Strategies of Public Address:

Which Media, Which Publics?

KRZYSZTOF

WODICZKO

Before I attempt to characterize briefly the strategies of public art today

in light of public practices of the avant-garde of the past, I must express
my critical detachment from what is generally called "art m public
places." This bureaucratic-aesthetic form of public legitimation may
allude to the idea of public art as a social practice but m fact has very
little to do with it. Such a "movement" wants first to protect the auton
omy of art (bureaucratic aestheticism), isolating artistic practice from
critical public issues, and then to impose this purified practice on the
public domain (bureaucratic exhibitionism) as proof of its accountabity. Such work functions at best as liberal urban decoration.
To believe that the city can be affected by open-air public art galleries
or enriched by outdoor curatorial adventures (through state and corpo
rate purchases, lendings and displays) is to commit an ultimate phosophical and political error. For, since the 18th century at least, the aty
has operated as a grand aesthetic curatorial project, a monstrous public
art gallery for massive exhibitions, permanent and temporary, ot
environmental architectural "installations"; monumental "sculpture
gardens"; official and unofficial murals and graffiti; gigantic media
shows"; street, underground and interior "performances"; spectacular
social and political "happenings"; state and real-estate "land art pro)ects"; economic events, actions and evictions (the newest form of exhib
ited art); etc., etc. To attempt to "enrich" this powerful, dynamic art
gallery (the city public domain) with "artistic art"collections or commis
sionsall in the name of the publicis to decorate the city with a
pseudocreativity irrelevant to urban space and experience alike; it is
also to contaminate this space and experience with the most pretentious
and patronizing bureaucratic-aesthetic environmental pollution. Such
beautification is uglification; such humanization provokes alienation;
and the noble idea of public access is likely be received as private excess.

42

KRZYSZTOF WODICZKO

The aim of critical public art is neither a happy self-exhibition nor a

passive collaboration with the grand gallery of the city, its ideological
theater and architectural-social system. Rather, it is an engagement in
strategic challenges to the city structures and mediums that mpHiafp our
everyday perception of the world: an engagement through aesthetic-crit
ical interruptions, infiltrations and appropriations that question the
Embolic, psychopolitical and economic operations of the city.
To further clarify my position on public art, I must also express my
critical detachment from the apocalyptic visions of urban design and
environment suggested by Jean Baudrillard in terms of "cyberblitz" and
"hyperreality": however brilliant his metaphorical-critical constructs
may be, they cannot account for the complexity of symbolic, social and
economic life in the contemporary public domain.
For Baudrillard the Bauhaus proposed "the dissociation of every com
plex subject-object relation into simple; analytic, rational lments that
can be recombined in functional ensembles and which then take on sta
tus as the environment."^ Today, however, we are beyond even this:
"[W]hen the still almost artisanal functionalism of the Bauhaus is sur
passed in the cybernetic and mathematical design of the environment...
we are fceyond the object and its function
Nothing retains the place
of the critical, regressive-transgressive discourse of Dada and of sur
realism." And yet this total vision omits the powerful symbolic articula
tion of two economically related but distinct zones in the contemporary
city: state architecture and real-estate architecture. The two work in
tandem: state architecture appears solid, symbolically full, rooted in
sacred historic ground, while real-estate architecture develops freely,
appropriating, destroying, redeveloping, etc. A monstrous evicting
agency, this architecture imposes the bodies of the homeless onto the
"bodies"the structures and sculpturesof state architecture,
especially in those ideological graveyards of heroic "history" usually
located in downtown areas.
Now in the current attempts to revitalizeto gentrifythe down
towns, cities legally protect these graveyards as meaningful ideological
theater, not as places of "cyberblitz" where "the end of signification" has
been reached. In this regard Marc Guillaume is only partially correct
when he states that the contemporary dovratown is just a "signal system"
for touristic consumption:
The obsession with patrimony; the conservation of a few scattered
centers, some monuments and musographie remains, are just such

