URBAN PLASTICS: September 2007

URBAN PLASTIC

Urban plastic is a characteristic form which comes into existence on the city streets:

by given elements of the place (e.g.: containers, junction boxes, garbage bins, traffic lights, ventilation tubes and similar);
by common operations in the life of the city (utilities, activities of night clubs and their poster-plasters, street artists' interventions etc.);
by spontaneous interventions of passers-by;
under effects of weather conditions through time (dirt, paling, decomposing..)

The idea of the project deals with rethinking of urban plastic, an artistic form in the public space.
While the classical urban plastic is a piece created/finalised by the artist and placed as a kind of ''foreign object'' into the public space, redefined Urban plastics are pieces initiated and directed by the artist, but created/developed from already existing parts of the city tissue, by usual street processes and organic laws of their own, within the given context.

SPECIES (DIS)APPEARING

Slovenian artist and architect Marjetica Potrc said that ''cities have the will of their own''. Is that a thought that we could apply to any city, in any period, or does it depend on the place and the specific moment in the (political) history of the city?
...

The city is a living organism.
Architecture, visual aesthetics of the streets, voices and smells, sounds and stories, its ''handwritings''... But what is the city and who is the city?
The life of the city, its specific energy and visual language of the streets can be created by their users, inhabitants, but it is also formed by other, outer authorities e.g. economy, government, different policies of public space, and similar.

My occupation with the phenomenon of wild postering came as a consequence of personal delight in poetics of the street-scenery which creates this characteristic phenomenon, but it also manifests a personal micro-resistance towards the existing tendency to sterilize and ''passivize'' the living space (physically and mentally).

Contrary to the commercial forms of advertising; huge, aggressive and sterile citylights, billboards and wallscapes, these places present the living tissue of the city; the part of the public space which successfully escapes control, manipulation and organising, which ignores the legal regulations and develops organically by its own laws.
Wild postering brings spontaneity to the public space of the city, creates colorful scenes in the city streets, shapes an autonomous area of sharing information.

Until recently, the streets chosen for running this project were prolific spots of wild postering.
Recently, the characteristic locations have regularly being cleaned and marked with captions: ''Zabranjeno plakatiranje'' (''Postering prohibited''). Slowly but surely one thing becomes obvious - the tendency to erase this ''disgraceful'' appearances from the city surface.

SPONTANEOUS PIECES

The photos show some of the already existing examples of spontaneous pieces found in urban space.

POTENTIAL PIECES

Examples of objects in urban space with a potential to became Urban plastics:

PHOTO DIARY

A legal framework is set; a temporary asylum for survival of the phenomenon of wild postering.
During one-year period, 5 recycling containers will be tagged with captions: ''PLAKATIRANJE DOZVOLJENO'' (Postering allowed) and ''MOLIMO PLAKATIRATI!'' (Please, paste posters!)
Contrary to the original captions, these captions might induce ''stratified outgrowths'' to appear on the container bodies. The wish is to activate material which carries a sculptoral, building potential and to view visual modifications in the estimated time period. However, the action is of experimental character so it is impossible to completely predict its results.
The urban plastics will grow and change within the living city-organism.

The development of Urban Plastics will be monitored, documented and published on this blog during one year.
At the end of the estimated period, some of the Plastics are planned to be presented inside a gallery space, completing the action by transfer into an artistic context.

PLATEAU DUBRAVA 1: