Introduction1

1. Western cities’ need for revival

A space does not communicate solely with the eye, but concerns the entire body, and cannot, without being reduced, be treated solely within the framework of visual aesthetics. Our everyday space is not seen from a plane, but experienced at ground level. A purely visual approach further ignores the fact–and this is problematic–that an urban space cannot be perceived in one go, but only in a series of fragmentary sequences, as one moves around over time. (F. Choay, 1985)

3Over the course of history, art in space has been a powerful lever of urban culture, acting as a sort of social and aesthetic mirror of the city. But social practices change, and with them the meaning and functions of urban space. A powerful force instils permanent change and life in the city–the force of citizens, who play a role in defining their districts. Hence the relation between social practice and space is a favorite topic for architects, sociologists, philosophers, and urban planners. A recurrent question over the 20^th century has been how to provide space open to multiple practices. The viewpoint of visual artists, when they convey a qualitative vision of space, can contribute to this dialogue on the Western cities’ need for revival.

1.1. What is a Western city today?

5Although increasingly without clear limits, cities nevertheless retain an identity, a specific character. They continue to be structured around places that have meaning, cardinal places which despite multiple changes still act as landmarks for those living there. It is precisely these places which ought to attract artists’ attention. Rein Raud (2002), one of the main theoreticians of urban space in Estonia, explains how trajectories, borders, and nodal points divide up space, with social energy thus being distributed along force lines running through it: “seeing social urban space as a network of potential trajectories, we are capable of describing the role spatial limits play in partitioning social energy. Energy is concentrated in crucial points, which often remain in the same places”, and this, irrespective of the nature of these places, which may also change over time. Thus if we replace the opera house on the central square in Tallinn with a church or palace, the place would continue to attract people in the same way, and its influence on them would remain unchanged. Apparently chaotic movements can be rendered as a set of trajectories and force lines; once studied, these may bring to light a deep sociocultural structure surviving through long periods of change. Contemporary urban space is divided into different districts based on the trajectories people take. Residents take certain trajectories each day, to go to work or leisure zones. This concept of a trajectory also plays a major role in Henri Lefèbvre’s theories of space put (1974, 1991). As for Le Corbusier (1994: 10), he metaphorically points out the existence of two types of path through urban space: “the curved road is the path taken by donkeys, the straight road the path taken by men”. This definition in fact hints at two types of city, and two ways of envisaging not only cities but also the civilization they reflect: there is a rectilinear world, and a curved world. In contemporary urban space, the debate between supporters of these two conceptions plays a considerable role in the development of cities. Straight or curved trajectories mark out and underpin a city’s essential places. 

6Bernard Lamizet (2002: 11) explains that the only way to discover a city is on foot: “walking around is the process by which, in going from place to place in the city’s space, it may be appropriated by recognizing it and giving it meaning”. We could even say that the path taken provides a way of knowing the city, of becoming familiar with its dynamic and piercing its character. Testing new paths is thus testing a city, which is perhaps in its entirety a sort of space in motion. The artist, faced with multiple urban rhythms, is tasked with a difficult mission: designing new trajectories to give a viable form–shared however slightly by the jumble of daily destinies–capable of generating links which, by weaving past and present together, conjoin and bring places into correspondence with pre-existing places, via a system based on interlacing and cross-referencing. Paul Ardenne (2002: 103) speaks of the fluctuating character of cities, evoking an urban space overrun by contextual art: “the modern city is the prototypical realm of the transitory, the Baudelarian place which, as the poet wrote, ‘changes more swiftly, alas, than a mortal’s heart”. Art must thus become transitory, it too must accompany the city’s inhabitants as they move and drift around, it must espouse the dynamic of spaces continually modifying the living city, and submit to perpetual transformation”.

