Public Species
Imagine that all the everyday struggles of your city went on vacation – together with the people causing them – so that basically you would be left alone only with the visible traces imprinted by its inhabitants. You could begin some kind of archeological endeavor – well, now you have all the time to do so – stumbling upon more and more items and arrangements, which tell you about the relationship between the inhabitants and their surroundings.
If you were a cultural critic, you might quickly come up with some diagnosis – finding it problematic, reflecting post-socialist whatevers, diminished sense of public good, etc. But instead you engage with the cooling spray arch standing all alone on that square, like a generous gesture by the city administration to any remaining after-life, dispersing water that instantaneously evaporates in the merciless dog-days heat – reminding you of Ulrich Seidl’s homonymous movie that illustrates the unbearable heat’s impact on a maybe similarly alienated (sub-)urban tribe of humans and their neuroses. All of which makes you, once again, feel quite content to be left right alone.
However, you also recall some comforting experiences when you felt part of a bigger social something, formative years growing up in your home village amidst your family, friends, rural community… even allowing you to experience those who actively cared for this shared environment. But then… at some point… it must have all somehow gone astray: you moved to the big city that is slowly but surely eating its surroundings with all-encompassing growth, sprawling suburbs and concrete fences, because “this is MY property”.
And then all of a sudden, they just left it all behind — material traces just like odd reminders of “it’s complicated” and all that could have been. You wonder why they even abandoned their cars — to keep a piece of public space occupied, just in case?
But what drove them to leave in the first place? Maybe they were just sick of the city — having become increasingly alienated by its recent developments, sterile malls, and apartment complexes...? So why not have a break, return to nature, to the village, family roots, with granny slaving over a hot stove to prepare Sauerkraut soup just the way you like it. You try to imagine — to visualize — the whole city just upping sticks and heading off for vacation, a mass endeavor – the stuff of your very darkest nightmare — though one with a purpose: something like a teambuilding retreat, to make them better urbanites, because everybody is a “placemaker” — well, just another nightmare.
You keep on walking through the deserted streets, beginning to enjoy this people-less city, while you stumble across more and more peculiar arrangements that kinda went under your radar when the inhabitants were still around, making you spin a yarn about them without them, unsure whether you actually miss them. Well, truth be told the park always seemed much nicer with no one around, especially at those stairs that lead nowhere, as though completely unburdened by purpose of any kind. And all around the birds continue to sing and chirp — just like nothing has happened — most likely they’d do pretty well without them… or us?
Curator of the exhibition and author of the text: Motahar Amiri
Photodocumentation of the instalation: Lenka Márföldy, Fotohof
2023