Art of Common Space
The concepts for The Art of Common Space were first developed in collaboration with American artist and theatre director Robert Wilson, the LANS team, and international creative practitioners at a series of workshop in Gunpowder Park, May 2006. American artist and theatre designer Robert Wilson, with an international reputation for cross-cultural collaborations, was invited to work in Gunpowder Park to develop ideas for a new model of creative project in May 2006. Together with Eileen Woods, Artistic Director for Gunpowder Park, they led a series of interdisciplinary arts-led workshops which explored vital issues relating to public open space, and considered Gunpowder Park as a possible ‘common’ space. During the workshops, participant and political theorist Dr. Benjamin Barber wrote: ‘The challenge of Gunpowder Park is in fact nothing less than the challenge of the new millennium: can we still constitute ourselves as a public? Can we recreate in the anonymity of this particular landscape something like a new commons?’ Practitioners representing visual arts, performing arts, design, architecture, anthropology and political science contributed to the original concepts. While Wilson and his international creative laboratory, The Watermill Center in Long Island, New York, known as his ‘academy for the 21st century’ continue to influence the project, the LANS team have subsequently consolidated the initial concepts from these workshops to develop The Art of Common Space programme in response to recent cultural developments in the UK. From these workshops, which were part funded by Arts Council England East, LANS has published the Robert Wilson / Gunpowder Park Stage A Workbook, as a synopsis of the workshop, charting the collaborative process with notations, essays, drawings, photographs and a sound piece by artist David Chapman in collaboration with Eileen Woods.
“Rethinking space and relationships between man and nature from a cultural perspective is a great challenge. The Art of Common Space offers a unique opportunity to address this issue and to redefine how we make use of the ever shrinking space of open land.” |