1.2. The predominance of visual elements and space

7As of the 1970s urban art underwent profound shifts in several countries. Places were accorded a provisional, ephemeral meaning. The paths people took within cities changed and varied, while new trajectories, new places, and new intentions emerged. J. S. Jauhiainen (2005: 53) points out that: “cities are full of signifying places. The accumulation of creativity in these places transpires in a particular fashion, in clusters. It is one of the most striking aspects of the contemporary economy. This makes cities and urban life more attractive for those living there”. And in the contemporary world, a city’s attractiveness is an extremely important issue, with repercussions on its economy, culture, and science. With cities in competition with one another, art is often used as a tool to boost attractiveness. The city is both a laboratory and a space for staging technical and cultural innovations, as much a space for creation as for application. Its attractive power depends not only on its capacity to innovate, but also on its faculty to orchestrate its space and invest it with new cultural, social, and artistic practices. In short, there is a certain congruence between changes in urban space and technical, social, or aesthetic innovation. But cities cannot base their attractiveness solely on the spectacle of change. They also need to propose a viable long-term framework for inhabitants. A city in motion has to be capable of coordinating and giving birth to innovation, and, ultimately, of involving all its inhabitants in this process through a participatory model rooted in interactivity. This implies thinking about architectural space in both its physical and aesthetic aspects.

8Thus in a book called Penser la ville par l’art contemporain, François Delarue (2004: 6) enquires: “how can the appeal to contemporary art and call for a dialogue between urban planner and artist give meaning to urban space or confer it with multiple meanings? How can this help rediscover the landmarks, reinforce the identity of living spaces, and the sense of belonging to a territory and a society?”. The artist and architect show us the extent to which new artistic expressions may be different and varied. Discord between art, architecture, and the city is an invitation to find new ways of thinking about openness and of constructing the city. The objective is to open discussion about the new role of artists. If artists find an innovative expression resulting from a dialogue with other disciplines such as architecture, urban planning, and landscaping, this will give rise to urban space with enhanced, regenerated sensory dimensions, bearing new qualities, making it possible to better meet inhabitants’ needs for conviviality.

9But art hesitates between isolation, withdrawing into itself, and relation, dialogue. It aspires to being the great laboratory for new architectural and urban forms. Yet one may state that in western cities, contemporary public art has not been sufficiently integrated into urban space. There has not been enough dialogue between the installation, the artwork, and the working living city in motion with citizens on the go. The artwork as end in itself, as isolated topos, refuses to be integrated into this contemporary city, this set of flows. Reduced to an artefact, a fabricated object like any other industrial or cultural product, it plays a merely decorative role. Yet it could play a certain part in implementing city-dwellers’ spatiotemporal activities, and this without losing its specificity and its halo generated by isolation. The work of art may serve to link seemingly opposed spaces, both emphasizing and smoothing out contradictions in urban space. In venues where art can encounter city dwellers, on agoras, it can summon different stakeholders and communication institutions. But for that, a genuine dialogue needs to be established between artists and commissioning bodies, between architects and urban planners. This would alert public authorities to the benefits which may accrue when citizens, space, culture, and business interact. This in turn would make it possible to work towards generating an environment helping citizens to flourish, and to identify the tools needed to develop such a stance over the long term. 

1.3. Tools for enhancing urban spaces

10Humans have long endeavored to optimize the value of urban space and improve its quality, by adding new beneficial functions and increasing its attractiveness (Van Schaik, 2008). In many American and European cities, 1% of the budget for each new (re)building project is devoted to enhancing the value of the various spaces through the arts and/or design. The reasoning behind this is that art ought to be accessible to all inhabitants, irrespective of their milieu and way of life. Many cities in the Creative Metropoles program used the “% for art” scheme to make districts and centers more lively (Amsterdam, Birmingham, Helsinki, Oslo, and Stockholm). Certain even applied the rule to all building works undertaken by the municipality. In Stockholm, emphasis was placed on institutions, such as schools and retirement homes. In other cities, such as Helsinki, the “% for art” was allocated to a specific form of district development. Applying this measure is now discussed in East European countries, including Estonia. But these actions to encourage artworks in the city are connected to the issue of public commissions. Can these drive life in society? Public commissions additionally oblige artists to consider various questions relating to history and culture, and to include within their project a context of which they perhaps have no direct experience. Aesthetics here meets politics in the Greek sense of “polis”, with the commissioned work concerning several institutions: urban administration, the state, academia, and the media. Various issues are overlaid, to such an extent that, to remain “master of the situation”, the artist needs to acutely analyze an original situation in which he is both selected creator and potential hostage.

