POLITICS AND ‘COMMON SPACE’

POLITICS AND ‘COMMON SPACE’: New modes of production through art, advertising and technology

BÁRBARA SALAZAR OYARCE

The past months have been irrefutable strange in terms of how we interact with space. Quarantine caused disuse of public space, while virtual platforms promoted an alternative space to address the lack of physical interaction based on the resignification of private space. Parallel to this situation, social discontent exploded globally, arousing protests and riots in the U.S., Latin-America and the U.K. that took back streets to demand change, using social media to viralize these inequalities and also allowing individuals to virtually take part on these public manifestations. These divergent scenarios show that space has direct relation with society and media technology, suggesting an alternative understanding of ‘common’ space positioned in between the public and private sphere. Firstly, it’s relevant to establish a conceptualization of the ‘common’.

In his book Common space (2016), Greek architect Stavros Stavrides states that “common spaces emerge in the contemporary metropolis as sites open to public use in which, however, rules and forms of use do not depend upon and are not controlled by a prevailing authority” 1. This shouldn’t be interpreted as lawless nor anarchist territories. On the contrary, Stavrides suggests that “it is through practices of commoning, practices which define and produce goods and services to be shared, that certain city spaces are created as common spaces”2, stating that common spaces are products of social interactions which define and symbolize them within the city. To reach this proposal, Stavrides explicitly mentions the influence of philosophers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s idea of the ‘common’, which advocates for a project of democracy through commonwealth. Exploring the political and economical constitution of society, Hardt and Negri suggest “the production of the common … tends to displace the traditional divisions between individual and society, between subjective and objective, between private and public” 3. According to the authors, this ambiguity, summed to the dual character of the common insofar its both produced and productive, allows the ‘multitude’4 to create an alternative global society to subvert the capitalist Empire’s mode of production. In order to achieve this, “the common … is based on the communication among singularities and emerges through the collaborative social processes of production. Whereas the individual dissolves in the unity of the community, singularities are not diminished but express themselves freely in the common” 5. Sustained in communication and cooperation6, how can common spaces arouse as the spatial node to question the dominant forms of existing? What is the relation between politics and space? To analyze this questions, we should look into the idea of ‘space’.

French philosopher Henri Lefebvre, a participant of the French group of critics of contemporary architecture and urban scene called Utopie, developed an elaborated proposal of the meaning of space in his book The production of space (1974). Lefebvre states that “(social) space is a (social) product”7, suggesting STAVRIDES, Stavros. Common space: The city as commons. (London: Zed Books, 2016): 2 Ibíd.

3 HARDT, M., NEGRI, A., Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004): 202 4 As explained by Hardt and Negri, “The people has traditionally been a unitary conception. The population, of course, is characterized by all kinds of differences, but the people reduces that diversity to a unity and makes of the population a single identity: “the people” is one. The multitude, in contrast, is many. The multitude is composed of innumerable internal differences that can never be reduced to a unity or a single identity”. HARDT, M., NEGRI, A., Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004): XIV 5 HARDT, M., NEGRI, A., Multitude, 204 6 Hardt and Negri state - to achieve biopolitics production - is fundamental: “the cooperation of a wide plurality of singularities in a common world, the focus on speech and communication, and the interminable continuity of the process both based in the common and resulting in the common”.

HARDT, M., NEGRI, A., Commonwealth (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009): 174.

7 LEFEBVRE, Henry. The Production of Space. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991): 26 1 2

that each combination of relations and modes of production constitute an specific socially produced space which is sustained through administrative policies, social constructions and technology. In specific, Lefebvre diagnoses that we are currently experiencing abstract space, an instrumental and ‘objectally’ functioning set of strict signs and formal relationships which is utilized and dominated by the capitalist system of production.

