East-West Study Project
„The Art of Encountering II“ by boris nieslony
E. P. I. Zentrum
Europäisches Performance Institut
East-West Study Project 2007
„Die Kunst der Begegnung“ / „The Art of Encountering II“
Thoughts and motives about public, art in public spaces and other casual forms of the cultural public issues,
as well as some theses about the conceptual foundation of the "Art of Encountering".
What is the difference between various (big) projects (more concrete "Art in extrernal Spaces", "External Art Buildings"
("Kunst am Bau") etc.) or for example the festival of the regions/Oberösterreich, bi annual since 1993; "Occupation"
and "Normal null", Berlin; the festival "Kontracom" in Salzburg or in the exploraions of of space paradigms
at "Last & Lost", Munic 2006 and the project "The Art of Encountering"?
And what is the difference between sire specific actions/performances and the "Art of Encountering"?
First some thoughts about public/versus/ Art in external Spaces and their accessibility
"Public is about the what of belonging to the people; relating to, or affecting, a nation, state, or community;
opposed to private; as, the public treasury, a road or lake. Public is also defined as the people of a nation not
affiliated with the government of that nation.
Public also refers to the general body of mankind, or of a nation, state, or community; the people, indefinitely;
as, the public; also, a particular body or aggregation of people; as, an author's public. "public Network" means
a network that is regulated as a common carrier.
Aggens (1983), in the paper titled "Identifying different levels of public interest in participation" states:
"There is no single public, but different levels of public based on differing levels of interest and ability".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public
Opposed to all accessibility are uncountable administrative and institutional ordinances and interdictions.
Social deployment shall be normative and controllable. The term "Unauthorized Tresspassing" and a
non visible "property" dominates. Public gets run-down on the one hand and impoldes more and more in
the exclusive equation "Man = Consumer" (Citymarketing) in a "goal orientated determinded environment".
Street is Street and no Concept Art. Ulf Amide
Public exists here not inherently, it appears only situativ. And - one should formulate as a convergence
to the theseses of Faucault, that public is not connotated and defined by an existence in spheres outside
of any given power-structures, but defined to be a fought over and hirarchic space. Therefore the civic
public (and all social movements) in spaces are a solid integral part of power in multiple ways.
The arbitrary installation of "art" in the city is a delict M. Walser
Public in Spaces by the power is a political delict.
Crucial criteria for public is the accessibility, not clearly defined which public is referred to, as for
example mutually exclusive publics exist simultaniously. The various types interplay, e.g.: to become prominent -
self-potrayal - well wachsed provacationmacheneries - to publicate and to make public - discourses for the exchange
of reasons for various pretensions of caches - to align and "eqaligne" social energies (soccer) - the establishing
of economig and political power - etc.
"Whether any event qualifies itself as public, is determined in the further devolution about it-s relevance,
which means, which incidents appear relavant in the social context".
In Belfast you find sign at public places, that request the population to reconquer the public space and
to (re) animate it.
Furthermore one could mark public as a social situaion, whose participants exchange thoughts, arbitrate goals
among eachothers and prepare actions and operations, that are based on the there proximated experiences.
Persons, that create a public, are partners, no group. They appeal to participants, not to any audience.
Iniatially, events are defined to be public, that arise attention of persons. Only throught the participating spectators,
listeners or readers an event becomes public.
Remembering as well, that there was a distinction in the school of Athens between the interna (esoteric),
in closed rooms as internal (secret) knowledge negotiated knowledge and the extern (exotic) knowledge
that was negotiated in public. This negogiating is process and event at the same time.
Public events and public knowledge is blood in the veins of the body of society. It-s the "self showing people" in public,
they are one of the most important cultural ressource.
The magazine ARCH+ dedicates it-s newest edition (2007) to the Situationistic Internationale (SI)
/Situationistische Internationale (SI) and understands the SI as the origin of many of todays strategies of planning:
"Inspite of the annulment of the Situationistic Internationale (SI) by Guy Debord in 1972, it keeps on living
as the "Phantom of Avagarde" (Roberto Ohrt) and keeps on fascinating and became the benchmark of the theoretic discours
about art and society - as well with impact on architecture and cityplanning and -building.
Was the city of Paris not only the referencespace of the Situationistic Internationale (SI), but as well the refugepoint
of their endavours about the abolition of art and the conveyance of art into a free life".