2. The role of the artist and the construction of meaning in urban space undergoing change

11Art today will be unable to assume its place in urban experience without first inventing a new function. What function is that? Visualizing, symbolizing, and drawing together are integral to the process of inhabiting, in the existential meaning of the term. Artists may go looking for the signs crisscrossing urban space, but they also need to choose from among very varied media, and address more specifically one or other of our senses. One of the guiding lines of my own practice is the idea that it is the artist’s role to orchestrate multidimensional space and to establish dialogue with citizens. To this end, I draw on two principles: multi-sensoriality, and interactivity. I consider that the artist is not there to create virtual worlds, but to awaken the imaginary and meaning. The artist intervenes as a re-creator of space.

2.1. The role of artists: creating a space for experimentation and interaction

12Experiencing the relation between space, the artist, and urban art cannot be reduced to technical knowledge, to a set of information. This relation requires deeper analysis, analysis enabling us to rethink the idea of space. This laboratory may give rise to new languages and new sensorial and structural forms. Space would thus be apprehended as a relational field where a set of complex mechanisms come into play. For the artist, it is essential to know the city’s material, its deep structure, for it is on this basis that he can move around and identify places in need of his action. Working simultaneously with space and time in strategic places is one of the challenges the artist must confront. The omnipresence in cities of traces of the lives of individuals and of groups is a reminder that they are a place of ceaseless activity, in tune to the rhythm of human acts. Thus to better understand a city’s character, one must examine its urban rhythms. At the same time, over the past 150 years, machines such as cars and trains have introduced new trajectories, new ways of moving about and apprehending space. Thus real (or virtual) pathways play a considerable role in our perception of urban space. They partly determine relations between individuals and the space through which they move. It is also these pathways which, by crossing, re-crossing, or moving apart bring to the fore the places of interest for the artist. The artist has to re-examine urban space thus redefined, and apprehend the city as a set of trajectories, of pathways, perhaps constituting the least visible but organic structure of what we call a city. It is henceforth by listening to this city which is one with its inhabitants, their pathways and their daily activities, that the artist may make his or her most valuable contribution: recreating spaces, creating works mirroring the invisible dynamic of citizens-on-the-go which animates the present-day city.

13To become a city once again, in the Greek meaning of the term, the city has to rediscover the paths of dialogue. Is that the role of artists, opening dialogue? And in what space is a contemporary artist to act? Public space is an open zone accessible to all, without distinction. Accessibility and social interaction hence become important objects of analysis for the artist. Could the artist not give greater sensorial depth to a new orchestration of this shared urban space? Maybe it is the artist’s role to act as the orchestrator of multidimensional space, not in the fashion of the set designer, but as constructor of meaning, as interpreter of urban life in its most immediate and concrete aspects. Leaving behind sterile theatricality, the artist can then propose, via his or her creations and installations, to activate key spaces where passing spectators can become actor-citizens (photo 1). In adopting a transversal approach combining considerations relating to techniques, aesthetics, and sociology, artists may no doubt play a key role in processes to regenerate spaces, in particular abandoned or undervalued spaces, or even, in certain cases, act as a catalyst for forces of change welling up within a community. 

