Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.05.2013, Blaðsíða 34

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34The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 5 — 2013
The Message: No Messages
Reykjavík district court building refuses to display YOUR TEXT HERE
The project is simple. People anonymously
submit text messages to a website that Marcos
has set up, the messages are then added to a
queue and automatically projected for roughly
ten seconds each in a spot he has designated.
With these short interventions, which typically
last only one night, one of Marcos' primary
aims is to activate public spaces.
“The intention is to have people physically
interact with their environment,” Marcos said.
“Cities are designed in a way so that everything
is homogeneous; you are meant to perform in a
particular way, to follow a certain pattern… my
work challenges this condition.”
More importantly though, the project’s goal
is to enable self-expression. These projections
serve as a way for people to articulate them-
selves and make their voices heard. Instead
of having their city decorated with banners
and product advertisements, residents actu-
ally have a say in what is displayed. “The main
point is to have people actually express them-
selves,” Marcos explained. This issue of self-
expression, however, is where Marcos encoun-
tered a problem.
THE COURT'S REACTION
After getting clearance without issue from
both City Hall and the Eymundsson bookstore
on Austurstræti, the court building on Læk-
jartorg turned down his request to carry out
his project on their building. When the proj-
ect was explained, the unnerved operator at
the court plainly repudiated his request. Ow-
ing their negative response to the fact that
theirs is a “politically charged building,” they
said they could not allow people to use it for
their own self-expression. Their message was
clear: unless we can be in control of what mes-
sages are projected, you are not running your
project here.
Having carried out his project successfully
in the past without many issues of censorship
like these, this reaction from the court building
came as a surprise to Marcos.
When he first ran this project as a research
student at Columbia University in New York, he
was sent on something of a wild goose chase to
get permission. “I had a lot of trouble because
the institution was somehow afraid of what
people would say. But they couldn’t say ‘no, we
don’t want you to do it,’ because that’s also very
delicate; it’s basically censoring freedom of
speech,” Marcos explained. In the end, Marcos
was granted provisional permission, able to run
his projector until some sort of nasty message
appeared, at which point a security guard would
shut it down. Ultimately, he decided to black out
any messages that might fall into this category,
so as to publicly highlight this condition of cen-
sorship.
When Marcos ran his project a second time,
in Detroit, he had complete freedom. More than
a thousand messages were submitted and then
displayed on the façade of an old industrial
building, and for a two-day period, Marcos just
left his projector running. “The great thing was
that all of the messages were positive,” Marcos
said. ”People came together as a community to
share messages about love, wisdom, criticism,
or just jokes. It was really kind of a family event.”
While it wasn’t on the centrally located court
building that he would’ve preferred, Marcos did
get to run his project in Reykjavík. The projec-
tions lasted for three nights, one on the City Hall
and the other two on the Eymundsson book-
store. Of the roughly 100 messages that were
submitted, as had been the case in the past,
they were all pleasant and familial.
The kinds of messages Marcos has re-
ceived in his project only exacerbate his con-
fusion over the court’s ultimatum to censor
and filter out what would get displayed. In
each of New York, Detroit, and now Reykjavík,
the messages received have almost all been
positive and created a family-like atmosphere
around the building. An argument could cer-
tainly be made that messages like, “Never
give up,” and, “Make each day your master-
piece,” don’t seem to warrant concern. Seen
in this light, the court’s lack of cooperation is
even more bizarre. “I don’t know what they’d
be afraid of,” Marcos said.
Marcos uses his own design studio, UN-
STABLE, to experiment with new media and to
be critical of the way public space is used. He
focuses primarily on the issue of control over
public space and how to go beyond its limits.
The layers of control over public space, Marcos
expressed, limit its potential. These conditions
are what Marcos had hoped to challenge with
“YOUR TEXT HERE,” with his use of the court
building’s façade. The court, however, obvious-
ly didn’t empathise with Marcos’ objectives.
“I wasn’t surprised to hear Columbia’s
answer because it’s a private institution
and they want to preserve this image. But
we’re in the City of Reykjavík, this is a public
place,” Marcos said. “This brings up the is-
sue of censorship again in a city, and even
with the court building, which is supposed
to be a public institution. I wanted to project
the messages there and display the voices of
local residents, but it turns out that no, you
don’t have your say.”
JUST CASTING LIGHT
Marcos has no future plans to rerun “YOUR
TEXT HERE” in Reykjavík, but does intend
to bring the project to other cities. The mes-
sages submitted in each of the cities seem to
capture something of the personality of the
local crowd, which is why Marcos plans to
continue to expand the project’s reach. “This
is becoming a travelling project, and in differ-
ent places, the messages are very different.
In every case they reflect the spirit of the lo-
cal community,” he said.
In the end, Marcos thinks the fuss made by
the court building seems funny. All this project
consists of is casting light onto a building. “It’s
not as if it’s graffiti or something permanent,
I’m just shining a light for a few seconds,” Mar-
cos explained. He hopes, however, that some-
thing as seemingly trivial as casting light may
inspire something more. “My interventions are
so ephemeral that they obviously can’t instant-
ly change anything in a city,” Marcos empha-
sized, “but they can certainly generate ideas or
raise concerns; that’s the whole point.”
- John Wilkins
Marcos Zotes is an architect who recently brought one of his latest projects, “YOUR TEXT HERE,” to Reykjavík.
He was caught off guard, however, when the Reykjavík district court building refused to grant him permission to use
their façade as a display point.
Visit Marcos Zotes/UNSTABLE at www.unstablespace.com. Design
“I
don’t
know what
they’d be
afraid
of.”