... and i am growing ears, that-s a strange feeling, but not too bad.... (B. Sturm)
"Stolpering, Stamping, Prancing, Walking and Rambling"
Practical methods are not only developed in the anxious times after the second worldwar, but already in 1833 Balzaz wrote
the essay: "The theory of Walking" as stipulated in the research-document about the "Pathology of Social Life".
Phenomenological foundation stones are planted there, to interveave stand and object, to indespensible interlace the
What and the the How, that are still more then up-to-date today.
A Disruption dominates and is to be formed.
Situative Urbanism and the Spacing of/the World
Public takes place first in the head, and then evolves into the various spaces, and then puts itself over into the exterior.
Various strategies of proceeding in a "Exertion Space".
The walk itself as a narrative-theoretical model, walking and thinking and the completely different walking and thing.
The putting over of movements, the "stroll-walk", the betwixt usage in the fallow of orientation.
Walking as strategy in the everyday life. Walk and Give. Common Practize.
On the inner site the creation of the "distinct classifiable entities" (the cognitive mapping) and on the other hand
the external/exteriour absence of the classification. How does it look like, how shall it look like?
Examination: to stage the self as a person within a community of others, and to actingly comment the staging of
the found and given reality of what is defined as public interest, shall get dematntled of given rolls, play-acting
of the public, demantled of a reglementing definition of the common and as J. Gerz defines it: "What was banned before
into the exile of the private, has to become public now".
No public hearings, no mesuring inspection but interferences. Participation and Particygiving.
With the term "Somatic Kulture", i adumbrate conditions, that are described as followed by the to be anticipated
intersections at the architectural, cityspacial and social body:
Interactions with human entities of being, coincidental presences, spacial conditions, with laywers of folds of liveworlds,
with realities.
Discours in the participating change, human and place, gestus and habitus, trade adn modifications, discrete intersections,
integration or ignorance of the pre-found, the found places, etc.
Not to define the personal attachment to capital and ownership as a benchmark for world and to be connected to
daily activities.
Intercention in these laywers, folds. To deploy folded in methods between participation and transformation.
To lead the discourse between communication technologies. Inventions in given realities will create visual interpretations
and images, that can be read dialectic, symbolic or poetically percieving.
Interferences within the public means to revise one-s worldviews and to found realities.
Vivisections at living bodies (city- and societybody/versus/body of the intervening artists and other participants).
Unfolding of fractions and cracks in the conditions of encoutering.
Altering from the words by Hannah Ahrend is to be written: Not things, works or posessions, that are declared
to be the public and are assigned form the human being, but only the one, who takes his life and person into the hazard
of public, can reach it, the public.
"The hazard of public seems to be totally transparent to me. One exposes oneself in the light of the public and this as
a person. Even if i hold the belief, that one may not appaer or act self-reflective in public, so i more then know,
that in any given acting the person more then is expressed, then in any other given activity. And now i would say,
that this hazard is only possible with a trust in human mankind. That means - with a - hard to define but basic -
trust in the human within all humans. It would not be possible in any other way."
And this view:
The magazine ARCH+ tries to define the opposing pairs as floolwed: Derivé/Citywalk, Psychogeogrpahy/cognitive mapping,
Détourment/Inbetweenusages, revolution of the daily/daily life.
And again ARCH+:"The orientation of a situation in a given space will be a strategy to surrender to the new consciousness
of space. In this sense we assume, that the new situation in a given space will establish itself , the atmosperic unity
of the "quartier" and the archipelstyle classification of the town - as the new leading definition of the situative
urbanism - to be thought further here, to extend this approach, that-s what this edition shall stimulate.
Methods and streategies that are embodied in the project: "Art of Encountering II" the walking, the walk and the fast
changable situation. This in a society, that constitutes continously a "double bottom", as one is facing in any given
normative and authoritarian society.
To well know that all this goals are highly positioned, it means to approach them:
Not to dissemble, that this project does not exist in any "empty space", but already interwoven within a net(work)
of artistic and cultural demands, that is spanned worldwide (to avoid "global"). e.g.: ‚New Genre Public Art’ –
‚Mapping the Terrain’ or ‚participatory turn’, where very exact analysises of the "social body" were and are
researched closely.This is not the space either, to negotiate the difference within the discours - "interaction" and
"participatory art", but it will a main issue of the alcertation between the artist.
