Luchezar Boyadjiev Artists and/in Public Space - a form of private “investment” in a civil society? (Published in English and German in: “The Art of Urban Intervention”, Ed. Judith Laister, Margarethe Makovec & Anton Lederer. Rotor Center for Contemporary Art, Graz; Universität Graz, Insitut für Volkskunde und Kulturanthropologie, Graz. Löcker Verlag, Vienna. 2014. ISBN 978-385409-702-0)
Between 2003 and 2011 in two of its projects ICA-Sofia (Institute of Contemporary Art-Sofia) navigated through the urban developments in the turbo-capitalist city of Sofia - the Visual Seminar project (VS, 20032006, together with CAS-Sofia in partnership with relations, a project initiated by the Federal Foundation for Culture, Germany; see http://www.projekt-relations.de/en/explore/visual_seminar/index.php ; http://ica-sofia.org/en/archive/visual-seminar ), and the project Art of Urban Intervention (AOUI, 20092011; a multi partner project spearheaded by rotor in Graz; see http://ica-sofia.org/en/projects/item/35the-art-of-urban-intervention ; http://ica-sofia.org/en/ica-gallery/exhibitions/exhibitions2011/item/302art-of-urban-intervention ). These projects, though vastly different in scope, ambition and program, are related through the methodology used for thinking and dealing with and in public space. The underlying premise was that in a city, which is transforming from a post-totalitarian into a neo-capitalist one, the very notion of public vs. private (not only regarding space) is a subject of an on-going process of formation rather than a static context for action – nearly a quarter of a century after 1989 it is not yet clear what public space might be in an environment of low-powered legislature and high-powered speculation (investment powered by money, influence, corruption and so on) that is not necessarily nor always illegal but is too unrestrained to be taken lightly (at least until the world financial crisis struck). The methodological model that we used envisages public space as a space of negotiations; this is the space where citizens negotiate and re-negotiate the conditions for the usage of public space between themselves as well as with the ruling power. In the process of these “negotiations” (they are rarely direct and overt) the public sphere is manifested. It can never be taken for granted in any of its local specificities. A working premise was the fundamental equality between all agents (voices) active in public space – artists and architects, citizens and media actors, policeman and passers-by, ethnic Bulgarians, Romani and other minorities, even the politicians - though they are privileged for being invested with executive or legislative power they are still part of the “landscape” for negotiations; though they provide the static ground for negotiations, they too are responsive to actions and provocations in public space. As people inhabiting the space of the city and thus having a long-term “investment” in the life of the city, we are all firstly citizens who are more or less active participants in the project, the action, and the debate. Both projects have expired but they are still an ongoing process in terms of the debate they have been part of or the issues they have raised and the questions/propositions they have made. In this process the theoretical research or the intervention in the urban (and/or media) space, the public debate or the printed edition are but elements from the whole. Both these projects were conceived not only as art, architecture or political action but rather as citizens’ behavior in public space seen as the setting of various activities with more or less specified professional profile. In this process some participants are merely initiators, organizers, instigators while others are not; the former are triggering the process but beyond that they do not have any privileged position as in “author vs. audience” over the latter - least of all because of exclusive professional competence. On the contrary, professional competence was seen as a pre-condition for citizen’s identity - before being artistic the act of negotiating the use of public space through art is a citizen’s action; the artist is a citizen as well as the “viewer” and that is supposed to make them equal. Ideally, they stimulate each other; compete with each other; present arguments to each other; they formulate and re-formulate each other – in other words, they negotiate as everybody else, in a setting not much different from a quarrel between two car drivers in Sofia arguing over the use of the same parking spot. A direct product is the energy to form citizen’s identity; an indirect result – stimulating the public awareness and acts of self-empowered citizens’ action.
