The Bad Sheets

The following work represents a recent unauthorized public art project by Gil Doron and the group Transgressive Architecture, consisting of several interventions into urban public space in London, and associated photographic and textual documentation. This project is recorded here in three forms: a critique of the UK Government's influential Urban Task Force report , Towards an Urban Renaissance (1999); a compendium of terms which both suggests the intentions of the project and develops its imagery; and a series of photographs of the 'bad sheets', taken from the film that recorded the individual interventions. This work relates closely to Doron's ongoing research, for example, 'The Dead Zone and the Architecture of Transgression' ( City , 4: 2, July 2000), an exploration of urban 'dead zones' which criticized the organizations, authorities and processes through which spaces become seen as 'void' or 'dead', despite their frequent use by communities outside of the city authorities' 'vision' of urban public space and its 'legitimate' usage. Here the multi-layered metaphor of a sheet, reminiscent of a shroud or tombstone, and placed as 'monuments to street communities who were cleansed from the public space', is used to question the conception of urban public space posited by the Task Force. The project was widely published in the general London and international press,2 bringing increased public attention to an influential report which warrants closer scrutiny than it has otherwise received. Here for the first time, is the full account.