SPACEWE MAKE

PUBLIC

We create our own memories in these spaces. We bring along our family and friends and create our own good times. We set up BBQ’s, even though the sign clearly states ‘No BBQ’s’. The spaces are created so that we can attach our own feelings to it, rather than have feelings imposed on us. For each undefinable place, we each have different memories and stories. It is this that makes the space truly public, and the space becomes ours. No longer is it nondescript, because it is remembered fondly as the place where you ripped your trousers on the swing that time, or where you sat until 3am just talking. No two memories are the same, and that is the beauty of these spaces. You need to dig deeper in order to uncover the pearl of the place. This publication is a study of the potential pearls you can find around public spaces

The public adapts a place to suit the needs that they feel aren’t already being fulfilled by the current establishment. We decide that the path that’s been made isn’t quite quick enough for us, and that by cutting over the patch of grass can slice time off your journey. Over time, these paths become so frequently trodden that they become established paths themselves- perhaps even more so than the original path, because it is the public that has concluded that it’s more logical. Other people see the tracks and realise that it makes more sense, and it is these desire lines that probably stick in the memory more because some decision has been consciously made.

SIGNSOFLIFEThe things you find at the site of a place can reveal a lot about the type of activities that go on there. It’s as though we feel the need to leave these little signs of life everywhere, almost to prove that we were there- to make our mark on a place. Each item tells a story in its own small way, each item has an impact.

Items found at the site of Blaise Castle on Sunday the 12th of February.

How do people leave behind such necessities as gloves? In this scenario, perhaps the job was done and there was no need for the gloves anymore. There was once a pub in the background, but now there are only the remains. The gloves are left along with the rub-ble. The view has been cleared, but eventually something else will stand where that pub once stood. Where regulars would meet for karaoke. Where you could always count on bumping into a familiar face. The only hint that anyone ever abided there is these gloves. Perhaps they’ll remain until the next inhabitants come and build.

Items found in the car park of Blaise Castle on the 15th February 2012

Why do so many girls loose their hairbands in car parks? As they are getting back in the car after a long day of playing, perhaps their hair is the last thing on their minds. Imagine their mums have arranged them into plaits, piggy tails, pony tails. Their hair so long that they don’t even notice the bands have fallen out. They’ve stayed at the park too long, and their parents are rushing them home with no time to consider the arrangement of hair.

Curious canisters found at the site of both College Green and the Downs. What do those places have in common to explain these reoccuring canisters?

Various tennis balls found at the sites of Ashton Court and the Downs.

It is evident that parks are not only used by children looking for an old fashioned good time.

Perhaps mothers have a whole artillery of pacifiers on them at all times, and so to lose one doesn’t result in the end of the world.

Keeping warm.

Keeping in contact.

OURSPACE

After a careful study of various popular, and conversely unpopular, public spaces, we have discovered that it seems to be human nature to mark our territory in any place we deem to be ‘ours’. Once you mark a space as ‘public’, we are all too willing to walk in and denounce a place as our own. Public spaces are extensions of our own territory; large back gardens where other people happen to come and go. People battle over it. Claim rights over it. Feel passionately about it.

It is the notches in the trees that differentiate them from every other. The particular tree that once had perfectly positioned branches for your feet. The particular tree that was sufficiently concealed from prying eyes. The particular tree which once provided optimal urinal comfort. The particular tree that cast enough shade to cover your whole group of friends from the summer sun.

The love scratched into a tree in ‘85 exists as a memory. It is a memory because some young couple once thought it important to proclaim their love. The predecessor to marriage is announcing your love to a forest. You know that other people will regard the tree as irrelevant, but the point is that for at least two people in the entire world, those words once meant everything. We create these meanings ourselves. And public spaces are simply just the blank canvas which we mark with our own story. This is what these objects reveal. That is the truth behind public spaces.

Most common items

found in public spaces.

Public Spaces- An InvestigationA publication by John Conlon and Stephanie Weise

Spaces researched around Bristol include Blaise Castle, Ashton Court, The Downs, College Green.