In 2010 the focuses of our research were the cultural context of Paris (through the research laboratory “Re-Hallucinating the Contexts” and cinema program “illegal_cinema”) and immaterial labor in performance (through public editing sessions and publishing a joint issue of TkH journal and Le journal des Laboratoires). The focus of our current activities – of an inter-disciplinary research and archive, “illegal_cinema” program, and a series of public events in Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Belgrade, Novi Sad, and Zagreb – are the issues of performance and the public.
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Mapping the field of research: conceptual framework, preliminary theses, initial questions
by Bojana Cvejic, Ana Vujanovic; January 2011
Introduction: “What is public space?”
(considered from the viewpoints of acting, action, act, performance, intervention, practice)
Is it different from the social field? How is the social dissociated from the public space? In what ways the social isn’t the public space?
Is public space the space of the common? The common brings back the question of “us”. The public in practice belongs to no one; how to make it belong to any-body and yet not structure it on the definition of what is common for everybody?
The public is traditionally defined by the opposition to the private. What does the collapse of borders between the public and the private mean in the light of Foucault/Butler’s motto “the personal is political”?
Do we imply that the public space is the political scene?
Is public space only that which we produce, but do not own? That which we have to share? That which we belong to, but it doesn’t belong to anyone individually?
How are public space, public interest and public good related? Is it only about the sum of individual interests, or something beyond it? In that case, what is it driven by? Ideology?