This interconnection between public space, art and citizens opens up a new field for experimentation in which the artistic interventions can be combined with public space acupuncture strategies to promote interaction among citizens, as well as between citizens and the place. Although public art has been used on numerous occasions throughout history to extol the institutional values that reinforce collective identity, whether on a national, regional or local level, at present
it can be used in our increasingly individualized society as a tool for communication that relates individuals with one another, or that brings groups together in a society that is becoming more and more segregated. Similarly, a new way of understanding art, not just as a top-down process but as a participatory activity, can create new avenues for experimenting with the role of public space. Paraphrasing the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky’s famous words: “Art is not better, but an alternative existence; it is not an attempt to escape from reality, but the opposite: an attempt to animate it”, we can conclude that public space acupuncture strategies that transform urban landscapes into urban art-scapes can generate a different perception of urban reality, creating an alternative public space that encourages citizens to experience the city in a different way and which helps to infuse new energy into urban life.
1. Franz Boas, Primitive Art. H. Aschehoug and Company, Oslo, 1927.
249 — Re-Placemaking: City as an Art-Scape
The hybridization process of public art does not just intertwine different disciplines, like landscape architecture and art; it has also promoted collaboration between numerous artists, landscape architects and designers in hybrid urban interventions that we might call art-scapes. This has led to the transformation of numerous public places into memorable pieces of public art that remain in the collective memory of city residents and visitors as places with a special identity, which acquire a sense of place in some way. Although some of these creations draw inspiration from the history of the site to lend it meaning, what is especially remarkable is the independence with which works of art are able to generate a new sense of place independently of the places themselves. In this way, sites with little or no sense of place can take on a new meaning for citizens thanks to art. At the same time, many of those art-scapes seek to promote interaction with citizens by reinforcing the community’s sense of place.