“In the place of the public sphere?” takes its point of departure in conceptions of practice and spectatorship based on the notion of a fragmented public sphere, and explores the potentials, problematics and politics lying behind a construction (real or imaginary) of particular “public” spheres. How does one perceive and / or construct specific public spheres and positional and / or participatory models for spectatorship as opposed to (modernist) generalized ones? Does this entail reconfiguration of the (bourgeois) notion of the public sphere into a different arena and / or into a mass of difference, overlapping spheres? or, in other words, what can be put in the place of the public sphere? private zones, salons, institutions, sub- and / or counterpublics? and what are the different arenas, possibilities and methods for interaction within and between them? finally, the question to be raced is how this should relate to artistic production and arts spaces and institutions?