Member of the Public.

For this guerrilla intervention I made lanyards with a tag that read “Member of the public” and handed them out to willing participants in public spaces of the CDB. This was an opportunity to explore the idea that wearing a lanyard marks you as belonging to a particular worksite, or group. It indicates a certain authority over a space, and access to areas that people not in the group, or not wearing a lanyard, can access. Covid has made us all so much more aware of our movements in public shared spaces, of where we stand, what surfaces we touch, of where we go and feel safe. Whilst public spaces belong to everyone, during lockdown our access was restricted to many of these spaces, or they were closed altogether. I felt this needed exploring!

Ed Woodham, Founder and Director of Art in Odd Places Public and Performance Festival 2021 NORMAL which took place in NY just recently, says “What is public space? If you have to push a door to go in somewhere, suddenly it becomes privileged or elitist. So public space becomes our space, no matter who you are. The article continues “And these exclusive doorways are not limited to the entrances of board rooms or galleries, museums, auction houses, or theatre venues. For multitudes of people… the pandemic has also exposed the ways that the gates of inequality restrict access to the most basic needs, namely: housing, food, health care, and most recently, the COVID-19 vaccine. Against these dire conditions, public art may seem irrelevant or twee, but it does a simple but essential thing: reminds everyday people that they are not alone in this bizzarro moment, and miraculously and fortunately, they are still alive and kicking.” (J Faith Almiron, “Why we need unconventional public art now more than ever.” Hyperallergic, May 13, 2021)