14It goes without saying that art programs may challenge decision-makers by initiating controversial projects obliging project managers to debate and take up stances with repercussions on social life. Each case is unique, each urban regeneration presents a specific character depending on the places where it is carried out, on the context, on the conditions, and on the assessment of existing resources, and hence is always fully experimental. These projects exhort society to introspection, and may even give a voice to people and communities who were hitherto un-consulted.

2.2. The dangerous dilemma of post-Soviet countries: whether or not to integrate past legacies into modern practice

15Certain European cities have a long experience of applying artistic practices to urban space (Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Birmingham, Helsinki, Oslo, and Stockholm), but others, such as those in post-Soviet countries, are only making their first steps in this field (Riga, Tallinn, and Vilnius). The international journal Architectural Design (2006, no. 3) produced an issue focusing on New Europe. In an article called “Place(s) without a Sense of Place?”, Valentina Croci called for analysis of how culture relates to architecture in the ten countries which had recently joined the EU. The post-Soviet countries formed a separate group within the EU, sharing an imposed cultural backdrop, an experience and memory marked by similar ordeals, a segment of time lasting fifty or so years experienced as a break in their history, culture, and economy. These countries found themselves facing a dangerous dilemma: what should they conserve of this past still written in memories, of fifty years of a Soviet way of life? Should they raze it, or recycle it as material for new interpretations. Could this legacy be used as a springboard for projects which would soothe how citizens relate to a past embodied in their cities as various urban hiatuses? 

16These questions bring out even more clearly the central role that artists may play in this unprecedented context, that of bridging the divide between past and present, of finding an equilibrium and points of connection between, on the one hand, the weight of a heritage, the apparently static structures bequeathed by a now finished interlude, and, on the other, the dynamism, openness, and thirst for reconfiguration specific to contemporary cities. Croci makes the following observation on this topic: “a major problem of such reconstructions is the risk of historicizing architectural artefacts, with the inherent danger that monuments might acquire new metonymic propagandistic values”. One of the most famous examples of this problem in Tallinn is noted by Croci: the debate which has long raged in Estonian society about the sculpture in the city center known as “the bronze soldier”. Should it be demolished, or conserved while adapting it to the period? (photo 2)

17To my mind, it is unwise to raze the past and uncritically accept Western economic and architectural models. Does not the solution instead lie in the historical memory of each member country? Is not each urban space irreducible, bearing its own values and artistic and architectural marks? It would be judicious to perceive urban space as a place where historic events accumulate. Each change, each alteration within the historic perimeter of the city tells us about the political or cultural changes society has been through, marking the periods in their own way. The contrasts themselves are eloquent, and acquire value as symbols. The visual artist, in his or her practice, may thus also have to accommodate a legacy, the specific marks and signs of these periods. Should s/he ignore the signs? Can s/he ignore them? How may s/he redeploy the “single-meaning” signs of the period and integrate them within the multiple meanings of the contemporary period? Artists in any case have to make choices which, even if “neutral”, cannot ignore the specific political issues involved in any artistic intervention in urban space.

18Those in charge of urban space in Estonia should perhaps draw on these principles to guide future choices. Clearly, given new needs, there is a tendency to erase old structures while leaving the dimensions of urban space unchanged. Thus in many historic urban spaces, one may observe a mixture of old and new. In this case, it is often the old structures which we like the most, perhaps because of the intimate relations they have with populations and the life around them. As a receptacle for various projections, they are ultimately experienced as closer to human nature. They are signs of the past which the artist may take up as the material and landmarks for future creations. The artist may opt for coherence or contrast between the two directions which, though seemingly opposed, can both pave the way to dialogue between past, present, and future. The relation to time has always been an interesting challenge for the artist, particularly when s/he has to interpret the past by bringing it up to date. S/he may then take urban space as it is, and create events which, via his or her “alterations”, give rise to new situations. S/he may even take hold of functional spaces and divert them to new functions, drawing for that on the different effects specific to new media and thus even generating virtual communities. The slight gap between two moments creates room for doubt, endowing the present with paradoxical duration. It is this time that the architect or artist seeks to make perceptible by creating an accumulation of parallel lives. We may thus see that time can help give greater substance to the present. Unfortunately, we must resign ourselves to acting in the temporal dimensions which are ours. Our perception is limited. For instance, we cannot watch the development of a tree as we may the building of a skyscraper. However, each space may also undergo episodic changes, relating to the passing seasons or the level of light, which induce different emotions that the artist may bring forth and help sustain. The city thus becomes the support structure for an artform feeding a tension between inner space and outer space, shadow and light, the routine and the particular, open and closed spaces. Cities are caught up in an ethics of existence and an aesthetics of perception.

