Arrived — our blank red plastic cases that we’ll turn into our Emergency Preparedness Kits for our upcoming exhibition at White Water Gallery.
Next … make the list, check it twice, and start building!
North Bay Emergency Kits
Great Things You Should know about in Detroit & Beyond
Just a copy & paste, but there’s too much to try to condense. Upcoming in Windsor and an opportunity for artists and food lovers from friends…
Please let m know if there’s anything I can do to assist you with editorial coverage and/or attendance (very affordable $5 rates are available — just ask!) For tickets and information: www.ensembletheaters.net
For more info, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MIKhl5ydvUo
MICROFEST USA SCHEDULE OF EVENTS (subject to change)
Friday, August 17, 2012
6:30 p.m. – Opening at Art Effect (420 E. Fisher Fwy., Detroit, MI 48207; www.arteffectgallery.com)
7 p.m. – Rogue HAA Panel: Art and Development in Detroit “Art, the Avant-garde and the Realities of Resurrecting an America City” with Philip Lauri (Detroit Lives!), Mike Han (Street Culture Mash), Jela Ellefson (Eastern Market) and Oya Amakisi (film/us social forum) (www.roguehaa.com)
9 p.m. – Detroit Performances including: Monica Blaire, Hardcore Detroit (www.hardcoredetroit.biz), Ryan Meyers-Johnson, Invincible (www.emergencemedia.org)
Saturday, August 18, 2012
9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. – Community Tour Tracks (three options)
Track A – Southwest Detroit: Art Impacting a Neighborhood. Matrix (www.matrixtheatre.org), The Alley Project (www.facebook.com/tapgallery)
Track B – The Urban Network: Art Impacting the Justice System (5740 Grand River Detroit, MI 48208). Yusef Shakur (www.yusefshakur.org), Prison Creative Arts (www.lsa.umich.edu/pcap), 4TheatrSake (www.vimeo.com/cellships)
Track C – College for Creative Studies: Art Impacting Redevelopment. Bus tour led by Mikel Bresee, Director of CAP/CPAD and Vince Carducci, Assistant Dean/author (http://www.cpadetroit.org/about-us/)
12:30 – 1:30 p.m. Lunch (bring cash)
Track A – In Mexican Town
Track B – The Urban Network
Track C – WSU reVITALunch (Pine and Huron Streets, Detroit, MI 48216)
MICROFEST USA SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Saturday, August 18, 2012 (continued)
2 – 3:30 p.m. – Art Impacting Youth Workshops
Detroit Summer Workshop (http://detroitsummer.wordpress.com/)
Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit (www.mosaicdetroit.org)
3:45 – 4:45 p.m. – National Plenary
5:30 – 7 p.m. – Detroit Soup project-funding dinner (2051 Rosa Parks Blvd, Detroit, MI 48216). (www.detroitsoup.com)
7:30 p.m. – The Hinterlands with Design 99: (3346 Lawley St. Detroit, MI 48212) (www.thehinterlandsensemble.org) and (www.powerhouseproject.com)
9:30 p.m. – African World Festival at the Charles Wright Museum (315 East Warren Avenue, Detroit 48201) (http://www.thewright.org/)
Sunday August 19, 2012
9 – 10 a.m. – Invincible with Complex Movements
10 – 10:30 a.m. – Brunch provided at the Hilberry Theater (Cass Avenue Detroit, MI 48201)
10:30 a.m. – noon – Town Hall Discussion “How do you know the work is having impact?”
noon – 12:30 p.m. – Closing
The Design Studio has extended their commission for an artist/culinary team interested in designing a week-long open Public Kitchen in September or October. The new deadline for applications is August 16th.
The commissioned team will get:
- $4,000 commission, plus $1000 budget
- A space near Uphams Corner for their installation of the Public Kitchen
- A built brick stove from Bread Oven
- Free fruits and vegtables from Fair Foods
Interested? Learn more about the Public Kitchen and the art commission here.
Screen Printing Letterhead
Exposing the screen to do a run of some letterheads for an upcoming project. Things might look quiet, but we’ve been busy.
More soon.
1-Day Project: “Find Something Worthwhile”
We had ordered these screen printing supplies in anticipation of using them for our upcoming Civic Maintenance project, but before we could embark on that large-scale production, we needed to test.
We got process colours cmyk and the basics for screen printing – photo emulsion and photo emulsion remover and two screens.
We haven’t screen printed since last year while we were at Martha Street Studio, and even then we had the luxury of some great technical assistance.
