When the city breathes again

Resuscitation of a lost community

Sonja Bell
Galerie Bell in Baden-Baden

It was the end of winter, that time of year when cities often seem to be in a state of waiting. The days had grown longer, but life, already thinning out, did not seem to have decided to return yet. On this evening, however, an art space filled with people. Not fleetingly, not by chance, but with a quiet sense of self-evidence. Coats were taken off, glasses raised, conversations began – quietly at first, then more and more animatedly. What happened there was not sensational. And yet there was something astonishing about it. For a few hours, the city once again seemed like a place that is not just passed through, but inhabited. People stayed. They listened to each other. Strangers struck up conversations. There was a special intensity that might once have been called urban life – and which has become rare in many places today. This experience was not a nostalgic look back – it was present. It was more than just seeing and being seen. Warm embraces were accompanied by evasive manoeuvres in a colourful society where not everyone likes everyone else – and yet a connection cannot be denied.This exhibition opening gently touched a lonely nerve. The faces showed a liveliness that is often missing – but why is that?

The diagnosis is well known. City centres are losing their residents. Historic city centres are becoming backdrops for short-term use, investment or tourist performances. Living space is becoming scarce, life is shifting to the periphery. What remains are zones of transit: shopping streets without shops, squares without people, architecture without connection.

At the same time, new forms of public sphere are emerging in the digital world. Social media promises exchange, visibility and participation. But this public space remains disembodied. It knows no closeness, no hesitation, no shared silence. Encounter is replaced by reaction, dialogue by commentary, community by algorithm. What is missing is a space in which people not only exist but also interact with one another – a space in which closeness and distance, voice and silence are possible at the same time. The city has lost these spaces, at least in many of its physical manifestations.

PUBLIC SPACES WITHOUT THE PUBLIC

The classic concept of the Western city was based on the idea of public space: the market square, the forum, the salon. Places where citizens were not only present, but also involved. Places where a sense of belonging was formed – not through identity politics, but through shared experience. Many listed squares still exist physically, but they have lost their social function. Squares are traffic areas, cafés are transit stations, city centres are investment spaces.What is missing are places where people are allowed to linger rather than consume. Not to buy, but to stay. Not to perform, but to show themselves as they are. If active citizenship is more than protest or voting – if it requires relationship, conversation and mutual perception – then it needs spaces that enable precisely that. And this is precisely where the question of the role of culture and art begins.

ART SPACES AS A LIVING PUBLIC SPHERE

Art spaces are not new places. And yet they are rarely seen as what they can be at their best: functioning public spaces. Not in an administrative sense, but in a social sense. Visiting an exhibition is voluntary. It is not algorithmically controlled. It requires time, presence and attention. People enter without knowing what to expect. They share a space without having to share an opinion. They encounter each other through something else – a work, a thought, an irritation. It is precisely this openness that makes art spaces rare places in the present day. They are ambiguous, inefficient and not scalable. But they enable something that is increasingly lacking in everyday urban life: resonance. Art is often interpreted either aesthetically or politically. However, its social power often lies in the situation it creates. An art opening is not a political event in the traditional sense. And yet, for a few hours, it creates a form of public space that recalls the original idea of the city. People of different backgrounds, ages and perspectives meet without an agenda. Conversations arise not out of obligation, but out of curiosity.

Katerina Belkina’s work ‘For All Mankind’ – an outside view of community

The work of Russian artist Katerina Belkina in her series For All Mankind offers a remarkable addition to this question. Belkina‘s figures appear distant, often fragmented. They stand alone in space – like isolated elements in a world that has forgotten how to live in community. And yet they carry within them a quiet longing for connection: for wholeness, for belonging, for a life beyond loneliness and fragmentation. The series does not depict an idealised community. Rather, it reflects the turmoil of our times – a time in which cities are losing their places, digital public spaces are replacing real encounters, and people nevertheless long for connection.

Belkina‘s characters are individuals in a fragmented world. This is precisely where their universal dimension lies: the desire for an “All Mankind”, for a place where people can meet in their diversity without losing their independence.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PHYSICAL CONTACT

Digital spaces have made many things easier. However, they have also displaced something: the importance of the body in social interaction. Closeness, distance, gaze, voice – none of these things can be fully digitised. Art spaces, on the other hand, are physical spaces. You move around in them, stand still, step closer. These seemingly simple actions structure experience and create a form of commonality that is not based on equality, but on shared experience.

SMALL SPACES, BIG IMPACT

Grand urban visions often fail due to their own complexity. Master plans and strategies remain abstract. What works, on the other hand, are concrete places: spaces that are used, encounters that take place. Museums, galleries and studios can be such places – not as prestige projects, but as everyday social infrastructure. They don‘t have to be big. But they must be accessible and taken seriously. The experience of that winter evening showed that it doesn‘t take much to make urban life tangible. A space, an occasion and the willingness to get involved. When cities become products, they lose their citizens. When they are understood as spaces for relationships, however, something else emerges: responsibility, belonging, identification. Art can help to change this perspective – not by beautifying cities, but by making them habitable again. As places where people can show themselves. Where people listen. Where people stay. Perhaps the future of the city is not in new technologies or taller buildings, but in rediscovering a simple yet ambitious idea: that cities arise where people meet. What if we no longer regarded art spaces as a marginal phenomenon of urban life, but as its seismograph? What if we could use them to explore not only culture, but also a new form of citizenship – in all its nuances? The answer to this question is open. But perhaps it begins precisely where a space fills up, conversations arise and the city breathes again for a moment.

Note: The images in this essay are not covered by the journal’s Creative Commons license. The rights remain with the copyright holder.