PUBLIC SPACE
THE ROMANCE OF PUBLIC SPACE
To speak of public space, it is first necessary to address the entire current crisis that surrounds its concept. So, I decided to bring up some questions that the Argentinian architect Adrián Gorelik exposes in his text “The romance of public space”.
First, Gorelik theorizes three urban models that he noticed influencing different spatial practices and urban policies from the 1980s onwards, they would be: Habermasian, Arenditian and assistance. The objective is not to enter into each one of them and understand their articulations with each other and with the city, but to make it clear that such models have a conflicting character and that urban specialists used these conceptualizations to refer to the public space and operate from their own traditions, thus incorporating new schemes.
The author then discusses the articulations of the public space novel, which emerged in the 1980s when, after a long absence from cultural, sociological, political and urban vocabularies, public space became a self-explanatory and operative category. It has become a “bridge category”, as it brings together an idea of city, architecture, politics, society and urban culture, which both illuminate the concept of “public space” and allow themselves to be illuminated by it, being complementary. They are dimensions of society, politics and the city that are strongly different, but somehow connected, although Gorelik makes it clear that they do not resolve his main theoretical node: the relationship between urban and political form.
From the 1980s until today, completely different things have been mentioned through the “public space” category. For example, it was spoken both by people who wanted spheres that were for decades under the monopoly of the State to be returned to society – a process in the 1990s of privatization of public services –, as well as by people who sought to preserve common spaces directed by the State. , protecting them from private business. What these oppositions show us is the conflict inherent in the definition of public space. It is something obvious and evident, but it is not usually thematized, thus becoming a fetish.
“Does it still make sense, then, to call any of these options 'public space', fighting for the definition of 'legitimate'? The most advanced urban thinking, some time ago, began to question the very notion of the city that alluded to the category of public space.” [1]
For Gorelik, the public space has become an idealized place where individuals deposit all the virtues that a city could have, instead of having the commitment to put them into practice in reality. The “bridge category” would have been transformed into a “zombie category”, since it continues to be present in our discourse as if it were entrusted with achieving an implicit connection between urban specialists, economic agents and the government, when, in fact, they worked. articulated, it was not to favor the public space.
Recently, however, architects have begun to put aside the banal way in which the public space category has been operating and appeal to their ability to compose different spheres, to decompose their individual parts and adopt, as Rem Koolhaas warned in the early 1990s, the discourse of chaos to understand the city.
THE PUBLIC ART
According to American art historian and critic Rosalyn Deutsche, “public” has become part of the discourse of conservative democracy – as have the terms “freedom”, “equality” and “participation” – for purposes specifically on the right and in the which, in the countryside of the city, is used to sustain a cruel and irrational urbanism.
It is possible to perceive in his speech that Deutsche adopts a vision of an urban model, based on the theorization of Gorelik, “Arendtiano”. This model derives from Hannah Arendt's conception of public space, in which it would represent the Agora of the classic polis, that is, it is the space of political action, the place of encounter with the other for the construction of difference. It is a boiling space that, through manifestations, as well as the art that occupies the street, does not propose to articulate social life, but to highlight the multiple fractures between society, space and time.
In relation to public art, Deutsche believes that its defenders often seek to resolve conflicts through procedures that are called "democratic", due to, for example, the "involvement of the community" in the selection of works of art, or the so-called “integration” of works with spaces. However, in this way, they leave aside the real convenience and necessity of these procedures, since the role of democracy would be to sustain and not resolve conflicts. Such questioning is justified by her when, from the 1980s onwards, the interest of private profit and state control made public art a mere democratic legitimacy, used to “beautify” and “give function”, but which, in fact, helped to suppress the social conflicts and oppressive relations that these spaces produced.
“The new public art involved and concealed what Marxist geographers called the 'politics of space' - a phrase that refers not only to the struggles that take place within spaces but, more importantly, to the struggles that produce and maintain those spaces. ” [two]
Public art, for her, would then be the instrument through which people would engage in political discussion or enter into a political struggle, so any “site” could potentially be a public space. They are not necessarily urban spaces such as squares, beaches, streets, they can be museums and galleries. Much less need to be in the physical city considered “real”, they can be in cyberspace and mass media. For her, the rejection of these other spaces is counterproductive, as it prevents us from extending the field of spatial politics, limiting different types of spaces from becoming public.
