In the Open reflects on public space as a space that continually undergoes transformation, compelled by changing relationships between economic, cultural and socio-political interests. Public space is a space of negotiation. Between individuals and a sense of place, government policy and the common good or corporate enterprise and its exposure to the world as a market. Public space is both a community's most inner place, where those interests belong and inhabit, in real time - and its outer-outside, a surface of competing idea's, of communication strategy, where images are produced or maintained, in ideal time. Public space is both life and story, in no particular order. We've asked ourselves “What makes something public?”, and found it overwhelmingly definition-fluid; some spaces are open to all but not accessible to all, some situations are for free but do not produce equal liberties in terms of gender, race, social background, ... – 'public' is a fluid term, especially in times where the economic, the social, and the political freely flow into one another. The Open floor plan of the neoliberal project, the jungle of the Enterprise-become-landscape. Thinking of publicness brings into question the open, the authentic, the planned, the autonomous, the common, the fluent - it demands a relational perspective, which is at the core of this exhibition. Taking place as an open scenario In the Open will reflect on how audiences and publics are addressed, dealing with subjects such as housing, community and fiction, alternative economies, social capital, individualisation, space and gender, urban space and intimacy, to reflect on publicness as a situation of exchange, a relationship, and its many forms and implications.

Art direction : Elise van Mourik and Laure Jaffuel
Course director : Leopold Banchini
Production / coordination : Arie de Fijter
Scenography by Elise van Mourik, Laure Jaffuel, Beatriz Conefrey, Ali Glover, Thorben Gröbel, Kyulim Kim, Wei Tung Kuo, María Mazzanti, Roman Tkachenko, Michael Weber, Andoni Zamora Chacartegui
Graphic Design : Claire Manent

Thanks to Gemeente Amsterdam, De Volkskamer and Casa Migrante