STRATEGIES OF PUBLIC ADDRESS

43

attempts [to compensate for the loss of social representation in

urban architecture]. Nonetheless, they are all in vain. These efforts
do not make a memory; in fact they have nothing to do wdth the
subtle art of memory. What remains are merely the stereotypical
signs of the city, a global signal system consumed by tourists.^
And yet it is still possible to establish a critical dialogue with state and
real-estate architecture or even, as described by GuUlaume, with monu
ments to pseudomemory. Not only is it still possible, it is urgently
neededthat is, if we are to continue the unfinished business of the sit
uationist urban project:
People will still be obliged for a long time to accept the era of reified
cities. But the attitude with which they accept it can be chapged
immediately. We must spread skepticism toward those bleak,
brightly colored kindergartens, the new dormitory cities of both
East and West. Only a mass awakening will pose the question of a
conscious construction of the urban milieu...
The basic practice of the theory of unitary urbanism will be the
transcription of the whole theoretical lie of urbanism, detourned
[diverted, appropriated] for the purpose of de-alienation: we con
stantly have to defend ourselves from the poetry of the bards of con
ditioningto jam their messages, to turn their songs inside out.^
Of course, the situationist project of intervention now requirescritical
evaluation; some of its methods and aims seem too Utopian, total
itarian, naive or full of avant-garde aestheticism to be accepted today. In
this respect we can learn much firom past and present avant-garde prac
tices, which I will schematize belowin terms of their relationships to: the
cultural system of art and its institutions; the larger system of culture
and its institutions; the system of "everyday life"; and mass or public
spectacle and the city.
HISTORIC AVANT GARDE (1910-1940s): futurism, dada, suprematism, constructivism, surrealism. Artistic interventions against art
and its institutions; critical and self-critical manifestations of the rejec
tion of its cultural system. Discovery of direct public address:e.g., futur
ist synthetic theater, evenings, actions and manifestoes. Discovery of
media art; discovery of critical public art as contestation. Roots of situa
tionist aestheticism (rejected by new avant-garde as well as by engaged
and neo avant-gardes).

we confrontmg the gelatinously unpleasant threat of a jeUy-fish and

decrees you a kind of molecular hodge-podge, a desire-breaching minority. You turn to him slowly and say "Goo-goo." He swoons at the
absracelike presence of what he calls your naive practices: "the banality
the everyday, the apoliticalness of sexuality, your insignificantly petty
wiles, your petty perversions." You are his "asocial universe which
refuses to enter mto die dialectic of representation" and contradicts utter
nothingness and death with only the neutrality of a respirator or a
rhythm machme. Goo-goo. But you are not really nothing: more like
soniethmg not recognized as a thing, which, like the culture which
produd it, S an accumulation of death in life. A veritable map and ves
sel of deterioration which fills your writing like a warm hand slipping
mitten on ^risp autumn day. And like the exe who asks not
"Who am l> but "Where am I?" the motor of your continuance is exclu
sion: from desire, from the sound of your own voice and from the
contractual agreements foisted upon you by the law. Order in the court,
the mo^ey wants to speak. He talks so sweet and strong, I have to take
a nap. Goo-goo.

Strategies of Public Address:

Which Media, Which Publics?
KRZYSZTOF

WODICZKO

Before I attempt to charaaerize briefly the strategies of public art today

in light of piiblic practices of the avant-garde of the past, I must express
my critical detachment from what is generally called "art in public
places." This bureaucratic-aesthetic form of public legitimation may
allude to the idea of public art as a social practice but in fact has very
little to do with it. Such a "movement" wants first to protect the auton
omy of art (bureaucratic aestheticism), isolating artistic practice from
critical public issues, and then to impose this purified practice on the
public domain (bureaucratic exhibitionism) as proof of its accountabil
ity. Such work functions at best as liberal urban decoration.
To believe that the city can be affected by open-air public art galleries
or enriched by outdoor curatorial adventures (through state and corpo
rate purchases, lendings and displays) is to commit an ultimate philo
sophical and political error. For, since the 18th century at least, the city
has operated as a grand aesthetic curatorial projea, a monstrous public
art gallery for massive exhibitions, permanent and temporary, of
environmental architectural "installations"; monumental "sculpture
gardens"; official and unofficial murals and graffiti; gigantic "media
shows"; street, underground and interior "performances"; spectacular
social and political "happenings"; state and real-estate "land art projeas"; economic events, actions and evictions (the newest form of exhib
ited art); etc., etc. To attempt to "enrich" this powerful, dynamic art
gallery (the city publicdomain) with"artistic art"collections or commisr
sionsall in the name of the publicis to decorate the city with a
pseudocreativity irrelevant to urban space and experience alike; it is
also to contaminate this space and experience with the most pretentious
and patronizing bureaucratic-aesthetic environmental pollution. Such
beautification is uglification; such humanization provokes alienation;
and the noble idea of public access is likely be received as private excess.

