The brief does not specify the nature of the intervention; it might be anything. It could be a document, or an event. "Or it could be a song," says John Reardon, one of the co-ordinators of Project Mongrel, a public art scheme currently under way in Cork. It involves six artists and architects from Ireland, Europe and America, all strangers to each other, collaborating to create an "intervention" on Patrick Street, which is currently being dug up and remodelled.

Tuesday, August 24th

The silences are beginning to stretch. The gang of six has been caged in a recently-built, all mod-con apartment in Cork city. It's their base for a month, as they attempt to kick the Mongrel into life, and it's horrible, a cell in one of those complexes designed to create a kind of generic domesticity for salaried young professionals. It seems cold and clinical, and the collaborators are jumpy as lab rats. They've been together 10 days and things have not been going well.

"I'll be honest," says Conor Moloney, a Dublin architect. "I've had enough. I feel like this is going nowhere. I don't want to be here. What can I say?"

"It's been sheer hell," says John Redhead, a multimedia artist usually to be found around Liverpool and north Wales. "We've been fighting like f--k. I really don't know. There may be something at the end of this and there may not."

"It was pleasant for what, a day, day-and-a-half?" asks Mel Ziegler, an artist based in Austin, Texas. "It's been a bit of a rollercoaster to say the least."

"It's not that there's been a shortage of ideas," says Aine Ryan, a Dublin-based architect. "Certain areas and fields keep coming up."

"But then it all gets swallowed by the swamp, the Cork marsh," says John Redhead, staring dead-eyed at the deluge outside.

"What's really hard," says Aine, "is that we have to try and think as a unit. You can't depend on what you usually do, how you usually work. You have to give yourself up. Switching from one to six is really crazily difficult."

"Maybe that can be an advantage," says Anke Zurn, an artist from Dortmund in Germany. "If we all thought the same way, it might get pretty boring."

I wonder if the brief for Project Mongrel is too loosely defined.

"Maybe it's too clearly defined," says Magda Jarzabek, a Polish architect and artist.

The collaborators have around £10,000 to spend on the intervention. But what to spend it on? As we stare forlornly at the tape recorder in the middle of the floor, Patrick Street, a few blocks away, is swarming with yellow hardhats. The medieval drainage system is at last being replaced, and when that's done the street will be remodelled according to a blueprint drawn up Catalan architect Beth Galli.

There will be semi-pedestrianisation, some swish new paving and bollards. It could turn out nice or it could be just another of those faux Bohemia refits currently being undertaken with relish in practically every city in Ireland and the UK. Project Mongrel is the Per Cent For Art scheme (whereby one per cent of the budget goes towards public art), devised by John Reardon and another Cork-based artist, Declan Kennedy, who are righteously antagonistic to the usual run of public art. In a statement on the project, they write: "We believe public art to be a symptom of a corporate strategy to gentrify and aestheticise the inner city, to control public space, while offering a model of public life which can be repeated globally."

The collaborators seem to be broadly supportive of this view. "Talking to people on the street," says John, "they feel Patrick Street is okay as it is. Leave it alone, you know, what's the problem? And then the problem we have is that people are very complacent about public art, it just doesn't impact on them, and I can understand that totally."

"We have to try and find a way of reaching a greater number of people than public art normally would," says Aine.

A number of possibilities have been discussed, as can be seen from the scribbles on the walls. But how do you get six people to agree on anything? We may be learning as much about the nature of collaboration here as we are about the nature of public art. "It could turn out to be impossible," says Aine, and a deathly silence again descends on the room. Your heart bleeds for them. They are six accomplished and articulate people, but the Mongrel is snapping rabidly. They have no end of ideas but they feel that they're doing nothing. And the problem with doing nothing is you never know when you're finished.

Tuesday, August 31st

All is sweetness, all is light! Well, relatively speaking. The sun has graced us with its easeful presence, and Team Mongrel has relocated to the Cork Dance Centre studio, a nice rambling space perched over one of the snake bends on Patrick Street. They have each decided to do their own thing during the day and then reconvene later to thrash out the resulting ideas.

They've been meeting a lot of locals - city planners, archaeologists, sociologists and writers - attempting to tease out a suss on the place. John Redhead has been down the soup kitchen, interviewing those left trailing the economy's cocky waddle. Anke has been snapping off hundreds of photographs. Magda has been poring over the Pana plans and getting stuck into Conal Creedon's novel Passion Play.

We talk around the issues that have been coming up, and incredulity emerges at the plan to erect another 29 CCTV surveillance cameras around the city centre. There is a worry, too, that the new-look Patrick Street might exclude rather than include; it might morph into nothing more that a conveyor belt to filter through feeder streams of happy consumers.

"Talking to the planners," says Conor, "they actually agreed with a lot of the fears we raised. They insist that they have no wish to sanitise the street." "But it still seems to me that the work they're doing needs to be integrated more," says Aine. "Some of it is just being imposed on the street without looking at the context."

More rows have been erupting on Project Mongrel, though at this point often between the collaborators and the two co-ordinators. "They maybe want something that's aggressive," says Aine. "But I don't think we want to just make a blatant criticism of what's going on."

"It's a soft target," says John Redhead. "It might be better to go for a more gentle, subtle approach."

One idea was for the six to take the £10,000, hit Patrick Street and shop till they dropped, kitting themselves out in any amount of new clobber and then parade themselves. It was tempting but ultimately got the heave-ho.

As things stand, then, there is still no intervention plan. So what have we learnt about collaboration?

"Choose your partners," says John. "You can't make art by committee consensus."

Wednesday, September 1st

`At this point," Declan Kennedy tells me, "it was dead in the water. I mean, right the way through, myself and John Reardon were watching it and thinking, wow, this is going downhill fast. But by Wednesday night, it was absolutely dead."

Down at the doghouse, it appears that there had been a bit of a domestic.

Thursday, September 2nd

It's three in the afternoon, I'm staring at the sea in west Cork, and the phone rings. "We've decided on an intervention," says Conor, "and we're all working on it. Except one person may have left."

An hour later, the phone rings again. All six are apparently now back together. I eventually get a hint or two about the planned intervention. It's not bad, it's certainly provocative and when the Corpo and the traders hear about it, they'll doubtless throw a wobbler.

"Now we'll start finding things out," says a happy Declan Kennedy. "The sponsors want a sexy result but it'll be interesting to see how far they'll go. There are going to be a lot of hard negotiations. Now we'll find out if Patrick Street is a public space or a private space."

The intervention is expected to be finalised by Sunday. This evening, at 8 p.m. in the Oyster Bar, the collaborators plan to announce details.