Models for Public Space An interview with Adrian Blackwell

The shrinking and impoverishment of public space is now a prominent theme in contemporary debates in art, architecture and urban planning. Since the 1960s, artists and architects, such as Melvin Charney, Gordon Matta-Clark, Dan Graham, Richard Greaves, Ant Farm and ParaSITE, have tackled this pressing issue by deconstructing, reframing and appropriating urban spaces and architecture, as well as by creating impermanent structures and models that serve the purpose of shifting habitual spatial practices. As a visual artist, architect and urban designer, Adrian Blackwell contributes to this tradition. His work focuses on the question of equality, access and democratic exchange in contemporary urban development and public space. Since 1996 Blackwell has produced a series of art projects that aim at altering existing spaces to encourage common uses. For example, Public Water Closet (1998) and How to Open a Car Like a Book (1999) create private enclosures within the city. Recent works such as Light Net (2004), Car Pool (2006) and Model for a Public Space (2000, 2006 and 2008) produce temporary locations for collective action and public debate. Alongside these object-based propositions, Blackwell has also engaged in critical documentary work: Evicted May 1, 2000 (9 Hanna Avenue) (2001) uses pinhole photographs to record the transformative potential of artists’ studio spaces; Detroit’s Underdevelopment: Separation, Divesture, Erasure, Encampment (2005) draws on three maps to trace the social and political forces that shaped the development of Detroit in the second half of the 20^th century; Factory = Territory (2005) documents the eastern edge of China’s Pearl River Delta with drawings, maps and pinhole panoramas. Adrian Blackwell is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, and a member of the Toronto School of Creativity and Inquiry. For years, before I started making art, I worked for an architect who designed extremely beautiful houses. He had a very modest and also very provocative, interesting way of making architecture. But at some point I realized this wasn’t for me. I wanted to engage with public issues and work with people who can’t afford to have an architect design their house. Art is much more direct in terms of aesthetic questions and its potential for realization. Art also allows more room for thought. I don’t know if it’s the only way I would like to do these things. But it has to do with an interest in relational ideas. I’m interested in the ways people use something more than the thing itself. So I think the fragility you refer to is another way of downplaying the artifact and the importance placed on it. The relational aesthetics thesis just makes sense to architects. Buildings are about social uses, right? At the same time, I am not satisfied with relational aesthetics in itself, because I believe in the necessity of making things. So my work is not exactly relational in the typical sense. Even if I tend to downplay the artifact, I’m still interested in fabrication and the artist’s role as maker of useful things. I certainly don’t mean that the artist’s role is to lead the community. But I think that art almost necessarily has to deal with and intervene in social and political contexts, it has to resonate with the world around it in a social and political way. As an artist I want to engage the city with my work. As far as I am concerned, one of the biggest problems facing the city is uneven development and the ways in which people are marginalized because of it. This is where the question of autonomy comes …