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Begin with an overview of the couple of my projects
They respond to a lot of the issues that are been brought up today
A lot of questions about getting people involved
Getting people to step inside the institution. What does it take to get people in there?
How can we program in a different way?
How can we structure our offerings in a different way?
So that it attracts more people.
A lot of talk about communality
How to find communality across different sectors and different populations
There is one thing in common that we all have
Regardless of income, of race, of gender
Everyone shares one thing
That's the city itself
And for the last 6 years
I worked in the city itself with the shared communality
To create projects
Which can extend themselves to the general public for one reason
Was said that culture has changed
Our relationships with culture has changed
And that is true
Our relationship with the city also changed
If combine relationship with culture changing an the relationship with city changing
We need a new paradigm of creating and operating culturally in the city
In the context of this time
This is the age of radio
This is the age of air flights
This is the age of looking into space
The same technique can not be used again
New times need new techniques
Culturarally that's was what we faces with
In new time we need new cultural techniques
This is a kind of hacking the urban
Hacking culture. Hacking our relationship with culture
Lets take for example public sculpture
I find it incredible arrogant
To drop a peace of public sculpture into a space
It has very little to do
With the people who actually using that space
When people go home
They go on the internet and they can choose
They can curate the video they watch
They can curate the pictures that they see
They can create their online world of friends, images and sounds
But they cannot do that in the city
In the city, we are still operating on "top-down" cultural model
Saying we have decided what you want to see
If people are going to have a peace of publick sculpture in the city
Why can't the public create them by themselves?
This the project produced in Amsterdam in part of the "Urban play" project
In the upper left hand corner - this little girl
In terms of the community. In terms of getting people involved
The day after this was installed, everyone began turning out
This crews of people out there beginning creating the sculpture
Next morning this little girl appeared with the bag of kitchen tools
She began curving out that little face, that you see there
She was in a grate pride for that. It would be forever
I had a long talk with her mom
Right after her mom came up and basically said
"What the hell are you doing, taking photographs of my daughter?"
Those moments really bring people together
In the upper right hand corner
The piece of public art is beginning to be created by the public
There's can be a different perspectives
This from the project I did in Porto
What could you suggest that would improve your daily life in Porto?
The bus stops are always overcrowded
Besides that, they are boring
Let's create something that looks like the brontosaurusor or like a loch ness monster
But serves as a chair
We can attach it to the bus stop to provide extra sitting
It can be as a nice piece of sculpture
This was done with prototyping very cheaply
It lasted for 3 days from the idea to execution
Let's get in quick, let's move
Let's get in with the solution and let's get out again
That's how we need to be operating
We need to bee much more quick operator
That's the pace which everyone else is consuming
This is another thing from Porto
People spend so much time on facebook, playing FarmVille
What if we had Farmville for real in Porto?
I love the phrase "FarVille for real"
People designed this little plastic things
Which can be printed out on a normal heavy duty printer
on plastic sheets - cut, snapped in a place
It beging creating this planting parts just out and around city of Porto
It's design. It's agriculture. It's public engagement
It's everything we've been talking about
And no one has to enter anything to take part in this
This from "Urban play" - "Moving forest"
One thing that people sometimes say about projects like this
That's very nice - those kind of attractive things
But how do they fit into infrastructure of the city?
How do they contribute?
This project is really an amazing project
On the left hand corner
The basic argument was:
Why all the greenery in the city have to be fixed in the place?
Why can't we put greenery where we want greenery in the city?
They created these things
That's only half of it
What then happen - is as people begun moving this carts around the city
Which where GPS tracked
What began happening
The GPS tracking wasn't to prevent them from being stolen
The citizens were telling the City where they wanted green things to be
In the upper right hand corner
Blank public plaza
I want greenery here
What begung happening was
Crowd sourcing the landscaping of the city
Threw a cultural project
The last project, we will talk about is the most well-known
"Urban play" project in Amsterdam
150 volunteers - 1 week
That material, you see there is 300 000 pennies
300 000 euro cent coins
One side is a normal bronze coin
Other side is painted blue
The whole purpose was that people could remix the coins
Could turn it over etc.
In the upper left hand corner
People are putting them together
It took 1 week of continuing work of 150 people
You see the sense of scale in the middle
2 individuals there crossing the plaza
In the lower right hand corner
The police, sweeping the whole thing up
Into one big pile
The story is that someone called them up and said
People are putting coins into their pockets
Which we knew would happen
But the police said
We got to take care of this
Next morning I was freaked out as anyone would
Who just produced the project of this scale
And found everything missing one morning
The police contact me and said
Don't worry
The artwork is secure
They didn't really get the point
They were really proud of themselves
Don't worry we've got it
It's in that 27 bags in that back room right now
It's good
Well thank you very much
Tears
The last thing I'm going to say
This project is really is kind of getting out there
Working culturally outside of the usual channels
Add a new ways in the common environment of the city needs
After I found that whole thing missing
I began walking back towards my flat
My had was spinning
It was between laughing insanely and crying uncontrollably
I crossed the footbridge
Right on the handrail of the footbridge was a penny
That's ironic. I've just lost 300 000 of them
It was blue on one side
To me it really meant a lot
Because already the message of the artwork had begun going like this
Since while in Amsterdam people still tell me
Last night I found a blue penny in my change