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AGW’s Border Cultures: Part One (homes, land) Exhibition Wins OAAG Award

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Earlier this year, we were part of an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Windsor called Border Cultures: Part One (homes, land). This exhibition, curated by Srimoyee Mitra (Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Windsor) and featuring works from an international roster of artists, also featured a project we made called Together Forever / Never Apart. The project used the icon of childhood friendship lockets to comment on the complex and often disconnected relationship Windsor and Detroit have with one another. One half of the laser cut and etched acrylic locket was installed on Pelissier Street in Windsor, Ontario, while the second half was installed on Gratiot Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. For the exhibition, we mounted another copy of the broken heart along with documentation from the install in Windsor and Detroit.

We just recently found out that the exhibition received an Exhibition of the Year Award from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries (OAAG)! Huge thanks to all the artists involved, the Art Gallery of Windsor, and Srimoyee Mitra for curating the exhibition.

Participating artists: Broken City Lab (Canada), Campus in Camps (Palestine), Iftikhar and Elizabeth Dadi (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)

Together Forever, Never Apart (2013)

Together Forever / Never Apart (2013) – mounted on Pelissier Street in Windsor, Ontario.

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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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Join us on March 16 for ‘Tell: Detroit’ at the Detroit Mercantile Co.

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In poker, a “tell” is a change in a player’s behavior that gives clues about their assessment of the situation. In the city of Detroit, such clues from residents about the deal they have been dealt are often ignored and misrepresented. Tell: Detroit brings together a group of documentary film makers and Detroit residents to create a collaborative documentation of urban resilience. Tell your anecdote about vulnerability, solidarity, community, or courage.

Saturday 16 March, 10am – 4pm
at Detroit Mercantile Co.
3434 Russell Street Eastern Market Detroit, Michigan

Download Flyer / Join Facebook Event!

Tell: Detroit brings together a group of documentary film makers and Detroit residents to create a collaborative documentary of urban resilience.

Tell: Detroit will produce an open access, free archive to document the experiences of the people of Detroit following the declaration of the city’s fiscal emergency by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder on 1 March, 2013.

Anyone can contribute an anecdote to Tell: Detroit. We want to collect and disseminate short stories about vulnerability, solidarity, community, and courage. We are committed to documenting the neglected reality that Detroit is much more than a financial crisis. Tell: Detroit asks what else we need to know, remember, imagine or construct to accumulate different images of the city together?

Tell: Detroit will be filming at the Detroit Mercantile Co. on Saturday, March 16, from 10am – 4pm. Artists, film makers and community activists will greet you and find the right setting for your story. We can record your anecdote in public, in private, on video or audio. Come share your story and be part of this open archive.

For questions, suggestions, or donations, email:
info@improbableporomechanics.org

Because Tell: Detroit is a crowd-sourced archive, we are relying on people to contribute by spreading the word – so, please tell anyone you think would be interested in sharing their stories.

Thanks, and see you at the Detroit Mercantile Co. soon!

Tell: Detroit is sponsored by:
Institute of Improbable Poromechanics—Enthusiasts of Urban Leakage (Detroit)
Broken City Lab—Artist Collective & Civic Space (Windsor) 
SCAPEGOAT—A Journal of Architecture, Landscape, and Political Economy (Toronto)

with Producers:
Paige Sarlin (The Last Slide Projector, Buffalo)
Alessandra Renzi (Infrastructure Critical, Milwaukee)
Stephen Zacks (Flint Public Art Project, Flint)
Scott Sørli (Convenience: gallery, Toronto)
Andrew Herscher (Detroit Unreal Estate Agency, Detroit)

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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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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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1W3KND RESIDENCY: Irene Chin & Megan Marin

Coming in on Mondays after a 1W3KND residency is pretty much the best way to start the week. Above, a beautiful little booklet created by Irene Chin and Megan Marin.

It looks at a number of projects that at a range of tactics and actions: Echo, Rhythm, and volume.

Can’t wait to see where this comes together as the residencies go on — maybe we should get a PDF up here in the meantime?

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More Laser Cuts ordered

We’ve played with Ponoko before, laser cutting some acrylic for a mould, and the results were great. We’re now sending off another couple of files for an upcoming project.

We’ll be cutting on mirrored acrylic .. and

… aluminum.

Ordered and locked! Should arrived in a few weeks.

 

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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

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Upcoming HRG Talk: GINA REICHERT & MITCH COPE of Detroit’s Powerhouse Productions

Image courtesy of http://www.powerhouseproject.com/

The University of Windsor’s Humanities Research Group 2012-2013 DISTINGUISHED SPEAKERS SERIES presents GINA REICHERT & MITCH COPE of Power House Productions / Design 99.

“Too Much of a Good Thing”

Mitch and Gina will discuss work initiated in their Detroit neighborhood over the past six years as visual artists (Design 99) and as facilitators and collaborators (Power House Productions).

7:00 pm, Thursday, October 18, 2012 at the Freed Orman Centre, Assumption University on the University of Windsor campus.

A reception follows the lecture.

For more information, phone 519-253-3000, extension 3508, or email hrgmail@uwindsor.ca

No admission charge.