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Book Launch: The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit

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Book Launch: The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit

FRIDAY MARCH 15, 7:30 PM

Broken City Lab’s Civic Space, 411 Pelisser Street, Windsor

Please join us for the Canadian book launch of Andrew Herscher’s Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit at Broken City Lab’s Civic Space. Rather than seeing Detroit as an urban problem that needs to be solved, Andrew Herscher suggests that we regard Detroit as a “novel urban formation” and a site “where new ways of imagining, inhabiting, and constructing the contemporary city are being invented, tested, and advanced.” Andrew Herscher is a writer and theorist whose work considers architectural and urban forms of political violence; his research has focused on locations as seemingly disparate as the Former Yugoslavia and more recently, Detroit. He teaches at the University of Michigan where he is cross appointed between the School of Architecture and Slavic Languages and Literatures. Between 2005 – 2009 he chaired the Rackham Interdisciplinary Seminar on Human Rights.

A discussion between Andrew Herscher, Grant Yocom (Lecturer in Philosophy, Oakland University) and Justin Langlois (Director, Broken City Lab) will take place on critical responses to urban crisis in this region and others.

This event is organized by Lee Rodney of the Windsor-Detroit Border Bookmobile and co-hosted by IN/TERMINUS: Media, Art, and Urban Ecologies.

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March 15th: Undocumented: A workshop for those without papers in Windsor and Detroit

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Undocumented: A workshop for those without papers in Windsor and Detroit

FRIDAY MARCH 15: 3 – 5 PM

Art Gallery of Windsor, Border Bookmobile Public Archive and Reading Room, Gallery C, 2nd floor

While it is often presumed that the Windsor-Detroit border is relatively easy to cross, many residents have been unable to visit their neighboring city since strict passport regulations came into effect in 2009. This workshop will be co-hosted with Windsor’s Broken City Lab and the Interminus Research Group to examine the uneven access to passports that impacts both new immigrants and lower income groups in Windsor and Detroit. As both cities have high unemployment rates, significant numbers of residents are unable to visit the other side. This planning workshop will bring together local organizations to work toward assisting passport applications for marginalized groups on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, with the ultimate goal of facilitating a small number of day trips for these new passport holders in 2014. The project will begin during this workshop and will continue over the next year. This is a research based project that will be documented at all stages to outline the significant challenges and hurdles faced by many residents of these border cities.

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Diversions: Detroit-Windsor Conversations on Borders, Traffic and Circulation

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AGW Symposium

March 8-9
Diversions: Detroit-Windsor Conversations on Borders, Traffic and Circulation

Windsor’s urban character has been closely tied to Detroit’s rise and fall. This symposium seeks to change the conversation about borders in the Windsor-Detroit region through inviting prominent artists and researchers to consider the obstacles and mobilities that have emerged in this urban locale.

Friday, March 8, 10:00 am – 5 pm

10am – 10.30 am : Opening Remarks by Catharine Mastin, Director, Art Gallery of Windsor, followed by conference organizers.

10:30 am – 12 pm: Spheres of Circulation
Moderator: Srimoyee Mitra, Curator of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Windsor
Panelists: David J. Taylor, Ali Kazimi, Richard Fung and Natalie Casemajor Loustau

1 pm – 3 pm: Bordered Spaces
Moderator: Lee Rodney, Associate Professor, Media Art Histories & Visual Culture, Director Border Bookmobile Project
Panelists: Janine Marchessult, Justin Langlois, Phil Hofmann and Marcos Ramirez ERRE

3:30 pm – 5 pm: Imagined Geographies
Moderator: Michael Darroch, Assistant Professor, Media Art Histories & Visual Cultures, Director of Interminus Research Group
Panelists: Christopher McNamara, Will Straw, Louis Jacob and Anouk Belanger

Admission to these panel discussions is FREE!

Saturday, March 9 11 am – 5 pm:
Exhibition Tours and Detroit Bus Tour

11 am – 12 pm: Exhibition Tours
Join Srimoyee Mitra for a tour of Border Cultures: Part One (homes, land) and Lee Rodney for a tour of The Border Bookmobile Public Archive and Reading Room. Admission is FREE!

