Marjetica Potrc: Kagiso: Skeleton House ; source photo; installation , Guggenheim Museum New York,2001; photo by Ellen Labenski; courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York

Marjetica Potrc: East Wahdat: Upgrading Program (source photo); Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, 1999, photo Matija Pavlovec

Aisling O'Beirn : Marjetica, I'd like to recount a story that captivated your interest on first hearing it.

Benny's Bar in Belfast was knocked down due to structural instability and is currently located in a portacabin on the same site. The site is due for redevelopment. They have the bar in the portacabin so as to maintain the alcohol license for the next premises. It is still as popular as ever.

You used this story to start a body of research. Can you tell me a bit about how a vernacular story can inform work?

Marjetica Potrc : Benny's Bar is great - not only do they have good beer but it's popular. Most journalists go there. I thought containers were put to good use here. In Belfast, I was struck by how many containers I saw. They are used for schools, kindergartens, a betting office, and so on. Everyone is happy with them. Everyone knows that it is easy to get a permit to install one too, since containers are considered temporary. You could say that temporary architecture is a most common feature in cities today. I see Belfast container culture as extremely contemporary.

Belfast containers are also an example of how you can circumvent the regulations in an over-regulated society. In southern Italy I encountered a landscape of permanently unfinished houses. What you see is an armature, which is sprouting from the ceiling as if waiting for another floor. This is never built because by living in an unfinished house you avoid paying taxes. Hong Kong façades are a good example too. People build on the front of their apartments. In Turkey city regulators came half way to unregulated settlements. A 24-hour ordinance allows people to build without permits if they roof the house within 24 hours.

AOB : On transportability and initiative, there was guy who had a shop smack on the border between the Republic and the North. Depending on the price of cigarettes either side of the border his shop was sometimes in the sitting room, sometimes in the living room.

It's known that the economy around the border fluctuates; yet people are adaptive in how they survive. Tell us about your interpretation of 'border' and people's creativity?

MP : Your story is an excellent example of what is happening today on the Mexican/US border where two cities, Tijuana and San Diego, make a bustling new urban situation. They grow and blossom because of the border.

Borders used to divide, right? I believe that today national states, which are based on the territorial principal, are giving way to cities. I was recently struck by the urban situation in the West Bank. If you look at the map of the West Bank and the many Jewish settlements there, it becomes obvious that it is nearly impossible to think of a unified Palestinian territory. So I thought, this might well be a new reality, where cities and not national states rule.

Also, in the West Bank you have parallel use of the same space at the same time. Jewish settlements are connected together with ring roads in an urban grid, independently of Palestinian villages and their roads. You encounter something similar in Johannesburg, where gated communities live parallel and independently of sprawling shanty towns. I read somewhere that by 2100, the organisation of societies will be based on city-states. We are looking at a new logic here.

Marjetica Potrc: East Wahdat: Upgrading Program , installation, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, 2001; photo John Seyfried; courtesy Allen Memorial Art Museum; installation , Centre Gallery, Wolfson Galleries, Miami, 2000; photo José Rodríguez

AOB : There was a recent incident on the Springfield Road in Belfast. Loyalists set a hostel on fire that was smack on the 'peace line'. The people living there were obviously already living in a state of duress (homeless) and then to be burnt out of even that circumstance was incredible.

It shows that people don't always choose to live on a border. It is safer to live either side of it. This relates to your thesis that gated communities are an urban phenomenon being adapted by people as a 'successful' strategy, be it the walls of Belfast or paranoid whites in South Africa.

MP : Yes, it's surprising to see so many people living voluntarily behind walls today. I used to see it as a medieval strategy. But let's face it, gated communities are a success story in the global city. In fact, you have two movements. Johannesburg is a good example. After the fall of Apartheid, the city developed in two ways. It expanded into shanty towns and it contracted into gated communities. I find it fascinating that these movements sprout out of individual initiative. We are not talking about public housing here; it's all private interests. And don't forget gated communities and shanty towns are the two most successful forms of contemporary city.

I think that when tourists take a tour of Belfast's gates and walls, it is not division between Protestant and Catholic that interests them. This doesn't really concern them. They enjoy looking at their own living aspirations, i.e., gated communities.

