Category Archives: Public vs Private

Krzysztof Wodiczko, “Homeless Vehicle” (1988)

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Wodiczko carried out a sequence of interviews with the New York’s homeless, learning about how they function by day and night in order to survive and protect their belongings. He was especially interested in those who collected glass, metal, and plastic for resale. Based on that, he designed the multi-functional Homeless Vehicle (1988-89) which reflected their real working and living conditions.

This vehicle is not a solution of the homeless crisis. It is an emergency tool for people who have no options, and an intellectual tool, as it articulates the complex situation of the homeless. It doesn’t represent them as garbage-collecting bums, but as people who use a device intended for specific purposes – which should not exist in a civilised world. This vehicle has a life-saving and didactic function, it finds a form for that which no one wants so know and see – the artist continues.

In this device, its user can wash, cook, rest, and sleep. He or she is able to safely store the collected bottles and cans. The inhabitant is also protected – the vehicle is visible enough to be safe from being smashed by, e.g. a reversing dustcart.

Such vehicle in the street provokes different questions. What is this part used for? How many of such vehicles are to be produced? Or: who are you? How did you become homeless? Then, that person is not only the demonstrator of the vehicle, but also a citizen of the city who has become homeless. That person works day and night, contributing to protecting the environment. He or she helps the city and should be paid for that – Wodiczko explains.

Melanie Manchot, “Walk (Square)” (2011)

photos of children marching

Walk (Square), 2011, Single Screen, HD, 20′40″

Walk (Square) forms part of an ongoing series of projects investigating collective gestures or situations enacted in public such as walking, dancing or celebrating. The work extends a practice based on an analysis of the construction of individual and collective identities and their performative representation through photography and moving image. Walking en masse—whether it be in processions, pilgrimages, in carnival or protest marches—forms the starting point for this video work made with 1000 Hamburg kids. Drawn into the centre of the city from all directions, with art as the ‘Pied Piper’, the work refers to current socio-political situations of protest as well as to recent research across different disciplines into the meanings of groups and crowds. The piece questions whether the act of walking may constitute a ‘form of speech’. On the square in front of Hamburg’s contemporary art museum a crowd of kids performs a simple walking choreography, based on Bruce Nauman’s video Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the Perimeter of a Square, 1967– 1968, creating a shimmering form of movement that briefly produces a moment of collectivity and visual coherence before breaking apart.

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“At first glance, Melanie Manchot’s work shows us what might be a demonstration, a procession or a parade in the centre of Hamburg. The differences between the three, though seldom observed, are crucial. T h e historian David Cannadine has observed that when the French “put their social structures on public display they have parades (which are intrinsically egalitarian), whereas the British have processions (which are innately hierarchical)”. Demonstrations can be either hierarchical or not but, unlike the other two categories, are impossible to fully impose order on.

In ‘Walk (Square)’, a thousand children flock into Hamburg’s central square – with “art as the ‘pied piper”‘, as she puts it. Once inside the square, the children undertake what Manchot calls a “simple walking choreography” based on the Bruce Nauman work ‘Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square’, seen elsewhere in this show. Manchot’s recreation of the earlier work in new form asks us to imagine how occupying public space has changed its meaning between ‘then’ and ‘now’. At the time of Nauman’s work, the purpose of protest was not in doubt, even if its efficacy was not universally accepted. Walking is, here, the means of occupying public space by traversing it. As Manchot puts it, “the act of walking constitutes a ‘form of speech'”. To walk – together – is in certain contexts a political act in the purest sense of the term. It is to ensure that one cannot be simply ‘walked over’ by those in positions of authority. To walk is to create “a moment of collectivity”, in the artist’s words.”

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, “Marches” (2005-09)

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Marches, is a project that started in 2005, the work been performed and exhibited for multiple organizations including Transmission Gallery Glasgow, C-E-M Lisbon, Artangel London 2008 and in Italy with Festival di Santarcangelo 2009. The chief concern of this project is to explore the auditory perception of our built environment.

At the centre of the Marches project is a series of performances that take place on the streets of towns and cities. These performances are choreographed marches in which a small group of 10 performers march planned routes through urban districts. These routes are primarily designed to include the most interesting acoustic/architectural dimensions of the town, connecting large halls, domed ceilings, glass walls, narrow corridors, piazzas, crowded spaces etc. The only costume the performers of Marches wear are specific shoes adapted for greater sonic effect, using combinations of hollow stiletto heels, thick wooden heels, tap plates and hobnails to create strange shoes that when stamped emit a sound that works to acoustically define the architectural space through which the wearer travels. The footwear is designed and adapted in collaboration with cobblers and shoe makers, during the Artangel project, the artist undertook a mini residency at Anthony Andrews Special Footwear and Orthotics.

