Fear and Adornment in Public Space

Colombia – South Africa – USA – Sweden – India

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

Nov 2007 Lugar a Dudas - contemporary art center in Cali, Colombia
http://www.lugaradudas.org/

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

Make a piece of jewellery for a specific site.

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.

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.

I work in the hospitality industry and therefore finish odd hours. I am not sure why but I often find myslef chosing to go through this park on my way home. It is not at all much closer or anything but I guess the anger of these idiots hanging around in my park, as I like ot call it and scaring people away makes me want to rebel. I dont want them to feel that they control this park or own it or that it is acceptable to be there looking for trouble. So I often find myself going home there and have actually twice been verbally harrassed by these losers. So far no damage, but the adrenilin rush in combiantion with the fear I feel going through this park is a very stong sensation, which I must add, I actually enjoy it. Or at least the rush of adrenalin afterwards.
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1 comment:

Sissi said...

Får mig att tänka på: http://www.hollabacknyc.blogspot.com/

May 20, 2008 at 11:13 AM

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