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In Store: Unto Caesar

The week almost escaped without getting a new instalment of In Store posted. So, if you haven’t already seen it on the In Store site, here’s the latest:

Downtown Windsor is framed by two landmarks: the Ambassador Bridge in the West, and the casino in the east. They are sights to behold, especially at night. Last week we looked at the bridge (and in fact we will return to it by way of Indian Road in a later film). So it’s only right that we now turn to the casino.

This week we follow Robin Fitzsimons as she trains to become the ultimate gambler, and then faces off against the mighty Caesars Windsor, icon of Windsor’s tourist industry.

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Caroline Woolard on how we share, organize, and create together

image courtesy of OurGoods.org/resources/ethics

This is part of an ongoing set of one-question emails sent to people we know, or would like to get to know, about things that interest us and inform our collective practice. They’ll be featured on the site weekly, usually on Fridays. These questions are more about unfolding ideas than about the people we’re asking, but we do ask those kinds of questions too.

We’re pleased to continue this project with a question for Caroline Woolard, one of the founders of two incredibly great initiatives, OurGoods.org and Trade School.

How can we not only define, but also enact, a new set of ethics and values that could transform the way we share, organize, and create?

Most people already have curiosity, enthusiasm, and strong desires to speak truth, hone a craft, produce beauty, and connect with others. So I will rephrase the question: How can we practice sharing, organizing, and creating in ways that transform ourselves, our communities, and the world? Here are some ways I do this:

 

Create online tools for collaboration and exchange!

We are only twenty years into the internet-era. We are in a beautifully experimental stage of the information revolution. Since the internet reached a critical mass in 1990, many people have been asking online platforms to foster deep connections in real time and space. At OurGoods.org, we support the production of new work through barter, because resource sharing is the paradigm of the 21st century. OurGoods is specifically dedicated to the barter of creative skills, spaces, and objects, because we want to build tools for the communities we are part of.

 

Learn from elders in sharing communities

We are in a contemporary fumbling for sharing rituals at intimate-distance. I’ve been looking to 30-year-old intentional communities and collectively-run spaces and institutions for advice. I’ve been visiting the intentional community Ganas, in NYC, to learn about the relationships they’ve built to share money, cars, houses, and work for over 30 years. At Ganas, for three decades, a voluntary daily meeting is set aside for members to talk through their personal struggles with cooperation. Members of Ganas recognize that no change will happen unless we struggle to “become the change we want to see in the world.” We are conditioned to compete, talk over, and gossip. We need more spaces to practice cooperating, listening, and working through conflict. Jen Abrams, a co-founder of OurGoods, has worked in the oldest collectively-run women and trans theater space for 13 years. She reminds me that, “you have to take time to check in with one another…emotions are not efficient… either you address your feelings together before the meeting, or you end up working through them while trying to have a meeting.”

 

Vocalize your Values

At Trade School, we asked a facilitator to help us come up with our principles. We talked about why we were each involved in Trade School New York (there are now Trade Schools in over 6 countries) and brainstormed about the things that are at the core of our work (the things that probably won’t ever be changed). After 2 hours, we made this rough set of working principles:

 

WHAT?

1. Trade School is a learning experiment where teachers barter with students.

2. Trade School is not free– we believe in the power of non-monetary value.

3. We place equal value on big ideas, practical skills, and experiential knowledge.

WHY?

1. Everyone has something to offer.

2. We are actively working to create safe spaces for people and ideas.

3. We want more spaces made by and for the people who use them.

HOW?

1. Trade School runs on mutual respect.

2. We avoid hoarding leadership by sharing responsibilities and information.

3. We are motivated by integrity, not coercion.

4. Our organization is always learning and evolving.

 

Practice forever

We recognize that bartering is a way to experiment with value. Because value is subjective, some people may not value the work that you make as much as you do. After bartering for years on OurGoods.org, we’ve come up with these basic guidelines:

 

1. Be clear: Define the exchange. Articulate what constitutes a job well-done.

2. Do your homework: Read your partner’s profile and feedback. Meet before you agree.

3. Be accountable: Do what you said you were going to do, when you said you’d do it.

4. Communicate: Stay in touch. Talk about what’s going right (or wrong) as it happens.

5. Leave feedback: This is what makes our community work.

Caroline Woolard is a Brooklyn based, post-media artist exploring civic engagement and communitarianism. Her work is collaborative and often takes the form of sculptures, websites, and workshops. Woolard is a co-founder of OurGoods.org and Trade School, two barter economies for cultural producers, and a coordinating member of SolidarityNYC, an organization that promotes grassroots economic justice.

