Fear and Adornment in Public Space
Fear & Adornment in Public Space – is the title of a larger contemporary art and craft project including workshops, site specific productions and community development conducted by the LAND Contemporary Art Practices (Sissi Westerberg and Veronica Wiman). By talking about Fear and Adornment we want to widen the perspectives of what adornment is and create awareness of the connection between fear and public space. Fear, or ways of conquering fear are put in relation to adornment– art for the body, decoration and ornamentation as well as architecture and art in the public space. What reasons are there for adornment, how are we affected by it and how can we use it? The project is an offspring of Veronica Wiman´s curatorial research and practice - Fear and Gender in Public Space www.genderandpublicspace.org
Other Venues
Jan 2008 Witswatersrand School of Arts in Johannesburg, South Africa
http://web.wits.ac.za/
April 2008 University of San Francisco, USA
http://www.usfca.edu/
Jan 2009 Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore, India
http://srishti.ac.in/
The Assignment
Choose a public place in the city where you, or someone else, experience fear or feel unsafe.
Make a proposal for a jewellery piece for the site. The adornment could be for wearing at the site or for adorning the site itself. It could be for a particular situation, person, time of day etc... The piece can be a tool, a solution, a protection or a means to conquer fear, but it could also be something that represents the fear or is a reaction to it.
Genvägen mellan Telefonplan och Åsen

Magiska amuletter
Falling, falling, escalator subway Östermalmstorg.
Mellan Rålis och Konradsberg

The path between the safe and the unsafe environment.
When I move from east to west towards my home I pass this tunnel. Before comes Rålambhovsparken, which I don’t like any time of the day, and after come Konradsbergsparken, where I feel safe and at home even though it is dark.
This is the zone between fear and safety.
The irrational fear



I admire woman that can walk outside during night time without feeling fear. I do feel fear even though I know that most often it is irrational. I know that most of the crimes of rape or other sexual violence is committed by someone you know, someone in your family, your ex boyfriend or a friend of a friend. I do not know where this fear comes from, but I know that I did not create it alone. The society constantly tells be both to be afraid and also how I should behave and look to not get raped or sexually abused. Woman that reclaims the night and the public space do have real courage, I would like to be one of them.
During 2007, 4749 cases of rape was reported in Sweden, 5,67% was committed outdoors
The underpass between Mälarhöjden and Bredäng.

This is a place that divides the Mälarhöjden area, with its cosy streets of expensive, stylish one-family houses and Bredängs forest of sad, rundown concrete apartment-buildings. It is a place of segregation that attracts anger, fear and resentment. I am always uncomfortable while i pass this place, it is an unfair place.
It is also a hidden place, where i fear an unwarranted attack of some sort, who would hear me if i screamed here? In which direction would I run if I felt threatened, Mälarhöjden or Bredäng, where would help come from?
Sergels Torg
I asked my friend at which site in Stockholm she felt most unsafe, and immediatly the answer was Sergels Torg.
Torg of fear
Platform
I don´t like the mass of people I have to face there every day. I am scared that sombody might push me or somebody else in front of the approaching train. And sometimes I am scared that I might become the pusher just to see what´s going to happen. When I am standing on that platform I can already see with my inner eye all the possible catastrophies so I get the feeling that they really are going to happen.
Tysta Marigången

This is a tunnel behind Hotel Sheraton, close to the Central station.
From the tunnel you can enter the car park under the hotel.
You can hear the noice from cars and trains passing quite close by but you feel that they are far away. Few people are visible, if any at all.
It feels like the time stopped.
At some point somebody had some sort of ambition with the place, but it didn't work out and since then no one seems to care. This is why the uneasy feeling kicks in, this is where the fear lies.
No one caring if anything happens. No one caring if nothing happens.
A dystopic sadness.
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?a=167201
Tysta Marigången inhabitated
Panic in the tubes of Stockholm

Rush-hour and the tube is packed with people, people sitting, people standning, people brething down your neck. A bag in your face, an elbow in your back, sharing the same suffocating air with half of the city population.
My body start to tingle, my legs feel heavy and i want to fight myself free. I want to breathe!
At the next stop i get of and hope that the coming tube is less crowded.
Panic in the tubes of Stockholm-part II
standing to close, body contact, violation of privat space. feeling unsafe and vulnerable, unprotected in my on skin. liquidized with the mass as one breathing creature.
Cold black water
Skinnarviksparken
Close to where I live there is a small park called Skinnarviksparken. It is not a large park as far as size wise but I think its both the location of the park, and the people that this park attracts that makes me uneasy. Close to this park there is a sports stadium and a beer hall. The sports fans who visit these two places often meet and rally in the park, either beore they go to a game or afterwards. I am not sure why but there is very often skinheads and quite violent gangs who chose to hang around in this park. Most likely because they have been kicked out of the beer halls, or are simply just looking for trouble.
Skinnarviksparken
It works like this. If you are walking through the park, and you hear that there is group of drunk and rowdy people in the dark areas (I have illustrated the skinheads as pearls with swastikas on them) then you know that there is a light right in the centre of the park that you can run to. When you get there, you place your hands on the head and say the word saviour. The light is activated by this word and is turned on into a bright light spherical cloud that lights up the whole park. People that are doing something they know is wrong, usually like to sit in the dark, and the worst thing they know is having light shown upon them. This is the "saviour" light. The light is on for 15 seconds which is enough time to get the end of the park. Also when youa re sitting in the dark and a bright light comes on, it usually takes almost 10 seconds or more before your eyes get used to the light source. This also gives the escapee comfort as you then know that the people in the dark cannot see where you are headed for several seconds at least.
Shortcuts
what might have been
An exit at Hornstull
Ways out: to hide. To run. To face it.
WAY OUT
Känslan av det dolda

Känslan känslan känslan känslan
Känslan av vad som döljer sig i det mörka.
Känslan av bland annat mörka sjöar och tunnlar. Vad döljer sig i slutet?
Monster? Pundare? Eller dig själv?
Jag är rädd för att utsätta mig av det dolda, det man inte ser, men samtidigt får jag en kick och måste göra det, precis som barn.
känslan känslan av
Västerbron
Kronobergsparken
One of my favourite sites in Stockholm. But at night it makes med insecure.
The subway station at Liljeholmen, on the train, just before the doors open.
Even though I’m used to be in this situation, I’m always nervous and my heart beats a bit to fast.
I’ve got many tricks to avoid paying the fine, but still I can’t control my fear.



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