Grand Opening Piazza Taxingeplan by International Festival in collaboration with Tensta Konsthall and FRONT More Here

Swedish Blogg about Tensta

Grand Opening 17 August 2006 Stockholm

International Festival and Front are on the 17 August opening a large-scale project in Tensta, a suburban area outside Stockholm.The constellation has during the last nine months, supported by Tensta Konsthall, negotiated and worked with local authorities, agencies, developers etc. to make it possible to change the official protocol for an area of 1200 m2 from parking lot to public square, and to design the area through a conceptual notion, based on ready-made products, that can empower other individuals and groups to similar engagements.

The square has received a new coating with a pattern designed with exiting road signs, an oversized rostrum, 650 seats, align one side and an adjoining facade, 65 meters, has been covered with bright red PVC-strips, performing the skin of the building like a membrane between inside and outside. The square has also been equipped with a hybrid between coffee table and flowerpot, where an authentic grass surface function as tabletop. A mass of white garden chairs have been scattered around to be used in a multiplicity of open set-ups.

Structurally, the originally derelict site has been upgraded with new asphalt, an entrance from a higher level, with access to local transportation and the local shopping area, has been opened, as well as a number of smaller adjustments such as renewed handicap ramps, entrances, flower arrangements etc. A temporary cinema screen will be available for outdoor screening and an outdoor cafe will be open in the warm months.

The opening of Taxinge Piazza, coinciding with a local social housing fair, is the first step in a three year long engagement, that will be devoted to involvement and empowerment of local individuals and groups through particular activation and especially an orientation towards the square as an open economical potentiality. A strong emphasize relates to how the economy of a largely ignored suburb, with a strongly mixed population, can flourish from the inside rather then through appropriation and short-term commercial interests. Taxinge Piazza is the formation of a cluster of custom, a pro-active resistance to homogenizing forces in our contemporary society.

The square designates a site of political activity and turbulence. In a time where public space is under threat also democracy is endangered. It is imperative for this project to have managed to change the official status of the site to public-square as this implies entirely different rights to demonstrate, distribute leaflets, commerce and e.g. political gatherings. Taxinge Piazze is prolific in a heterogeneous manner opening for local emancipation.

Taxinge Piazza is not a manifestation of public space but aims to function as a passage in order to involve and empower users. It is rather the use of the site that, so to say, is the project and it is in the specific design of activation and actualization that it can function as a pro-active intensity on a long-term basis for the population
of Tensta.

Public Space, Democracy and Art

Change defines the human being. The will to change is what conditions humans. People gather around interests and exchange opinions that in some or other way stimulates shifts and changes in our local environments as well as on the global scene. The speed differ and size matters and as long as there are butterflies in Kyoto an effort always matter. Change and difference is defined by the existence of spaces and sites where everybody can give voice to a specific perspectives and where common opinions can offer manifestation.

Political life is generated by being two worlds in one, it is governed by a constantly nourished antagonism, or to not end in simple binary opposition, by dissensus. A moment of sustained consensus implies the end of politics, i.e. of modern democracy.

The town square is historically a significant site for the proliferation of democracy and hence a site where dissensus were nourished and gave way for new voices, voices of the people, the proletarian and so on. The public square, always controlled by authorities have always been the passage, precisely not a manifestation, where the rise of new movements can take place.

The common idea of public space change constantly. In contemporary society the value of public space has decreased, and we experience a veritable corporatisation of our environment. When public space is being threatened it is evident that the foundations for our democracy also is endangered.

As the ontology of public space shift it goes without saying that its artworks also need to change. If, in accord to several critical positions, public space, as we have known it, is endangered can art production produce possibilities for communities to reclaim space as democratic?

Front and International Festival takes an interest in how artistic production can function as a formation of culture and become a shape-shifter in relation to dominant culture in order to retain and perform, rather than merely represent, the notion of a critical position. Can an artwork activate the spectators, or a community, in specific ways as a means for emancipation and actualization?
Taxinge Piazza is a proposal for a self-organized reclaiming of public space and implicitly a process of democratization, through individual and communal involvement. The project empowers the individual in a nonlinear way and enriches the local environment in a differentiating manner.

Design

The design process has been three fold, where two processes has been concerned with social design and a third with the use of ready-made materials accessible to anybody, which can be used in a multiplicity of ways.
An important part of the project has been to design approaches and ways of speaking with authorities and politicians in order to produce acknowledgement even if the project would fail, and equally address how a multicultural context can generate potentiality on its own terms if it is given permission to activate its particular movements.
A second design process relates to the projects trans-disciplinary character. It has been imperative for the project to design a mode of production which practice is trans-disciplinary at the same time as its expression is specific for the projects circumstances.

The third and central design process has been negotiated between conventions of aesthetics and user value or DIY. The design brings forth unconventional uses of conventional materials, emphasizing economy and multiplicity of use in front of aesthetic homogeneity and consistency of material. A diverse range of ready-made objects has been utilized in order to underline those issues but also as a means to create focus on the underlying structural levels concerned with distribution, authorization and ownership.

Public art

First we build environments and afterwards environments build us. There exists reciprocity of production of how the city and its police govern a population that on the other hand offers itself to be governed. Such statement could be interpreted as cynical but if we shift perspective it also offers opportunities for change, for initiative and hands-on activation.

When the ontology of the city and its public spaces change it also implies that its public art needs to change, but it is evident that a glass cupola on the Reichtag in Berlin does not make power transparent.
Public art produce change by specific modes of involvement and empowerment of singular individuals and communities.
A square is not something that one shall identify with, but something that can give us the opportunity to change who we are.

We have to change the ways things change. Democracy conditions opportunities for processes of change, and is governed by a continuous production of dissensus.

Taxinge Piazza is an in situ manifestation of activation here and now, via hands-on pragmatic engagement and not a monument over what we already know. Taxing Piazza makes public art available for a multitude of ways of speaking, thinking and reflecting on the bases of its users and their specific relation to space, community and democracy