While erasing distinctions, Lefebvre states “the dominant form of space, that of the centres of wealth and power, endeavors to mold the spaces it dominates, and it seeks, often by violent means, to reduce the obstacles and resistance it encounters there”8. The proposal to overcome this abstract space is clarified when Lefebvre defines space as a multitude of intersections, a tripartite – yet unitary - tension of production of space defined by spatial practice, representations of space and representational spaces; insofar space manifests physically, mentally and socially. These terms respectively suggest space is composed by patterns and places of social activity; systems of signs and codes to organize spatial relations; and using imagination to overlay the physical and make a symbolic use of space’s objects. According to Lefebvre, the representations of space are dominated by the rigid structure of capitalism and therefore are passively experienced, “embodying complex symbolisms, sometimes coded, sometimes not, linked to the clandestine or underground side of social life, as also to art”9. To change life and society10, he depicts the concept of differential space: the production of an appropriate new kind of space that accentuates heterogeneity and differences. While restoring unity by constantly maintaining and dissolving social relations, transformative socio-spatial practice - such as social struggles - produce new spaces. This implicates space embodies social relationships, turning itself into a suitable scenario for ideologies11, which “only achieves consistency by intervening in social space and in its production, and by thus taking on body therein. Ideology per se might well be said to consist primarily in a discourse upon social space”12. This suggests space is inherently political, understanding politic as both “the ensemble of discourses and practices, institutional or even artistic, that contribute and reproduce a certain order”13 and as “an open process through which the dominant forms of living together are questioned and potentially transformed”14. If space is inseparable from the conflictual relations that define society, the ‘common’ is the alternative to pursue new forms of subjectivation against closed discourses.

Hardt and Negri, as well as Lefebvre, apparently consider that communication systems are essential towards the creation of a different common space that revokes the homogenization and totalization of space.

Firstly, Hardt and Negri understand communication systems as the cooperation and coordination of the multitude through the artificial common - languages, images, knowledges, codes and practices – that complements the natural common - land, water and air. To them, “this artificial common runs throughout metropolitan territory and constitutes the metropolis … The metropolis is a factory for the production of the common”15. Situating common spaces within the urban sphere, Hardt and Negri define the metropolis in a dual condition - product and productive of the common – which allows the encounter of alterities simultaneously represented through unity. Nevertheless, Lefebvre disagrees with this messianic idea of the metropolis as it unavoidably represents the logics of capitalism.

Lefebvre understands communication systems in terms of a code, a common ‘language’ and consensus that “recapture the unity of dissociated elements, breaking down such barriers as that between private and public, and identifying both confluences and oppositions in space that are at present indiscernible” 16. Initially stating this ‘code’ might contribute to the reversal of the dominant tendency, he later retracted this idea as the code could only be applied to spaces already produced, also acknowledging “the state has control of all LEFEBVRE. The Production of Space, 49 LEFEBVRE. The Production of Space, 33 10 In this regard, Lefebvre mentions the following: “'Change life!' 'Change society!' These precepts mean nothing without the production of an appropriate space”. LEFEBVRE. The Production of Space, 59 11 Lefebvre defines that in differential space, “ideology carries no flag, and for those who accept the practice of which it is a part it is indistinguishable from knowledge”. LEFEBVRE. The Production of Space, 9 12 LEFEBVRE. The Production of Space, 44 13 MOUFFE, Chantal. “Every Form of Art Has a Political Dimension”. Grey Room no. 02 (Winter 2001): 99.

14 STAVRIDES, Stavros. Common space, 55 15 HARDT, M., NEGRI, A., Commonwealth: 250.

16 LEFEBVRE. The Production of Space, 64 8 9

existing codes. It may on occasion invent new codes and impose them, but it is not itself bound by them, and can shift from one to another at will. The state manipulates codes”17. Lefebvre recognizes the space of the city embodies a discourse, nevertheless, rather than a language, it speaks through directions that impose conventions and order, apparently abandoning the proposal that differential space is produced within the city.

However, his discouragement is later subdued as he suggest “the city and the urban sphere are thus the setting of struggle; they are also, however, the stakes of that struggle”18. Considering the later, is it possible to produce common spaces if the city still functions under capitalist modes of production? In this regard, French sociologist Hubert Tonka, fellow partner of Lefebvre at Utopie, complements the discourse about the city and it relation to global strategies of class power.

Tonka is straightforward in stating the city as practice, both a commodity and a mode to produce commodities, where buildings represent the highly rationalized and monolithic totality of the State and social relationships are reified and integrated into the logics of commodities. However, Tonka suggests “the city is the proper place for a revolt, a revolution, for it is there that the banality and triviality of everyday life run their course”19. To him, the operation of everydayness contains the last residue of contemporary consciousness allowing to resist class struggles: the singularity of everyday life battles the rational argument of the global project. Nevertheless, Tonka diagnoses the capitalist modes of production are alienating everydayness, especially through communication forms such as advertising, suggesting “advertising, in this sense, is – altogether – nothing but the propagandist philosophy of the new happiness and its mode of propagation”20.

Available in everydayness, advertising develops an intricate relation with technology in order to spread messages through the city. In this way, as architect Manfredo Tafuri proposes “the city as an advertising and self-advertising structure, as an ensemble of channels of communication, [which] becomes a sort of machine emitting incessant messages”21. In this regard, can we subvert the use of advertising in order to communicate and produce new ‘common spaces’?

