PUBLIC/PRIVATE - OPEN MY EYES

(Boston Manor, London 2010)

Open my eyes; we are surrounded by roads, houses, shops, restaurants, theatres, hotels, museums, etc. There are strangers in these places and we have ‘public’ relations with them. Unless we are flaneurs, we have a purpose or a destination. We have a function in these spaces. The space is instrumental in directing us to fulfil the purpose – passing, spending etc . We are not considered as individual but as an object of the function such as consumers. Layout, advertisement, signs, etc enable us to give up control over ourselves for the incentives of materialism and consumption. The configuration of space and ‘public’ shape our thoughts and behaviour and we become what we shop. Our self reality is replaced by another kind of reality – illusion – created by corporations or organisations. We know how to read spatial configurations, we follow the signs, and we move ourselves towards the planned destination in perfect order. The spaces are designed for us to pass through with a purpose and there is little engagement between the place and us. There is few historical or cultural references such as monuments or artefacts. We lose our identity in the masses as anonymous in these places. Marc Auge calls these places ‘non-places’. Non-places discourage our spontaneous encounters we expected in places in old times. Multiplicity and complexity is replaced by singularity due to this functional separation. City as a bigger space is getting functional separated as well. Urban is renewed via gentrification; slum is demolished, but existing slums getting aggravated. Rich area and poor area are getting isolated after updated property development. Corporate expands and buys out more spaces then turns them into more non-places – monoculture space discouraging us from engaging with the world. There is no public or private in non-places. It is time to make non-place back to ‘place’, to diversify the singularised public, and regain the selves, private and public. We need to make meaning public and private out of the non-places. (Inspired by Jonas Brodin: Life in Fragments 2005)