Evident Use

EVIDENT USE is an evolving map. Users contest and reconfigure the map in order to define public space and ownership. This map can be placed anywhere.

The visitor studies the map, and explores its territory. Visitors draw and describe their renditions of public spaces into the map to revise it. Every iteration of the map is saved, and the continuous layering of information illustrates the amalgamated fabrication of social space.

Four foot high physical icons are placed by visitors around the territory marking re-classified public space, and passersby can in response to the icons, complete the map circuit through voicemails and visits to the gallery.

EVIDENT USE asks what public space is, how it is used, and by whom. How do we experience the ownership of space? How do visitors participate in the construction of space? And how are they in turn constructed by it? EVIDENT USE functions as an analytical and a productive tool, identifying cause and effect of spatial divides in society by positing social blueprints, and calling for their revision. The movement in, speculation of, and engagement with the map-territory becomes an vision of public space. EVIDENT USE has reconfigured 3 sites in 2004: North Adams, Munich, and San Francisco.