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It has been some time since the concept of art in public places became separate from that of sculpture as a monument, becoming replaced by aspects of the
architectonic. Usually, these aspects bear some relationship to specific paradigms determined by the given place. It is almost impossible that they should exist
outside that place, particularly in a neutral institutional framework. In Dresden, where he lives, Adam Page has been observing the sell-out of public property, a process that has transformed "the concept a public place once promoted by state policy into the concept of a public thoroughfare dictated by private strategies." In his text "Space Politics" Page reflects on the extent to which architectural structure can regulate social behavior patterns and further the private appropriation of space: "The precision and physicality of the built frame makes the volume of a space absolute, so that it becomes the yardstick for all others. It introduces a division between inside and outside, private and public." It is to this inner link between architecture and social behavior that the artist devotes his particular interest. What he is concerned to do is to make a precise analysis of the functions that define public architecture, and to elucidate the question of how public it actually is and who is in control of it. Adaptable structures, such as the Executive box at Friedrichsplatz, are not absolute sculptures but communicative artistic acts. Ideally, they can react to specific situations and promote communicative exchange between places, institutions, and society. Artistic interventions of this kind "may not even need to be specific to a site, because present notions of site, like space, are being further delocalized, dematerialized. They do however need to be specific to a situation - the present, the temporary, the physical, the spatial." Such are the conditions for this short circuit to succeed. S. P. |