What do street festivals and public art achieve apart from trashing civil space and disrupting traffic? Should they be allowed? In the first debate in the series, Sir Ian Blair and Ruth Mackenzie join an illustrious panel to debate the politics of the public domain and how it is used.
Artichoke, producers of unforgettable live events, announce the first of three public conversations in London, Liverpool and St Ives, to discuss the ways in which our civic and open spaces are imagined, inhabited and controlled.
Held in partnership with Sky Arts and Tate, the first of these Question Time-style debates will take place at Tate Modern on Tuesday 21st June. Panellists Sir Ian Blair and Ruth Mackenzie will be joined by Gus Casley-Hayford, Sarah Gaventa and Tim Marlow as Chair, as they respond to direct questions from the audience on the vital issue
of public space and how it used.
How we use our public space is fiercely contested, while the space itself is being increasingly privatised via the back door. Be it public art, sporting events, political demonstrations, the right to take a photograph, or simply sitting on the grass, these collective interventions are controlled and regulated. While some events are given carte blanche to shut down the streets, others are put under pressure to relocate into parks and gardens, or simply not permitted to take place at all.
Artichoke’s work is central to the debate. From The Sultan’s Elephant and La Machine, to The Telectroscope and Antony Gormley’s One & Other in Trafalgar Square, their projects positively aim to disrupt daily life, with the closure of the roads and the public occupation of the streets transforming the familiar into the extraordinary. Yet such disruption is often the subject of fierce debate.
Artichoke sets out to challenge the generally-held consensus that our urban environments are primarily for commerce and traffic, rather than for communal activities and fun. This debate asks what kinds of events do we want to see at the centre of our city’s life? How much disruption can we tolerate?
Added by tbizzle on May 28, 2010