19Most cities have invested in regenerating their centres, the symbolic place where their everyday identity is staged, together with their potential for leisure and creation. But ever more cities are drawing up strategies for the rebirth of other urban spaces. Renovating old industrial buildings and developing cultural districts provide opportunities to revisit the past and mobilize the creativity of artists and inhabitants. The examples of the district of Arabianranta in Helsinki and of the Kultuurikatel in Tallinn provide a way to observe on the ground the role that artists play in building new perceptions and new practices in urban spaces undergoing change.

3. Creative territories and regenerating waterfront spaces, the Arabianranta in Helsinki and the Kultuurikatel in Tallinn

“Water in a city is like a respiration, the first resulting from its inhabitants” Thierry Paquot, 2009, p. 149.

20Water has often been used functionally, neglecting the artistic and emotional qualities it bears through its very nature. Spaces devoted to water, particularly in northern Europe, have not been designed in all their dimensions, nor has water’s specific social and aesthetic potential been exploited. Over recent decades, port areas have been used as a site for experimenting with new urban visions. Numerous archives of architectural projects and counterprojects can tell us about attempts to connect cities and ports. Several cities involved in the Creative Metropoles program (Barcelona, Helsinki, and Oslo) have spent sizeable sums of money on integrating their waterfront to the city center. Via new civic buildings, public spaces, and various urban functions, cities seem to wish to assume a direct physical relationship with water and the shore. Creating connections thus entails drawing pedestrians and cyclists to the seafront, instead of relying solely on cars. It is perhaps Helsinki which best exemplifies this type of connection: the Esplanade leads, as if by magic, from the heart of the city to the seafront. In Oslo, the recently redeveloped Aker Brygge Harborfront brings new urban developments into line with citizens’ community vision. Via the examples of the Arabianranta district in Helsinki and the “cultural cauldron” in Tallinn, I wish to examine the place of art and artists in regenerating industrial spaces, above and beyond the siting of creative and cultural activities and the expected economic outcomes.

3.1. The “cultural cauldron”, or reconquering Tallinn’s seafront

22The objective of the urban planners and developers seeking to renovate old industrial buildings in Tallin in fact corresponds to requirements expressed by artists and cultural structures looking for spaces. Thus the surface of the former powerplant is well-suited to cultural use for the large buildings are easy to subdivide. The Kulturrikatel includes a certain number of self-managed co-working spaces with moderate rents. These co-working spaces enable cultural entrepreneurs to create start-ups and benefit from administrative and legal assistance together with training in setting up and developing a business. Nevertheless, the main benefit cultural entrepreneurs draw from this shared space stems from physical proximity with other cultural entrepreneurs, generating the potential for synergies, drawing on everyday personal interactions between those engaged in creative processes. This gives concrete form to synergy, making it possible to explore new avenues and develop new cultural products and services. 

