The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

Urban art projects can embody a critique of the physical and institutional
spaces in which they are located. But they also involve urban forms of practice,
and this too is part of the critique. The three projects discussed here are
marked for us by an increased inclusion of the processes surrounding artistic
production within the artwork itself; the involvement of people from a
range of organizations in realizing the work, together with the role of viewers
as participants, has meant that beyond their physical presence, these
works constitute live interventions into systems or situations.
In our own practice, we began operating without a studio for economic
and logistical reasons; but over time this rootlessness has come to inform
our operations in more profound ways. Because our work can take place
anywhere, we are more able to respond to the very particular qualities of a
site. For us, the artists’ studio space has never been essential as a creative locus.
Realizing our work brings us into contact with bureaucratic systems,
and consequently administration is an essential part of our practice. We
move around the city—usually on foot, tracing more or less purposeful connections
between London sandwich bars, public libraries and park benches,
stock photo agencies, toolshops, and light industrial units. Walking in the
city brings a direct physical aspect to the understanding of distance, topography,
and scale that has formed an important element of our installations.
In its finished form, our work is often sculptural, yet the way it is
conceived relates in part to the juxtapositions of collage that stem from our
background in photography and graphic media. We use images principally
in two ways: practically, to plan and visualize projects in advance and to document
them on completion; and theoretically, as ready-made elements incorporated
into the substance of the work. In our finished work we present
rather than represent.
By relocating industrial and consumer goods, often through single
gestures, our projects have become involved in complex situations. The titles
we choose are taken from a diverse range of sources within the public
domain, and often in current use. We use titles not to describe but to add
another element, which can gradually bring meaning.
While our work is to some extent identifiable by technique and formal
devices, its key feature is a critical engagement with the prevailing ideas
and attitudes that underlie consumer culture within late capitalism. Familiar
yet evolving urban forms such as shopping centers, business parks, and
road networks continually offer new manifestations of those ideas and
attitudes.
This choice of subject matter and our mode of dealing with it has
been a response to living and working in the city; in particular, we are interested
in how patterns of social, political, and economic organization