Vinja Rogoi

Private/Public?: Personalising the City by Shadow Casters

Starting from the metaphor of the city as a vessel which shapes the liquid of our everyday life, performing collective Shadow Casters (Zagreb, Croatia) regrets contemporary distancing of urban population from the public space, which various parts are increasingly neglected, labelled as dangerous, turned into a non-place (Augé), or controlled and restricted in use. However, rather than rehabilitating public space as public, they tend to reframe it as private — the space of one’s stories, memories, experience — while striving towards present positive image of home or private commercial property. Thus, the hypertextual structure of their projects (2000-2009) is expressed through spatial urban networks forming various layers of narrative tissue and demanding engaged movement and sensorial shift from the recipient. Reading the hypertext suggests reexperiencing public space as the space of personal safety where our fragility can be openly exposed, the space of personal freedom where we determine the limits of (in)appropriate behaviour, the space of personal creativity where our momentary decision or need dictates its use. Invited to visit Shadow Casters’ private stories, we are offered the liberation and protection of their mobile transparent walls. However, as that newly produced private image occasionally cracks, leaking the more restricted, threatening or simply different atmosphere of the public space, the interplay of two images and the doubled experience of the public becomes the most valuable gain for the audience.