“What then remains as the meaning of "public" art? It seems, for Deutsche, the qualifying mark of public art is not its place or existence as an object, but its effect. Wherever it is situated and whatever material it is made of (if it is made at all), the work must support, rather than suppress, democratic debate about boundaries, both physical and intangible.” [two]
SPACE POLICY
Since the “politics of space” – struggles that produce and maintain space – was addressed by Rosalyn Deutsche, I would like to highlight one of the aspects that seem to me to be most important in the discussion of “public spaces”, theorized and discussed in these bibliographies that I bring : barriers and access difficulties that limit everyone's right to the city.
In most cases, people from the urban periphery are the ones who suffer the most in relation to their mobility and socio-spatial practices that are stigmatized and often denied by politics, the form of city production and by society itself.
According to the Brazilian Élvis Ramos, individuals from this periphery, especially young people, end up elaborating their ways of jumping the scales, building their territorialities and their assemblages, bypassing many material and symbolic barriers that are imposed on their living spaces. These struggles have to do with the idea of acquiring space capital , which would allow them to compose forms of mobility and access in the city.
Such practices, contrary to socio-spatial segregation and territorial stigmatization, can also be present in the scope of leisure and art. This is what Ramos seeks to exemplify in his article [3], taking into account the low microculture – one of the youth networks on the outskirts of the city of Marília, São Paulo –, to show how entertainment is also a field for the construction of space capital. . It is a resource that not only covers the issue of mobility, but also territoriality and visibility.
“That is, at the same time that young people seek fun in their enjoyment, they also build spatialities to become visible and often end up entering a field of divergence and struggle in the city.” [3]
As Rosalyn Deutsche says, the term “public” ends up being a disguise to sustain a cruel and irrational urbanism, in contrast, these practices, regardless of whether they are considered artistic or not, are the instrument through which people enter a political struggle and support a democratic debate.
LA HAINE (THE HATE)
The French movie "La Haine" (1995), by director Mathieu Kassovitz, addresses issues of public space, mainly on the power of mobility, visibility and territoriality of the periphery. Inspired by the story of three young victims of police violence, when the film premiered, considering the French context at the time, it generated a great repercussion, both of indignation among French police officers, and of encouragement from protesters in the streets of Paris.
The short tells the story of three young friends – the Jew Vinz, the Arab Saïd and the boxer Hubert – descendants of immigrants and residents of a housing complex in the suburbs of Paris, known as banlieues , a source of pride for its residents who, at first, century, moved there to escape the filth and precariousness of the big city. However, decades later, the suburbs present dilapidated buildings, burned-out cars and neighborhoods that look like ruins devastated by a war, serving as a backdrop for local young people who face daily the dispute for territory and the struggle for visibility in the city - coming along with a good dose of discrimination and police abuse.
The work begins with real recordings of conflicts between police and protesters in the streets of Paris and develops, in fiction, in the 24 hours following that night of protests in which a young man, a friend of the protagonists, is arrested by the police and beaten during interrogation until he is in coma. Vincent, coincidentally, finds a weapon lost during the riot and swears that if his friend dies, he will kill a police officer.
“The Hate” can be summarized in an anecdote that will be repeated a few times throughout the film: “It is the story of a society that falls and, during its fall, continues to repeat to itself: 'so far, so good... so far. , all right…so far, so good…'. But the important thing is not the fall, it's the landing.” The film is a narrative of the hatred present in the oppressive public spaces of these peripheries, which ends up reflecting in their social configurations. It is not by chance that the ways young people find ways to circumvent the material and symbolic barriers imposed in their living spaces are materialized through violence, representing a problem that remains contemporary.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES
GORELIK, Adrian. The Romance of Public Space . Alterities, Mexico, v. 18, no. 36, p. 33-45, Jul./2008.
DEUTSCHE, Rosalyn. “ Art and Public Space: Questions of Democracy .” Social Text, no. 33, 1992, pp. 34–53. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/466433. Accessed 19 May 2021. Own translation.
RAMOS, Élvis M. The construction of spatial capital and social visibility by low youth microculture in the city of Marília/SP . GEOgraphia, v. 20, no. 44, p. 84-97, 30 Dec. 2018
LA HAINE (TRANSLATION: THE HATE). Directed by: Mathieu Kassovitz. Production: Christophe Rossignon. Paris: Canal+, 1995. MP4 file. (98 min.)