Notes on Artistic Research in Urban Spaces: Film, Video and Sound Strategies
Notes on Artistic Research in Urban Spaces: Film, Video and Sound Strategies

Summary/Abstract: Over the last years, debates about who owns the public space have received much attention. “Urban space” carries certain images and, with increasing privatisation and commercialisation, becomes a consumable experience, from which, however, many are being excluded. The requirement to consume and the deployment of private security services limit free access to public spaces and, therefore, to the public sphere. Marginalised groups are being relegated to places at distance from the highly frequented areas of the city centres. Next to large squares, busy roads and shopping complexes, the empty spaces between buildings, so-called “terrains vagues (cf. Di Sola Morales 2003),” form places of transit of an open and diverse nature. Different groups test the hidden qualities of these “in-between spaces” and decide whether to use them or not. In this article we explore two different approaches to using and understanding those “in-between spaces,” i.e. the urban space, through the medium of audio-visual strategies. In particular, we are concerned with the audio-visual use and exploration of public space. The contrasting strategies will be analysed by referring to concrete examples. Chapter two looks at Public Screening, current “guerrilla-acts” in which “non-cinema places” are temporarily being used by a group of “passers-by” (people who are actually part of the screening team). In chapter three, we outline a transdisciplinary approach for the analysis of public space and spaces of consumption, the latter being used by the public but private by law. Patterns of the daily use of these spaces, including time, are made visible through audio-visual means. This article reflects the plurality of artistic and scientific methods in use by the members of the interdisciplinary research team, who collaborated in writing this text.

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