July 27, 2005
Cracks in the Pavement:
Gifts in the Urban Landscape
Cracks in the Pavement: Gifts in the Urban Landscape is a multi-phased, interactive project that calls attention to the “in-between” spaces encountered throughout everyday life. The project focuses on details within the urban landscape and encourages close inspection of our social space. This summer, artists based in locations around the world will respond to what they find in their urban environments by making art objects designed to be placed in sites that intrigue them—at bus shelters, in alleys, under bridges, in libraries or post offices, or deep in park bushes. Members of the public are invited to search for these site-specific works using maps and clues provided at the web site. Art works featured in Cracks in the Pavement may be kept by whoever finds them. Works not found will be allowed to remain in the landscape indefinitely to be encountered by chance, displaced, or transformed by the very environmental forces that define each piece's context.
The process of discovery lies at the heart of the project. It invites people to engage with their surroundings intimately, encouraging any number of potential encounters or experiences provided in the act of searching. Every environmental detail reveals evidence for an event occurring at a moment in time, as careless and forgettable as roadside trash thrown from a car window or as sublime as the cracks in a building’s foundation caused by an earthquake or tornado. Cracks in the Pavement asks us to ponder where we are in relation to what surrounds us. It calls attention to what we pass by every day, as well as what we leave behind.
Cracks in the Pavement was started in Austin, Texas, in June 2004. The project featured site-specific works by 15 Austin-based and international artists both in Austin and in London, UK and was presented as part of the London Biennale 2004. This year, the project will be launched in multiple phases in different locations throughout summer 2005; click here for a list of participating artists, locations and launch dates. Cracks in the Pavement is organized by Heather Johnson, and will be on view throughout the summer until the last piece is found.
Posted by jo at July 27, 2005 07:58 AM
