Reconfiguring the public and the private: Noc-Noc arts festival, Guimarães, Portugal
研究葡萄牙吉马良斯一个低成本本地艺术节如何通过将住宅和商铺转变为临时公共空间，挑战公私界限，并动摇市政府作为主要活动赞助者的主导地位。
In the past decades many cities have experienced growing pressure to produce and stage cultural events of different sorts to promote themselves and improve economic development. Culture-led development often relies on significant public investment and major private-sector sponsoring. In the context of strained public finances and profound economic crisis in European peripheral countries, local community low-budget events that manage to create significant fluxes of visitors and visibility assume a particular relevance. This paper looks at the four editions (2011–2014) of Noc-Noc, an arts festival organized by a local association in the city of Guimarães, Portugal, which is based on creating transient spaces of culture by transforming numerous homes, commercial outlets and other buildings into ephemeral convivial and playful ‘public’ environments. By interviewing a sample of people who have hosted (sometimes doubling as artists) these transitory art performances and exhibitions, artists and the events’ organizers and by experiencing the four editions of the event and engaging in multiple informal conversations with the public, this paper attempts to discuss how urban citizens may disrupt the cleavages between public and private space permitting various transgressions, and unsettling the hegemonic condition of the city council as the patron of the large majority of events.