Afternoon: Detroit Bus Tour with Dylan Miner (seats are limited)
Dylan AT Miner is a border-crossing artist, activist, historian, curator and professor.
Admission is $5 for the bus tour; email Nicole McCabe nmccabe@agw.ca for more information.

Complete information on the Diversions Program is available at: http://www.agw.ca/event/583

Art Gallery of Windsor
401 Riverside Drive West
www.agw.ca

 

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In Store: The Border

Another instalment of In Store, featuring Lee Rodney discussing her Border Bookmobile project, in the multi-part documentary that our exceptionally talented friend, Daragh Sankey, has been putting together. Here’s his notes on the latest:

Ed. note: Hey, it’s been a while! I did a lot of overtime and also a freelance job and had to prioritize all that cash money work over this project, but I’ve managed to get one more done. This one is about Lee Rodney and her project the Border Bookmobile. There will be two more films after this: one is a mild recut of an earlier short I did, about Andrea Carvalho. The other concerns Leesa Bringas’ Postcards To Indian Road. I have another film coming, about Broken City Lab itself, but it has ballooned in scope and length to encompass events outside of the SRSI residency, so I don’t know if it belongs as part of this series of films. Besides, who knows how long it will take me to finish!

Lee Rodney’s reputation preceded her. She’s a professor at the University of Windsor, and some of the residents of SRSI and Broken City Lab members had been her students, and spoke very highly of her. Sure enough, there were many fascinating things to document during her stay: the bookmobile itself, the tour of Windsor’s forgotten neighbourhoods, and many fascinating conversations, including the one with Justin that forms the backbone of this film.

There are a number of borders crossing through this film. One is the border between Detroit and Windsor, that divides what in many ways should be considered one city. Another is the border between city and suburb. Also there is the border you see in the final shot. Nature borders the city, but not only at the outside edge. It has a way of creeping back in.

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Borderlands Symposium: University of Maine

Next week, I’ll be headed to the University of Maine at Farmington to present at the Borderlands Symposium, assembled by our friends, TUG Collective. Here’s the brief on the symposium:

A series of talks, workshops, performances, and films that will illuminate some of the social, economic, political and ecological nuances along North America’s borders, and catalyze our attention to how various individuals, either acting alone or collaboratively, are actively creating transnational communities in which “our destinies and aspirations are in one another’s hands.”

Along with Lee Rodney, curator of the Border Bookmobile and border research extraordinaire, I’ll also be initiating a new project idea based on the legends of Paul Bunyan. It sounds absurd, yes, but so are the border realities that we face. The legends around Bunyan are such that there’s plenty of room to initiate a new conversation around the histories of the North American border – -Bunyan becomes a tool, a lens for exploring a series of histories and geographies.

We are proposing to read between the lines of these histories to see the changing representations of Mr. Bunyan and to propose other stories of how we might re-view him in the 21st century: could he be considered among the early architects of NAFTA ? A subversive border crosser, roaming freely through the Northern territories between Canada and the US ?

Those questions are tied to a number of workshops and group discussions we’ll be giving along with a panel discussion with the always incredible Riccardo Dominguez and Dan Millis.

I’m anxious to share some of our ongoing How to Forget the Border Completely research, it’s going to be a fun three days.

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Anxious to Explore the Border Bookmobile’s Winter Reading Room

I stopped by the Ecohouse today (where our collective studio is housed) to check out one of our new neighbours — The Border Bookmobile Winter Reading Room. Collected and curated by Border Bookmobile founder, Lee Rodney, the books assembled as part of the winter reading room are going to be incredible helpful for our upcoming How to Forget the Border Completely research project.

I did a quick tour of the collection, though I anticipate that we’ll all be getting a lot better acquainted in the coming weeks.

Continue reading “Anxious to Explore the Border Bookmobile’s Winter Reading Room”