new genre public art is taking over the streets, re-purposing public spaces in innovate and exciting ways. the panel member of the onedotzero_adventures in motion ‘city interventions’ discussion have three very different practices all working in the public space, making for a lively and thought provoking conversation around the purpose and concepts of public art.

jason bruges has his own company and has made some interesting site specific works sensory reactive works which have both human and environmental inputs. he talked us through recent work including a commission for the olympic delivery authority. jason’s work is an intelligent, integrated response to the public space, allowing the audience to feel their presence not only in the physical environment but also its social implications. in the panel discussion he drew focus to the methods he employs to retain artistic control over his work despite mostly working commercially, as well as the masses of legal issues generated when doing public artwork by the book.

this was a great chance to hear from the GRL founder about how he legally and illegally invades public space to create artworks. I love his idea of ‘geek graffiti’; bringing simple open-source technology to the streets. Open-source was very much the focus of bruges discussion. james felt the development and open-sourcing of simple technology allows bombers and taggers to reclaim what has become a technologically authoritative cityscape. working to defeat the ‘global boring’ by ‘bringing back the rebel’ into the public space.

deadly knitshade brings this rebellious public art zeitgeist to a feminised craft world. by calling the work craft instead of art seems to allow her to relinquish a conceptual public responsibility for the work and concentrate on the ‘fun’ element (as well as avoid an angry brush in with the long arm of the law!). knitshade is part of the knit the city yarn-storming group who’s work has included a phone box cosy and more recently, and self admittedly more culturally relevant, a nursery rhyme inspired yarn storm of 6 london churches. knitshade explained that for them it wasn’t so much about the audience response to their work but the community attitude of the knitters. she also focussed the discussion on the transient nature of the work and how documentation of the work in place is, to her, the real artefact.

the panel discussion weaved in a fun and silly way through the personal opinions each artist had of the public space. these juxtaposed ideas made for a lively debate and certainly shed light on the changing cityscape. both yarn bombing and open-source tech feel like very different methods used to reclaim the evolving cityscape; the change being brought about by many influences, including that of innovative public space artists such as jason bruges; so the debate over who has rights to alter the public space was particularly lively.

great insights into the changing cityscape, all of which seem like great fun!

written by

holly clarke