“The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. Its authority is lost. In its place, there is a language of images. What matters now is who uses that language for what purpose.” (Berger 1972, 33) Museums have been experiencing a radical change over the past two decades. Their values have been unsettled with the introduction of newer means of cultural production. Though they have shifted their focus into more diverse and dynamic programming that can attract more museum-goers, reshaping these institutions has been difficult and has met with criticism and resistance. Art, in its broadest sense, is a form of expression and can take on diverse meanings as it takes on different settings. The inclusion of ephemeral, performance and process-based art has been apparent in recent years, bridging the aesthetic and the social. There have always been alternate and appropriate ways to showcase art outside of the traditional convention, and the very acceptance of these forms will allow artists to communicate and establish a dialogue with wider audiences within unconventional surroundings. Being situated in the real world, art intensifies one's experiences by engagement through play, exploration and performance with moments of serendipity and surprise. It places the audience at the centre of the field and gives them an active role that heightens their perception, appreciation and experience of the urban sphere. Acting as the catalyst for social change, many cities have used art to make their public spaces more inviting. Art is a state of encounter (Bourriaud 2002, 18), advocating alternative perspectives and establishing a sense of shared identity and civic pride within citizens. It fosters social cohesion and an improved understanding of the plurality of cultures. Cities often have leaned upon art or culture-led regeneration to activate spaces and voids enabling a safe secure environment to preserve histories and increasing mobility in disregarded parts of the city. Moreover, art in public space is not determined by the same premises as in museums or exhibition rooms. They have suffered from one-dimensionality, object orientedness, permanence and exclusiveness but with a more recent consciousness and introduction of concepts like temporality, flexibility, collaboration and inclusiveness, art can be perpetuated not just as an aesthetic but a didactic practice. Architecture is often defined as “Baukunst”, which means the art of building or building as an art form. However, Architecture has become an impersonal container of art and with its conventional routines and lack of transformation, it has failed to give art, specificity and context. Understanding why certain architectural forms or organisations are chosen over others or what logic drives them can help us make informed decisions. Architectural decisions for art should be based on collaborative values that allow the building to communicate. From choosing a distinctive location to unconventional curatorial approaches, the architecture should allow artists to use diverse strategies that can guide the audience into ways of seeing, appreciating the artwork and its structural embodiment. My research addresses the integration of art and architecture into everyday life, where each artist can build and structurally curate an experience they want to deliver to their audience. Architecture then becomes a vessel of deliberation and reflection, reframing existing situations and actualising a space that is open, fluid, meandering in and out of social,
political and temporal undercurrents of the artwork. The variability of these experiences is what contributes to the enrichment of arts that could form a network in the city. Although disjointed from each other’s ambition they would invoke a dynamic output that would perhaps blur the boundaries between art, architecture and social infrastructure. These forces, derived from the situationist discourse, break traditional boundaries and disrupt and change the experience of existing models and space. Thus introducing these “situations” changes the potentialities of space and onsets a journey for the citizen to build their maps within their city. Furthermore, theories of adaptability and flexibility by Leupen and Maccreanor along with social and spatial theories of Lefebvre, Simmel, Tschumi and Debord have been instrumental in informing the plausibility of such an interactive and integrative practice that weaves not only social but ecological responsibility of architecture. With this in mind, the architecture can act like an open-source catalogue, a kit of parts where reconfiguration of individual elements and creating combinations can produce an array of results. A place that encompasses a great variety of creative expression, where even the architecture informs the floating culture and fluctuating identity of artwork/exhibit. A systematic yet personalised appropriation that allows architectural gestures like changes in scales, rhythms, circulation, and spatial configuration befitting of the program and function. These mass-customisation tools, mountable and demountable will help make the model sustainable and reusable. Having said that, space and its construction can be seen as a playing field, a heterogenous place in the public sphere that allows us to fill the gap between a viewer/observer and a participant/actor. Construction of such urban assemblies in quotidian spaces initiates a cross-cultural, emotional and global perspective that opens up architecture for plurality. These very permutations and combinations in question would provide for a variety that is necessary if one wants to have a final product that is capable of accounting for producing intangible urban theatrics in the city.
Bibliography :
Berger, John. 1972. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books. Bourriaud, Nicolas. 2002. Relational Aesthetics. Translated by Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods. France: Les Presses du reel. Lacy, Suzzane, ed. 1995. Mapping the Terrain. Seattle: Bay Press.