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.

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
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3 comments:

Sissi said...

Får mig att tänka på: golvbrunnar, ett örhänge som tappats, materialet/utrymmet mellan plattorna, vad döljer sig/ samlas/kan uppstå - mellandessa döda fyrkanter?

May 20, 2008 10:10 AM
Sofia said...

I returned to the site the other day, a little bit afraid but still determined to make the place more cozy. Just next to the spot where the photo was taken, in the tunnel where the roof gets a little bit lower, there were people setting up a Christmass market. It felt strange, with all the plastic SantaClaus figures and fake snow. When a women, some kind of boss, spotted me taking pictures with my cellphone, she turned very hostile.

Woman: Who are you taking pictures for?
Me: For my self.
W: Where are they going to be published?
M: Maybe in an art project.
W: You can´t do that!
M: Sorry, I thought this was a public space.
W: But you can't photograph my pieces, if you're doing art your self you must understand that!
You have to ask first!
M: I wasn't aware of the nature of the situation. That that was the case.
W: But you can't do that! You must stop! You can't use the pictures! I'll have to answer to ten decorators, and they'll be pissed at me!
M: If I decide that I want to use them, I'll ask first.
W: How have you planned to do that then?
M: Before I leave.

Then I strolled up and down the tunnel for another fifteen minutes. Feeling her fury towards me getting pale.

I wanted to publish the pictures I took but since the memorycardreader is gone it turned impossible.

May 23, 2008 11:55 AM
daniel peltz said...

i like this story sofia. the character of the dialogue, your desire to publish the pictures. these sorts of attacks can be so intense, like a child suffering the wrath of an adult who is so clearly in a different state of mind from the child.

June 12, 2008 10:16 AM

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