There were significant differences between the VS and AOUI projects – length, volume of work, quantity and characteristics of components, participants, projects and not least – budgets. However, the main difference (keeping in mind the shared methodology) was in the scale and sphere of action as well as the scope of implications. The Visual Seminar was a massive “surgical operation” on public space in a regime of negotiations and bargaining with power and other citizens of Sofia out in the open; the Bulgarian part of Art of Urban Intervention (in the cities of Sofia and Dobritch) was a project of testing, speaking about, and reflecting upon models for thinking the future as well as individual artistic positions within the public space of the city. The Visual Seminar engaged with the basic opposition between public and private use of urban space in a situation of massive investment between 2000 and 2006/2008 in Bulgarian cities and resort areas on the Black Sea cost; the AOUI concentrated on: a/ the possibility to think of a future, in particular a future beyond and outside of the paradigm of the supposedly victorious neo(turbo)-capitalism; b/ the possibility to have discrete actions for alternative use of the city that have the same status and scope of efficiency as any everyday life act of a city’s dweller. Whereas the VS was an attempt to construct a shared environment for citizens and partners, the AOUI was a platform for co-citizens operating on a micro level and talking over the current situation of lacking perspectives and alternatives. In the context of VS the interventions of artists and theoreticians were products of long-term research, careful preparation and meticulous timing for positioning the action within the time and space of the city of Sofia. Each one of the main 9 projects from the VS module “Resident Fellows” had its own budget, project frame, and support structure of public debates, colleagues from the seminar, a book, an epilogue and even after-image. The blitz projects of the artists taking part in the AOUI (subtitled Transformation Spots) were low budget, fast, direct, operative and nearly spontaneous interventions aiming to test the use of particular spots in the space of the city. Their modus operandi though artistic in means and unusual in substance was parallel to the usage any ordinary city dweller might engage in. Of course, each intervention was duly documented and made available for scrutiny later on in an exhibition within the “white cube” walls of ICA Gallery (fall of 2011). AOUI-Transformation Spots was a discrete “acupuncture” session on some spots of public space. Certain citizens (5 young artists) claimed their right to a none-functional (yet none-destructive, none-aggressive) use of the city with the aim of marking their presence as citizens without necessarily aiming at direct negotiations with the other players in the city. The interventions in the city realized within this project might have remained unnoticed but for the most immediate surroundings in a small neighborhood or a specific street corner. Neither aggressive visual impact nor interaction were the goal but whenever they would take place it wasn’t within the regime of consuming art positioned in public space as a trap for the amateur viewer…; rather the goal was to work within the regime of playful interaction between equals who become co-citizens together in a specific place and time, though maybe for just a few minutes. 5, 100 or 1000 co-citizens – numbers were not relevant; neither the mass impact of a protest action nor some kind of educational function from a privileged position was the motivation. The message was – “…here I am a playing citizen, do you want to play along in this shared space?” Within this model art has the right to exist in public space because it is a citizen’s gesture of presence and not because it has some kind of extraordinary rights, mission or competence. This is the same way any kind of citizens act becomes valid in public space. In a modest scale and fast rhythm the struggle here is for the freedom and the right to have presence in the city. Within the model we used for the VS and AOUI projects (public space is a space of on-going negotiations) the status of each artistic intervention is defined by the answer to a question – which is the phase of negotiations on the conditions for the use of public space that the intervention partakes in? Does the intervention engage with a finalized negotiating process, or is the process still in motion or is there some other situation taking place with regard to the negotiations? The simplest examples for a finished process are the public institutions of memory in their material/visual form – the permanent monuments, the museums, etc. Here the “work” has intervened forever in the public space of the city either as a result of a public consensus (or a form of consensus) reached after debate or as the result of arbitrary (none-negotiated) actions of the ruling power. In the last case consensus is imposed
with a decree without the participation of the citizens (as is currently the case in Bulgaria). However, no matter how consensus is reached here the process of negotiations is closed; society and citizens are more or less happy and must get used to the new situation concerning the use of public space. This is what a sample of public art is in a very simplistic definition – a product of a finished process of negotiations. The best examples for public art might set a new kind of consensus with a lasting effect even when they are not meant for eternity… In any event – the process is over – either there is (was) permission for the artistic intervention from the authorities and/or the communities of people concerned; or public funding is used for the realization; or there is a decree; or let’s say there is a long term program for anesthetization of the environment. In Bulgaria the good examples for public art are rare, which might be the effect of lack of public debate or insufficient debate or passive public opinion, etc. Within the Visual Seminar project something different was taking place – negotiations all through the project period – long preparations for temporary interventions in the public space of the city, often realized without a specific (or any…) permission from the authorities that were meant to provoke a search for a new kind of consensus – with a civil (rather than commercial, or representative) substance serving public rather than private interests. Each artistic action in this context on the other hand, might be seen as a specific kind of “investment” in the space of the city, in its civil and public character… In spite of the efficiency, visibility or the specifics of each intervention, these were part of an on-going process of negotiations and the