Stealth agents

Abstract

Traditionally, the nature of public space has had either the endorsement of commercial enterprises, or the advocacy of state or religious institutions. In both cases, the apparent power of public appropriation is underlaid by a surrendering of basic civil rights and the stripping of privacy. This thesis seeks to generate a true interface for body and city: public space in [on] the city and its infrastructure of policing where they become a single entity -from publicized private behaviors to privatized public affairs-finding in its ambivalence the opportunity for the emergence of a true public life, hesitant to pledge allegiances to its different publics, and capable of acquiring agency for all of them. Public space that enables uncontrollable events while deploying a new type of surveillance. The operative site of this thesis is the Boston Government Center Plaza, regarded by many as failed public space. The response to its barren convexity is the re-centralization of basic services dispersed throughout the city: a gathering place for mobile units that offer free health, cultural, and communications services. This new public node responds to a much questioned Boston City Hall with unsubtle opposition to achieve a landscape of simultaneous anarchy and safety, and most importantly, the choice of resistance.