I R DR E O ’MAHONY:Acknowledging Rural Complexity

Artist Deirdre O’Mahony explores the complicated intersec-tion of public space, civic life, history, and art. In one piece, for example, she reopened an abandoned rural post office as X-PO, a public meeting place that hosted events, installations, lectures, and art exhibits. A key to X-PO—and to O’Mahony’s concept of placemaking—is providing a platform for sponta-neous collaboration. “I really wanted to allow space where people could share different kinds of knowledge, because it has always been my experience that where different forms of knowledge come together, interesting things happen.”

Public Art Review: Do you have a working definition ofplacemaking as you approach your work? Deirdre O’Mahony: For me, placemaking is about actively engaging with the matrix of human, natural histories and prac-tices that shape a place and its context. Placemaking makes these connections visible; it acknowledges the complexity of the social, environmental, cultural, and economic dimensions that affect place.

How does that manifest in the places you’ve worked?Well, you must understand that in Ireland we have a compli-cated relationship with the land that plays out in recurring con-flicts around landscape and land use. These conflicts engender compulsive and passionate responses to particular—and not necessarily picturesque—places: fields, bogs, and so on. These irrational passions are so deeply felt that the Irish playwright John B. Keane wrote a powerful play about them called The Field, and the term “Field Syndrome” is sometimes used to describe them.

I live in a very beautiful region called the Burren, in the west of Ireland. When I came here in 1991, I was shocked by an environmental conflict about the construction of an interpreta-tive center. The plan, and the controversy surrounding it, had a profound effect on local relations and raised all sorts of issues. The central question concerned the power relations that gov-erned who drove the representations, cultivation, preservation, and interpretation of place.

ABOVE: Chang’s Looking for Love Again was commissioned by the Alaska Design Forum.

TOP: People writing their memories of and hopes for Fairbanks’ vacant Polaris Building.

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Observing this controversy forced me to try to identify a contemporary place-based practice that could begin to address the fragmented and fluid nature of rural society today. Since then, my version of placemaking has tried to complicate per-ceptions of rural life. I want to make visible some of the more complicated reasons behind recurring conflicts about environ-mental regulation, changes in land use, and the effect of these changes on individual and collective subjectivities.

So does your work specifically attempt to challenge these perceptions? If so, how?I’m interested in how this mix of expectations plays out in the social unconscious in rural areas. As a result, my projects explore an expanded idea of the relationship between arts practice and cultural activism. X-PO is a good example of this.

This was the abandoned rural post office that you turned into a meeting place.That’s right. In Kilnaboy, in North Clare, I had finished a tem-porary public art project called Cross Land in 2007, and it left me with a lot of unanswered questions about the sustainability of a very beautiful landscape—and one that has been shaped by more than 5,000 years of farming. The question for me became how best to engage different stakeholders in an extended pro-

BELOW: Deirdre O’Mahony’s X-PO is housed in a former post office. BOTTOM LEFT: X-PO hosts community events and art exhibits. BOTTOM RIGHT: A portrait of a postman who lived in the building.

cess of collective reflection on a sustainable future. As a public art project, it created a space for the many dif-

ferent “publics” in the locality to meet—much as the old post office had done until it shut in 2002. I really wanted to allow space where people could share different kinds of knowledge, because it has always been my experience that where different forms of knowledge come together, interesting things happen.

I used a mix of processes from installations, talks, curated exhibitions, and events, in order to animate a conversation on what people felt was important in their place. Various groups started to meet regularly. Understandings—of each other and our various skills and practices—developed. Opinions and ideas on the future for the place differed widely. Some participants had a deep knowledge going back centuries; others had limited knowledge but a lot of enthusiasm. Connections were made, friendships were made, and discoveries were made.

So you kind of turned the space over to these folks, right? What were some of the projects that emerged?I curated the space for just eight months, and since then, local users of the space have taken over managing and funding it. Among the events was an exhibit of archival photographs of the parish, which graphically demonstrated the rapidity of

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change in the landscape. One group used the space to present their version of the story of their family and community who had been the subject of the Harvard Irish Survey in the 1930s. A mapping group spent five years charting every house, new and old, going back to the earliest parish records of 1847.

Is there a common thread among these projects?X-PO lays no claim to be representative. It is, rather, the act of participation that is at the core of the project. This, for me is the essence of placemaking—an ontology of place experienced in a moment of “being-with,” as Jean-Luc Nancy proposes.

