Ars: časopis Ústavu Dejín Umenia Slovenskej Akadémie Vied (43.2010)

/. Gr<%^^ PLT?/ Go^Lřyt o/* G. Lz/^Lb.
dbtAvLf o/ 7hí7rAr rgpT^r/77". ' The artist hopes that
these works can enliven the drudgery and prescribed
nature of our urban public sphere(s)d
The works display, what I would like to term for
the purpose of this essay, a relational ambivalence
that demands further exploration, speciňcally for the
way in which the faces both humanize the landscape
while also communicating a monstrous capacity of
consumption. In this way, the pièces function within
a polemic that does not effectively communicate a
specihc social politic, such as the pôles of interac-
tion at play within as theorized
by Suzanne Lacy.
Lacy, in the theoretically demanding and aca-
demically vigorous Tbvtw?.' (T/?7T
vdrT, maps out a continuum of positions the

artist can occupy between the private and public
in the execution of their work. They are:
átt where the artist acts as the conduit of
expression for witnessing the social reality;
where the artist calls attention to some-
tlaing in need of analysis; where the
artist contributes to an intellectual problém that can
alter the visual appeal or beauty of an object, thereby
challenging conventions; and /A who
undertakes consensual productions of art that ac-
tivate the larger communityr In contrast to Lacy's
understanding of an inherently politically motivated
public practice, what appears to be at play in the
work of Landin is a kind of relational ambivalence
where the viewer or spectator is implicated within the
work in a mode of exchange seldom encountered in
public art, Street art, grafňti, or post-grafhti modes
of display and critical analysis.
Because of the influence and after-effects of graf-
fiti practices in urban areas, there is a propensity to
align this kind of practice to a post-grafhti aesthetic.
For the intent of this essay, I will be arguing that
these pièces offer a trope of criticality unapparent
in current understandings of not only post-grafhti
but Street art practices as well. There is a kind of
itinérant participatory element to these pièces that
invite a consumption of the urban sphere(s) that
promûtes, through the simplicity of their inaction,
a critically créative engagement with the city. These
are works that invite participation, disavow elitism,
and convey a message of positive engagement with
urban life. Unlike much public art, the works do not
perform or attempt a didactic function. Instead, they
express a socially cognizant endeavor that realizes
the politics of place and space without falling into
the paternalistic. The pièces are as alienated from
understandings of new-genre-public-art as they are
of Street art, of grafhti as they are to post-grafhti,
because of the relative ambivalence they display. It
is a tactic deployed through the création of slight
gestures active in the nooks and non-spaces of the
city-sphere, where the viewer, if they are so inclined,
may remove, add to, or distort the work.

' KLEIN, N.: LL JLrÀ DíLtLř.* LL LL y* DdvjLr C^AaLL^. ^ LACY, S.: Debated Territory: Toward a Critical Language for
London 2007. Public Art. In: ALyyLg TL LbvL%.' G^re P^LLEÎL. Ed. S.
LACY. Seattle 1996, pp. 171-188, particularly pp. 174-176.
^ LANDIN 2008 (see in note 2).

70