Abstract

Since the 1970s, practices in public art have documented or expressed aspects of the everyday city by reassembling its order. This paper addresses three practices developed in the context of the Skulptur Projekte Münster in which the artists Michael Asher, Janet Cardiff, and Jeremy Deller make the physical order, routines and rhythms of the everyday city evident. Using non-rational methods and juxtaposition, these projects show a tendency to complicate the urban order, in a sense, reassembling the ordinary to make it known. They bring clarity to the concept of the city as an “optical artifact,” in the words of Michel de Certeau. In a critical capacity, they demonstrate novel ways to locate creativity within the commonplace, creating interludes that critique a top-down urban plan. Forming an archive of their own, these projects provide a rich resource for assessing the urban everyday. Connecting past and present, they intersect with aspects of cultural or collective memory and different ways to consider the urban realm beyond the Skulptur Projekte.

Bio

Elisha Masemann  holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Auckland (2018). Her research focuses on creative (mis)uses of the city. She was the Kate Edger Charitable Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellow in 2019 and a Teaching Fellow in the Medical Humanities at the University of Auckland. With Leon Tan and Cameron Cartiere, Elisha co-authored “Mapping Art in the Public Realm 2008–2018,” published in The Routledge Companion to Art in the Public Realm (2020).