Public space has changed, even if our mental frameworks have not always kept pace. Streets, squares, and gardens remain fundamental arenas of social life: places of encounter, conflict, and transformation. Yet alongside them, and with ever greater influence over collective life, there exists another dimension of public space: less visible, immaterial, algorithmic, mediated by digital networks and private platforms. It is there that part of the narratives, emotions, and disputes shaping contemporary social experience are constructed. The digital public sphere has not replaced the physical one, but has layered itself over it, creating a hybrid field we cannot ignore. Artistic creation in public space - particularly in the performing arts and in practices that intervene in everyday social life - has been one of the last bastions of the in-person experience and the unrepeatable event. Yet it becomes inevitable to ask: are we creating only for the visible street, or for a public space no longer confined to the ground beneath our feet?

Today, the dynamics of attention, participation, and the symbolic construction of the city are no longer organised solely within the physical territory. When a performance takes place in the street, its impact extends beyond the limits of the time and place in which it occurs. The event does not end; it is prolonged, transformed, or dissolved within digital circuits, where it is documented, replicated, and reinterpreted. Public works, even when ephemeral, also participate in a broader informational ecology, shaped by algorithmic flows that influence what is remembered and what is forgotten. This reality imposes a new layer of mediation and, with it, new risks and responsibilities.

It is important to recognise that the digital public sphere is, for the most part, managed by private platforms operating under commercial logics. These platforms are not neutral spaces: they function through algorithmic filters that determine what is visible, what is amplified, and what is silenced. When public art depends on such channels to reach wider audiences or to ensure its own memory, it risks being decontextualised, diluted, or shaped according to criteria beyond artistic control. Artistic creation in public space must therefore rethink its position in relation to this hybrid ecosystem, where bodies and data, gestures and code, coexist and compete for collective attention.

There is also a growing ambivalence in the digital tools that permeate the artistic context. Technologies such as drones, sensors, augmented reality, or data-capture systems expand the expressive and relational possibilities of artistic creation. Yet these very same technologies are also employed in contexts of surveillance and social control. When public art incorporates such devices, even with emancipatory intentions, it may risk legitimising, aestheticising, or normalising practices that compromise freedom, privacy, and the autonomy of bodies in shared space. How can we innovate without reproducing mechanisms of power? How can we create immersive and sensory experiences without yielding to dependence on the device?

Despite these risks, the age of hybridisation also offers fertile possibilities. There are artistic proposals that experiment with new forms of presence and activation, weaving together the urban territory with the immaterial circulation of data, or combining performative gestures with network logics. A striking example is the work of German artist Simon Weckert who, by transporting 99 active smartphones in a handcart through the streets of Berlin, succeeded in tricking Google Maps into registering false traffic jams, thereby virtually altering the city’s traffic flow. This critical, invisible, and highly effective intervention demonstrates how art can interfere with the algorithmic systems that govern daily life, making visible the mechanisms that shape our perception of space. When well-founded, such practices reveal alternative pathways, capable of generating shared experiences between the visible and the invisible, the local and the global. Yet for them not to become mere visibility strategies or formal exercises, they demand critical thinking, political awareness, and a deep understanding of the complexity of today’s public space.

The challenge is not to replace the square with the screen, nor to dissolve the physicality of artistic creation. The real challenge is to understand that contemporary public space is composed of multiple layers: the material context, the symbolic territory, digital flows, and regimes of attention. If artistic creation in public space has always been an act of occupation - physical, political, and poetic - today that act must expand its field of action without losing the ethics that sustain it. The question is no longer simply “how to occupy public space”? The urgent question is “what is, today, the true public space to occupy”? Answering it does not mean abandoning the street, but it does require art in public space to rethink itself in a world where the square and the cloud, the asphalt and the algorithm, belong to the same ecosystem of coexistence, contestation, and possibility.

Photo: © Simon Weckert

Bruno Costa

Bruno Costa holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of Aveiro and a Master’s degree in Management for Creative Industries from the Portuguese Catholic University (UCP). His research has focused on the construction of European identity, with particular emphasis on the internationalisation of artistic projects and European cultural cooperation. He is a guest lecturer at UCP, teaching the course Partnerships, Networks and Internationalisation in Creative Industries, and serves on the steering committees of both the Circostrada Network and IN-SITU - the European platform for artistic creation in public space. As co-director of Bússola, his professional career has centred on strategy, planning, financing, and management within the cultural and creative sectors.

Daniel Vilar

Daniel Vilar is a cultural and marketing manager with a strong focus on cultural, tourism, and territorial dynamics. He holds a Master’s degree in Communication Sciences from the University of Porto and a degree in Marketing Management from IPAM. As co-director of Bússola and Outdoor Arts Portugal, his professional path has centred on the planning and implementation of strategic cultural initiatives and the promotion of creative cities, both nationally and internationally. His work contributes to the shaping of public policies, cultural communication strategies, and territorial development. He frequently participates in conferences related to strategy, communication, marketing, and regional development. In his role at Bússola, he is committed to fostering the strategic growth of both cultural projects and the territories they inhabit.