<nettime> Trafalgar Square, Monday June 4...

[Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

Bwo Gil Doron <g_doron@YAHOO.COM> -----
and the INURA (International Network for Urban Research and Action, 
http://www.inura.org)

Subject:      Monday, June 4th,
              14:30-17:00 Trafalgar Sq. Transgressive Architecture intervention
              in co-operation with pigeons and other nomads
Comments: To: transgressivearchitecture@hotmail.com



The Bad Sheets  in Trafalgar Square. 

Transgressive Architecture intervention in co-operation with pigeons and
other nomads.  Monday, June 4th, 14:30-17:00

Silence has fallen on Trafalgar Square. No more pigeons cooing, no more
children laughing.  The tourists do not stop there any more; they just
pass by, disappointedly gazing at the voided square now that the pigeons
are gone. It is the silence after the storm. Silence after the battle
between the cleansing and purification brigade and the city's everyday
life.

The war which was declared in the name of safety - in the name of
beautification, and economic re-development , in the name of "the father",
has never been given a name. This war has never been commemorated. Its
victims have never been given a monument. But this war has never ended,
and Trafalgar Square was not its only place. This war is being constantly
fought in other streets, parks and squares, in every public place.

The Bad Sheets installation by Transgressive Architecture is the monument
to this unspoken war. The Bad Sheets are the tombstones for the victims.
The white Bad Sheets are the Taleet (the Jewish prying shroud)  in which
one clothes oneself every day and in which one is buried. The White Bad
Sheets unfold to reveal a planning land use map, dyed in white by
planners. In this map a process of suspension of the present occurs. But
from these white tombs, these temporary monuments, these site specific
maps that create non-places, the architecture of transgression is born.

The Bad-Sheets are not white. They have never been.  

Taken from the private realm they have been stained in the public by
images of streets vendors, prostitutes, buskers, cruisers for sex, the
homeless, and protesters; they were stained by the dirt of their nomadic
existence in London's public spaces. They will not be washed - they
remember that "dirt is only matter out of place" and they do not have a
proper place. They are placeless and temporary. Nevertheless, by the
repetition of their appearance in London in different spaces and times,
the Bad Sheets creates their home in the city.  It is the repetition that
makes a difference.

The Bad Sheet are "public art" which does not identify the public, and
questions "Is it art?"

The Bad Sheets create a space, which can generate endless possibilities.
Misuse it. Use it. Or don't.

The Bad Sheets are fertile mobile platforms. We invite you to dance. 

Transgressing the boundaries of cleansed public space the Bad Sheets
create boundless space, open and inclusive. Don't watch this space,
inhabit it - carry it with you.


Transgressive Architecture 

The Bad Sheets, is the intervention of the Transgressive Architecture
group - a collaboration of artists, architects, a photographer, a writer
and a film maker. The group was formed in March 2001 to re-think and react
in London's public space. The Bad Sheets is a temporary and nomadic public
art installation. The Bad Sheets are site specific installations in
contested public places, but they also reflect the general conditions of
social cleansing in London's public space.

Launched in March 2001, in front of the RIBA, the Bad Sheet intervention
generated a statement by Lord Richard Rogers, head of the Urban Task
Force, and London city architects, that supported the right of
marginalized communities such as homeless people, beggars, prostitutes,
participants in public sex, buskers, and protesters, to act in the public
space. In May, in the Charing Cross underpass, the Bad Sheets brought to
the public's attention the new by-law which its mere purpose is to evict
the houseless people that find shelter in this place.  The Bad Sheets in
Trafalgar Square protests against the cleansing of the pigeons which has
led to the demise of the square as a tourist attraction. The pigeons gave
the rigid and monumental square some qualities that architects struggle to
achieve currently in their works: mutation, mobility, hybridism, fluidity,
temporality and volatility. The pigeons made the square a space of event.  
The Bad Sheets in Trafalgar square is a public art intervention which
tries to restore these qualities.

The next Bad Sheets interventions will deal with the cleansing of sex
activity from parks, and the cleansing of artists from streets and
squares.

For further details please write to Transgressivearchitecture@hotmail.com
or Mob. 07796928215



Gil M. Doron, Writer, Artist
Lecturer at University of North London and University of East London 
Schools of Architecture 
Ph.D.researcher, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
E-mail: g_doron@yahoo.com
4 Nevena Court, 90 Effra Rd. 
London SW2 1BT
Tel: 07796928215
Home page: http://www.gildoron.com

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