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The Commons
Public art project: custom campaign for billboards and mobile advertising platforms, 2020-
Societies are created in public spaces. Green areas, public squares, parks and walkways create an organic network through cities; they form a topography of social and political participation and the backdrop for public interaction. The Commons is a poetic and provocative campaign encouraging reflection on the nature of shared spaces, site-specific and evolving over time.
Advertising also comprises an influential infrastructure in public space. Not only along streets and squares but also in the digital realm, billboards, posters, pop-up windows, and screens function to disseminate marketing campaigns to often unwilling audiences. Mobile devices advance the intertwining of analogue and digital spaces, such that we increasingly exist simultaneously in the inextricable intersection of both.
As part of broader discourses around digitalisation and the attention economy, or social cohesion and exchange beyond filter bubbles, The Commons questions the commercial use of shared, public space. Do the public spaces we inhabit reflect our priorities, realities, and values -- and how could public space be transformed for social good?
Originally commissioned by the Culture Department of the City of Munich, The Commons comprised a custom campaign for billboards and outdoor advertising spaces in downtown Munich in summer 2020 and on Instagram (@TheCommonsMUC). The project has since expanded into a series and was shown again in Munich in winter 2020/21 and in Los Angeles in early 2022.
Catalogue - Munich
Interview - Los Angeles
![The Commons, public art commission on commercial billboards, downtown Munich, 2020](./../images/the-commons/thecommons15.jpg)
![The Commons, public art commission on commercial billboards, downtown Munich, 2020](./../images/the-commons/thecommons8.jpg)
![The Commons, public art commission on commercial billboards, downtown Munich, 2020](./../images/the-commons/thecommons3.jpg)
![The Commons, public art commission on commercial billboards, downtown Munich, 2020](./../images/the-commons/thecommons5.jpg)
![The Commons, public art commission on commercial billboards, downtown Munich, 2020](./../images/the-commons/thecommons10.jpg)
![The Commons, public art commission on commercial billboards, downtown Munich, 2020](./../images/the-commons/thecommons14.jpg)
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![The Commons, public art commission on commercial billboards, downtown Munich, 2020](./../images/the-commons/thecommons12.jpg)
![The Commons, public art commission on commercial billboards, downtown Munich, 2020](./../images/the-commons/thecommons7.jpg)
![The Commons, public art intervention on mobile billboards, Los Angeles, 2022](./../images/the-commons/thecommons_LA1.jpg)
![The Commons, public art intervention on mobile billboards, Los Angeles, 2022](./../images/the-commons/thecommons_LA2.jpg)
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![The Commons, public art intervention on mobile billboards, Los Angeles, 2022](./../images/the-commons/thecommons_LA5.jpg)
![The Commons, public art intervention on mobile billboards, Los Angeles, 2022](./../images/the-commons/thecommons_LA6.jpg)
![The Commons, public art intervention on mobile billboards, Los Angeles, 2022](./../images/the-commons/thecommons_LA7.jpg)
![Imagine if posts planted trees, online ad, 2020](./../images/the-commons/TheCommons_insta.jpeg)
![All public space is offline, online ad, 2020](./../images/the-commons/TheCommons_insta_2.jpg)
![Suppose the future was more than just new ways to shop, online ad, 2020](./../images/the-commons/TheCommons_insta_4.jpg)
![Flowers > Followers, online ad, 2020](./../images/the-commons/TheCommons_insta_7.jpg)
![Flowers > Followers, online ad, 2020](./../images/the-commons/TheCommons_insta_5.jpg)
![The Commons posters, public art, Munich, 2021](./../images/the-commons/TheCommonsMUC2_1.jpg)
![The Commons posters, public art, Munich, 2021](./../images/the-commons/TheCommonsMUC2_2.jpg)
![The Commons posters, public art, Munich, 2021](./../images/the-commons/TheCommonsMUC2_5.jpg)
![The Commons posters, public art, Munich, 2021](./../images/the-commons/TheCommonsMUC2_3.jpg)
![The Commons posters, public art, Munich, 2021](./../images/the-commons/TheCommonsMUC2_4.jpg)
![Funded by the City of Munich, logo](./../images/the-commons/project_funded.png)
- Acknowledgements
- Originally commissioned by the Cultural Department of Munich as part of the public art series Oeffentlichkeiten. link
- Design in collaboration with ATAC. link
- Production in Munich: Annalena Roters.
- Photography in Munich: Maximilian Geuter. link
- Los Angeles edition carried out during a residency with Otra Vox. link
- Photography and production in Los Angeles: Brian Kim
- Press
- Urban Poetics - Consider this a love letter to public space, Ruth Catlow, The Urban Activist, 28.09.2020, Link
- Parks Statt Parkplaetze, Cora Wucherer, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 20.07.2020 Link
- Kuenstlerin Gretta Louw plakatiert ihre Gedanken ueber den oeffentlichen Raum, Roberta De Righi, Abendzeitung, 16.07.2020 Link
- Resident Spotlight: Gretta Louw, Otra Vox, 2022 Link