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Two Tales of a City opens in Hamilton!

As February wrapped up, we prepared our bunting and banner components to be shipped up to Hamilton for the install. Sara and I went to Canadian Tire to buy Scotch Guard to weather-seal and water-proof the work.

We bought two different kinds, both sealed the fabric adequately after setting to dry for a few hours.

Next, we stopped off at Jodi‘s studio in The House to help her finish cutting and sewing the rest of the Helvetica text letters.

The letters are black with a backing and a layer of Heat N Bond Ultra adhesive in between, for mass and stiffness.

Jodi had mentioned that she was fortunate her surger hadn’t had any problems throughout the project. Shortly thereafter, a needle bent and we had to switch to her other machine to complete the remaining letters.

Once all materials were in one place, we counted, folded, and packaged everything up to fit neatly in this tiny little box. (Amazing!) This was sent off earlier on in the week to Hamilton Artist’s Inc so that Julie could start the install before we arrived on the 9th.

Once in Hamilton on March 9th, we headed to Hamilton Artist’s Inc to check out how the install was going. The bunting looked awesome on the front of the building!

Another shot from James Street.

Pieces of this bunting will be distributed to various individuals and organizations in the final stages of the project.

The banner along Cannon Street, an unforseen frosty wind tunnel, wasn’t fully installed yet. We helped Julie measure and install for a few hours.

The install was a lot more slow-moving than expected, mainly due to the wind.  We were able to get a few letters up before heading over to the Farmer’s Market to set up for the workshop.

This space, called the Community Kitchen, is for rent by the hour in the Hamilton Farmer’s Market.

A white board wall? Pretty awesome. Wish we had one of these on hand at all times!

The workshop began with a discussion about headline stories that the rest of the country hears about Hamilton, then we started talking about the local stories, both published and passed on orally, specific to the city and city residents.

We ran the workshop in both French and English, as we had both French and English speaking people in attendance. Julie was on-hand to help translate. I wrote attendee’s comments and answers  on board-meeting-sized sheets of paper lined up on the wall.

We then moved the conversation toward places in Hamilton, favourite places, places you avoid, places you go to speak/hear french.

Julie helped out with writing when a lot of good things were being said and I couldn’t keep up!

Everyone had a lot of good insights, as most were originally from Hamilton, or just generally curious and good observers of their city surroundings.

Stories of development for buildings previously sitting vacant in the downtown core, tales of infrastructures designed to keep people moving, failed and forgotten industries, rumours of neighbourhoods with bad reputations and stories of missed and seized opportunities were all shared.

This woman, a francophone, had a lot of insights into local francophone culture. She also told some amazing personal stories about her experiences as a francophone in Hamilton.

 

Some favourite places in Hamilton: James St N, Bibliothèque central, Musée sea beaux-arts de Hamilton, The Starlite, among others.

We then passed along a big sheet of paper and re-wrote an exquisite corpse-style history of Hamilton, in Franglais. Starting with the past, the story moved through to the present and then the future with each participant’s additions.

As the story was being passed around, we began work on our collaged maps. Using scraps of fabric, card stock, glue and sharpies, participants made artistic maps of a site, place or space in Hamilton discussed previously.

I used these strips of arrows to show one-way roads in the downtown core, namely Main St, and King St.

There were lots of fun materials and patterns to pick from.

Here a participant is adding to the Hamilton narrative while another is making their map.

Finished brainstorm sheets; What stories is Hamilton telling the country?

What are the local stories that nobody else gets to hear?

Where was the first place you visited in Hamilton?

What is your favourite place in Hamilton?

What places/things/people do you avoid in Hamilton and why?

Where can you hear people speaking French in Hamilton?

And finally, where is the heart of the city? The general consensus is that Jackson Square, the multi-use complex that hosts the Farmer’s Market, the public library and  a mall in the downtown core, is the heart of the city. Also, the monthly Art Crawls that happen the first Friday of every month were also considered to be a driving force in the city. We decided this question needed to be asked to more people, so we took it back to Hamilton Artist’s Inc to ask Art Crawl attendees.

Back at HAI, we set up a table in the lobby for Art Crawl perusers to interact and participate.

Signs in both English and French were displayed, asking Art Crawl-goers to draw us a map of the heart of the city.

With super-sized post-its and some bright coloured sharpies, we thought this activity would be fun and quick for people of all ages and abilities attending the Art Crawl.

I drew an example, a rough interpretation of Jackson Square.

Everyone was having so much fun drawing maps during the Art Crawl!