I haven’t shot a screen for a long time, so while the first test was a bit rough (see prints above), the second attempt on Thursday went a little better.
I ran a number of prints and then Rosina took over. Sara and Kevin also got in on the printing at one point!
She made a lot of prints.
Early days in screen printing tests — this detail in particular wasn’t our best work — but the imperfections were working for us.
We printed on a lot of different paper, pulling from magazines and old art periodicals.
Then, we pulled out the window wall that Kevin built a while ago and started to setup the prints as a grid.
I really liked some of the details and textures when things got messy.
Kevin and Rosina tackling the grid.
We ended up having to do some more prints to completely cover the window wall.
And then, the finishing touches of trimming and taping the edges.
And installed! We took down our video installation and Sam’s water-bottle planters to make way for this … sometimes we get impatient … but also, this will make it a lot easier to host the Walk-by Theatre on Mondays.
A closer look at some of the grid. This was an excellent way to spend the afternoon. And, all the better that it was the randomness of being in the space together that made it happen.
Mailbox Prototypes and Organizational Systems for Civic Maintenance
We’re in the preparation stages for an upcoming project called Civic Maintenance. The project will be based around the writing and distributing of a thousand letters (give or take) to residents of Windsor, thanking them for staying in the city, or contributing to it, or somehow having an impact on it, or maybe all of those things. The idea of maintenance (in a ‘civic’ sense, or city sense, maybe) is normally attributed to specific acts on infrastructure and the built environment, towards their preservation in a longer-term. It focuses on an cyclical act, a process that takes significant investment, and most often in a preventative capacity. We think that these kinds of acts could do well to be more closely connected to the people who make up this city, towards preserving a sense of belonging, and investment in this place, and in the largest and most symbolic sense, towards convincing people not to pack up and leave.
These early stages begin with an attempt to narrow down the list of people to receive our letters. Initially, we considered doing a random selection from the phone book, but we soon turned towards a more explicit selection. We still worked from the phone book, but instead started to pull last names that might act as a descriptor for the city, in one way or another. This is still developing, and we’ll be working to translate more last names as well..
Alongside the letter writing itself will be the exhibition design — a way of keeping track and organizing our process. We began to piece together some very crude ‘mailboxes’ from cardstock and cardboard.
And popsicle sticks.
And boxes with coloured paper.
The mailboxes will be attached to the walls and provide a way to organize the letters — perhaps by last name, or sentiment, or geography, or quality of handwriting, or time, or something else.
Intending to embark on an ambitious process to make cardboard mailboxes, we started to put together some templates.
These mailboxes would be not unlike what we might see in a more rural setting.
The form of these mailboxes seemed enticing, as a way to pull things away from being tacked on the walls.
Hiba broke the corrugation to make the cardboard flexible to bend.
She used a pencil.
This gives the cardboard a lot more flexibility, but retains the outside finish.
Rough mailbox design from cardboard.
Two envelopes wide.
More of an exploratory design process than a movement towards any finished idea, this kind of mailbox might work at a smaler scale.
And then, there were these. Simple folder-like design created from 9×12″ cardstock with the edges of pushpins holding it together.
If we’re to make 30 or 40 or 50 of the mailboxes, these basic foldable designs might work best.
They also seem to make the envelopes more accessible in a way — rather than hiding them in the mailbox itself, the sizing of these folder-type mailboxes would make the envelopes more easily legible and would give us an opportunity to look an organization code more readily. That is, we need to figure out not only how to keep track of what letters are sent out, but what kind of data we create based on our last name selection system. We’re not sure where it goes yet, but it’s where we’re at by midweek.
More maintenance soon.
Exploring Urban Ecology with Sam Lefort (a look back at our week of workshops)
It was a quick week, but such an excellent start to our Artist-in-Residence program at CIVIC SPACE. Sam Lefort, bee lover, excellent designer, and most generous workshop host spent the week teaching members of the Windsor-Essex (and beyond) community about a range of sustainably minded practices and interventions, hopefully many of which will be carried on in numerous locations around the region.
We’re already looking forward to bringing Sam back, but in the meantime, here’s a look at the week (and possibly what you missed!)…
Continue reading “Exploring Urban Ecology with Sam Lefort (a look back at our week of workshops)”
IN STORE: DEAR INDIAN ROAD
Dear Indian Road is near the very top of my list of favourites from Daragh Sankey‘s nearly complete documentary series on our Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation project. It’s kind of unreal to think about the things that have changed (and haven’t) around Indian Road, the border crossing, and the fallout from this ongoing political and infrastructural battle.
