My views on “public art” and “art is public spaces” have changed drastically. I now feel that “art in public spaces” is primarily about exporting preexisting institutional frameworks to new sites and colonizing foreign cultures. The elements of the non-institutional environments will always surrender to art: The less culture there is at a site, the more easy it is to colonize it using artworks. A singular art object can fold the unprotected wilderness into itself and take control of its surroundings (A cross on top of a mountain etc). When art is made for the insides the institutions, it is met with more resistance and its structure is opened for negotiations. It is more easy to evaluate and compare artworks inside institutions. They may be more democratic spaces then I have previously thought! Institutions are dependent on gatekeepers who maintain status quo and reject works which they deem unfit. The act of rejecting something is actually articulating and making the inner values of the institution open for public debate. The wilderness cannot reject art. I should start to offer my artworks to established institutions. That would be the only way to benchmark their values.
Eero Yli-Vakkuri
It is worth noticing that a fair amount of Pokestops in Helsinki is placed on public art works. I think PokemonGo is using Helsinki Art Museum’s open data files in its virtual geography. Could this be interpreted as postcolonial act of re-territorialization of national public space?
I’d interpret it as Nintendo/Niantic’s gift for HAM. HAM now has the superstructure it needs to lure youth to their public art events. All it takes in some moderate investments in PokemonGO incenses and they’ll reclaim lost audiences. They are all in on it! Nintendo/Niantic has wrapped the world into a virtual enclave of it’s own making (which manages like virtual property). It is building a framework for future super-institutions. This is why some public institutions have been “gifted” pokestops.
Gift as debt – yup…
Here is a revealing story about academic degrees, historical centers and PokemonGO deities. Catholic mindsets might be more perceptive this sort of communications.