search for a new kind of consensus debated in public meetings. Here too the public is more or less engaged, more or less happy with the results. But at least it does not have to get used to anything permanent which is imposed on its living space – there are not fixed rules, definitions or representative objects. The potential for citizen participation is maintained in a state of readiness for further action and debate; the process of negotiations is going on; the conditions and regimes for the use of public space are being re-defined and there is a kind of local example for what art in public space might be. While negotiations are going on there might be scandal, censure, people fired or affected in a number of different ways. However, it’s a kind of participation with and/or because of art. The artistic projects from AOUI-Transformation Spots fall within the same general category of art in public space. However, in as much as they had no permission whatsoever, were fast and immediate interventions with range of visual efficiency radius of less than 50 meters and 5 to 20 citizens, they verge into a third category which is in fact the most promising and interesting one. Simple and ephemeral, efficient by chance rather than by default, these interventions were attempts at dysfunctional and arbitrary acts in the city environment. And they were intentionally harmless, innocent, and innocuous totally in contradiction to what at the same time (since the summer of 2011 and going on) the state government and its municipal peers are doing with and to the city of Sofia in the context of the so called “museum reform” – the fast, hasty, none-debated, publically impenetrable, and not even reflected upon by the state experts process of constructing several new museum institutions with the only motivation NOT to lose the available postaccession funding coming from the EU and Brussels. In Bulgaria of the last 2-3 years this kind of citizen-as-artist intervention in the public space of the city has a modest alternative impact in opposition to the actions of the government and its agencies. That is not however neither the main goal nor the desired effect – it is just that such gratuitous arbitrariness is in fact and in substance similar to the museum reform and museum construction practiced at the same time by the ruling power – in both cases there is no negotiation at the time the action is happening… The difference is that those citizens in power have been empowered by a public vote NOT to do anything arbitrary or gratuitous; on their turn the artists can afford NOT to enter into any negotiations with the ruling power by intervening into the city space with the goal of stating their citizens’ presence without any permissions – thus they might be able to trigger new agreements for the use of public space, new usage, new agenda and so on civil society issues. In fact this is the background for the most visible action of a group of anonymous graffiti artists in recent memory in Sofia – in June 2011 they painted part of the Monument of the Soviet Army in Sofia (a socialist realist in style and dubious in message monument erected in the 1950ies that was never liked too much by
the Sofia population…) in such a way that the figures of Soviet officers and soldiers were transformed into comics characters such as Captain America, Spiderman, and even Ronald McDonald and Santa Claus… Their message, apart from the sprayed text under the altered sculptural group reading “In tune with the times”, is in substance: “We are here! We do not negotiate the fact!” In correspondence to this one of the most visible and efficient interventions within the AOUI project was an intervention with graffiti means into the graffiti message (nationalistic, etc.) sprayed on a city wall by some football fans – the artist simply corrected the grammar of the “original”… His message – “we do enter into negotiations even with those who do not want negotiations!”… If we do apply the model for thinking public space used in the VS and AOUI projects to on one side – art and artists, and on the other – city, urban environment, citizens actions - we would offer the following categories: Public Art – consensus is reached; Art in Public Space – terms of use are being negotiated; Art of Urban Intervention – we are here! …and that’s none-negotiable…! >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Photographs - captions: 1/ Luchezar Boyadjiev. “Hot City Visual”, 2003 A project for research and intervention into the visual environment of Sofia. Part of Visual Seminar, April – October 2003. Detail. Pseudo-corporate advertisement of the small “business” of a Romani family - billboard “Stefan’s Brigade (and sons-in-law)”; façade of the National Art Gallery, Sofia. October 2003
2/ Javor Gardev. “Visual Police”, 2006 A project for research and intervention into the visual environment of Sofia. Part of Visual Seminar, 20052006. Detail. An officer, the leader of the fictional Visual Police squad created for monitoring the visual environment of Sofia. Portrait photograph of the major. 2006
3/ Luchezar Boyadjiev. “Double Take(s): Interfacing Cities”, 2003/2012. Ongoing cycle of digital photographs and photomontages. Details from the research on the “Hot City Visual” project – the “low-end” of advertisement, neighborhood level - a small bistro in Sozopol on the Black Sea Coast of Bulgaria (2004); and the “high-end” of advertisement – corporate, center of Sofia (2003).
4/ Luchezar Boyadjiev. “Double Take(s): Interfacing Cities”, 2003/2012. Ongoing cycle of digital photographs and photomontages. Details from the research on the “Hot City Visual” project – an monument from 1981 in the center of Sofia dedicated to the 1300 anniversary of the state - abandoned to decay after 1989 (2007); a new kind of “monument” from the Black Sea Coast resort of Sunny Beach in Bulgaria (2004).
5/ Samuil Stoyanov. “Temporary Alteration”, 2011 Site-specific intervention in the city part of the AOUI project. 40 garbage bags, 40 fastening bands, street lamps wrapped in plastic bags. Spring 2011. City of Dobritch, Bulgaria
6/ Veronika Tzekova. “Space Appropriator #3 (Junior Pro-Ball)”, 2011 Site-specific intervention in the city part of the AOUI project. Chalk drawing, football, kid. Spring 2011. Sofia, Bulgaria
7/ Destructive Creation Group. “In tune with the times”, 2011 Unsanctioned graffiti painting and writing over a 3D relief of the monument to the Soviet Army in the center of Sofia. Comics’ characters painted over Soviet Army officers and soldiers to comment on the dubious status of the monument. June 2011, Sofia
8/ Vikenti Komitski. “Corrected Graffiti”, 2011 Site-specific intervention in the city part of the AOUI project. Spray paint over nationalistic graffiti correcting its grammar and spelling. Spring 2011, Sofia