Art & Design Agency and Participation in Public Space Conference Proceedings International ...

267 Pages·2016·9.34 MB·English

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CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
MEDIATIONS
Art & Design Agency and Participation in Public Space
Royal College of Art, London,
United Kingdom,
21-22 November 2016
ISBN: 978-1-910642-18-4
EDITOR
Saba Golchehr
CO-EDITORS
Rosa Ainley
Adrian Friend
Cathy Johns
Karolina Raczynska
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Karimah Hassan
www.karimahhassan.com
PUBLISHED BY
Royal College of Art
Kensington Gore, London
SW7 2EU
UK
www.rca.ac.uk
This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
HOSTED BY
TRADERS - short for ‘Training Art and Design Researchers for
Participation in Public Space’ - is an EU FP7 Marie Curie Multi-
ITN funded project that focuses on developing and testing a
methodological framework on which art and design researchers can
rely when working on public space projects in participatory ways -
www.tr-aders.eu
Art & Design Agency and
Participation in Public Space
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
TRADERS
Dr. Henric Benesch University of Gothenburg
Prof. Catharina Dyrssen Chalmers University of Technology
Adrian Friend Royal College of Art
Prof. Susannah Hagan Royal College of Art
Dr. David Hamers Design Academy Eindhoven
Prof. Hilde Heynen KU Leuven
Dr. Liesbeth Huybrechts University Hasselt
Prof. Frank Moulaert KU Leuven
Jessica Schoffelen LUCA School of Arts, KU Leuven
Dr. Veerle Van der Sluys LUCA School of Arts, KU Leuven
EXTERNAL
Dr. Pablo Abend University of Cologne
Dr. Erling Bjorgvinsson University of Gothenburg
Dr. Andrea Botero Aalto University Finland
Prof. David Chandler University of Westminster
Prof. Maria Hellström Reimer Malmö University
Dr. Sophia Krzys Acord University of Florida
Dr. Sybille Lammes University of Warwick
Dr. Lieselotte van Leeuwen University of Gothenburg
Dr. Diana Tanase Royal College of Art
Joaquim Tarrasó Chalmers University of Technology
INDEX
09
.
INTRODUCTION
11
WHO SHOULD BE IN CONTROL OF THE DATA CITY?
12 .
THE DESIGN OF DIGITAL SHADOWS
Co-Speculating Presents That Might Already Have Come True
S. Rosenbak and H. Feckenstedt
29
ART & DESIGN INTERVENTIONISM AND LONG-TERM
PARTICIPATION
AN UNEASY RELATION?
30 .
Place.People.Praxis
Collective Engagements Towards Mediated Urban Futures
D. Chopra
44 .
Nautilus Конструкт
Building an Open Stage for Skopje
D. Kokalevski & E. Filipovska
58 .
THE INTERMEDIAL SCENOGRAPHIC SCREEN
Performing ‘Loveness’
D. Hannah
71 .
Urban interventions
Reshaping the Public Space in Palestine
M. Sayrafi
83 .
CONTEXTUALISING CITIZENS
Design-Led Approaches To Visualising Community Ecologies,
Building Interventions And Mobilising Citizen Participation
P. Smith and C. Broadley
100
PUBLIC PLAY
101 .
Play as a democratic means to reconfigure the politics of space
A. P. Assis
112 .
TO PLAY, OR NOT TO PLAY? THAT’S THE QUESTION!
Exploring A Child-Perspective On Play To Negotiate Power Relations
In Participatory Design Processes Involving Children.
S. Schepers, K. Dreessen, and N. Kosten
124 .
Exploring Play as a Generative and Transformative Process
J. Wong and I. Mulder
136
MULTIVOCALITY, DESIGN AND PUBLIC SPACE
137 .
NARRATIVE-BASED ART AS MEANS OF DIALOGUE AND
EMPOWERMENT
S. Miettinen, M. Sarantou, and D. Akimenko
149 .
The dramaturgical pattern of public space
The use of ‘as if’ Space in Vali’Asr Mosque
N. Amini
162 .
IN PURSUIT OF THE VOICES WITHIN SOCIAL DESIGN DISCOURSE
M. H. Buğali, S. Fairburn, R. Halsall
172 .
BUILDING SPATIAL CAPACITIES TO RETROFIT THE DISPERSED
CITY
Exploring The Role Of Design
O. Devisch and L. Huybrechts
185 .
DESIGN PROCESS AS POLITICAL POSSIBILITY
C. Mancke
199 .
Visualising Multivocality through Participatory Painting
A. Mlicka
214 .
LISTENING TO THE UNSAID IN PUBLIC SPACES
Politics of Fear Collective (POF)
232
MULTIPLE PERFORMATIVE MAPPING
A WAY TO CHALLENGE SPATIAL CONFIGURATIONS
233 .
