This spring, Nir Aish and Jenny Flaumenhaft, two of our Black Paint Fellows, led Curriculum Lab in exploring the intersection between public and private space, a topic that we drift in and out all the time – What is public space? What is private space? How are these spaces constructed, socially, physically, culturally? Jenny and Nir aimed to focus our play on the in-between what exists as both public and private and why. Participants were asked to come to the lab prepared with an image that they think exists as the between: both public and private. In Lab, particpants discussed these images and made digital collages on Jamboard.
Jenny’s Reflection:
In a space of wandering, the Curriculum Lab collects questions, words, thoughts, rambles. When it became Nir and my turn to choose the direction of this collective think garden, the themes felt infinite. I had all sorts of desires. I wanted to make maps, to pour out feelings, to collage experiences. I wanted to explore the concrete: our loved experience, the unsaid: what we construct, social rules, and abstract: how spaces construct us. Everything felt big and scattered. I was strolling through a museum in Paris, thinking about the line Apollinaire wrote about Picasso. Apollinaire wrote that many people felt Picasso’s work bears witness to the disenchantment, but the reality was not that at all, instead everything enchants him. It was an earnest curiosity. This sort of enchantment, turning an idea, a picture, a concept on its head, flipping it over, and exploring it at every angle inspired the topic of last week's curriculum lab. We chose to scope out private and public space and live in the jumble. We wanted to play, justify, rationalize how spaces occupy the intersection between what is private and public.
pri·va·cy
/ˈprīvəsē/
noun
- the state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people.
pub·lic
/ˈpəblik/
adjective
- 1.
of or concerning the people as a whole.
noun
- ordinary people in general; the community.
"the library is open to the public"
Privacy perceived as intimate, close, ours, guarded, and publicity thought to be shared, collective, open so often exist at the same time. In this Curriculum Lab we collaged pictures of these intersections. Through showers, books, bathrooms, mirrors, gardens, weddings, subway cars, schools, COVID, Capitalism, ZOOM, tatoos, we isolated the collapse of the public and private. My group went through the slides highlighting ways we are invisible and visible and how we have private moments in public spaces. We spoke of how public spaces become empty and are suddenly private, and how we have our own unique experiences that make books, theater, schools feel like ours but are inherently for the public. Our reactions to whether our space was public or private were often personal, based on our experiences.
As usual with Curriculum Lab, I was left with questions: Is this space finite? How are special goals archived? Who is the audience? Who has the right to ownership? How are we meant to interact with space? How do we defy that? Who makes the rules? Who breaks the rules? How is space built around an audience and how does an audience build a space? Where do we push the boundaries of privacy? How does that feel?
Leading this session was invigorating, humbling, and left me wanting to do more with this subject as there is so much left to explore. Thank you to everyone who collaborated their ideas, pictures, post-its, and stories.
Nir’s Reflection
When joining Black Paint curriculum lab, I thought I was joining a group of bright and thoughtful people, who will collaboratively work on designing lesson plans and units. Little did I know that I would be joining a space where I get to make sense of the world around me, where wandering is the objective, and most importantly where the trivial becomes nontrivial. This last part is extremely meaningful and I am very grateful for such moments. One specific reflection that I had during a session and that I still think about, is the experience of riding the subway in NYC. For me, it is a powerful experience as much as it is mundane. I get on, and I am in my own private zone, headphones in, staring at thin air. It pretty much feels like everyone else is in their own zone as well. However, we are definitely sharing, at least for those couple of minutes, a public space. It is at those fascinating moments, where a person or people engage in an action that addresses us - all riders, as a group (e.g. a performance) which I feel the intensity of the in-betweenness of private and public space.
When Jenny and I came together and she offered that we explore this topic, I was thrilled! Our discussions leading up to the lab session were interesting. We brought it down to an understanding that we are looking to grapple with the rationale behind the process in which people make sense of a place as either private, public, or in-between. My group’s discussion, as always at lab sessions, was incredibly insightful. I felt that the private, public, and in-between categories enabled us to be both abstract in where we apply these categories but also concrete in our thinking and articulation. When discussing marriage, for example, one group member concisely and simply put it that marriage was a publicly recognized private space. I truly wish we had more time. I was left with a desire to expand this conversation to realms of digital life, in all its forms. I am very grateful for having this opportunity to lead a session with Jenny and for everyone who participated. I will continue to explore this topic in other spaces in my life!
