Interviewing the Interviewer

I agreed to meet with myself at a coffeeshop near both of us. When I found myself, I was drinking a cold ginger ale and flipping through my notes, as I am prone to do. I got right down to business:

Me: Why public art?
Myself: Well, for this project I knew I wanted to do something that was related in some way to design. As a student and ... hopefully as a professional ... I have primarily been doing work in urban design and planning, among many other things. I wanted to work on a project that involved intentionally designed spaces within the very unpredictable public realm. Public art exemplifies that, in that it imposes crafted design in spaces that really... have no other formal planning. Well, that's not quite right - plazas, squares, and lobbies are very high-design. But they are typically open spaces without a specific program to follow, whereas typically public art pieces have a specific agenda.

Me: That's all well and good, but really, how does the panel discussion relate to this course?
Myself: The discussion really felt like New York, if that makes any sense at all. It was essentially public, if you could afford $10, so it attracted people from all walks of life who had varying levels of interest in public art. Some were AIA members, some were just folks off the street who wanted free wine. In that sense, the conversation became typical of the New York typified in Ian Frazier’s Gone to New York. The organic nature of the public discussion reminded me of the sense of New York Frazier conveys in his book, which hinges on the unpredictable, the confrontational, and the eclectic, whether in his essay on the character of Canal Street or when the cops appear in his open door.

I also thought of public art when I read Whitehead's essay on Central Park. People forget that Central Park is essentially landscape art, and when they visit it they are really visiting a living, breathing monument. In a sense it's kind of an urban design nightmare, because it's really unsustainable and so literally central, and so expensive to maintain because so many of the plantings are not native or the trees are hundreds of years old grasping at soil that is nutrient-deprived. -- But that's another story. Basically, Whitehead's essay got me thinking about public space, and how art and the urban collective interact.

Relating Tuan's work to this project is pretty self-explanatory. Most of his book is dedicated to the sensory experience of spaces, and art in urban space really appeals to the senses directly. In fact, if I can make this leap, a lot of art is meant solely to appeal to or ignite the senses. His chapter on architecture's role in the experience of space and place also guided my thinking during this discussion and my further research of public art. Tuan's work was the main inspiration for attending this event - in addition to thinking about the role of public art in urban spaces, I also tried to be more conscious of the meeting space itself and the dynamic of the people in attendance. ... It was out there.

Me: Sounds it. I'm told this wasn't your original concept for this project. How did you get to this idea?
Myself: Your source is right. I originally had in my mind a sort of "walking tour" of Manhattan based on Quinn's wandering around the city after losing track of Stillman, as I mentioned in an earlier post. When I read that portion of Auster's City of Glass, I kept trying to imagine the walk in my own head. It got easier as he got further downtown, but as soon as I had a clear picture of the street in my head, I realized that a.) this is a work of fiction, and b.) the street would have looked entirely different at the time this was written anyway. Knowing that, I wanted to follow that route and see what I could see, as they say. That idea kind of fell flat, though, so I started brainstorming. As luck would have it, I stumbled upon an article about a company that runs walking tours through "dangerous" neighborhoods in the city. They wear red berets and jackets and patrol around like some kind of security officer. Of course now I can find neither the article nor the company's website, so maybe it was all a figment of my imagination. I considered going on one of their tours, but you need to book in groups and in advance. I then changed my train of thought - I always had design and public space in mind, but my initial thought process with the first two ideas was how people create designs in existing public spaces. I turned that idea around - how do design professionals affect public space, and in turn, what does the public do with it? And it just so happened that my professor, Jean Phifer, was plugging her talk at the Center for Architecture.

Me: So is public art actually an interest of yours, or did it just fall into place for this project?
Myself: Public art is indeed an interest of mine - I think it's rather fascinating in urban spaces. I jumped on the bandwagon last year when there were a bunch of highly publicized, but temporary public art projects installed in the city, including Olafur Eliasson's Waterfalls, the Telectroscope - which was really more of a tourist attraction than art - and David Byrne's "Playing the Building" down at the abandoned ferry terminal. And of course Banksy. From there I started looking up art projects done in other cities, which is how I initially learned about Peter Gibson and Sentieri Urbani. There really are a ton of great, informal (but legal!) public art projects out there in the world. Unfortunately there are also a lot of really smart guerilla marketing campaigns that complicate the nature of participatory street art, but I think people like Poster Boy demonstrate that there's still an undercurrent of trickery to the form.

Me: What are some other resources for learning about public art?
Myself: There are a number of institutions dedicated to formal public art, such as the Public Design Commission, formerly known as the Art Commission, based in New York, the Percent for Art program, and the Public Art Fund, both of which have chapters nation-wide. For casual browsing, check out WebUrbanist and Urban Prankster, which feature great posts of pieces in action.

Me: Well thanks for that.
Myself: Yeah, check them out at your leisure. Nice catching up with you. It's been awhile.