Hacking Buiksloterham
How Self-Builders Are Making Their City
M. Lange and M. Waal
240
THE CURATORIAL
NAVIGATING KNOWLEDGE BOUNDARIES
241 .
Orchestrated public space
The Curatorial Dimensions Of The Transformation Of London’s
Southbank Centre
A. Jones
255 .
How to Play the Environment Game
J. Kei
.
INTRODUCTION
Over the last decade the notion of citizen participation has (re)gained momentum,
both in the realm of national and local politics – partly driven by advances in
digital technologies, such as civic platforms – as well as outside the institutional
domain. Several art and design practitioners have embraced this participatory turn,
aiming to empower citizens to reclaim agency in the public realm. At the same
time, various (conceptual) models of participatory democracy have been explored
through numerous political theories.1 There are, however, very few theories that
mediate between such conceptual models and actual participatory art and/or
design practices in a meaningful and rigorous way [i].
The TRADERS2 project, and the MEDIATIONS conference as an extension of it,
aims to operate within this ambiguous territory. TRADERS focuses on enabling
an exchange of experiences and knowledge in the field of participation in art and
design. Working collectively and individually through workshops, performances,
exhibitions and publications, six early-career researchers have explored different
approaches including intervention, mapping, data mining, play, dialogue and
curating. While these six research projects vary in their thematic approach and
deploy different art and design-based research methods, they all contribute to a
collective deconstruction and problematisation of the notion of citizen participation
in art and design, particularly within the context of public space.
Operating within this context means dealing with discrepancies between a
multiplicity of forces (political, economical, environmental, legal, etc.), concerns
(social justice, privatisation, digitalisation, etc.) and actors (citizens, policy makers,
urban planners, etc.). Artists and designers who aim to empower citizens in often
‘agonistic’ spaces [ii] need to mediate between various aspirations in order to help
bring about desired social and/or political change. Such mediation can take shape
in many ways: through mediating between different stakeholders, between the
client and the public, between different publics, between top- down and bottom- up,
between theory and practice, between ideas and action, between imaginaries and
reality, and so on.
1 Some examples include deliberative democracy, associative democracy and agonistic pluralism (resp.
Habermas, J., 1996. Between Facts and Norms. Cambridge: Polity Press; Hirst, P., 1994. Associative
Democracy: New Forms of Economic and Social Governance. Cambridge: Polity Press; Mouffe, C., 2000.
‘For an Agonistic Model of Democracy’ in (ed) Martin, J., 2013. Hegemony, Radical Democracy and the
Political, Oxon: Routledge)
2 TRADERS - short for ‘Training Art and Design Researchers for Participation in Public Space’ - is an EU
FP7 Marie Curie Multi-ITN funded project (tr-aders.eu)
In this conference we explore six possible approaches to mediation for artists and
designers that aim for civic empowerment:
- Data Mining – data -driven methods to mediate between the top- down and
bottom -up to promote citizen empowerment in the ‘Data City’;
- Intervention – a method to mediate between ephemeral actions and long-
term effects on civic participation in public space;
- Play – mediating between realities and imaginaries of children and adults
in their experience of, and participation in, public space;
- Modelling in Dialogue – mediating between different actors and voices by
modelling multivocality within participatory processes;
- Multiple Performative Mapping – performative and participatory mapping
as a method to mediate power configurations in the digital-physical urban
landscape;
- Curating - exploring if and how the curatorial negotiates and mediates
between knowledge boundaries in art and design.
During this conference we interrogate the means, modes and/or practices artists
and designers can employ to mediate between multiple actors with diverse
agencies. How can they use their own agency to empower citizens to bring
about desired social or political change? And how can artists and designers
‘make a difference’ [iii] within existing/established distributions of power? These
questions, and more, are explored through different paper, exhibition, keynote
and reflection sessions, examining ‘matters of concern’ [iv] in art and design
practices by analysing material, e.g. artefacts, as well as immaterial components,
e.g. relationality, positionality, etc., of real-life participatory projects. We aim to
scrutinise the ethical implications – such as artists’ and designers’ accountability
– that are inherent to participatory processes, yet often remain underexplored by
researchers and practitioners when working with, or in the service of, the public.
The conference therefore explores how artists and designers can become critically
aware of their agency in the pursuit of empowering publics in decision-m aking for,
and co- creation of, public space(s).
[i] Krivý, M. and Kaminer, M., 2013. The Participatory Turn in Urbanism. Footprint, Issue 13, Vol. 7(2).
Autumn 2013. pp.1-6.
[ii] Mouffe, C., 2000. Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism. Political Science Series 72, C. Neuhold
(Ed.). Vienna: Department of Political Science, Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS).
[iii] Giddens, A., 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley,
California: University of California Press. P.14.
[iv] Latour, B., 2004. Why has critique run out of steam? Critical Inquiry, 30, Winter 2004.