Calendars, Notes, Installations, Vinyl, Camouflage, Drywall, Tests, and Hearts

Our rate of posting on here has slowed down considerably since the summer. We’re still busy, it’s just the pace of the work and projects now seems to span longer and longer time frames, and with so many ongoing and overlapping projects, it’s just a lot more challenging to find the time to keep track of it all. We’re actually putting in more time than ever, with Hiba and I meeting regularly two to three days a week and our colleagues joining in when schedules allow. It’s amazingly fun and productive, but harder than ever to document meaningfully.

So, just for a quick look into the last four or five weeks, here’s what we’ve been up to…

Above, we’re planning for the 1W3KND Writing Residency, and we’ll be announcing our participating writers and artists really soon.

We’ve also been hosting biweekly events at CIVIC SPACE. Every other Monday is All Tomorrow’s Problems. We take a lot of notes.

Every other Wednesdays are Zine Nights, and then there’s Skills For Good(s) on a semi-regular Tuesday night schedule. All of these events are free and open to everyone. We usually post the details on the right-hand side column of the front page of our website, and also try to keep civicspace.info up to date. Emphasis on try.

Here are some of the leftovers from Alana Bartol’s recent Skills for Good(s) on Making a Ghillie Suit!

October also allowed us to play host to Sam Lefort returning to take on a project with students from Forster.

The project and exhibition were so great and it was incredibly fun to have Sam back for an entire month.

Here’s just a little peek at her installation.

And, the process of taking down the vinyl to make way for the upcoming Cross-Plotting, opening on Friday, November 9th!

Hiba and I have been working on some other parallel projects for an exhibition in January. Think planes and banners.

Rosina provided the new over-sized pad of paper. It’s been very helpful.

We also still have some postcards left from Sam’s show, if you’d like some.

We’ve been patching the walls, a lot. I think the winter break is going to be set aside for a painting party.

We’ve also had the pleasure of Laura Gentili as a kick-ass studio assistant. She’s assembled furniture, changed door locks, organized, scanned, and sketched her way through the last few weeks, and been awesome the entire way.

Sam was kind enough to leave our space a little nicer than she found it. Above, and installation to brighten up the back office area at CIVIC SPACE.

Also, we’re still working on our window installation, with the help of Paul Anderson. Earlier today, he was testing a contact mic, while also going over details to build the Max patch we’ll actually need.

And this afternoon, Hiba and I also picked up a project that appeared in How to Forget the Border Completely.

This is something that Danielle has been wanting to do forever. Above, a really early prototype.

We’ll eventually laser cut and etch these from aluminum. Installation to follow. Also, in the background, we’re writing. We’re still working on the Homework publication with Brennan and Cholé. And, we’re planning projects into the fall of 2013. It’s good.

Planning (in and) For the Future

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Monday night at BCL HQ, going over plans for moving forward on our recently OAC funded project starting in January 2010, Broken City Lab: Save the City (details to follow), using good ol’ fashioned lists and future technologies—it was amazing, in every sense of the word.

Not sure how many more times we’ll be meeting over the break, but we’re all excited for what the new year has in store … so many projects, it will be excellent!

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Math, Markers, and Measurements + Eric’s micro-documentary

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We spent last night watching a rough cut of some of Eric’s ongoing micro-residency project, did a lot of measuring, used Google Earth, did some math, drew some diagrams, and brainstormed a new project (because Cristina wants to sew, a lot).

With the semester basically over now, we’re hoping to wrap up a couple things before the new year before starting on some bigger new projects in the new year, which you will hear about soon!

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Labour Lounge @ WAHC in Hamilton

Workers Arts and Heritage Centre

Broken City Lab is heading up to Hamilton on Friday, November 20th, 2009 to run a workshop/event on communicating through intervention in urban spaces. The workshop is being held at the Workers Arts & Heritage Centre as part of their Labour Lounge series, this time in partnership with the Hamilton Youth Arts Network.

This has been the description of the workshop/event and it’s perfectly fitting: “Come on out and learn how art can interact with the urban environment leading to AWESOMENESS!” Oh, and our workshop will lead into the hip hop stylings of Lee Reed; it should be amazing fun!

The details: Workers Arts and Heritage Centre (51 Stuart Street, Hamilton), 7pm – 10:30pm.

Saying Something with Banners

Everything Must Go!

Anna Gray & Ryan Wilson Paulsen are working on a series of text banners / posters. Sometimes the banners are held between the two of them, other times they each hold smaller cards with texts that work off of one another. Sometimes they write the text on the banners, other times they invite others to compose it.

They’re fans of reading, typography, and from what I gather, lists.

Oh, the things that could be said with banners here—we should get on that.

Working on a Process: Plastic Bag Banners and Such

the banner

Another day spent at 406 Pelissier. Working with these plastic bags is really time consuming, but it will be worth it. The projects we have in mind are taking longer than we may have initially aniticipated, but that’s been the case with everything we’ve ever done.

The banner is growing steadily, but we’re hoping for a final length of somewhere near 18 feet. We’ve also scouted a location, but we’re still working on the message for the banner itself.

Our continuing work with the planters is going well, as we’re about 1/3 of the way to the grand total of planters we’re hoping to make. Also, the test planter is doing well, with some wildflower seeds sprouting already. With the planter being indoors, it has certainly helped to keep the soil moist, but also (and as we had figured long ago), the first and second design iterations of the planters were drying the soil very quickly due to the use of newspapers. With the plastic bags, the soil seems to be holding moisture much better. We’ve been careful to create drainage holes, but we probably need to integrate this into the design more effectively.

Continue reading “Working on a Process: Plastic Bag Banners and Such”