Interstitial spaces, practices, and boundaries: how street arts transform a world heritage site

Research on linking interstitial spaces with practices has foregrounded the significance of creating boundaries for new modes of social interaction. However, an oft-overlooked in-between aspect of interstitial spaces raises the question: how do in-between spaces contribute to the emergence of new practices without first fixing boundaries? By drawing on the notion of spacing, we conduct a 12-year longitudinal qualitative study of how the appropriation of interstitial spaces transformed a UNESCO world heritage site (WHS) into a city of street arts in the capital city of the Malaysian state of Penang. Our findings underscore several interstitial conditions and events that lead to three spacing trajectories – interstitial reconditioning, boundary crossing, and interstitial spreading. Interstitial reconditioning brings field actors in heritage management, museum, and tourism to exploit the heritage status by introducing the installation of 2-D wired sculptures on streetwalls. This transposed practice from museum to displaying arts outdoor reconditions the material and spatial-cultural contexts for unexpected allies including artists to experiment new interstitial practices, which trigger boundary crossing that interrupts existing boundaries, and interstitial spreading to other interstitial spaces. This study contributes to an ongoing multi-disciplinary conversation about two contrasting views of space, and more broadly to the knowledge of interstitial organizing