We had to leave before the night was over, but we are looking forward to having a look at these maps, and possibly including them in the forthcoming Two Tales of a City publication.

The first iteration of text of the banner on Cannon Street; NEW TALE NO EXCUSE

Watch out for more messages over the next two months! Want to participate? Fill out our Hamilton form, aussi en Français.

 

 

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In Store: OVER THE BRIDGE

Another week, another instalment of In Store by Daragh Sankey. Having these weekly videos is so great and it’s amazing to look back on all of this. So, here’s the story this week:

This week, we follow Thea Jones over the Ambassador Bridge to Detroit.

Thea had recently done a research paper about Detroit. I’m pretty sure she was drawn to the Windsor residency for the opportunity it presented to visit what has become the poster child of broken post-industrial cities. I also was fascinated by Detroit; I’m sure many of us are. Toronto, where I’m from, is sort of the opposite: a thriving, very expensive downtown, where successful information & service industries have replaced industry.

This was in contrast to Windsor residents who of course, being right across the river, are pretty used to Detroit. Its ruins are much less exotic to them. So don’t roll your eyes at the ruin porn, Windsor pals! The film doesn’t really stay there; the field trip to Heidelberg is a trip to a whole other side of Detroit-the-symbol.

Keep your eyes here: http://angryrobot.ca/instore/

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In Store: Laura of Bell Payphone Labs

The series continues… with an introduction from Daragh’s site:

There is a whole narrative to Bell Payphone Labs. Laura got into the lab coat for every installation she did, playing the role of the phone scientist. She had a little lab area in the storefronts the whole time as well, with educational posters about her department’s enterprises. I realized I had some assumptions about artists heading into this project: artists worked alone, used their own identities, and were removed from day-to-day life. Like lawyers, or dentists. But over the course of things I realized there were many artist collectives, artists who assumed different identities, and many who engaged with the world in far more interesting ways than I was expecting.

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“Reading is Necessary for Understanding the World:” Advocating for Open Access in Art & Social Practice Research

Today, I was asked by a PhD candidate in Library and Information Science at the University of Western Ontario, if and how my MLIS education has shifted or changed my view of technology.  Before entering this program, my academic research was predominately rooted in ways in which technology, digital media, and social networking can be used to preserve, organize, and most importantly, share information.  Technology certainly does have the capabilities of creating these opportunities, but entering this program has also  illuminated the strong restrictions that are placed upon digital information.

Thinking back on Justin’s thoughts Toward a New School of Art, he states, “reading is necessary for understanding the world,” and thinks about how art education must not be restricted to a traditional academic classroom setting in order to stay relevant.  Blurring these two ideas together, I also feel that art research should be viewed in a similar light.  Art education and related information literacy should be about about participation, collaboration, and especially access.

Academic research goes through a long process to be published.  The Atlantic’s recent post on the topic clearly explains the process all the way from a paper’s conception, to its publication, to its exclusive academic library access.  Open Access is one way in which scholarly research has been able to avoid this, and in turn, allow publications to receive broader readership.  Open Access refers to the practice of providing unrestricted access to peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles online.  Many of these can be found through the Directory of Open Access Journals.

As seen by programs in place both at Emily Carr University (where Karlyn is studying!) and Portland State University‘s, the field of art and social practice is emerging.  As it grows and its scholarship develops, I hope its practitioners and researchers will continue to keep art and  social practice collaborative and go down the Open Access route to keep creative engagement accessible.

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Simon Rabyniuk on the division of practice and real life

movement (time spent) Maps : part III - 1 by Cara Spooner

This is part of an ongoing set of one-question emails sent to people we know, or would like to get to know, about things that interest us and inform our collective practice. They’ll be featured on the site weekly, usually on Fridays. These questions are more about unfolding ideas than about the people we’re asking, but we do ask those kinds of questions too.

We’re pleased to continue this project with a question for SRSI and Homework alumnus and one half of the Department of Unusual Certainties, a Toronto-based research and design collective, Simon Rabyniuk.

Where does practice end and real life begin?

There is no division between practice and life. My first reading of this question situates it as something about the experience of the individual, and because of the context I’m receiving it in, something about the experience of the individual artist. Although I think it becomes a more interesting question dealt with in broader terms.

