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Some things you should do this week (and next): Art, Lectures, & Funding Workshops

photo courtesy of Windsorite.ca

Thankfully, Owen over at Windsorite.ca grabbed a shot of this (above, our work, AS OF 2011.09.21, WE ARE ALIVE & WELL.), since we still need to schedule a plane ride to get some photos of our own — above, you can see a shot of our work as part of this year’s Windsor Biennial at the Art Gallery of Windsor.

Speaking of the Biennial, there’s an opening this Friday, and it promises to be a huge party with all of Windsor and Detroit’s finest. It starts at 7pm with a curator’s talk with food, drinks, and music running until 10pm.

If you’re looking for something to do ahead of the Biennial opening, you might consider checking out Interminus‘ first guest speaker as part of this year’s lecture series. Dr. Will Straw will be giving a talk on Culture and the Urban Night at Rino’s Kitchen starting at 4:30pm.

And, finally, next week, if you’re in Windsor (or just heading here to attend Homework), we can recommend you check out some FREE Grant Information Sessions on Thursday, October 20th from 6:30pm-9pm at the Art Gallery of Windsor hosted by the Ontario Arts Council‘s own (and our very favourite grant officers), Lisa Wöhrle, Associate Visual Art and Crafts Officer; Loree Lawrence, Community and Multidisciplinary Arts Officer; and Mark Haslam, Media Arts Officer. If you want to attend, RSVP to Martina Roncarelli, Program Assistant, mroncarelli@arts.on.ca, 416-969-7417 or toll-free in Ontario, 1-800-387‑0058, ext. 7417.

Hope to see you around!

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How to Forget the Border Completely, submitted for print!

Months of work and research culminated in a 3am submission to Blurb to print our How to Forget the Border Completely publication. It’s about 150 pages long. I’m really happy with this, and I can’t wait to get it back in print. Above, a screenshot of some of the pages in the PDF.

In terms of distributing the content, it’s now really difficult to imagine parting it from this kind of collected format. We’ll offer the book for sale through Blurb, but maybe a PDF as well? Hard to say, it’s 70mb, a bit of an unruly download I suppose. The version I ordered was excessively expensive, but it seemed only fitting to get at least a few copies with a nice image wrap, matte pages, and no Blurb logo.

Anyways, huge thanks to my BCL colleagues and the always generous Lee Rodney and Tom Provost for working with us on this. On a side note, the more I work with InDesign, the more I love it.

It’s election day in Ontario, you should vote.

How to Forget the Border Completely is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.

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Defiance: Disobedient Design Panel Discussion

Next week, I’ll be heading over to Detroit to join a panel discussion hosted by rogueHAA entitled, Defiance: Obedient Design. They’ve been doing a lot of great programming over the last year or so, and here’s some more information:

As part of the Detroit Design Festival presented by the Detroit Creative Corridor Center, rogueHAA is pleased to announce the third event in its 2011/2012 series: PROVOCATIONS: Challenging Detroit’s Design Discourse. This bi-monthly lecture series began in June and will continue through the end of 2012.  Each panel discussion will invite local, regional, and national figures to discuss what makes Detroit provocative.  Set in a variety of under-utilized, contested, and historically charged spaces throughout our city, each event seeks to challenge the participants through candid discourse and direct engagement of the built environment.  It is the aim of each panel discussion to explore new urban strategies that promote social equity and advocacy.  We believe good design (and good design discourse) is a proactive and critical act, toeing the line between conflict and resolution.  While each event exists for only a moment, the entire series will provide a lasting catalogue of constructive dialogue, informing Detroit’s shared creative consciousness.

Event 03 DEFIANCE : Disobedient Design.

I’m quite excited to participate, if you’re in the neighbourhood, check it out on Tuesday, September 27th from 6-9pm, 2690 Wight Street.

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Panel Discussion: Intervention: Contemporary Artists in the Urban Space

If you’re in Kitchener on Saturday (or just needed an excuse to check out CAFKA.11), you should consider attending this panel discussion.

Alongside Pedro Reyes and Lucy Howe, I’ll be discussing the installation at CAFKA and BCL’s practice in general in the context of urban interventions.

The details: Saturday, September 24, 2011, 10:30am-12:30pm @ The Museum (10 King Street West, Kitchener)

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CAKFA.11: Reflect on Here

Reflect on Here, text installation at CAFKA by Broken City Lab

Reflect on Here, text installation at CAFKA by Broken City Lab

After months and months of work, we finally installed our project for CAFKA.11. Led by Josh, Hiba, Kevin, and myself, the project took an incredible amount of research and build time, but we were incredibly excited to see our efforts finally in place in front of Kitchener’s City Hall when we wrapped up the installation last night.

Reflect on Here calls on passersby to think on the infrastructure of the city, the attempt to create place with architecture, and the materiality of the text itself. This project was made possible with the generous support from the Ontario Arts Council‘s Exhibition Assistance Program and the incredible team at CAFKA.

Continue reading “CAKFA.11: Reflect on Here”

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Installing at Forest City Gallery

We spent the weekend in London, Ontario. We were installing for our upcoming exhibition at Forest City Gallery, while also briefly wondering about what it would be like to not do site specific work. Anyways, you should plan to come to the opening on September 9th!

We’re working on an installation using our “…and then the city” framework for exploring and unfolding the layers of narrative that go into shaping a place. We’ve pulled together some historical overviews of London, but have really enjoyed using an online questionnaire to hear about some of the narratives on the ground here. Huge thanks to Forest City Gallery and London Fuse for helping to spread the word. All of the answers have fed into the installation in some way, so it’s been a really effective way to get to some of the overarching stories about this city.

