Art Intervention

Leading on from exploring the figure in space and setting up scenes using the model paper man, I began to look more into art interventions. By definition an art intervention is an interaction with a previously existing artwork, audience or space so by placing my paper man in the fridge for example, I was in effect, and without knowing it, creating an intervention as I was subverting the purpose of the environment and engaging with the space. In recent years, this form of conceptual and performance art has become particularly popular. Commonly associated with the Dada movement and the Neo-Dadaists, art interventions have an inherent playfulness about them as they encourage viewers or the audience to interact with the work and with those around them experiencing the intervention. When learning about art interventions in class, what particularly captured my attention was the ability of these art installations to alter the physical environment and make people see things in a new way.

One such example of this was the wrapped Reichstag building by Christo and Jeanne Claude - the wrapping begun in 1977 and wasn't finished until 1995!

The Wrapped Reichstag building, Christo& Jeanne-Claude, Berlin, 1995

Plans for the intervention by Christo & Jeanne-Claude

Living in a city, I was also really interested by the prospect of altering an urban space and reintegrating nature and organic matter into a concrete, city environment.  An intervention which achieves exactly this is the recently built 'High Line' in New York city. Built on a section of the former elevated New York Central Railroad, the High Line project has organised the redesign of the space and has planted an arial greenway. The High Line park runs from West 12th Street in the meatpacking district all the way up to 30th Street, so it runs through a considerable part of the city.

The High Line before and after

People on the High Line

Plan of the High Line

I was so inspired by the idea of the High Line and recreating a natural environment in an urban setting that I went about trying to re-create (on a much smaller scale) the high line garden on the street outside my house! Using a small bundle of cress, I went onto the road outside my house and place the cress on the pavement, in between cracks and on ground hole covers in order to recreate a natural, organic environment in amongst a city landscape.

Cress placed over a ground hole cover

Cress inserted in a crack in the pavement

Placing the cress on a boulder and playing with perspective

Using only one small box of cress, it was difficult to completely transform an urban environment into a green garden space, however, by using perspective and focusing on subverting small aspects of the environment, I think I successfully managed to recreate some of the aims of the New York High Line gardeners. As I became more interested in using organic forms as intervention materials, I discovered a really amazing recent movement that's kick off in cities all around the world in the past couple of years. Its called guerilla gardening and it involves small teams of people collaborating together to plant small gardens or allotments in abandoned areas of the city. Sometimes they even take up pavement blocks to plant flowers and grass. 

Guerilla gardening in Spain