Public questions

In both 2020 and 2021, we have been directed to safely inhabit our private sphere and public encounters have become novel. This installation is a meeting place to explore our boundaries in a gallery room by Freedom Square, which over time has been a hay market, a car parking space and a public square, among other functions. This location may embody a space for workshops that help to negotiate our status quo in the public sphere, which may be first learned and subsequently debated. How do we contribute to matters that are unchanged? Do we see the shared values that maintain our social status quo in the blended coloured piles?

The participants of the negotiations have the opportunity to freely select any public issue that matters to them. Each participant enters an instructed process where the pile in front of them has a certain value and colour that they are asked to interact with in order to negotiate with the other participant and another coloured sand pile. The interactions are as spontaneous or as programmed as the participant feels; however, there is always an aspect of keeping your fellow participant in mind and relating to them. After a period of bodily engagement, the participants come together behind the workshop table to then reflect on their performance and summarise their findings about the discussed issue.