AOB : Façades interest people. College Green in Belfast was a building comprised of flats but it was very run down to the point of near dereliction. It looked like an urban void even though people lived in it. So much so that one summer a homeless guy slept under the hedge. I guess he felt that it was safe enough to do so because of the buildings' derelict appearance.

You have looked at urban voids as something positive. They are not necessarily like a disease that needs to be cut away (as Le Cobusier would describe them) but are an organic part of the cities' growth. Can you expand upon this idea?

MP : I like to think of unregulated empty spaces as a wild nature in cities. It's actually the nature that the city itself makes, all these parking lots and abandoned houses. They are common and recently taken as a plus.

Then you have theatres, museums and sport stadiums, what I call regulated empty spaces. Cities take pride in building them. They are supposed to help revitalise a city, to pump up the functional image. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is a success story and the sport stadium in derelict downtown Detroit is not. It was expected that the stadium would attract development, which actually did not happen. The city just added one 'emptiness' to another. After the game is over everyone goes home and downtown is empty again, right?

Marjetica Potrc: Nerlidere: The 24 Hour Ordinance , source photo; installation , Worcester Art Museum, 1999; photo by Steve Briggs; courtesy the artist

AOB : It's like the strategy where a corporation is brought in to develop part of a city. They zone an area for culture or an area for finance. So when the financial business is done that area becomes empty, or culture takes place in the evenings so during the day that area is dead.

MP : In Berlin, the eastern part of city is most creative. It all happened because it accommodated enough dysfunctional space. Another fascinating thing in Berlin is tours of the cities' underground, where you walk through dark canals, and construction-site tourism. These are not representative sites, right?

I could even say that empty space is overvalued today, or maybe the 'fantasy frames' of society are changing. I know that there exists a market for the remaining empty space on earth; for instance, you can buy yourself a piece of the desert. On the other hand, empty space is created. Fast-developing cities like Shanghai host a surplus of empty office space. What you are looking at are high-rises that sit there for no particular reason.

I know of Kraftwork 1, a project in Zurich, which seeks to redefine leftovers of the industrial era, i.e., empty factories. In Germany, they make entertainment parks in them, which I think is an excellent idea. Museums and old industrial sites, they both function as entertainment. Kraftwork 1 is an interesting proposition because they envision these industrial warehouses for the contemporary migrant urban population.

AOB : I understand, but worry that they are creating an area for migrants. It's like an isolated area?

MP : Contemporary cities' streetwise populations have similar needs to immigrants. When you are on the move, you need just basics, water, communication and a simple dwelling. This in fact is a quote of a woman living in rural India, whom I saw on TV. What she says is very similar to what streetwise populations of developed countries think important. In the Guggenheim I exhibited her quote together with Philips wearable electronics. The more you use wearable electronics, the less you are bound to a particular place.

Take blue-collar workers in America. The white-collar elite still needs a place to plug in the computer whilst blue-collar workers have everything mobile.

Think of how we talk about inventions today. Inventions used to be introduced as a product of 'progress', a frame of mind that I find obsolete. No one talks about a 'better future' today. Inventions that I find most inspiring are about urgent needs, for instance dressed as 'prevention of catastrophes'. What I see are more private concerns.

AOB : Speaking of mobility and technology close to the body, I heard a joke whilst working in a bar.

Three businessmen are having lunch and, trying to impress each other, start showing off their technology.

The first guy says, ''Hey look at my phone, how small it is. I close my palm and you can't see it, it also lets me access email and I can get the football results.''

The second guy retorts, '' That's nothing. You can't even see my phone, its just an ear piece and it reads my mails to me.''

The third guy leans over farting and says, "Hang on a second, lads, then I'll show you my phone but I just have a fax coming through.''

MP : That's a great story.

This is where the so-called primitive or medieval strategies become interesting. Remember the Jewish settlements in the West Bank I talked about, which in fact obliterate the zoning regulations. Or take Curitiba, the city in Brazil. Curitiba became a success story by in fact obliterating the currency and introducing goods-for-goods exchange. As part of the recycling program, people bring 4kg of trash and get in exchange either 1kg of food, bus tokens or an opera ticket and it works. Curitiba is a model city for several cities in South America.

