Miles, Malcolm. Art, space and the city: Public art and urban futures. Ed: Routledge. London.

1997

The monument
Negando otras posibilidades del pasado. Los discursos hegemonicos
“the argument has a general application; whilst the monument as a device of hegemony establishes a
national history, so it may also bury a national memory (...)The history represented by statues is a
closure inhibiting the imagining of alternative futures by denying the possibility of alternative pasts;
but if this monument is an opening in society’s received structure of values, dislocating the assumptions
of an ‘official’ history, it is an act of resistance (…) what seems more to the point is whether it, or
public art in general, affirms or interrogates the structures of power in society ” (p. 50)

“THE MONUMENT AND NATIONAL IDENTITY Monuments stand in a complex relation to time:
they state a past or its imitation, but are erected to impress contemporary publics with the relation to
history of those who hold power and the durability of that relation expressed in stone or bronze. One
past out of many possible constructions is represented as the past, just as one concept of the city is
represented as a dominant concept in its planning” (p. 37)

antimonuments and graffiti

“Many kinds of graffiti were added to the column, exposing prejudices against ‘guest-workers’
reminiscent of anti-semitism, the controversy around the monument accepted by the artists as part of its
impact. The column has been described as an antimonument, which refuses the forgetfulness of
conventional monuments which do society’s remembering for it ”

habitantes construyen los paisajes urbanos

“h ‘a willingness to listen and learn from members of the public of all ages, ethnic backgrounds, and
economic circumstances’ (Hayden, 1995:235). (…) primary importance to the political and social
narratives of the neighbourhood, and to the everyday lives of working people. It assumes that every
inhabitant is an active participant in the making of the city, not just one hero-designer” (p. 118)

“the spontaneous visual interventions of urban dwellers through graffiti and ‘unofficial’ street murals.
Some kinds of art, such as the altering of advertising posters to invert their messages, is between the
two (…) cultural diversity and environmental awareness are cases of art as intervention ” (p. 123)

El arte que no pertenece al mainstream

“The ‘art of public engagement’ is misunderstood and often maligned by the mainstream and critical
contemporary art fields. It is vital to reassert the presence of community-based art…. The field must
expand its definition of art by broadening the knowledge of what art means within other societies
(Jacob, 1996) ” (p. 124)

THE CONTRADICTIONS OF PUBLIC ART arte público entre momumento y activismo

“The map of public art is difficult to delineate, and contested, but its polarities could be stated as, on
one hand, a contemporary equivalent of the nineteenth-century monument, a practice which
accepts social and artistic conventions, its contradictions concealed by relocation to an art space
outside the gallery or museum and by the lack of documentation of its reception; and an emerging
practice of art as activism and engagement” (p. 52)
“ (...) public art often fails to create a public (…) public art inevitably operates in the public realm and a
lack of critical engagement with the construction of that realm leads by default to n. Descriptions of
public art are generally not kind and reflect its marginality. It has been called ‘a special kind of
socioaesthetic pudding’ (Willett, 1984:11), and ‘an oxymoron…resolved in favour of banality’
(Brighton, 1993b:43), which indicates that there is a problem in using the term ‘public art’, and perhaps
it is no longer possible to do so for anything other than a co-option of art to public policy through
public funding. But, another writer states that artists ‘working in the public interest address a wide
range of human concerns’ ” (p. 52)

“a sculpture in a plaza is not made accessible by its site as such, and any work of art in a public
collection might be described as ‘public’,5 so that the issue becomes not ‘public art’ but ‘the reception
of art by publics’. That reception can be manipulated. ” (p. 53)

lo publico
“One basic assumption that has underwritten many of the contemporary manifestations of public art is
the notion that this art derives its ‘publicness’ from where it is located… The idea of the public is a
difficult, mutable, and perhaps somewhat atrophied one, but the fact remains that the public dimension
is a psychological…construct. (Phillips, 1988:93) ” (p. 60)

estructuras de poder
“‘conventional’ public art became increasingly characterised as collaboration with dominant state and
corporate, national and global structures of power ” (p. 61)

“The acceptance of difference (of gender, race, class, sexual orientation and age) contributes to the end
of social fragmentation; but it is a process of resistance as well as celebration, and it too requires
bridges from social theory to art practice. Jacob writes: ‘Difference is a key concept in the breakdown
of the mainstream power structure’ ” (p. 107)