Art as Opportunity
Yvonne P. Doderer, Stuttgart
Art is another field than urban planning
or architecture. Art bears the potential
of opening up other or new perspectives
on how urban space can be developed
or at first on how urban space can be
discussed in terms of public issues of
public interventions. And thus I think
art is a much more open field for raising
certain discussions than architecture or
urban planning. Architecture is quite
narrowed down or has the need to realise
something in the first step—without the
consciousness. So I think the artistic field
opens up the possibility to think about how to discuss issues like what is public
space? How might public space function?
Art is not outstanding from society.
Art is always connected to society and
its discourses. Thus it makes no sense
to separate art from other issues like
society or planning. So I think it is a very
necessary approach to include artistic
methodologies as early as possible into
urban development processes. This additionally
widens the planning field,
because from my point of view the planning
profession is following mostly the
need of designing with having a reflexion
about the needs and the own methodology
in the beginning. And to quote
Niklas Luhmann: The observer is already
observed while observing in a certain
way. This means that the planning field
has the self-impression that they are the
observers without realising that they are
already observed. The planning field has
to open up more for artistic questions in
order to find answers on what is public
space and what it might be used for.
LIST Icelandic Art News. Page last updated 29 May 2008. Texts and images copyright © 2008 by the authors. For inquiries and contact information see about us.