What is practice? For an individual a practice is a personal commitment to an action (i.e. the practice of active listening). I would propose that a fundamental quality of a practice is a conscious intent expressed through the process of trial, reflection, and learning; while routine may be part of one’s practice, intent keeps it from becoming route behaviour. For an artist I would propose that commitment be understood as a lifestyle of exploration in the production of material or embodied relationships. I would also propose that there is a distinction between the singular and plural use of the term. An individual can have many personal practices, while they have a professional practice.



movement (time spent) Maps : part III 5 – by Cara Spooner

 

What is real life? Life is form changing through time. Enacted on a sensing being, this change in form becomes a sequence of experiences. Organized as memories these sequences form a narrative and a sense of identity. This definition fails to articulate the social character of a human’ life. Somehow ‘real life’ is different then that. Real life is nested in the colloquial, the work/leisure/boredom cycle, desire, and responsibilities. A day in one’s real life is bisected into what you sell, and what you keep for yourself.

Real life somehow refers to artists having jobs beyond their practice as an artist. The question “Where does practice end and real life begin?” perhaps asks if when an artist’s time is not going towards making things do their practice and real life become separate things within them? Again, I would propose they do not. There are many prominent examples of artists who use their art practice to reflect on and respond to the experience of their present situation. Two examples that may represent a spectrum of approaches are Michelle Allard and Adrian Piper. Allard explores the formal constructive properties of the office supplies she uses in her day job. Piper explores the reaction raced/classed bodies produce in social spaces. One’s experience, including their real life, becomes a source to parse through in ones practice as an artist.

Simon Rabyniuk is a Toronto-based visual artist and member of Department of Unusual Certainties. His work often draws upon performance, video, drawing, and sculpture to explore cities and their systems.

He has presented work across Canada including as part of Hammering Away, Workers Arts and Heritage Centre (Hamilton), Meet us on the Commons, Art Gallery of Mississauga, 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art (Toronto), the Harbourfront Centre’s Hatch Emerging Performance Series, at Ryerson University’s Modernity Unbound Symposium, and as part of Broken City Labs’ Storefront Residency for Social Innovation(Windsor). In 2011 he recieved support from the Ontario Arts Council through their Emerging Artist Grant .

Cara Spooner has been involved in performance related projects as a dancer, choreographer, designer and curator. She has presented work at Toronto’s Nuit Blanche, XPACE Cultural Centre, The Harbourfront Centre’s HATCH Emerging Performance Project, Pleasure Dome, The Mississauga Art Gallery, The Festival of New Dance, Badass Dance Fun and Stromereien 11. caraspooner.com

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The Tales of a Timeline / Les Fables d’une Chronologie

Just  little reminder if you’re in the Hamilton area…

Vous invite à participer à : « Les Fables d’une Chronologie – L’atelier des Histoires de Hamilton »

Développé de la recherche amassée des archives et de questionnaires présentés aux habitants de Hamilton, l’atelier Les Fables d’une Chronologie engagera ces participants à créer collectivement une histoire vaste du passé, présent et future en pensant aux statuts économique, industriel, social, culturel et politique de cette ville.  Cette histoire fera partie de la publication pour Deux Contes d’une Ville, qui sera disponible à la fin de l’exposition.

L’atelier prendra place le Vendredi 9 mars 2012, à 3:30pm, dans la cuisine communautaire, au Marché Fermier d’Hamilton (35 boul. York, Hamilton). L’ouverture officielle de l’exposition aura lieu plus tard le même soir de 6:30 à 8:00pm à Hamilton Artists Inc. (155 rue James N. Hamilton).

Envoyez votre réservation à irene@hamiltonartistsinc.on.ca pour cet atelier.

 

The Tales of a Timeline: Hamilton’s Stories Workshop

Drawing from a range of archival research and post-it note surveys with residents of Hamilton, The Tales of a Timeline workshop will ask participants to collectively write a sprawling story of Hamilton’s past, present, and future through economic, industrial, social, cultural, and political lenses. This story will then be featured in the forthcoming publication as part of the Two Tales of a City project.

Join us for the workshop starting at 3:30pm at the Community Kitchen of the Hamilton Farmer’s Market (35 York Boulevard, Hamilton) on Friday, March 9th, 2012.   RSVP to irene@hamiltonartistsinc.on.ca for the workshop.

Join us for the official opening of Two Tales of a City, later on that evening, from 6:30-8pm at Hamilton Artists Inc. (155 James St. N., Hamilton).

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In Store: From Scratch

The next instalment of Daragh Sankey’s documentary on SRSI, In Store: From Scratch.

Via angryrobot.ca:

We’re going to start things off with this film that gives a little background. We follow Broken City Lab as they take possession of the storefronts, get them ready for the residencies, and discuss the location and the ideas behind the project. Plus, demon toilet and exploding painting!

So here we go. Next week: disco balls. The week after that: Detroit

Keep your eyes here: http://angryrobot.ca/instore/