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085 Issue # 11/11 : PublIc Issues
community-in-themaking
Siri Peyer in an E-mail-Conversation with
Jeanne van Heeswijk, conducted from February to June 2011
siri Peyer: Dear Jeanne, before talking about some of your work more
specifically, I wanted to ask you if you have a theoretical understanding
or explanation of how you define public space?
Jeanne van Heeswijk: Public space in most of our contemporary cities is
highly regulated. The term suggests that social interaction is obviously
implied, but actually it is not. We see more and more people feeling
left out in what is often a clinical understanding of the public domain.
Something we often seem to forget is that the public domain is not
evident. It is a source of conflict between residents, developers, and
government.
Just to be clear: the public domain is more than what we describe as
public space: it is the actual physical space, the social interaction,
the media, and the means of communication. All of these together
determine someone's living environment. It concerns the space in which
people live, and the relationships both with each other and with the
outside world. To become an active citizen, you are not only a user of
public space but you are also engaged in its creation and are an integral
part of the image (imagining) of that space.
The public domain is based on the meeting and confrontation of people,
cultures, and ideas. It is exactly in that confrontation that new ideas
and social formations originate. Public life is but for a small part
oriented toward the physical environment. Furthermore, it is much more
a process of social, economic, and cultural activities that move –
certainly today – on various scale levels. At the heart of the processes,
and especially those around which urban life revolves, cultural interventions
are often the only manner in which an engagement in these pro-
cesses can again be generated. We must no longer view the public domain
solely as the result of economic and legal considerations, but instead
we can start viewing and using it as the (per)formative basis of a
community-in-the-making.
Has this understanding changed because of your practical
experience?
For this it is important that more friction is created. For friction to
occur, there must be more communal participation in that space. To
realize this communal use, people must feel that the space actually be-
longs to them. The question for me became to create places in which
we, in discussion with one another, can face up to the confrontation in
order to address one another as co-producers of the city. Can we make
this arena of tension visible and develop instruments that make it
possible to intervene? Can we collectively develop a public domain in
which everyone has a place? And can we then develop the instruments that
enable people to genuinely shape, deepen, sharpen, or question their
daily surroundings. This needs a form of reciprocity, an exchange of
knowledge, collectivization, and cohabitation in the process. (fig. 1,2)
To assist the building of urban spaces that allow for cultural, social,
economic, and political changes, I started to create platforms where
people are able to encounter each other and where, on the basis of the
meetings that take place, they can construct representations of their
environment. In other words, I intervene in a given situation in such a
way that those involved can increase the number and intensity of their
ties. To this extent, I propose action programmes, incitements to conversation,
sites of exhibition, and systems of circulation. For this,
a practice of dealing with questions of urban spaces is needed, one that
1 — Freehouse – Tomorrow's Market - speak your mind,
2009, Rotterdam South. Photo: Jeanne van Heeswijk
2 — Freehouse – Tomorrow's Market — show your style,
2009, Rotterdam South. Photo: Marcel van der Meijs