This proposal represents a group of students who will meet for the first time on Tuesday 6th February and over the following weeks will undertake a short course at the University of Brighton entitled ‘Critical Spatial Practice: social and spatial practices in public.’
In these sessions, the group will study and critique concepts and terms of ‘space,’ ‘place,’ ‘site,’ ‘site-specific,’ ‘socially-engaged,’ ‘participatory,’ ‘relational,’ ‘practice,’ ‘community’ and ‘intervention.’ They will develop, design and produce a live intervention in a public space in Brighton, which responds to the specific conditions of the chosen location. They will be asked to document and represent their intervention in some form of written or image-based piece.
I want to propose that we (that is I, and the group of students) will use the space for an open discussion and evaluation of their experience of the project they have undertaken. This discussion will be optional for the students to take part. It will be open to others to join. This discussion will ask whether it is possible to produce critical spatial practices from within an institution. It will address whether there is a possibility of teaching and learning about questions of being together through relational practice, where that practice is framed through being together in an institutional setting. It will ask what the challenges are of producing live projects when every step outside the institution requires a pre-planned event which requires a risk assessment, ethics approval and pre-determined itinerary and activities.
How does pre-determining relational work define and produce the outcome of the work? What are the ethics of being together, anyway? Should there be an ethics? And whose subjectivity is at stake when we ask these questions?
The full proposal of what the group will plan to do will be developed by the group over the duration of the course, in response to this proposal. It may not be a discussion, it may not be open to the public, it may not address the questions above. There may not be a risk assessment.
03
Friday 11 May 2018
2-3pm
Critical Spatial Practices: A Discussion
Katy Beinart & students from the University of Brighton
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