Publicness

I contribute to Critical Practice, a cluster of artists, researchers, academics and others, supported by Chelsea College of Art & Design, London.

We are collaborating with Kuba Szreder, a freelance curator from Warsaw,  on an international conference exploring the contested, and increasingly relevant to topic of ‘publicness’ or 'being-in-public'. We are working towards Parade (working title) a conference and series of events in the beautiful Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground at Chelsea, opposite Tate Britain in central London – 4 minutes from the Houses of Parliament. Parade is scheduled for May 2010.

We intend to explore different conceptions of publicness - historical, cultural, architectural  and digital, as represented in Eastern and Western Europe through the contrasting experiences of Poland and Britain.

Parade will be a landmark event, in a stunning bespoke structure, in an amazing location with a host of international contributors. This will be no standard 'conference' - with famous speakers and passive audience - we intend to explore participatory ‘public’ forms of knowledge production; including a Market of Ideas, workshops, seminars and barcamps as well as more conventional presentations and talks. The content of the event and the forms that it takes will be intimately bound.

As debt bubbles burst and markets seize, states are taking control of previously private financial institutions; and energy, resources and knowledge, formerly ‘public goods’ are increasingly subject to restrictive property claims. An exploration of ‘publicness’ has never been so vital.

See the development of #Transacting or the currencies, or follow the development of the market stalls