Challenging the Commons

On June 21, a group of people gathered in a plaza outside a building in downtown San Francisco. Forming a circle, they began to gesticulate with their arms and make chattering noises with their mouths. Security guards approached and asked them to leave. The group refused: this is a public space, they said, and we can do what we want here.

Shortly after calling the police, the security guards returned and admitted that yes, this was a public space, and yes, this group had the right to make these strange noises there. “It was one of our greatest victories,” says Eric Oberthaler, cofounder of San Francisco-based performance and activist group Snap Out Of It (SOOI) and a participant in the COMMON-space project. 

Created by artist and activist group Rebar and supported with a grant from gallery Southern Exposure, the COMMONspace project focused on places such as this one: privately owned public open spaces, or POPOS for short. San Francisco’s 1985 Master Plan mandates the construction of POPOS in any new downtown commercial building, a measure put into place in response to increasing urban density and decreasing amounts of open, urban green space. These areas—ranging from corporate atria to rooftop gardens to plazas—are, in theory, the same as a park.

At first, the idea seems like a win-win: Developers can build projects, and citizens get a place to hang out. But San Francisco’s POPOS do not always conform to citizens’ ideals about what public space should offer. Surveillance cameras, security guards, and businesspeople in suits don’t exactly cry out “open to everyone.”

In New York, the situation is similar. More than 500 POPOS have been built in that city since the 1950s. In 2000, Harvard University professor Jerold Kayden published a comprehensive study of New York’s POPOS, called Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience. He concluded that the city’s POPOS were underutilized and unregulated, and that many New Yorkers didn’t even know they existed.

Inspired by Kayden’s investigation, three members of Rebar—John Bela, Blaine Merker, and Matt Passmore—examined their own city and recognized that San Francisco had similar problems: Although POPOS were being constructed as mandated, barely anyone used them and the city was not analyzing their usefulness. So Rebar took on the task. Through investigation, analysis, and action, the COMMONspace project asked of these privately owned public open spaces: “How public?”

In the first phase of COMMONspace, Rebar gathered information about the physical and social characteristics of San Francisco’s 14 POPOS.

Each space was evaluated according to its location, “local dress and behavior,” and “surveillance and gatekeepers.” With that data, they created an interactive map that can be accessed and commented on by the general public. “If security does not seem to recognize you or if you are not in business attire, be prepared to be confronted with the security guard every time you decide to visit this public area,” says the listing for 150 California Street. “Be prepared to only read or converse quietly if using the indoor areas,” says the entry for 55 Second Street.

The group’s next step was action. “We partnered up with SOOI and said, ‘Let’s just get in there and energize these spaces,’ which appeared to us to be underused by the public and constrained by the psychogeography of downtown,” says Blaine Merker—in other words, the very fact that these spaces are located in the business district gives the public the idea that access and certain behaviors are prohibited.

The new partnership initiated what SOOI calls “paraformances:” performances in which the public becomes positively involved, rather than feeling isolated from the performers. Oberthaler and his SOOI cofounder, Alex Zendzian, brought to the table one of the core tenets of SOOI: the “benevolent conspiracy,” a term that refers to giving people the sneaking suspicion that there are forces in the world committed to bringing them happiness and well-being.

The groups entered each POPOS, some more than once, and conducted paraformances. One such event, called the Nappening, invited the public to take a nap in a POPOS that resembled a dance studio with its shining wood floors and tall windows. Why do such a thing? “Our goal is to draw public awareness to these spaces and to give people the experience of existing in a city environment that is radically different from what you would normally do on your daily business,” says Oberthaler. “It’s creating a new realm of possibilities. Napping is something everyone does normally. But doing it in a public space that was a beautiful indoor environment was the radical thing about that.”

COMMONspace participants arranged the Nappening ahead of time with security, so there was no conflict. But not every experience was harmonious. In some buildings, the public designation seemed to take security officers completely by surprise. “There’s a tremendous variety to these spaces,” says Passmore. “We’ve found a lot of differences in enforcement and house rules. That’s what’s different between these and a truly public space, in which you would expect that there’s a consistency to public law and you can count on those rules to be enforced.”

One constant was surveillance: Cameras monitored every POPOS. Sometimes signage announced the surveillance but not always, which raises some questions very relevant to our post-9/11 world: “Are we willing to accept infringements on our liberties in exchange for the safety and security that we feel in places that are more exclusive than a public park?” asks Bela.

The goal of COMMONspace was not to change things from a policy standpoint (Rebar had help from a friend in the planning department, but not much other contact with the City). Rather, this was an urban exploration through the lens of art. “We look at the urban environment as our studio, and this code that governs urban spaces as our primary medium,” says Bela. “We don’t work in a gallery. We’re interested in engaging the processes that make up the urban places where we live.”

COMMONspace has officially come to an end, marked by the trio’s presentation of their findings at the “Mapping the City: Artists Engage With the Urban Environment” symposium on June 30, but in the future they plan to create a field guide that will contain information and tactics that can be used by activists and artists in other cities. Bela believes that citizens have the responsibility to make these spaces truly public.

“It’s up to us to exert our rights to be in those spaces and to use them in a way that is appropriately public. If we don’t use and explore them, we’re just faced with the continuing enclosure of the public commons.”