Kabul—A Tale of Two Cities

In this chapter, I explore Kabul. Kabul, as protagonist, impacts the participants as much as they impact it. In this chapter I argue for a relational dynamic between city and inhabitant. I argue here that, through their art praxis,artists shape their city as it shapes them and explore the publics that encounter their works in public spaces. By inscribing their art on public spaces, there is an act of reclamation of spaces that have long belonged to the powerful and wealthy. There is a love and fear for Kabul by its inhabitants, and the act of producing art upon its physical spaces is an attempt at reconciliation between these competing experiences. I treat the streetscape as a component of the art and offer its contribution to the work and the praxis. I also introduce the conceptualization of the incidental-ephemeral publics who, at the moment of encounter with an artwork, are touched by it. In this way, I approach art as a form of public pedagogy, which offers democratisation and subversion of dominant cultures. As physical bodies in experiential space, artists, contexts and publics become part of the performance of creating art on the street.