23In the case of the Kultuurikatel, informal networks between artists and cultural stakeholders prefigured the material approach to urban regeneration through culture. These self-managed artists’ centers function both as “creation factories” and as clusters of artistic activities. Extrapolating from the “cultural cauldron” operation, the idea arose of a creative cultural district and, more generally, creative milieu. Warehouses, factories, and shipyards along the seafront, now open to the population, are home to creative businesses, according space to music, theatre, opera, restaurants, as well as offices and apartments. This “cultural kilometer” serves the creative economy, but the re-creation of urban space in collaboration with artists and residents also offers citizens a new atmosphere. In addition to enhancing the historic heritage and obtaining UNESCO World Heritage listing for the city center in 1997, the city authorities have paid attention to creativity and the cultural industries since 2005, with the ambition of turning Tallinn into a creative city. Programs seeking to use culture and cultural events to drive urban regeneration (such as the European capital of culture, festivals of light, etc.) seek to promote the diversity of cultural life, to lastingly change inhabitants’ quality of life, and promote a dynamic image of post-Soviet Estonia. On the other shore of the Gulf of Finland, opposite Tallinn, the city of Helsinki has interacted with artists in the new district of Arabianranta.

3.2. The district of Arabianranta in Helsinki: a frontier for art and design

25Another specificity of the district is that it is adapted to working in the creative industries, since many apartments include a workshop or office. Arabianranta’s economic vocation is based on the Helsinki University of Art and Design (TaiK), which moved into the former Arabia ceramics factory in 1988 (photo 4). A culture, arts, and science campus has gradually been built up in this district via the spatial aggregation of other training institutes, particularly in music (the Helsinki Pop and Jazz Conservatory), stage arts, and the applied sciences. Nearly 6,000 students and 1,500 professionals now act as a talent pool for the creative industries. Arabianranta is the symbol of how to regenerate an industrial district through culture (Landry, 1998), based on rehabilitating the Arabia manufactory buildings. A museum, library, book shops, cafés, offices and homeware retail premises lie alongside the building which now houses part of TaiK, whose multicolored external cladding is in fact a work of art.

27Even though the many works by Finnish, Scandinavian, and international artists have helped make this urban area more attractive (photo 5), the implementation of the artistic project was not driven solely by purely economic motives. Above all, the works echo with the district’s artistic vocation. Equally, they show the progressive emergence of a public space, of a living space capable of drawing together the different populations living there side-by-side, day in day out: businessmen, artists, IT engineers, and designers. Finally, they make it possible to strengthen Arabianranta’s identity as part of broader plans for a polycentric, interconnected city.

Conclusion

28The city needs creativity, just as creativity needs the city. Not the definitively established and saturated city, but rather the city of niches and openings, the city of dialogue between cultures, and of enthusiasm arising from change. In 1961, Jane Jacobs, as a sociologist and observer of urban phenomena, argued in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities that diversity and the exchange of ideas played a key role in creating powerful, dynamic urban life. For her, cities have their own personality, with districts developing due to the spontaneous gathering of individuals united by a common purpose. Spontaneity and sharing within a public space are here essential concepts. Any physical modification to the urban space produces social effects, be it simply by modifying the context in which people live. Artistic and cultural dimensions may play a crucial role in the sustainable development of districts, by increasing inhabitants’ self-confidence and strengthening their feeling of belonging to the city.

29That is why particular attention needs to be paid to integrating “cultural catalysts”, which may be physical, economic, or social, but generally have a broader impact. Thus, to my mind, we need to explore the possibilities cultural activity offers for discovering talents, building up dialogue between cultures, and changing mentalities in society. For it would be a mistake to reduce cultural activities to instruments serving attractiveness and theatricality. Space is a raw material which is both concrete and abstract, malleable and fragile, and of great human value. All changes may both improve space and expose it to processes of saturation, loss, and lethargic sedimentation. Insisting on the role of artists as the intermediary for creativity and sociability in space leads me to summarize the possible solutions in the following terms: encourage the implementation of a transversal approach to cultural, economic, and institutional policies, in order to place creativity at their heart. It is thus a matter of making city stakeholders aware of a proactive approach to creativity, so as to promote a territorial policy open to the challenges that the territories of the future will face.