Methods

Provocation

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Action or speech that makes someone angry, especially deliberately.
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To use provocation as a method to subvert one’s expectations means: to deliberately act out to make somebody angry.

The project examples are often intervention art: art works that interact with an existing structure or situation. Provocative works make us aware of a space or situation and, after making us angry, make us question and look at the situation differently. An example of a provocative project is the Wheat Field project of Agnes Denes, where she took a land fill in lower Manhattan - a very expensive piece of land meant for luxury building blocks - and cultivated it fully with wheat. In this way calling attention to the misplaced priorities at that time.

Provocative projects touch upon the boundaries of society, it pushes these boundaries to evoke a reaction. John Körmeling’s work shows us the possibilities of architecture if it would be liberated from tradition and its social responsibilities, it is not strange to see that most of his work makes use of this method. For example the ‘Kunstfabriek’, a ‘art-factory’ made with seven laser beams, a building that you can switch on and off. To realise this, floors, roof and walls of the existing academy had been drilled through.

Another good example is the intervention artwork in Utrecht ‘Sic Transit Gloria Mundi’. Verhoeven occupied a public square for what people believed was to be the building site of a giant sculpture. After two weeks of occupying the square people found out that the art piece was the occupation itself. It annoyed people that space was taken from them, made them question what public space is, and how we use it. To use provocation architecturally, you have to look closely at the location and situation you are reacting to. Often these projects are temporary performances or conceptual artworks. They are there to make people aware and annoy them, but leave after a period of time.