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Side-Eyes by Marc Nair
Artist Statement
Offence: The Public & The Private
In this project, offence is articulated in the overlap between private and public spaces. Public space is often under defined or undefined, leading to all kinds of impositions upon it by private property. This includes unwanted objects, household objects, the creative use of public space, and even reconfiguring how space is seen.
Private property encroaches, engages and extends individual space within the confines of a city state where notions of the common corridor are often the cause of arguments and even altercations. Some of this is undoubtedly due to living in a dense environment, but often, a lack of communication also leads to cross-purposes in outcome.
The Housing and Development Act (Chapter 129, Section s27(1) covers, among other areas, “the foundations, columns, beams, supports, walls, roofs, lobbies, corridors, stairs, stairways, fire escapes, entrances and exits of the buildings” which are not part of the flats. And under the Environmental Public Health (Public Cleansing) Regulations,Article 8(4), under cleanliness of public areas, states that “the occupier of any flat shall keep that portion of the common corridor or passageway along the frontage of his flat clean and free of any refuse, rubbish, litter, garbage or stains”.
The boundaries of the law are designed to delineate and reduce the risk of offence, but real life isn’t so simple. Each of these images offer points of tension or fractures, loose threads, so to speak, that pick at the immaculately presented fabric of the city state.