How can a work (is it allowed to speak about a work?), how can a situation depict itself, without obviously being
the actual (space) conferment. (Grafting as a method of art)
Encounter
Encounter as intersubjective constitution is temporary. It happyens, it enfolds, ealationless, unambitious.
The artistic interventions are of a performative kind.
In "public" it-s shown as "the temporary", prefigured.
It-s not the intention of the encounter, to design works, that accomodate in any social or political strategiesm,
but nevertheless have an impact as a consequence.
While encountering, the pardoxical concomittance happens (possible by the given framework and -conditions),
that cultur is implanted as a "white spot" into one more or less functioning surrounding urban context.
The project "the Art of Encounter" has to be seen as way more complex, that swinging along with the fields of:
local/versus/transnational, east/versus/west, public-representative/versus/public-non-representative - the following:
° the model of the interdisciplinary colloquium shall guide perception of the social body as well into field,
that are declared epiphenomena of social processes. side effects, to be seen from the corner of one-s eyes,
often more then not at all recognized. (Performance as listing and numeration, choreography of splace and
space and spot and the there moving, fluctuating humans.)
(The model itself a side effect.)
The aura of a space, freed from any functionality, freed to be useless
° Deriving from various deals of thoughts to "what is public space", tending to "how is public space in public"
is to be noted, that there are not really too many models and theories of temporary artical interventions.
But questions originated over the years: how can an instrumantarim for the various conditions, for the interventions
in the various seen and unseesn spaces, then non-spaces, the white spots look like? Where does it make sense to imlant
intersections and to depict them?
The slowly but steady development of depictments, that do not "personify" the incidental as a fact: f.e.:
here my own individual, artistic performance and there the (incidentally free) space of a somewhat coincidental public.
To practize artistical exercise as a longterm development of insightful methods.
The glances of the others have the power of the subjective images. This glance is no medium, it is communication.
° The factor "Education" embodies for me a more stringed sense, then the one of exchange. The participating artists
understand their participation, ther particigiving more as a direction, then being in the education. This of course
shows and has impacts on the methods of the various interferences and the chosen strategies. Many questions affix
exactly here, that research the efficiency of the methods, that examine their tools in sense of usability.
Possible connection of public on the one hand:
A person is protected by the interferences within a group of persons, but simultaniously in the intention of
the interference is hindered. (The interference would look different without the "group"). Cameras prevent any interaction,
and is coded and accepted as a representative (enforced) public by bystanders or participating persons.
False estimation of it-s methods.The acticities of the the public person are more effective and stronger and in their
depiction more present.
On the other hand protection derives and new possibilities in this encounters can be created among the various users.
Common standarts set new standarts of normes within changing paradigms.
°Changes and new orietations, - definitions (selfdetermination) the sharing of ressources, the cast of positions,
receptive structures; definition participants-audience, etc
Public in this new definition defines acting out of inner needs and this as a counterpoint to the public as
the normative in the edict, carried out by justice, authority, power and economic interests.
Then this public as a psychoanalytical public, that pathologizes it-s participants and decruits them
as multifuncional users.
And suddenly there was wind.
Thanks to: Gerhard Dirmoser, the invited and travelling artists from Japan, the German artists,
the participating organosators from Essen, Düsseldorf, Köln, Hildesheim, Hannover and the thoughts of :
G. Deleuze, M. Foucault, P.Bourdieu. J.-L. Nancy, F. Julien and and and ...
Literature:
• Arendt, Hannah. Vita Activa
• Babias, Marius. Die Kunst des Öffentlichen. Verlag der Kunst
• Benjamin, W. Illuminationen, Seite 188-193.
• Deleuze, Gilles. Die Einsame Insel
• Habermas, Jürgen. Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft
• Lettre 76, ( 38-46) Definition von Öffentlichkeit Seite 28, Sp 3, (Jochern Gerz) Öffentlichkeit als Körper, Seite 41 Sp. 2,
• Lewitzky, Uwe. Kunst für alle – Kunst im öffentlichen Raum.
• Mersch, Dieter. Esse est performari, zur Logik ästhetischer Demonstration. In Ästhetik & Kommunikation Heft 99, 1997
• Raabe, Katharina und Sznajderman, Monika. Atlas des Verschwindens
• Sheik, Simon. In the Place of the Public Sphere. Berlin 2005
• Callahan, Anna. www.anna-callahan.com/connections
Boris Nieslony 2007
Translation Sibyll Kalff 2007
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