The City As Stage: Critical Interventions in Public Space

Course goals

Content

In times of increasing neoliberal privatization, homogenization and control of public urban spaces in today’s cities we witness various artistic and creative attempts to reclaim and reconfigure the city, be it for the moment or for the longer run: street art; urban farming; parkours; flashmobs; guerrilla gardening; pop-up stores and restaurants; occupying abandoned sites for new purposes. These raise interesting questions: Who owns the city, how do we shape the urban landscape? Where and when does the city truly become a ‘public space’? How can we appropriate it in new ways?

You will reflect on these questions not only by discussing texts, but also by going into the city of Utrecht and working through these questions in more experiential and creative manners. This course celebrates the motto: thinking by doing. Furthermore, the course invites you to explore and define your personal and individual engagement with respect to issues of public space and the city. Therefore, this course requires a genuine interest in the topics of the course, and an open and curious attitude.

The course focuses on cultural and artistic interventions in urban space and how they actively re-think and reconfigure the city. It investigates how cities can be used as platforms where new notions of citizenship, community, and public sphere are being performed. The course introduces students to the theoretical concept of ‘performativity’ as a way to understand both how power relations are performed in cities on a daily basis, but also how these can be critically revealed and (temporarily) disturbed through creative interventions in public space.

In addition to discussing a variety of specific cases of public space interventions in class, you will visit performances that are happening in Utrecht and you will design and execute a small-scale intervention in public space yourself in a small group of fellow students. You will work on a series of assignments that lead you step by step to the actual execution of your intervention. You will receive regular feedback during the process, allowing you to improve your work during the course. You will also see and analyze an example of a performance intervention during Utrecht’s SPRING festival of performance. Finally, you will write a reflective blog in which you will track the development of your thinking and making across the course.

This course is part of the minor Creative Cities.

LAS and TCS students who follow this course as part of the core curriculum of their major, need to complete a compulsory preparation course/assignment. See for more information: https://tcs.sites.uu.nl/
 

Additional information

Priority rules
This course has priority rules and a waiting list. Your enrolment is guaranteed if you

- are a student in the BA Media and Culture and this course is part of your specialisation (verdiepingspakket)
- are a student in the BA Liberal Arts and Sciences or Taal- en Cultuurstudies and this course is part of your specialisation (kernpakket)
- are enrolled in the Creative Cities  minor
- are an exchange student and meet the course’s entry requirements
In all other situations, you will be placed on a waiting list if you enrol in this course. For any remaining slots in the course, lots are drawn among the students on the waiting list.

Schedule
Please note: the time slot shown here is not yet final, and may still be modified until the third Wednesday in September.