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Broken City Lab in Conversation with Julian Montague at Videofag

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Friday, February 1st, 7:30pm – 187 Augusta Avenue, Toronto, Ontario

This Friday, Cristina Naccarato and Joshua Babcock of Broken City Lab will be heading to Toronto to participate in a discussion at Videofag with Julian Montague. The discussion will revolve around the repurposing of space in “North American Rustbelt Cities”. Julian will be discussing the topic from an American perspective while Joshua and Cristina will be discussing their work in Southwestern Ontario, Canada.

Julian Montague is a Bufflo-based artist whose work frequently draws upon the socio-political ecologies and aesthetics of the American Rustbelt. His acclaimed projects include ‘The Ruins of 270 Sherman Ave North’, ‘The Shopping Carts of Eastern North America’, and ‘Abandoned House Project’.​

“​Videofag is excited to be hosting these three artists in discussion on the ways in which artists cities with an abundance of space – specifically in so-called ‘North American Rustbelt’ – are innovating new functions for disused buildings/public spaces, and in the process reinventing the possibilities of neighbourhoods, community, and the artist’s role within a city. Specific examples will be drawn from BCL’s own repurposing of Windsor storefronts and empty ad space on city transit.”

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CUTMR Panel: Evolution – Design Conversations in a Collaborative City

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Justin heads to Toronto this weekend to participate in Evolution — Design Conversations in a Collaborative City on Sunday, January 27 at 1pm in the Gladstone Ballroom at the Gladstone Hotel. We were there earlier this year for Nuit Blanche, it’s going to be fun to return! Here’s the overview from the curators:

In celebration of Come Up To My Room‘s 10th year, we are asking some big questions about design in Toronto, exploring how far we have come and where we are going.

This panel discussion brings together a diverse group of designers, theorists, critics and writers, this panel will offer a unique look at the intersection between art, design, urban planning and architecture that can and should inform the basis for a collaborative city.

Panelists:
Andrea Carson Barker – Editor & Founder, View on Canadian Art
Christina Zeidler – President, Gladstone Hotel & founding co-curator of CUTMR
Justin A. Langlois – Founder, Broken City Lab
Pamila Matharu – Visual Artist, Arts Educator, and Cultural Producer & founding co-curator of CUTMR
Zahra Ebrahim – Principal & Founder, archiTEXT

Come Up To My Room (CUTMR) is the Gladstone Hotel’s annual alternative design event. CUTMR invites artists and designers to show us what goes on inside their heads. Coming together in dialogue and collaboration, participants are limited only by their imaginations, making CUTMR one of the most exciting shows in Toronto.

As this is an important anniversary for this ever-expanding show, the tenth installment will emphasize the idea that formed the basis for the very first CUTMR — occupying and altering a space in a dramatic, conceptual, or experimental way.

Founding curators Christina Zeidler and Pamila Matharu return this year and are joined by Noa Bronstein and David Dick-Agnew.

 

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Border Cultures: Part One (homes, land)

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With artists Broken City Lab (Canada), Campus in Camps (Palestine), Iftikhar and Elizabeth Dadi (Pakistan/USA), Willie Doherty (Ireland), Marcos Ramirez Erre(Mexico/USA), Sanaz Mazinani (Canada), Christopher McNamara (Canada/USA), Dylan Miner (USA/Canada), Ed Pien (Canada), Leila Sujir/Maria Lantin (Canada)

Border Cultures is a three-part annual exhibition that brings together regional, national and international artists to examine the complex and shifting notions of national boundaries. It is an exhibition-in-progress, conceptualized as a research-based platform for artists and cultural producers to explore and examine the border through different lenses. Border Cultures: Part One (homes, land) will be followed by Part Two (work, labour) in 2014 and Part Three (security, surveillance) in 2015. In this exhibition artists reimagine the pattern of crisscrossing national boundaries as way to engage in dialogues and share knowledge. With a goal to mobilize and connect the ongoing critical dialogues on national boundaries in Windsor with diverse narratives and experiences of border contexts in different parts of the world.

The exhibition opens on Friday, January 25 at 7pm at the Art Gallery of Windsor.

