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02 Issue # 11/11 : PublIc Issues
editorial
Selma Dubach & Christoph Schenker
This edition of On-curating.org deals with aspects of the public sphere, public space,
and public art in seven different metropolises around the world. The point of departure
was a competition that was held for a master plan for public art in the new Europaallee
district in the centre of Zurich, the first such plan in Switzerland.
In his article "The Tree-lined Road to Europe," the urbanist Richard Wolff presents
the urban development project Europaallee, which is currently being built, and traces the
around 50-year-long historical development of the project and its changing politico-
economic conditions. Due to the central location and the high investment volume of 2 to
2.5 billion Swiss Francs, Europaallee is an extraordinary building project for Switzerland.
A venture of this magnitude has to be seen in a global context. With Europaallee, the
neoliberal city of Zurich is bolstering its position as a global city that is competing
with other global cities economically. Europaallee is de facto an expansion of Zurich’s
central business district and as such seems to demand a cultural prop in the form of
public art. To arrive at a curatorial concept for art in the Europaallee district, the
City of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Railways held a two-stage competition in 2009 and
2010 (a selective procedure with prequalification).
What functions does public art claim to fulfil in the given economic and social context?
What understanding of the public sphere underlies public art? And how does it create room
for public activities? Our aim here is not to ask and answer these questions based on
the competition entries. Rather, we are interested, taking the globally networked space
of Europaallee as a starting point, in broadening our perspective and putting up for
discussion how artists, curators, urbanists, and cultural studies experts in other cities
think and act. This edition of On-curating.org is a mosaic consisting of different per-
spectives of different authors from different disciplines from different big cities across
the globe. It creates a picture of what the public sphere, public space, and public art
can mean today against the background of regional conditions.
Under the title "The Production of the Public. Experiences from Mumbai," the architect
Rupali Gupte and the urbanist Prasad shetty impressively examine concrete urban formulations
and different scopes of the much-discussed concept "production of space" in
the Indian metropolis Mumbai. In his article "Understanding the Public and the Chinese
Contemporary," curator and critic li Zhenhua, who divides his time between Beijing,
Shanghai, and Zurich, investigates the changed public sphere in China and the possibility
of artists to interact with the Chinese public. In this context, he traces the social and
political developments of his home country over the last forty years. In the essay "A
Different Sense of Space. Public Spaces in Tokyo and Shanghai," the cultural theorist and
photographer Jürgen Krusche shows the different notions and perceptions of the public
sphere in the two Asian metropolises Tokyo and Shanghai. Even today, historical developments
of private and public life in these cities give rise to divergent usages of public
space. The artist Minerva cuevas discusses the ways in which art uses public space in
the megalopolis Mexico City. The works discussed in "Mexico City and the Construction of
its Public Sphere" range from conceptual (Gabriel Orozco) to socially involved, activist
works (Abraham Cruzvillegas). The theoretical discussion of the artist collective Oda
Projesi (which literally means "room project") in the article "Spatial Practices of Oda
Projesi and the Production of Space in Istanbul" by the cultural studies expert Derya
Özkan is followed by a conversation between Özkan and the three members of the collective
entitled "Art’s Indecent Proposal: Collaboration. An Attempt to Think Collectively."
The article addresses issues related to location and neighbourship, as well as the possi-
bility to create (social) space through art. The focus is on Istanbul, where the artist
collective operated an independent art space for five years. Curator siri Peyer concludes
this issue of On-curating.org with an interview with Jeanne van Heeswijk, an artist who
lives in Rotterdam. The two discuss different kinds of interventions, of interactive and
participatory projects of the artist, that often accompany urban planning processes, as
well as the understanding of public space as a social public domain which underlies the
projects.