Here’s Daragh’s background on the video:
I was quite impressed by Leesa’s project. The visual impact, the collective participation, the subtlety of its activism – it all came together beautifully.
When it came to the issue of representing Indian Road on film, I couldn’t get it out of my head that the ideal technique was a single tracking shot. The road is patrolled by private security hired by the bridge company, so I wasn’t about to go lay down track or get a steadicam rig and walk the length of it. The answer was a surreptitious car mount. I found a cheap suction mount and stuck it on there. This was about a year after the residencies. My lady friend and I rented a car and drove up to Windsor to get this and a few other shots (there was some car mount footage in this one too), but unfortunately the car rental place I used didn’t let you specify what model you wanted, so we wound up trying to sneak up Indian Road in a bright orange jeep with a camera mounted on it. Like the ninja! But somehow we stayed out of trouble, and I’m very happy with how the footage looks.
This is the semi-final film. Next will be a brief coda wrapping up the series. I still have tons of great stuff dealing more specifically with Broken City Lab themselves, but I’m not promising that any time soon.
There’s more here on the rest of the In Store series.
WTPh? What the phonics
WTPh? – What the Phonics from Andrew Spitz on Vimeo.
Super fun project … thanks to @RichardZimmer for the link!
WTPh? (What the Phonics) is an interactive installation set in the touristic areas of Copenhagen. Street names in Denmark are close to impossible for foreigners to pronounce, so Andrew Sptiz and Momo Miyazaki did a little intervention
Project by:
Andrew Spitz – andrew-spitz.com/
Momo Miyazaki – momomiyazaki.com/
For more info, check out soundplusdesign.com/?p=5405
Detroit Je T’aime – a new interactive documentary
Lafayette Coney Island from Detroit je t’aime on Vimeo.
Nora Mandray (director/producer) and Hélène Bienvenu (co-producer) are part of a growing group of people who believe that Detroit, MI, is a laboratory for the city of tomorrow. They’re a duo of French filmmakers/journalists, and they’ve been working for over a year on an interactive documentary project supported by the French Film Institute. DETROIT JE T’AIME tells the story of the DIY spirit that’s leading the Motor City’s transition from the assembly line into a new collaborative economy.
DETROIT JE T’AIME is an interactive documentary that weaves together three stories of com- munity-building in the post-industrial era. It follows a group of female mechanics, an urban farmer and an activist hacker who are each working to transform Detroit into a sustainable city through small-scale DIY projects.
Here’s the interactive part:
* DETROIT JE T’AIME will be broadcasted on a website made up of a series of web pages or “screens.” Each screen will feature a video.
* When you decide you’re finished with a page, you’ll click on the next one. You’ll be taken through the documentary at your own pace.
* At anytime, a “DIY toolbox” will be available in the corner of the screen. The “DIY Toolbox” will adapt itself to the story: guidelines and tools will suggest you to start similar projects depending on what’s happening on the screen (be it a community garden, basic bike repairs, or an LED light project.)
* You’ll be able to share ideas from the film with your friends across social networks.
* Through each screen/video, you’ll have access to a different Detroit neighborhood — historic background will be provided through datavisualization, interviews and/or archival footage.
There’s also a Kickstarter page (they’re looking for funding until the end of July 2012).
And, on the short video above:
Detroit and Lafayette Coney Island has the best coney hot dogs in the world (so say Detroiters). The chili, mustard and onion topped super fast treat is a Detroit staple that simply can’t be argued with. Whether occasional delights on the way to a Red Wings, Tigers’, Lions’ game or daily food, the experience is pure Detroit. The classic style of the small Downtown space recants the Motor City glory days, the customers joke with the Yemeni cooks and the waiters do magic tricks… Mind you it’s hot!
CARTographyTO hacks Astral info pillars
Via BlogTO…
Several months in the making, CARTographyTO formed through word of mouth when the first Astral Media pillars were sunk into the sidewalk in Toronto: concerned citizens, artists and others with a creative streak came together with the desire to reclaim the lost public space in their neighbourhoods.
A spokesperson for cARTographyTO stated, “These structures are billboards masquerading as sources of useful public information. When you look at the pillars, it’s hard to find the maps, and this goes against the City’s own public space guidelines. How could City Hall allow this to happen? Beyond mere visual pollution, these pillars are a safety hazard. And Astral’s influence on our city is a public insult and embarrassment – more power has been given to those who already have the loudest voices, to the detriment of all who use these spaces.”
Love that this happened.