So would you say it’s “neutral” ground?That’s not quite right. X-PO means accepting difference and disagreement. By its very existence, X-PO has challenged some local organizations and provoked opposition. It is very pub-lic—it performs a kind of coming together that is based on the here and now, not on a priori relations or inherited standing in the community. Interestingly, for the purposes of public artists, while X-PO was run under the banner of “art” it was largely unquestioned, even as it questioned some of the fundamen-tal power relationships and assumptions of its rural location. Only after it was taken over by the regular users of the space did it become contested. Still, it survives well and continues to function despite, or possibly because, it is “in dissent” with some local hierarchies.

J E F RË:Creating Places, Not Objects

Artist Jefre Manuel, who works under the name JEFRË, is a relative newcomer to public art. Three years ago, at the age of 35, the practicing designer had a heart attack and triple bypass. The experience convinced him to retire from architec-ture/landscape architecture and return to his artistic practice (among other places, he studied at the School of the Art Insti-tute of Chicago). Today, he’s won a number of large compe-titions, thanks in large part to his approach to placemaking.

“Because of my background in public space and architecture, I’ve never been interested in creating objects; I create places,” he says. “It’s not about a single element, it’s about a collection of elements that make a place.”

Public Art Review: Can you describe your approachto placemaking?JEFRË: For me, it’s the literal definition of the word place. Mil-lennium Park is a place not only because it has iconic sculp-tures. It also has great civic parks, architecture, and restau-rants. And people.

If you think about great cities, when I ask you, “What is your favorite place and why?” you’re not going to say the Sears Tower or the Empire State Building. You’re going to say Cen-tral Park or Millennium Park. Those are places. No one single

Construction on JEFRË’s planned cube for Kissimmee, Florida’s new Lakefront Park, rendered here,

begins in January 2013. In addition to being a sculpture, it will serve as a performance and civic space.

sculpture or building or landscape will make a place. It’s all those elements combined—plus the people who use it.

So how does this approach translate into your practice?Because of my background, I don’t really have a certain medium or style. I give you one specific thing related to con-text and history and I don’t repeat it again. As a result, my work is very site specific. I’m not someone who has to find a place to plop a piece. I’m also very careful to be sure that 80 percent of my materials and work is all done with local folks, so the tax money is going back into the community. Program-ming is also very important—the idea that you’re not creating things that are static. The most successful public art pieces are interactive.

How do you achieve that with a single sculpture as opposed to, for example, Central Park?You create an opportunity to be inside it or walk through it, like the Eiffel Tower. For example, I recently won the competi-tion for a sculpture in Kissimmee’s new Lakefront Park. Their waterfront is located near Disney, which is their competition. And they understood that they have an opportunity to create an icon for the city—something that would identify the water-front not only as a destination, but as an icon that could com-pete on a national scale.

The sculpture is a cube of water that represents a common form seen in the local Indian tribe. By day it acts as a civic fountain, by night it transforms itself into a cultural perfor-mance space, and on the weekends it becomes a civic venue for celebrations like weddings. It’s more than a sculpture; it’s a blank space and people make it art.

SARA DALE I DE N:Encouraging Public Intimacy

Raised in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Sara Daleiden now lives in Los Angeles, where she takes an interventionist and activist approach to redefining the public spaces of her adopted city. Much of her work is rooted in the tradition of the flâneur, who experiences urban space through directionless walking. Trans-plant this concept to car-crazy L.A., and the badge of pedestri-anism takes on a radical hue.

Public Art Review: How would you define placemaking?Sara Daleiden: I think of it in terms of how we use public space. It all boils down to how we socialize and how we function in a location. Everything comes down to power dynamics and how we interact socially. By looking at public spaces and how we inhabit them, we can begin to understand those power dynamics.

I’m inspired by the work of William Whyte and The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. It raises interesting questions about public space. Where do people want to go? What are their behav-iors when they get there? What do they need? What’s the human behavior? What’s the stereotype of how you think people will act? What do their bodies physically need in public spaces?

How do these questions inform your practice?One of my projects is the Los Angeles Urban Rangers. The idea behind it is to use the National Park Ranger system to guide people through the urban landscapes of Los Angeles. It’s a huge megalopolis, right? We treat it like a national park with hikes, maps, guides, and field kits, and we’re a friendly guide,

Sara Daleiden’s projects encourage exploration: Being Pedestrian (above) involves walking

training exercises and The Los Angeles Urban Rangers (below) serve as city guides.

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BELOW: Herbert Dreiseitl’s “recycle hill,” which overlooks a restored meandering river system, is topped by local Singapore sculptor Kelvin Lim Fun Kit’s An Enclosure for a Swing.