The show will run until October 21, 2011, and, in the meantime, what’s more fun than a peak of the install process?

Continue reading “Installing at Forest City Gallery”

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Homework: Conference Schedule & Presenters

After a long wait, we’re very excited to announce the (working) schedule for our upcoming conference, Homework: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices! We’ll be updating this page with information regarding the venues shortly.

Please note that the following is subject to change, but this is what we’re planning so far:

DAY 1: October 21, 2011 at the Art Gallery of Windsor

Introducing Homework: 9am

with Justin A. Langlois, Research Director, Broken City Lab.

Panel #1: Education: 9:30am

Unpacking the artist’s role in education and beyond educational institutions, what art education does and could look like, the changing roles of student and educator, and the dissemination of knowledge through creative praxis.

Heather Davis
Stephanie Springgay
Amber Yared
Elizabeth Underhill & Stacey Sproule

Panel #2: Collaboration: 11am

Examining resistance through collaboration, models for processes and participation, collaborative possibilities across disciplines, and collaborations with communities.

Yael Filipovic
Tim Maly
Markuz Wernli Saito
Labspace Studio
Susan Gold

Panel #3: Artist-Run Infrastructure: 1:30pm

Looking at existing infrastructures accidentally and intentionally support alternative practices, borders creating opportunities and crises, role of artist-run centres as a counter infrastructures, and the motives for working creatively between infrastructures.

Sarah Margolis-Pineo
Anthea Black
Anna Lise Jensen 

Panel #4: Cities & Space: 3:00pm

Unfolding spatial pockets of everyday life, the in-betweeness of cities and engagement, uses and misuses of public spaces, the ways in which we understand place, and open-ended landscapes.

Megan Mericle
Ryan Legassicke
Catherine Campbell
Ellyn Walker
Burcu Yigit Turan
Dannys Montes de Oca

Panel #5: Collaboration at Work: 4:30pm

Featuring all Homework artists-in-residence discussing their work together over the course of the four-day residency.

Andrea Carvalho
Brennan Broome and Chloé Womack
Brett Randall Jones & Jack Forinash
Charlie Michaels
Department of Unusual Certainties
Zoe Kreye
Elliott Jocic
Immony Men
Laura Leif
Lea Bucknell
Megan Deal
Nick Tobier Ann
Rodrigo Marti
spmb
Roving Studio

Special Parallel Projects: Ongoing

Amber Landgraff – Revolting Dance Party (see info below)
Allison Rowe & Nancy Nowacek – Crouch, Touch, Engage

Keynote Panel Discussion: 7:00pm at the Art Gallery of Windsor

More details are available on our Keynote Page.

Gregory Sholette
Temporary Services
Marisa Jahn

Revolting Dance Party with Amber Landgraff: 10pm at Villain’s Beastro

The Revolting Dance Party is an ongoing project, based on Group Material’s project of  the same name, that engages with music that is focused on social and political issues. Amber Landgraff DJs the event using songs shared on sites like Youtube in order to bring social media as an act of activism back from the imaginary space of the Internet and into a physical community space.

DAY 2: October 22, 2011 at the Art Gallery of Windsor

Publication Plans: Saturday am

Homework is a four-day residency, two-day conference, and collaboratively written publication, and as such, we will utilize the morning of Day 2 to start generating content for our book, together. Details about times and locations to participate in this process will be forthcoming. However, as you already know, simply by attending, you have the opportunity to participate in the creation of this book. More soon.

Group Work: 12pm-5:00pm

Large discussion groups led by each keynote to delve into further detail around the issues being addressed throughout Homework. These Group Work sessions will address the following:

How do we support or invent the practices that are needed to respond to the economic, social, and political realities of today? How might we find solutions, inspirations, and models for a way forward through new schools, new byproducts, new practices, and new infrastructures, leading us toward a critical and novel way of integrating art with everyday life.

Group Work #1: Marisa Jahn: 12pm
Practices that embed themselves in existing infrastructures.

Group Work #2: Temporary Services: 1:30pm
Practices that invent infrastructures and infrastructural services.

Group Work #3: Gregory Sholette: 3pm
Practices that collectivize against and alongside new, old, and unimagined infrastructures.

Closing Remarks: 5pm

with Broken City Lab.

Accommodations

Group Rates

We have secured a group rate for anyone attending Homework to stay at one of three hotels in Windsor’s downtown core. If you book the room, please note that you would like the Broken City Lab Homework Conference rate. This group rate is only valid until September 19th, 2011.

Hilton Windsor: $115 per room, per night, $11 self parking per car, per night or $21 valet parking per car, per night.

Windsor Riverside Inn (formerly the Radisson): $105 per room, per night, $10 self parking per car, per night.

Travelodge Hotel: $89 per room, per night, $10 self parking per car, per night.

Homework: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council, the University of Windsor’s School of Visual Arts, and our community partner the Art Gallery of Windsor.

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A Set of Informal Questions about London, Ontario

We want to know about London, Ontario.

We’re doing an exhibition at Forest City Gallery, opening in September, and we’re looking into the wide range of narratives that go into constructing a place — the architecture, the headlines, the people, the memories, the relationships, the rumours — and we’re hoping you can help us out.

Whether you’re a longtime resident,  someone who just moved in, or even if you’ve only ever visited London, Ontario, we want to hear about it all.

So, just fill out the form below, tell us some stories, and we’ll work with all of this for our exhibition.

Continue reading “A Set of Informal Questions about London, Ontario”