As part of the acquittal process for Shifting Sand 2 by EXCX ascertaining the success of our temporary Activation on Docklands Promenade, we produced research, photography and an extended piece of writing putting the notion of activation itself under interrogation:

What makes an Activation successful? Who gets to decide? And what is the point of Activation anyway? By way of answer it might help to push deeper into the challenges of ‘bureaucracy’ that we faced in delivering the Activation, because this very bureaucracy was the source of the Activation in the first place: both in terms of commissioning as well as defining a need and possibility for state-led attempts to incentivise certain kinds of public behaviour (spontaneous, adventurous, transgressive) in spaces like Docklands that are heavily financialised, rule-bound and administered by the state in collaboration with private developers. This leads to a series of paradoxes outlined with the following four titles: