Stephen Chen
Land scape
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW
BOUNDED NATURE also inquires into the interstitial space between personal and public spheres , providing the spectatorship with an immersive experience that forces such a contamination the inner and the outside : how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space ?
I think the public sphere has only existed as an idea and ideal – there has never been a unified and inclusive public sphere , even within art . Instead shared concerns are regulated in a social field , whereby hierarchies exclude certain voices , and dictate the boundaries of what is appropriate to express in public vs . private . I think the prevalence of bad art in public spaces is a function of this social field , whereby art is reduced to anodyne decoration , as repressed stasis , instead of interrogating or pushing those boundaries and hierarchies .
Yet I think it could be so much more . I was inspired to find a way to critique and recover the potential of public space when I was in Frankfurt few years ago . I heard of a statue ( the Frankfurter Engel ) near St . Peter ’ s church dedicated to LGBT persecution during the Nazi regime . I went to look for it and found it was situated in a “ dead ” space – between the back wall of a building and the driveway of a Best Western , and frequented by drunks needing a spot . So I did a guerrilla performance piece , GEBROCHENGEL , as a means of reclaiming that space and questioning the sufficiency of “ apologetic ” monuments ; where over a period of 3 hours on the anniversary of Marlene Dietrich ’ s death , I performed her signature song “ Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß ” (“ Falling in love again ”) twelve times at random intervals , one for each year of the Third Reich .
What has at once captured our attention of your inquiry into urban ritualization is your