2022 the relativity of a right time and a right place

 
(remarks_Austrian Culture Forum) 2022
the relativity of a right time and a right place  

 

When I think about public space I think about the spaces where we converge out of necessity in the course of our daily lives. I do not think about recreational space or spaces of collective pleasure. 

This public space is a place of provisional convergence, bodies passing in relative anonymity, a social contract of detachment in place. To enter this public space is to enter into collective indifference. This is a place of social un-ease, we need only look to the public’s hyper-focus on the personal smart phone and the escape promised by the imaginary of the private screen as it transports each subject to some space other than here.

Equilibrium within this space is dependent on regulation and compliance. The public behaves accordingly, acting through first person submission, conforming signifies belonging. But what might be counter-signified should the first person shift from one of submission, or desire to fit in, to one of fugitivity, to a position of refusal, to an ‘I do not, will not, can no longer, nor ever did belong here’ subjectivity. A signifying shift from the tolerance of what might be the right time and the right place for some, to an ownership of a wrong place and a wrong time for others.

The potential for any individual to become non-compliant, threatens to destabilize collective disinterest. The random possibility of a breakdown of anonymous order is nothing less than unsettling, made more so in that it might be any one of us, at any moment, with no for-warning, who simply refuses to continue to participate in the appearance of stability. And so we are trapped in collective limbo, anxious and waiting. And yet a breakdown, or collapse, of collective compliance could offer a desired (desired perhaps unconsciously), even radical, experiential release. A territory as of yet unmapped. 

I suggest that public space might be so otherwise utilized. As it offers a vehicle for convergence, perhaps a shift to convergence of potential, or vehicle for collective re-imaginary. The re-imaginary in turn might offer a glimpse of inter- even trans-dependence, a space for the public that solicits conscious attention, even a desire, to risk belonging with intention, to be present to a vulnerable collectivity.

 

Images

Ann Messner frogperson (still image)

Mirland Terlonge black bag (video)

Mary Mattingly pull (still image and video)

David Hammons untitled scarf action in blizzard

and blizzard balls (3 images)

Paul Chan greetings from Baghdad (2 images and video)

Patrick Rowe mobile print power (4 images)