prep time

Speak! Listen! Act!

A kaleidoscope of architectural elements for public space.

Parrhesiastic Play @AIANY

Our Parrhesiastic Play for NY public space got an award! And is now part of the "Designing for Free Speech" exhibition at AIA New York's Center for Architecture (536 LaGuardia Place New York, NY 10012). 

About the exhibition:
Theatrum Mundi, in partnership with the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter, asked architects, designers, activists, artists, and anyone interested in imagining new spaces in the city for free expression to identify public spaces in New York City and propose re-designs that transform them into places that activate the rights enshrined in the First Amendment.

Applicants proposed architectural or performative designs (temporary or permanent) that transform spaces in New York City into places for public “demonstration.” This challenge was about re-imagining and idealizing existing spaces that have the potential to animate the public, especially spaces that are not traditionally considered in this frame.

“New York City has a rich history of creative and political expression,” says Stephen Duncombe, project director and Theatrum Mundi fellow, “but with the privatization of public space, the surveillance of political communications, the commercialization of creative expression, and the virtualization of social gatherings, we want to imagine how we can transform spaces in the city into places for free expression. The Designing for Free Speech challenge offers a forum to do this.”

A jury selected nine proposals to be exhibited at the Center for Architecture in New York City and be awarded a small sum toward their implementation. The public also selected two additional proposals via an online voting system at http://designingforfreespeech.org/gallery/. The jury consisted of Lance Jay Brown, FAIA; Henry N. Cobb, FAIA; Lisa Keller; Richard Sennett; Stephen Duncombe; Gianpaolo Baiocchi; Mary Miss; Mindy Thompson Fullilove; and Ida C. Benedetto.

Theatrum Mundi is a professional network of urbanists and artists in different cities co-directed by Richard Sennett, Saskia Sassen, and Richard Burdett. The collective consists of academics, architects, planners, and performing and visual artists, with the aim to stimulate discussion about practices spanning stage and street. www.theatrum-mundi.org

cardboard pavilion

The Spiral

The Spiral for the Emancipated (Freed) Spectator

The Spiral is a temporary open-air structure for public events that suggests the blurring of the dichotomy between stage and auditorium. Inspired by Jacques Rancière’s “The Emancipated Spectator,” the project proposes a flexible spatial configuration that dissolves the distance between performers and audience. Instead of creating an auditorium based on (usual) concentric circles, the Spiral utilizes a spiral arrangement in which the “space for the audience” is not differentiated by that of the “space for performance;” instead a series of multi-level platforms are proposed that can create multiple relationships among multiple performances and multiple audiences. The Spiral is a modular structure that consists of three different sizes of triangular palettes that can be stored, moved, and (dis)assembled easily and quickly. It can be arranged in various configurations depending the needs of performance and the conditions of location.

Parrhesiastic Play

Parrhesiastic Play 

Freedom of speech and public space can be addressed according to Krzysztof Wodiczko (inspired by Michel Foucault) through the concept of the Ancient Greek Parrhesia, meaning to speak boldly. In the antiquity, only few privileged individuals, the Parrhesiastes. had the right, obligation, but also the strength to act the freedom of speech and to speak the truth for the others. Wodiczko suggests: 

“Contemporary Parrhesiastes should be the people who are least privileged, who have things to say which nobody wants to hear. From that group there should be born Parrhesiastes who should reprimand society and address the situations of authority’s unjust treatment or misunderstanding.” 

How can we create conditions in public space for the contemporary Parrhesiastes to open up and speak freely? What are the platforms for the true-tellers to communicate the crucial issues that others need to know? How can they disseminate these ideas to the others? 

Parrhesiastic Play is a performance architecture for public space that acts as communication platform for NYC citizens. Parrhesiastic Play is an alternative urban scrabble, a set of spatial elements that are both urban chairs and sculptural letters available to be arranged in different forms, and phrases by New Yorkers. Parrhesiastic Play can be positioned in multiple locations that are currently surveilled. By linking the physical space to the live webcams network, Parrhesiastic Play offers to people a stage to perform in front of the cameras, and disseminate their message to a larger audience while addressing surveillance through play and spectacle. 

In collaboration with Vien Nguyen

Parrhesiastic Play

Parrhesiastic Play currently on view at Designing for Free Speech Gallery, supported by Theatrum Mundi!

Freedom of speech and public space can be addressed according to Krzysztof Wodiczko (inspired by Michel Foucault) through the concept of the Ancient Greek Parrhesia, meaning to speak boldly. In the antiquity, only few privileged individuals, the Parrhesiastes. had the right, obligation, but also the strength to act the freedom of speech and to speak the truth for the others. Wodiczko suggests:

“Contemporary Parrhesiastes should be the people who are least privileged, who have things to say which nobody wants to hear. From that group there should be born Parrhesiastes who should reprimand society and address the situations of authority’s unjust treatment or misunderstanding.”

How can we create conditions in public space for the contemporary Parrhesiastes to open up and speak freely? What are the platforms for the true-tellers to communicate the crucial issues that others need to know? How can they disseminate these ideas to the others?

Parrhesiastic Play is a performance architecture for public space that acts as communication platform for NYC citizens. Parrhesiastic Play is an alternative urban scrabble, a set of spatial elements that are both urban chairs and sculptural letters available to be arranged in different forms, and phrases by New Yorkers. Parrhesiastic Play can be positioned in multiple locations that are currently surveilled. By linking the physical space to the live webcams network, Parrhesiastic Play offers to people a stage to perform in front of the cameras, and disseminate their message to a larger audience while addressing surveillance through play and spectacle.

*** To learn more about the project and to support it with your vote, please visit this LINK 

free-see-saw

Free-See-Saw

Free-See-Saw is a hybrid urban furniture and play that aims to become a dialectic space for New Yorkers. Through Free-See-Saw people have the possibility to change existing equilibriums and redefine their role through play. Through its playful character, Free-See-Saw suggests a more informal use of public space that it is somehow lacking today. The urban furniture becomes a performance, a space for spectacle, where the role of subject-object, performer-viewer is not clearly defined. The intervention has also the possibility to imply the need not only for participation, but also collaboration or co-operation among New Yorkers.