Nick Gee

Trouble in the garden: exploring the ambivalence of public space and private property

How contemporary art practices can contribute to the recovery of a representation of human experience within the realms of the dominant bourgeois public sphere.

This research situates itself within the tradition of theory of experience especially that developed by Alexander Kluge and Oskar Negt. In their collective work, The public sphere and experience, they develop a concept of a public sphere that designates the overall “horizon of experience”, which create the terms and forms in which human experience can be had. It is simultaneously what enables and what restricts experience.

Through a critical analysis of the forms of production, diffusion and reception of information within contemporary society my intention is to explore how, and where a specific art practice can operate to produce a counter form of human experience.A methodology for this project is situated in the crossroads between philosophical political questions concerning the public sphere and experience, the theorisation of artistic démarche and documentary film and television practices.