aMAZElab XX Mediterraneo

GOING PUBLIC program (2002-2012)

On the occasion of the award-winning GOING PUBLIC program (2002-2012), a series of projects have been carried out focusing on the relationship between community and territory, urban space and public sphere, borders and mobility. Various platforms have been activated involving artists, students, citizens, to rethink the use of public space, offering alternative proposals for conflict and border areas such as: Beirut, Jerusalem, Tangier, Sarajevo.

The relationship between community and territory, between city and citizens is at the centre of the most recent debates. The proposal of the GOING PUBLIC program, with workshops, seminars, exhibitions and public debates, has focused on urban and peripheral space, social policy and territorial management. In other words, the use of public space in our culture of living.

The public place is a space where people act and create "a common world full of differences" (Saskia Sassen).

We are experiencing a crisis on the use of public space, which is the result of a conflict of global and local interests, the growth of commercialization, globalization, gentrification, in few words the privatization of public space. This reality has produced a disorientation between individuals and communities. Art and Culture can function as critical practices that allow to capture something more than the representation of the city and its public space: the valorization of public sphere.

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