Participants of the performances are choreographed to join and disperse at points of distinctive acoustic interest. Pathways are planned according to the most acoustically exciting way of navigating all the domed roofs, narrow corridors and reflective glass walls offered by the surrounding urban territory. Planning also involves sociological research and historiography; digging into the city’s history to find stories and accounts of parades, processions, marches, trudges and demonstrations. The resulting routes, illustrated in the maps/scores made, were harvested and mapped onto the current city form, intersecting new buildings and extinct pathways to create new navigations of the city.

Marches performances can be heard online here

Photographs here document recent exhibitions of Marches at AUB Art Gallery Beirut 2013 and Caja Madrid Barcelona 2012.

 

Francis Alÿs, “The Modern Procession” (2002)

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The Modern Procession, organized by artist Francis Alÿs (b.1959, Antwerp, Belgium) and presented by the Public Art Fund in collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art, is modeled after a traditional ritual procession. Beginning in front of MoMA at 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue at 9am, the procession parades through midtown Manhattan, crosses the Queensboro Bridge into Long Island City, marches along Queens Boulevard, and ends at the door of MoMA QNS (33rd Street at Queens Boulevard). Both festive and ceremonial, the procession makes the museum’s historic transition both visible and public, linking the two boroughs in a spectacular and memorable way.

A 12-member Peruvian brass band, Banda de Santa Cecilia, sets the pace for the procession. More than 150 uniformed participants carry reproductions of MoMA’s most famous works—Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel, and Alberto Giacometti’s Standing Woman—on handheld wooden carriages. The presence of these reproductions pays homage to the history of MoMA while celebrating the cultural and economic potential of bringing art into the streets. Artist Kiki Smith serves as a representative of contemporary art. Carried by fellow participants, Smith leads the spectacular procession, which also includes banners, dogs, and scattered rose petals.

Regina José Galindo “Who Can Erase The Traces?” (2003)

woman leaving bloody footprints

Regina José Galindo, Quién puede borrar las huellas? (Who can erase the traces?, 2003), performance, Guatemala City, photo: José Osorio

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In her most celebrated work, Who Can Erase the Traces? (¿Quién puede borrar las huellas?, 2003), she walked barefoot through the streets of Guatemala City, from the Palacio Nacional de la Cultura to the Corte de Constitucionalidad, carrying a basin filled with human blood into which she periodically dipped her feet. The trail of footprints visualized her reaction to the recent news that Efraín Ríos Montt, a former military dictator responsible for the most destructive period of the country’s internal conflict, had been permitted to run for president despite constitutional prohibitions. In this work, the line between Galindo’s body as object and subject was so subtle that the blood covering her feet appeared to be her own; she embodied the war’s victims, taking their blood as hers and appropriating their suffering.

Francis Alÿs “The Green Line” (2004)

video stills of a man dripping paint as he walks

The Green Line, Jerusalem, Israel, 2004; 17:41 min
In collaboration with Philippe Bellaiche, Rachel Leah Jones, and Julien Devaux.

Alÿs performed this walk by carrying a can of paint with a hole in it as he traced a portion of the “Green Line” that runs through the municipality of Jerusalem. There is a filmed documentary of the walk.

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“In the summer of 1995 I performed a walk with a leaking can of blue paint in the city of São Paulo. The walk was then read as a poetic gesture of sorts. In June 2004, I re-enacted that same performance with a leaking can of green paint by tracing a line following the portion of the ‘Green Line’ that runs through the municipality of Jerusalem. 58 liters of green paint were used to trace 24 km. Shortly after, a filmed documentation of the walk was presented to a number of people whom I invited to react spontaneously to the action and the circumstances within which it was performed.” (credit)

Vito Acconci “Following Piece” (1969)

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a paper with photos, notes, and a map

Vito Acconci, Following Piece (1969)

For 23 days he chose random people on the street to follow. He did so until they entered a private residence or office. He typed accounts of the pursuits and sent them to different arts people around town.

Vito Acconci, Following Piece (1969) Mixed media, 30 inches x 40 inches

Vito Acconci, Following Piece (1969) Mixed media, 30 inches x 40 inches

This piece has many critics due to the problematic nature of following a person without their consent.