Innovation in technologies, specially Internet and social media, suggest a new approach to communicate through space, because they depend on access to a common code that connect multitudes through unrestricted networks. Hardt and Negri elaborate this idea explaining “the content of what is produced [by Internet technologies]– including ideas, images, and affects – is easily reproduced and this tends towards being common, strongly resisting all legal and economic efforts to privatize it or bring it under public control” 22. By establishing a common mode of communication, technology creates an alternative scenario to change and reappropriate the discourse of space through symbols and signs, such as Lefebvre stated with his idea of representational space. Linked to the ‘underground side of social life’ such as art, the perceived, conceived and lived triad could be approached by technology. Considering the prior, this text proposes the relation between media technology and art enables a new approach to ‘common’ space, conveying a new space that embraces virtuality and deals with the restrictions of private and public space, thus enhancing space as a political apparatus that materializes the ‘common’.

To demonstrate this, the text reviews the work of two Chilean artists: Alfredo Jaar and Delight Lab. Positioned in different temporal and geographic scenarios, both ‘site specific’ proposals use media technology and advertising to produce common space, reappropriating the city in order to expose Latin American’s struggles. By comparing the aesthetic principles and techniques used by these artists, this text intends to contribute towards a growing awareness of the possibilities of creating a ‘common’ political space through digital artistic interventions.

LEFEBVRE. The Production of Space, 163 LEFEBVRE. The Production of Space, 386 19 TONKA, Hubert. “Critique of Urban Ideology” In BUCKLEY, C., VIOLEAU, J. (Eds.) Utopie. Texts and projects, 1967-1978. (Los Angeles: Semiotexte, 2011): 166 20 TONKA, Hubert. “Critique of Urban Ideology”: 167 21 TAFURI, Manfredo. Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1976): 166 22 HARDT, M., NEGRI, A., Multitude, X 17 18

Fig. 01: Estudios sobre la felicidad, intervention by Alfredo Jaar, Santiago, Chile, 1979. Photograph by Alfredo Jaar

Alfredo Jaar (1956) is a Chilean visual artist - settled in New York since 1982 -, whose work explores and discuss social and geopolitical crisis through photographs, installations and architecture. Estudios sobre la felicidad (1979-1981) - translated as Studies on happiness-, was one of his first projects involving advertising.

While Chile was under the dictatorship of military Augusto Pinochet (1974-1990), Jaar made surveys, posters, videos, interviews and leased different white billboards around Santiago to place and answer the following question: Are you happy? (Fig. 01). By using multiple methods of communication, he insisted on reaching a non-specialized audience to displace the idea of art as public or private into its conceptualization as a communal entity. As historian Sol Peláez states, Jaar positions that “the interrogative way of being in Common is the possibility of a community without foundation, a community that composes (works) and de-composes (de-works) in its contingent movement”23. Later on, under the Messages to the Public program from the Public Art Fund organization24, Alfredo Jaar’s A logo for America (1987) displayed a 42-second animation among the characteristic billboards of Times Square, New York where thousand of people participated during its two week duration (Fig. 02). Combining maps, flags and text – This is not America -, the project conveys a simple message: inhabitants of the United States are not the only ‘Americans’. The Guggenheim Museum, who later purchased the work, states “Jaar challenges the ethnocentrism of the United States, which habitually claims the identity of the entire American continent as its own”25.

In this way, Jaar uses the language of commercial advertising to subvert the capitalist hegemony, reclaiming Times Square as a common space to position political issues and destabilize totalitarian discourses. The

PELÁEZ, Sol. “Studies on Happiness: Alfredo Jaar and the Shuddering of Enjoyment”. Aisthesis no. 65 (2019): 58.

The Public Art Fund explain the program as the following: “Messages to the Public formed a key part of the Public Art Fund’s long-term commitment to media-based artworks. Running from 1982 to 1990, the show featured a series of artists’ projects created specifically for the Spectacolor board at Times Square”. PUBLIC ART FORM. “Jenny Holzer: Messages to the Public”. Public Art Fund. N.D. Accessed 20 October 2020. https://www.publicartfund.org/exhibitions/view/messages-to-the-public-holzer/ 25 GUGGENHEIM. “Collection online: Alfredo Jaar”. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. N.D. Accessed 20 October 2020. https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/33149 23 24

project was later remounted at Times Square in 2014 (Fig. 03), London’s Piccadilly Circus and Mexico city’s Auditorio Nacional in 2016; and lastly digitally projected over Bogotá’s Torre Colpatria 26 in 2017 (Fig. 04).