OPPOSITE PAGE: Dreiseitl’s award-winning design for Portland, Oregon’s Tanner Springs Park includes stormwater management and an art wall made from recycled historic rail tracks.

many surveillance cameras can they count? What makes them feel they can sit here and why?

On another project, Being Pedestrian, I collaborate with a dancer and we do walking training exercises, because nobody walks in LA. For example, we’ll ask people to link arms and walk in pairs, with one person walking backward. It’s a sensi-tizing gesture. We think of the project as training in wandering, teaching people to slow down and be curious. It’s encouraging an environmental experience.

So your goal is to take people out of their routines so they experience place in a different way?Sort of. But it’s also a question of routines being enforced by public spaces and of reshaping these spaces. We need more creative thought, because we’re creating parks and plazas and they’re not being used.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of public inti-macy. That’s a difficult term, because it can be construed as sexual, but I use it to mean that feeling of being bonded or connected to your tribes. It’s very human to want to be able to move fluidly between different collective experiences—and private experiences, too. Public space can either foster or diminish public intimacy.

like a park ranger. Our goal is to empower people to get out into the landscape and experience it in interesting ways.

The Rangers is a multidisciplinary group. My background is as a visual artist, and we also have historians, geographers, architects, and other disciplines.

Why do you take the multidisciplinary approach?In general my work is less discipline-specific. If the question is “How do we make L.A. a better place to live,” the answer can come from planners, artists, architects, geographers. It’s all collaborative. These projects are almost designed to question authorship. We’re serving a community, or cultural function, but we’re doing it with a real consciousness of metaphor—and a geographer has just as much ability to read metaphor in a given place as I do.

What are some examples of that reading from your work with the Rangers?Los Angeles is such a privatized city. With the Rangers, some-times we look at confusing spaces, like a private plaza that looks like a public plaza. Or we’ll play games designed to make people alert to their surroundings in new ways. Are they comfortable in a space? Why not? What do they notice? How

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H E R B E RT DR E I S E ITL :Redesigning the Urban Experience

From his studio in Germany, Herbert Dreiseitl designs public spaces that explore “the interaction of the individual with his surroundings.” Dreiseitl says he was first inspired to explore placemaking by his work with heroin-addicted youth. “I fig-ured out that the way to reach young people is through their surroundings. The key question to social life is how you feel at home in a place.”

Public Art Review: In your practice, where do you place emphasis when it comes to creative placemaking?Herbert Dreiseitl: A lot of our public places in cities are domi-nated by ugliness and constructed by engineers who only look for how to get traffic from A to B as fast as possible. There’s no social awareness about what people really need.

I’m interested in creating a space where people are getting in contact with each other, and also the environment. That’s why we focus on water, because water has an amazing ability to be in a permanent process of transition, and it’s the opposite of the hard, harsh environment we have in our modern cities. Water seems like a therapeutic or healing influence.

Is there a “language” of placemaking? Or a set of principles that set it apart from mere engineering?I would say rather that placemaking is always an impression of our culture, of what we think has value. You can see this in different cities. In every city, there are fantastic places. You go there and you immediately take it in—such an incredible atmosphere. This atmosphere was certainly not driven by traf-fic or logical engineering. It is more like a cultural event. Places like that are a living room for society.

Yet your work also has a strong environmental focus.Yes. It’s another component: a celebration of air, light, water—the environment. It’s a question of getting in contact with something that is lost. Our cities are a totally artificial environ-ment—that’s a fact. As a result, we have a strong desire to sit outside and feel air and light, to feel the temperature change from day to night. People are longing for that.

Do you bring the public into your process?Placemaking is never accomplished by one person. It’s a social process where you bring in people with multiple fields of expertise. That’s so important to make it a vibrant place.

I like to work on public engagement, though in the United States, it’s very different from here. It can be much more compli-cated in the U.S. because people are very opinionated and it can be hard to get people to think outside of their opinion. But it’s absolutely essential to have that dialogue with the local people.

During that dialogue, I’m trying to look behind what peo-ple say, what’s the message, which is often the unspoken. What is the real intention? It’s very important for artists to listen to that. It’s almost a spiritual dimension.

What about your team? How much work do you do withother professionals?I like to work with teams—my office team is a mixture of architects, landscape architects, engineers, and professionals in urban design and planning. We also work with many other professionals on projects. More and more, we in the field of art have to connect. We have to create a network. That’s what placemaking really is.

JoSeph hart is associate editor of Public Art Review.