Highlights of this exhibition include the Canadian premier of early black and white photographic works by Irish artist Willie Doherty shot in the contested city of Derry, Postcards from the Edge of the Tijuana and San Diego border by Marcos Ramirez Erre, an exchange of best-friend lockets between Detroit and Windsor and a mobile print lab by Métis artist Dylan Miner in collaboration with youth from the Turtle Island Education Centre, Windsor, and much more. The exhibition is curated by Srimoyee Mitra.

Also, our friends…

The Border Bookmobile Public Archive and Reading Room
Organized by Lee Rodney in collaboration with Mike Marcon

This project aims to reposition local history within the context of international borders, chronicling the shifting relationship between the two communities as post-9/11 border policies continue to drive a wedge between them. Over the past three years, the Border Bookmobile traveled throughout Windsor and Detroit as a mobile exhibition and discussion platform and cross-border community archive of books, artist projects, photographs, videos, maps and ephemera about the urban history of Windsor-Detroit and border regions in other parts of the world. At the AGW, the Border Bookmobile will host a series of discussions and workshops with the goal of collecting, organizing and synthesizing knowledge about this border region to contextualize globally, and chronicle, locally, the changing perceptions of the border.

And…

March 8-10, Diversions: Detroit-Windsor Conversations on Borders, Traffic and Circulation, An Experiential Symposium.
Organized by the Art Gallery of Windsor, IN/TERMINUS: Media, Art, and Urban Ecologies (University of Windsor), The Border Bookmobile (Windsor-Detroit) and the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada (McGill University).
Panellists include artists Marcos Ramirez Erre, Dylan Miner and Christopher McNamara as well as theorists Will Straw, (McGill University) and Janine Marchessault (York University). FREE admission

March 9, 12-1pm, Curator’s tour of Border Cultures: Part One (homes, land)
FREE admission

March 15, 2-4pm: Connections and Disconnections in the Windsor-Detroit Area This is a one day workshop run by Broken City Lab and ArtsCorpsDetroit to arrange an exchange for people without passports in Windsor-Detroit area.
FREE admission

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Call for Participation: Regret & Resolve

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With the start of the new year, we wanted to take stock of the regrets we have about the city or our roles within it, and the resolutions we might make to change this place for the better.

We want to ask two questions: What are the things that we know we should be doing, or wished we would do, or find ourselves scared to do, but never get around to actually doing? How can we take responsibility or ownership over our actions, or lack thereof, and find a way to be honest with where we should go next?

We’re wondering what citizenship looks like in a city like Windsor, and how we might be able to publicly and honestly articulate it.

Regret & Resolve  is a new project where we’ll be turning a series of resolutions and regrets into t-shirts. We’ll take online submissions from residents of Windsor and create a limited edition series of 50 shirts. Each selected submission will be made into two shirts — one for the author and one for our gallery exhibition. We’ll release all the shirts on the same night (January 31st) with an exhibition and exchange at Civic Space that will be open to the public.

We want these shirts to capture a moment of tension and hope in the city as we know it today and hope for it to be tomorrow. We feel like there may not be a venue to collectively articulate the responsibilities shared across this city, and that a t-shirt might be a good place to start. Printing these regrets and resolutions on t-shirts allows for a distributed conversation, a series of positions that we might take at the beginning of a new year, and a way to publicly talk about what we’ll do next. We’re really interested in an honest assessment of the things gone wrong, and the ways in which we might commit to righting them.

Interested? Fill out an online form between January 7-25, 2013 with your statement of regret or resolution. We’ll select 50 submissions and print them for the opening at Civic Space on January 31st from 7-9pm.

Submissions are now closed, see you on January 31 at 7pm!

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New Workshop Series Starting in January: Building Electronics / Designing Originally

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Starting on January 15, 2013, we’ll be offering a new workshop series for anyone and everyone interested in learning about electronics and  physical computing.

Hosted by Paul Anderson — a man of too many hobbies who holds the advanced qualification for ham radio in Canada, and has been working with electronics on and off since childhood — the workshops will offer a basic introduction to skill sets and then move into building a number of small projects together.

