The Symposium informed by the Equinox project starts on the basis of an openness about public space as a social and political realm and essential to democratic life and as a place of physical design. Informed by the political and moral philosophy of Hannah Arendt, and her position that this realm is where citizens negotiate, mediate and take collective action for the common good. Modernity she contends, has manufactured “distracted citizens” alienated from the public and the ‘common world’. It is this social and political terrain that initiates the open ground and framework for the Symposium as we ask ‘Can and does temporary performance action connect the public realm and the citizen again, if even only momentarily?’