Sigrid Merx

Performing public space: the intimacy of baking and eating apple pie in public

Public space doesn’t exist as such. It is not a pre-given or fixed space. Public space is an ongoing performance and it can and has to be constituted over and over again in that performance. Considering public space as a performance we can see how actors involved have both the possibility and responsibility to (re)shape public space. In my paper I will investigate this performative dimension of public space, using Public Pie, an initiative of two young Dutch designers, as my case.

Public Pie is a small mobile restaurant that bakes and serves traditional Dutch apple pie in public. With Public Pie the designers wanted to create an intimate public space facilitating personal encounters. The project clearly feeds of nostalgia, offering food as comfort, referencing a utopian (national) past when people knew each other and pies were not bought in supermarkets but home made; a time of social cohesion. As such it can be understood as a somewhat idealistic response to a notion of urban public space as impersonal, anonymous, unfamiliar. Using Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory as a method I want to show how different types of ‘actors’ such as food, baker, visitor, architecture and location work together in this specific instance of performance to create an intimate public space where people meet instead of being mere passengers. I will pay extra attention to those moments Public Pie, according to the artists, ‘failed’ in creating intimacy, emphasizing public space’s performative and therefore instable nature.