Last night Danielle and I went to the downtown Transit Windsor terminal to install the first five test panels we had printed for Text In-Transit. The panels read: everything is possible, YOU MADE MY DAY, YOU ARE THE CITY, YOU CHANGED EVERYTHING, and changing the world starts by changing this city. We had to install these panels while the buses momentarily stopped at the terminal, so it was pretty quick. When we install the rest of the panels later this month, we’ll do it at the garage.
Broken City Lab office hours on Tuesday, March 31st, at 7pm, LeBel, room 125. You are invited! There is lots on the table, as it may be official that spring is here. If anyone has anything they want on the agenda, feel free to add it in the comments!
I picked up five test panels on Friday from the printers and got a test shot of them installed on the buses. These first five panels were made up internally at BCL (we still haven’t had the chance to start going through all the submissions yet). I’ll be going back to the downtown terminal this evening to actually install the five test panels on a couple of buses, so keep an eye out for them over the next week.
I’ll post some more photos of the panels installed tomorrow.
Broken City Lab office hours on Tuesday, March 24, at 7pm, LeBel, room 125. We’ll be working on plans for the community garden project, some guerilla gardening things, and likely going through some of the Text In-Transit submissions! If anyone has anything else they want on the agenda, feel free to add it in the comments!
SCAVENGE THE CITY: An Algorithmic Walk with Broken City Lab is happening on Sunday, March 29th at 6pm. Starting at Phog Lounge, we’ll be handing out a custom algorithm (a set of instructions), using a fancy computer program that we write, to take you and whomever you want to walk with, around the downtownish area of Windsor to discover, uncover, note, photograph, and invent.
This isn’t a traditional scavenger hunt—we won’t be placing anything around the city for you to find—instead, the instructions will ask you to do specific things in less specific places, to try to encourage not just experiencing new places, but experience them in new ways.
The walk should wrap up by 10pm and then back at Phog we’ll share stories, videos, photographs, drawings, etc, of our adventures. Whether you’ve already come out to one of the previous hugely successful walking themed events in Windsor (Big Walk, or the Spacing Walk) or haven’t taken a stroll downtown in years, we would love to have you share on this adventure with us!!!
Today is the 1 year anniversary of the conversation I had with Danielle that sparked the idea for Broken City Lab. We had just finished eating dinner, I was doing the dishes, and we were talking about what protest means today, and how to move beyond protest towards social change. Right after the conversation, I wrote a one-page description of what a concentrated effort to change things in the city incrementally through artistic practice might look like and titled it Broken City Lab.
It wasn’t until later on in the summer last year that a few of us got together as Broken City Lab, and we started to carve out, rewrite, rethink, and actually do the things that has made BCL what it is now. I just wanted to make a little note, even just for myself, about what was happening a year ago and what we’ve done since then.
So, as an anniversary gift to you, here are some interesting things I’ve read and seen recently:
Detroit House: $100. Bold New Ideas for the City: Priceless.
Christian Robert-Tissot’s Nature Morte (via vvork)
In Hard Times, Public Places are More Important Than Ever
Happy March 19th!
We got up early and headed down to the EC Row pedestrian overpass between the Dominion and Huron Church exits to install YOU ARE AMAZING! It’s hard to describe what it felt like to do this—taking on this project gave us all a genuine excitement about participating in changing a part of Windsor and the way we interact with it, even if it’s just for a moment. Windsor needs a lot of things, but I think maybe most importantly, it needs a little encouragement.
There was a lot of great documentation, with many photos after the jump, and a video on the way.
Finally installed this morning above EC Row in Windsor, Ontario—YOU ARE AMAZING!
Courtesy of the always brilliant Steven …
There’s now a new submission form that allows you to get a quick preview of what your Text In-Transit panel could look like, along with a fun little colour swatch. If you’ve already submitted, it’s worth submitting more just to try this out, and if you haven’t submitted yet—get on it!!!
Check out the NEW Text In-Transit Call for Submissions page!
Or if you’re more comfortable with an old fashioned email, that’s still fine too.
It’s been a busy last week, getting back from Victoria, and launching the Text In-Transit Call For Submissions, but we still had time to meet for our weekly Office Hours and continue working with the Massey Physics Club. Our adventures in paper making for an upcoming planters project we have in mind, and in learning more high school physics and math are after the jump.