44

KRZYSZTOF WODICZKO

SOCIALLY ENGAGED AVANT-GARDE (1920-1930s):

Brecht, Grosz,
Tatlin, Lissitzky, Vertov, Alexsandr Bogdanov, Varvara Stepanova^
Lynbov Popova, Galina and Olga Chichagova, Heartfield, etc. Criticalaffirmative action on culture and its institutions; critical transformation
of the institutions of the cultural system of art. Engagement in mass
publications, design, educatibn systems, film (Kipo-Pravda, Kino-Oko),
opera, radio, theater ("epic" form, "estrangement" technique),'
agit-prop, proletcult, spectacles, Novy Lef (Sergei Tretiakov's affir
mative intervention). Roots of present affirmarive interest in media
cultural programs and public domain; also roots of situationist inter
ruption and dtournement.
CRITICAL NEO-AVANT-GARDE (1960-1970s): Daniel Buren, sup
port-surface artists, Hans Haacke, etc. (Missing reference: British pop
art.) Critical-affirmative action on art and its institutions; critical and
self-critical manipulation of its cultural system. Artistic attack on art as
myth of bourgeois culture; critical exposure of structural ideological
Imks between institutions of bourgeois art and culturepolitics, ethics,
philosophy, etc. Critical infiltration of museumsas official publicspecta
cle, but no significant attempts to enter mass spectacle, popular culture
public design.
'
SITUATIONIST CULTURAL AVANT-GARDE AS REVOLUTIONARY
FORCE (1960-70S):

Henri Lefebvre, Situationist International, Guy

Debord, etc. (Missing references: Huxus, punk rock). Cultural revolu
tionary intervention in everyday life and its institutions (environment,
popular media, etc.); critical and self-critical abandonment of art as cul
tural system and of avant-garde art as specialized procedure. Public
intervention against spectacle; tendency toward alternative spectacle.
Creation of situations "concretely and deliberately constructed by the
collective organization of a unitary ambience and game of events";
manipulation of popular culture against mass culture. Organization of
drive (drift), urban wanderings to contest modem structures, domi
nant architecture, city planning (surrealist tacrics). Influence of
postmarxist cultural studies and sociology; the city as "rediscovered and
magnified" festival to overcome conflict between everyday life and fes
tivity. Attack on passive reception of the city: "Our first task is to enable
people to stop identifying with their surroundings and with model pat
terns of behavior."
PRESENT CRITICAL PUBLIC ART: NEW AVANT-GARDE AS "INTEL
LIGENCE":

Barbara Kruger, Dara Birnbaum, Alfredo Jarr, Dennis

STRATEGIES OF PUBLIC ADDRESS

45

Adams, Dan Graham, etc; also Public Art Fund (New York), Public
Access (Toronto), Art Angels Trust (London), etc. Critical-affirmative
action on everyday life and its institutions (education, design, environ
ment, spectacle and mass media, etc.); critical transformation of culture
from within. Critical collaboration with institutions of mass and public
media, design and education in order to raise consciousness (or critical
unconscious) regarding urban experience: to win time and space in
information, advertising, billboards, lightboards, subways, publicmon
uments and buildings, television cable and public channels, etc. Address
to passive viewer, alienated city-dweller. Continuous influence of cul
tural studies enhanced by feminist critique of representation.

References
1.

Jean Baudrillard, "Design and Environment or How Political Economy

Escalates into Cyberblitz," in Por a Critique of the Political Economy of
the Sign (St. Louis: Telos Press,1981), pp. 185-203.

2.
3.

Marc Guillaume, in Zone 1/2 (1986), p. 439.

See Situationist International Anthology, ed. Ken Knabb (Berkeley:
Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981).