Representation / Presentation: Is public space made by government or citizens?

One of the fundamental confusions about the concept of public space is whether it refers to spaces funded and built by an elected government, or to spaces appropriated by citizens in order to contest government policies. This tension emerged with the rise of modern democracy, predicated as it is on the election of representatives through majority vote. In this form of democracy, citizens no longer speak in their own voices but through others, and a gap opens between the peoples’ demands and the motivations of government. Within this situation, public space emerges as a locus where people can present themselves to others in political contestation, rather than relying on their representatives to act in their best interest.

Furnishing Positions is a serial publication that focuses on the paradoxical nature of public space. Its standard form is an 18”x18” broadsheet, consisting of an artist’s project on one side and a text on the other. It will be published once every two weeks for three months, starting September 15, 2014, with each issue focusing on a specific paradox. As a serial, each issue builds on earlier editions. As each issue is published, it will be hung and made available for free in the Blackwood Gallery, posted to the gallery’s website, postered in public sites, and circulated electronically. As the exhibition progresses these broadsheets will accumulate, generating and animating conversations in the space.

In 2003, it was announced that Vancouver would host the 2010 Winter Olympic games, but protests against the spectacle started long before. Opposition was declared - against the anticipated displacement of low-income residents, civic debt in the face of extraordinary corporate gains, and infractions of Indigenous sovereignty. These criticisms focus on the dark side of neoliberalism, according to which the boundaries between private and collective expressions are recoded in favour of commercial interests. For urban theorist Miguel Robles-Durán, public space is no longer a place available to all for social gatherings, debate, protest, or retreat without specific purpose for the simple reason that these uses do not “[meet] the requirements of the private investors, private corporations, and of public-private alliances to extract land rent and most importantly, to develop new spaces in which to re-invest their accumulated surplus.”11Miguel Robles-Durán, “For the Brief Moments of Confrontation,” in Make_Shift City, Renegotiating the Urban Commons, ed. Francesca Ferguson and Urban Drift Projects, in cooperation with the Berlin Senate for Urban Development (Berlin: Jovis Verlag, 2013), 25-31. As preparations for the games mounted around Vancouver, these tensions were predictably aggravated.

00, Six Paradoxes, 15/09/2014
Adrian Blackwell

01, Affinity / Disagreement, 15/09/2014
Abbas Akhavan | Kanishka Goonewardena

02, Representation / Presentation, 29/09/2014
Dylan Miner | cheyanne turions

03, Materiality / Immateriality, 14/10/2014
Greig de Peuter | Paige Sarlin

04, People / Things, 27/10/2014
Karen Houle | Kika Thorne

05, Privacy / Publicity, 10/11/2014
Eric Cazdyn | Charles Stankievech

The Furnishing Positions broadsheets are all available for free download. To order free printed copies of any or all of them, please send an email including title(s), number of copies, and your mailing address to: blackwood.gallery[at]utoronto.ca.