Introduction
We are Laura Groeneveld, student Theater Design, and Jannida Langeveld, student Fine Art and Education. Soon, in June, we will graduate on the ‘School of Arts Utrecht’ and this is one of the projects we are doing for our graduation. We designed this project ourselves because of our interest in interactive public art in urban space. We would like to know how art (visual art or theatre) in public space could bring people together.
‘Neem Plaats’ [Take Place]
In this project, we are looking for an answer on the following question: how can an interactive visual art installation bring people together in the urban public space?
We would like to make a break in peoples daily routine and let them be conscious about the moment, the others which whom they share the public space and the place they are traveling to.
‘TreinTekenen’ [Drawing in the train]
Description: We choose one coupé in the train and asked all the passengers to draw their destination on an A6 card. We did this four times between Utrecht CS and Amsterdam CS.
'De TekenTafel' [Drafting Table]
Description:
We took a table to the street, put some nice flowers, sweeties, cookies, pencils and paper on it and invited people to join us at the table. Here we gave no specific instructions, as we wanted to see what creativity already lurked in the people passing by.
The next time will will make the table more inspiring by placing a miniature city on the table. The small city is a visualization of the 'birds view' that we hope participants get from taking a step out of their daily routine by taking place at our table. Furthermore, we ask the people at the table to draw their destination as well, so that we might compare the drawings from the street and from the train.
With bringing the ‘home- element’, in the form of a kitchen table, in to the street, we bring something of the private space into the public space. Hopefully it will help people to take a little step out of the safeness of their daily routine to get involved with art and automatically with other people, who they normally pass by. Moreover, with the drawings we want to catch some of the private stories that move through the public space.
'De Expositie' [Exhibition]
Having an exhibition is a big part of our survey. It is the moment we can look back to the project and it gives the opportunity to present an overview of the project as one community-art piece. All the participants will be invited for this exhibition (and the opening!). We are really curious to find out what interaction will take place between people in the environment of the exhibition.
