Luchezar Boyadjiev Artists and/in Public Space - a form of private “investment” in a civil society? (Published in English and German in: “The Art of Urban Intervention”, Ed. Judith Laister, Margarethe Makovec & Anton Lederer. Rotor Center for Contemporary Art, Graz; Universität Graz, Insitut für Volkskunde und Kulturanthropologie, Graz. Löcker Verlag, Vienna. 2014. ISBN 978-385409-702-0)
Between 2003 and 2011 in two of its projects ICA-Sofia (Institute of Contemporary Art-Sofia) navigated through the urban developments in the turbo-capitalist city of Sofia - the Visual Seminar project (VS, 20032006, together with CAS-Sofia in partnership with relations, a project initiated by the Federal Foundation for Culture, Germany; see http://www.projekt-relations.de/en/explore/visual_seminar/index.php ; http://ica-sofia.org/en/archive/visual-seminar ), and the project Art of Urban Intervention (AOUI, 20092011; a multi partner project spearheaded by rotor in Graz; see http://ica-sofia.org/en/projects/item/35the-art-of-urban-intervention ; http://ica-sofia.org/en/ica-gallery/exhibitions/exhibitions2011/item/302art-of-urban-intervention ). These projects, though vastly different in scope, ambition and program, are related through the methodology used for thinking and dealing with and in public space. The underlying premise was that in a city, which is transforming from a post-totalitarian into a neo-capitalist one, the very notion of public vs. private (not only regarding space) is a subject of an on-going process of formation rather than a static context for action – nearly a quarter of a century after 1989 it is not yet clear what public space might be in an environment of low-powered legislature and high-powered speculation (investment powered by money, influence, corruption and so on) that is not necessarily nor always illegal but is too unrestrained to be taken lightly (at least until the world financial crisis struck). The methodological model that we used envisages public space as a space of negotiations; this is the space where citizens negotiate and re-negotiate the conditions for the usage of public space between themselves as well as with the ruling power. In the process of these “negotiations” (they are rarely direct and overt) the public sphere is manifested. It can never be taken for granted in any of its local specificities. A working premise was the fundamental equality between all agents (voices) active in public space – artists and architects, citizens and media actors, policeman and passers-by, ethnic Bulgarians, Romani and other minorities, even the politicians - though they are privileged for being invested with executive or legislative power they are still part of the “landscape” for negotiations; though they provide the static ground for negotiations, they too are responsive to actions and provocations in public space. As people inhabiting the space of the city and thus having a long-term “investment” in the life of the city, we are all firstly citizens who are more or less active participants in the project, the action, and the debate. Both projects have expired but they are still an ongoing process in terms of the debate they have been part of or the issues they have raised and the questions/propositions they have made. In this process the theoretical research or the intervention in the urban (and/or media) space, the public debate or the printed edition are but elements from the whole. Both these projects were conceived not only as art, architecture or political action but rather as citizens’ behavior in public space seen as the setting of various activities with more or less specified professional profile. In this process some participants are merely initiators, organizers, instigators while others are not; the former are triggering the process but beyond that they do not have any privileged position as in “author vs. audience” over the latter - least of all because of exclusive professional competence. On the contrary, professional competence was seen as a pre-condition for citizen’s identity - before being artistic the act of negotiating the use of public space through art is a citizen’s action; the artist is a citizen as well as the “viewer” and that is supposed to make them equal. Ideally, they stimulate each other; compete with each other; present arguments to each other; they formulate and re-formulate each other – in other words, they negotiate as everybody else, in a setting not much different from a quarrel between two car drivers in Sofia arguing over the use of the same parking spot. A direct product is the energy to form citizen’s identity; an indirect result – stimulating the public awareness and acts of self-empowered citizens’ action.