Fig. 02: A logo for America, intervention by Alfredo Jaar at Times Square, New York, United States, 1987. Photograph by Solomon R Guggenheim, New York.

Fig. 03: A logo for America, intervention by Alfredo Jaar at Times Square, New York, United States, 2014. Photograph by Ka-Man Tse.

The technological translation of the operation – from billboard into a projected facade – created a lot of tension in Colombia, but it also raised questions regarding public and private space. Writer Juan Pablo Pacheco describes the situation as the following: “The exterior facades can be seen as "public" because they 26

Torre Colpatria (1973-1978) is the headquarter of the Colpatria bank – owned by Scotia Bank group - as well as other financial associations.

are exposed, because they face the street, although the dynamics that allow their construction and control are a consequence of the strengthening of private companies” 27. Although A logo for America initially required the physical presence of the audience to massively transmit a message, its relevance lies on ‘singular’ reflections upon geopolitical denomination and identity. In this way, Jaar inserts his project into the mechanisms of power to question power itself, producing an in between common space to propitiate interpretative discourses through art and digital technologies.

Fig. 04: A Logo for America, intervention by Alfredo Jaar at Torre Colpatria, Bogotá, Colombia, 2017.

Photograph by Babel Media Art

30 years after the original inauguration of A logo for America, the collective ‘Delight Lab’ projected the words Dignity, Humanity and Hunger (2019-2020) over Torre Telefonica, the epicenter of protests and riots in Santiago, Chile. Delight Lab is a studio of audiovisual design around video, light and space founded by Chilean artist Andrea Gana and designer Germán Gana in 2009. Their earliest works experimented with Mapping, the technique of using video projections to display animations or images into existing surfaces or buildings, promoting the interaction between massive audiences and the space of the city through spectacles, festival and cultural activities. However, later the texts and images projected by their work were used to allege and represent social struggles, reappropriating the city and buildings as a means to communicate discourses through space. First in 2014, Delight Lab projected Luis Poirot’s image of bombed Palacio La Moneda in 1973– the headquarters of Chilean Government –, onto the renovated building, commemorating the death of President Salvador Allende and the imposition of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Later in 2018 amidst riots in Plaza Italia due to the ‘unknown’ circumstances of his death, Delight Lab projected the image of Camilo Catrillanca, a murdered Mapuche community member, with the text May his face cover the horizon28 from the Chilean poet Raul Zurita (Fig. 05). Text and image created a new space between building and public space that symbolized the protesters concerns and demands.

PACHECO, Juan Pablo. “Alfredo Jaar at Torre Colpatria”. Arcadia Magazine. 12 December 2017. Accessed 20 October 2020. https://www.revistaarcadia.com/arte/articulo/alfredo-jaar-artista-chileno-presentacion-en-la-torre-colpatria-bogota/67269/ 28 The original text in spanish is “Que su rostro cubra el horizonte” 27

Fig. 05: Camilo Catrillanca, intervention by Delight Lab at Torres Turri, Providencia, Santiago, Chile, 15th August 2018. Photograph by Héctor Hernández Montecinos

Fig. 06: Protesters around General Manuel Baquedano’s monument, Providencia, Santiago, Chile, Photograph by Duna Radio.

Fig. 07: Democracia?, intervention by Delight Lab at Torre Telefónica, Providencia, Santiago, Chile, 24th October 2019.

Photograph by Gonzalo Donoso

Later in 18 October 2019, Chilean ‘multitude’ started the biggest social outbreak in recent years to demand social equity, dignity and fair human rights, organizing protests for several weeks at Plaza Italia, the same location of Camilo Catrillanca’s protests (Fig. 06). In the middle of this agitated social context which forced the imposition of a military curfew, Delight Lab began beaming different messages into Torre Telefonica (Fig. 07), a cellphone-shaped skyscraper located next to Plaza Italia which is owned by the multinational telecommunications company Movistar. Dignity, We are not at war, What do you understand by democracy? and For a new country are some of the works projected between 2019 and 2020, including the latest Reborn29 projection from 25 October 2020 when Chilean ‘multitude’ approved the modification of Augusto Pinochet 1980’s constitution (Fig. 08). However, this messages that represented and requested social demands, were displayed while paradoxically the place was empty due to the military curfew. Even though some of the projections were massively seen in situ, the images where widely viralized through social media, generating political tension and censorship from the police forces and the Chilean government (Fig. 09). The controversy is similar to Jaar’s work for Torre Colpatria: while Plaza Italia is a public space, the facade of Torre Telefonica is a private space. However, Delight Lab produces a common space that reconfigures a politically repressed space through media technology and virtuality, suggesting an alternative approach to destabilize the prevailing discourse which does not necessarily require physical audience.

