Urban pranks
(a plastic ninja seen in Rome)
Being a great fan of random acts (and André Gide’s acte gratuit), it’s always to read what the mainstream press has to say about it. So when the WSJ features something about this, there are sometimes some good excerpts, such as:
“The latest pranksters are “urban alchemists,” akin to so-called guerrilla gardeners who cram plantings into sidewalk cracks, or people who create “found art” made from random items plucked from the streets, according to Jonathan Wynn, a sociologist at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.
“These are people in cities who take the public spaces and everyday life and make something kind of magical about it,” he says.“
Why do I blog this beyond the fun part of prank, they’re definitely interesting as signal which reveal the need for meaning making in contemporary cities/societies.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
…And with more and more city public space becoming privatised by, what is to happen to the notion of public life and community?
As you’ve suggested, city inhabitants are being lead to a future of commercialisation - the only way that they interface with a city - which squeezes out the purpose of a community: social relations, theatre, play, and debate.
It’s a dialog that performance company Blind Ditch are opening, by facilitating games of ping pong in the public squares of many British cities (http://www.blindditch.org/globalplayer/), as an attempt to shift the focus of public life back to public life