Marjetica Potrc: Gates and Walls, Belfast ; Gated Community, Israel ; photos courtesy the artist

AOB : You talk also about 'core units' and people upgrading them. There are examples of this in Belfast which you referred to, schools in portacabins. Because the containers are grouped and the playground is painted with street games (hopscotch) it becomes a school. This makes you mentally unite the structures as a community. Can you talk about the core unit and how people upgrade it?

MP : Firstly the city is the society; there is no public space per se. We have learned that public space is not necessarily physical space. As for core units, they are being built as a constructive dialog between regulated city and unregulated city in South Africa or in South America, everywhere where urban populations grow fast. I have built quite a few core units so far. For me, they are case studies.

One of my core units shows a case from East Wahdat, a suburb in Amman, Yemen, where the city authorities built core units for shantytown dwellers. Core units are small functional units that house an electricity and water connection, and a sewage system. New owners build their own houses around them the way they envision them. The East Wahdat Upgrading Program won the prestigious Agha Khan Award.

Usually, I transplant a case study from real life into a gallery. I don't want to criticise society; I want to celebrate individual initiative. That's different from social activism, an approach that was popular among artists in America in the '80s. In my view, they put the homeless population in the corner where society wanted to see it anyway. As for me, my work is sometimes being criticised as being romantic, even voyeuristic. I personally think that these categories reflect the position of those who state them. I see no romanticism in people claiming their land in shanty towns. Both shanty towns and urban voids, the so-called unregulated sites, are facts of contemporary urban life. But yes, they might seem threatening to people that describe them as romantic.

Marjetica Potrc: Construction Site, Berlin ; Underworld, Berlin ; photos courtesy the artist

AOB : People accusing you of 'exoticism' comes from an 'us and them' argument, where people feel a need to categorise?

There was a Belfast character often seen walking through the city with a toothless lion on a lead. Now I don't know if it is an urban myth or not, as I've never seen this guy, and I don't care. I like the idea that he and his lion are not described as 'exotic' but he is described as a 'Belfast character'. You have been researching 'urban animals'. Can you expand?

MP : The 'toothless lion' story is very funny, I like it that he is a Belfast character. When I was in New York a month ago, Daniela Fabricius drew attention to animal sightings in American cities. She talked about urban bears and I said, "What, urban bears?'' So she sent me images and I started to research; it is fantastic.

I am working on a project using an image of a coyote that ran into a lift in downtown Seattle. He lost his way and jumped into an elevator which closed its door. The totally frightened coyote was trapped looking at a security camera, which took a photograph of him.

These kinds of 'animal sightings' are pretty common in America. You can find them on the internet just by typing 'nuisance bears' and 'nuisance alligators'. You can imagine bears sorting your garbage and alligators swimming in your pool.

Marjetica Potrc: Recycling in Curitiba ; Recycling at the Burning Man ; photos courtesy the artist

AOB : People describe the animals as a nuisance, yet the animals are moving into cities because their ordinary habitat doesn't support them any more. They find a new situation to support them and they adapt. It's a badge of convenience to say that someone/something is a nuisance or alien to a particular place.

MP : Not only do they adapt to urban life but also they always come back. There was a story about urban bears in a city that was built on the bears' breeding ground. Every year the bears are spotted and stopped by city patrols, tranquillised, put in a helicopter and airlifted to another location. Every year they come back. What should you do with these 'nuisance bears'? You can airlift them. You cannot just shoot them, people would object.

There are groups in America trying to support the idea of bears and people living in close proximity. Someone thought of a special pepper spray trap. You hang a net full of fish from a tree and you connect it to a pepper spray. When a bear comes and wants to eat the fish, the pepper spray activates. The inventor hopes that bears would eventually learn not to browse through trashcans.

AOB : Pavlov's dog!

MP : Urban animals are a good metaphor for the shifting borders in contemporary cities - just think of all the 'unwelcome' immigrants in Europe. Imagine that one of them would try to pump water from your swimming pool. What would you do?

Maybe it's fun and more constructive to use another set of ideas and not regulations. After all, immigrants and urban bears are guided by ideas closer to the flesh than the mind. It's survival and pursuit of happiness that guides them.

Marjetica Potrc: Urban Bear ; Pepper Spray Trap for Urban Bears ; photos courtesy the artist1999; photo by Steve Briggs; courtesy the artist

AOB : Well, Marjetica, thanks very much and hang out the net for that urban bear.

Aisling O'Breirn is an artist based in Belfast.