Fig. 08: Renace intervention by Delight Lab at Torre Telefónica, Providencia, Santiago, Chile, 25th October 2020. Photograph by Galería Cima

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Fig. 09: Destruir en nuestro corazón la lógica del Sistema, intervention by Delight Lab at General Manuel Baquedano’s monument, Providencia, Santiago, Chile, 24th September 2020.

Photograph by Luis Bahamondes.

The original texts in spanish are “Dignidad”, “No estamos en guerra”, ¿Qué entiende usted por democracia?, “Por un país mejor” and “Renace”.

This text elucidates ‘common spaces’ as a dual force that produce but is also a product of new practices of social interactions, which are placed within the city and destabilize the totalitarian modes of production.

The analyzed cases – Alfredo Jaar and Delight Lab - understand society as a ‘multitude’; they integrate the singularities of the subject by constantly maintaining and dissolving social relations to construct a discourse around unity, insofar they produce new common spaces. Each case produce and sustain the idea of centrality, not only because of their central location, but also as Lefebvre suggest they are “a form, empty in itself but calling for contents – for objects, natural or artificial beings, things, products and works, signs and symbols, people, acts, situations, practical relationships”30, they are the gathering together of everything that coexists in a given space. Common spaces arouse as the spatial node to question dominant forms of existing by adopting and inserting themselves into certain mechanisms of these forces, such as advertising communication and technologies. Non-hegemonic symbols and new forms of communication are fundamental to produce common spaces and to reinstate the concept of space as political: it is an open process to destroy and ensemble new orders. This are placed within the space of the city as an ambivalent force: they are neither public nor private, they belong to the common. This text understands digital artistic operations produce small contributions towards the subversion of totalitarian discourses. The rigid structure of Capitalism reproduces its modes on production, efficiency and hegemony into the city, the buildings and their subjects, therefore, the operation of subversion implicates the restructuration from the core of social relations. At the meantime however, digital artistic operations emerge as an alternative to unbalance hegemony through everydayness, producing temporary common spaces that resuscitate the residue of contemporary consciousness and resist its alienation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY GUGGENHEIM. “Collection online: Alfredo Jaar”. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. N.D. Accessed 20 October 2020. https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/33149 HARDT, M., NEGRI, A., Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empir e (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004) HARDT, M., NEGRI, A., Commonwealth (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009) LEFEBVRE, Henry. The Production of Space (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991) MARTIN, Reinhold. “Public and Common(S)”. Places Journal (January 2013). Accessed 15 October 2020. https://doi.org/10.22269/130124 MOUFFE, Chantal. “Every Form of Art Has a Political Dimension”. Grey Room no. 02 (Winter 2001): 95-125 PACHECO, Juan Pablo. “Alfredo Jaar at Torre Colpatria”. Arcadia Magazine. 12 December 2017.

Accessed 20 October 2020. https://www.revistaarcadia.com/arte/articulo/alfredo-jaar-artista-chilenopresentacion-en-la-torre-colpatria-bogota/67269/ PELÁEZ, Sol. “Studies on Happiness: Alfredo Jaar and the Shuddering of Enjoyment”. Aisthesis no. 65 (2019): 37-64.

PUBLIC ART FORM. “Jenny Holzer: Messages to the Public”. Public Art Fund. N.D. Accessed 20 October 2020. https://www.publicartfund.org/exhibitions/view/messages-to-the-public-holzer/ STANEK, Lukasz. “Space as Concrete Abstraction: Hegel, Marx, and Modern Urbanism in Henri Lefebvre”. In GOONEWARDENA, K., KIPFER, S., MILGROM, R., SCHMID, C. (Eds.) Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Henri Lefebvre and Radical Politics (London: Routledge, 2008): 62-79 STAVRIDES, Stavros. Common space: The city as commons. (London: Zed Books, 2016) TAFURI, Manfredo. Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1976) TONKA, Hubert. “Critique of Urban Ideology”. In BUCKLEY, C., VIOLEAU, J. (Eds.) Utopie. Texts and projects, 1967-1978. (Los Angeles: Semiotexte, 2011): 155-177 30

LEFEBVRE. The Production of Space, 331