“The distinction between urban public goods and urban commons is both fluid and dangerously porous. How often are developmental projects subsidized by the state in the name of the common interest when the true beneficiaries are a few landlords, financiers and developers”.

David Harvey. 2012. Rebel Cities. From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, p79. 

Self-centred objects is a set of clandestine street furnishings that have been made or imagined for a London neighbourhood. They belong to a broader body of practice-based research on suburbia, the commons and the parliamentary capacity of sculpture. As such they sit within a wider enquiry into how contemporary art might contribute to the interpretation and shaping of the built environment. Realised and documented works in this series can be accessed through the links below or by scrolling across the “carousel” on the Projects page of the website.

1. A pair of ramps designed to be positioned against a kerb so as to enable a motorist to gain access to off-street parking without paying for the kerb to be lowered. The ramps are produced in a range of materials including corten steel, stainless steel and polyester resin.
2. A stile at Teddington rail station. The stile is placed over the spikes of the station fence so as to provide a shortcut to the Waterloo-bound platform when accessing it from the south.
3. A pin number mnemonic. This consists of sets of four Jesmonite cast square tiles each 5cm x 5cm and then either 2mm, 4mm, 6mm or 8mm in thickness. The tiles are arranged on pavements within easy view of cash or ticket dispensers in the neighbourhood where the artist lives and which I use regularly. Their arrangement provides a mnemonic for the artist’s pin number. So as not to draw attention to themselves, the tiles are cast from a section of the surface on which they are placed and then coloured or distressed accordingly.
4. A fox training tower. This is a four meter tower sited in the artist’s front garden below a street lamp and positioned to be viewed through the front window. Waste food is placed at the top of the tower to entice foxes to the top. Access to the food is via a spiral ramp way around the outside of the tower. In this way the attempts of foxes to retrieve the rubbish provide night-time entertainment
5. A hedge planted in the grounds of a local authority house to screen it from the road.
6. A trap for parakeets, which are now common in the borough where the artist lives. Once caught, the parakeets are to be tagged with the name of the artist collaboration ‘Beard and Ferguson’ and then released.
7. A non-roadworthy vehicle used as a shed and parked in a front garden so as to stop other people from parking in front of one’s property.
8. A free-standing sign placed in a static queue as a substitute for the artist who does not have time to wait.
9. A beehive positioned in a tree on the Haymarket, a small triangle of green in Teddington. Honey is retrieved from the hive.
10. A floating vegetable patch moored in an inconspicuous stretch of the River Thames near Twickenham.
11. A travel card safe. This is a hidden cavity in a wall near the station made by removing a loose brick, reducing the width of the brick and replacing it without mortar. The safe permits the artist to share a travel card with another person whose schedule does not permit the card to be exchanged in person.
12. A non-functional bicycle chained to the bike-parking facility at a railway station so as to reserve the space for the artist’s bike.

The Scottish liberal philosopher and economist David Hume argued that the logic of commerce (for Hume the pursuit of private interests) will be for the greater public good (Hume 1994). As is evident from David Harvey’s observation that heads this page, Hume’s proposition has come under renewed scrutiny in the context of urbanism. This series attempts to open up Hume’s claim by means of an art practice and in the context of twenty-first century London suburbia.

Leading art has sought to foster active citizenship by staging participatory events. Representation and the inclusion of minorities are key to its social function and democratic mandate.  In relation to the suburbs, art might be thought to enchant its ordinariness, to  help residents reconstitute their relation with the suburbs, to challenge assumptions and prejudices, to help with the suburbs’ self-organisation. Art is construed as something to be made by residents so that its promise is realised in the act of making and placing, and not just in the act of viewing the art of other people in museums and galleries.

But what happens when the notion of public is acknowledged as a plurality, so that there are multiple publics each with conflicting interests? In London’s suburbs, there already exist numerous gestures on the part of local residents who take as given the public benefit of private pursuits. For instance, a local newspaper reports that a homeowner, fed up with motorists speeding on his street, has installed a fake speed camera. A resident in a controlled parking zone has affixed a fake a disabled parking badge to his or her gate. How, then, are public interests which have just one constituent to be reconciled with a notion of the collective? What if this constituent is the artist (a constituency of one individual) who in entrepreneurial spirit, self represents? Can the creative spirit revealed in these activities be reconciled with the socially productive paradigm propagated within theories of socially engaged art?

Taking these questions as cues from which to begin ‘acting’, a series of artworks have been sited within suburban space that in various ways might be understood as common. In some cases the chosen spaces are private gardens but face the street or are overlooked by other dwellings. In others they are on land that is owned or managed by publicly accountable bodies such as the highways, waterways or city council. The artworks are functional in the sense that they facilitate daily negotiation of the suburb and enhance the quality of living within it. Each is made with a specific use in mind and is sited to optimise its potential.

However, rather than imagined for a spectator, functionality and benefit are considered from the point of view of the creator. In other words, if there is an experience of benefit among would be spectators, while welcomed, it is entirely coincidental. Thus, in the case of some of the artworks, for example Pin Number Mnemonic, despite the public nature of their locations, their ways of functioning are known only to the artist. In others, such as Fox Training Tower, the work can be viewed from both the living room window and from the top deck of passing buses.

In this way the works enact a form of ‘self-representation’ in the suburbs, whereby the individualism associated with neo-liberal values is combined with activity in space that is in various ways shared. But what is also sought through these pieces is the capacity to bypass an institutional framework for social etiquette – a framework founded upon the politics of location and ethical participation in it. Thus, through these interventions in the environment, questions are raised about the social and political impact of behaviour which shuns both dominant and idealist models of democracy.

References:

Harvey, D. 2012. Rebel Cities. From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. London: Verso Books

Hume, D. 1752. ‘Of Commerce’. In: Hume, D. 1994. Political Essays, ed. Knud Haakonssen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

NF