The first workshop will be covering the basic theory. Ohm’s Law, how current flows in a wire, what resistors are, how transistors and diodes work, etc.

With the second workshop, we’ll start playing with the Atari Punk Console circuit. We’ll start with a schematic, and build it using breadboards and experimenting. Eventually we’ll solder them together so they’re ready to be put in a project box.

The workshops are free and open to the public, but registration is required by January 9. Please use the form below to sign up.

We’re also working to get a hold of 10 electronics kits to play with over the course of the workshops — but these will be limited, so register ASAP!

Sorry, registration is currently on hold as we’ve filled up our available spots sooner than we thought! We’re going to see if we can expand them, in the meantime, please get in touch if you’re interested in attending.

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Skills For Good(s): The Tortilla Workshop

How to make traditional style corn tortillas with Arturo Herrera

December 11th, 2012 at 7pm at Civic Space 

Windsor based artist, Arturo Herrera will show us how to make traditional corn tortillas from scratch with fresh ingredients on a skillet. Herrera finds inspiration in corn tortillas and it is one of his favourites foods from his childhood upbringingin Honduras. He not only eats the corn tortillas,but also uses them as canvases in his own artistic practice.

This will be the last Skills for Good(s) before the Holidays, so come out and join us for a festive cooking extravaganza!

Class Barter Item: An item that is related to Canada or being Canadian.

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Zine Night End-Of-The-Year Party with RIOT GRRRL Tuesdays!

Zine Nights will be slowing down for  holidays with a very awesome end-of-the-year wrap up party in collaboration with Riot GRRL Tuesdays, a monthly feminist collective hosted by 99.1 fm’s  Milk and Vodka.

Our next and last zine night will be held on Tuesday, December 18th, at Phog Lounge. Beginning at around 9pm, we’ll begin working together on a publication where we’ll ask contributors “What is your feminist new year’s resolution?”

Come and take part in our last publication of the year and celebrate with some new friends, beer and perhaps poutine!

Zine Nights will begin again regularly on Wednesday January 9th, 2013 !!

 

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Justice at Work: An Alternative to the Alternative

Where: Room G110, Windsor Law

Presented by: Danielle Sabelli (Windsor Law Student) and Justin Langlois (Assistant Professor, University of Windsor)

This workshop seeks to reimagine a range of potential, unlikely, and imaginative careers. Members of Broken City Lab will help facilitate an exercise in exploring and unfolding the ways in which the knowledge and practice of law might be applied to new settings, situations, and social realities. Are there legal careers yet to be defined or is there a need to forget the ideas of a law office, court system, and legislative boundaries all together? Join us for an engaging and challenging discussion towards articulating an alternative to the alternative.

Danielle and Justin are co-founders of Broken City Lab, an artist-led interdisciplinary creative research collective and non-profit organization working to explore and unfold curiosities around locality, infrastructures, and creative practice leading towards civic change.

More information: jaw2012.wordpress.com

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Cross-plotted: Detroit to Windsor Exhibition Opens November 9th

Cross-plotted: Detroit to Windsor is an exhibition by a group of Master of Architecture students at the University of Michigan. The group is formulated around a research practice that investigates the unfolding circumstances of the city through full-scale-work: making is used as a means to reveal, critique, and alter the realities of our urban settings. The exhibition focuses on specific plots of land in Detroit by exploring their material and atmospheric conditions as well as their immaterial regulations, degrees of neglect, and idiosyncrasies. The capsules work to re-frame materials from the plots in Detroit within their displaced context in Windsor.

The group is collaborating with the artist-led interdisciplinary collective Broken City Lab, as well as the Creative Rights legal team. The attitudes and research practices developed for this work will inform a yearlong thesis studio.

The exhibit opens November 9th at 7pm at Broken City Lab’s Civic Space: 411 Pelissier Street in downtown Windsor.

Exhibitors:

John Guinn

Tony Killian

Anastasia Kostrominova

Emily Kutil

Sarah Nowaczyk

Harry Solie

Grant Weaver

Andrew Wolking

Ning Zhou

Professor: Catie Newell