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Humanities Week 2009: Urbanism in these Border Cities

Park & Pelissier

This week is Humanities Week 2009, presented by Humanities Research Group (HRG), and it’s focusing on urbanism, cities, and the past and the future of Windsor / Detroit.

Here’s the rundown of the events, which I copied / cut / pasted, so please excuse the list:

Tuesday 22 September • Philosophers’ Café 8pm • Phog Lounge, 157 University Avenue West
Come participate in a wide-ranging discussion concerning cities, their possible futures, and the future of Windsor with Justin Langlois [Broken City Lab], Tom Lucier [Phog, tomlucier.com], Melinda Munro [City of Windsor], and Jeff Noonan [Philosophy, University of Windsor]. Cash bar.
Wednesday 23 September • MASSH Lecture 4.30pm • Room 1115, Medical Education Building, University of Windsor
In the first of the MASSH Lecture Series [Medical Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities], Steven Palmer, Canada Research Chair in the History of International Health with Steve Malone, graduate student, Department of History will speak on the history of medicine in Windsor and Detroit, in a talk entitled “Border Cities Medicine: Towards a History of Medical Practitioners in Windsor.” A free reception follows in the atrium of the Medical Education Building.
This event is co-sponsored by the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Windsor Programme, the Canada Research Chair in the History of International Health, and RREHS, Reason, Rhetoric, and Ethics in the Human Sciences.
Thursday 24 September • HRG Distinguished Speakers’ Series 7.30pm • Freed Orman Centre, Assumption University
Jerry Herron, professor of English and American Studies, Wayne State University, will talk on the contemporary history of Detroit. “Borderama Detroit” will explore the city as a spectacle, and what Detroit, that ‘life-in-death’ city, means for the future of urban areas around the world.
Friday 25 September • HRG Colloquium 10am • Location to be communicated
“How Not to See Detroit: What Tourists Always Get Wrong When They Come to Look at Us, and What One Got Exactly Right” is a wide-ranging discussion with Jerry Herron about Detroit and the way it has been documented by the photographer Corine Vermeulen-Smith. Seating is limited; contact the HRG office for more information and to register.

Tuesday 22 September • Philosophers’ Café 8pm • Phog Lounge, 157 University Avenue West – Come participate in a wide-ranging discussion concerning cities, their possible futures, and the future of Windsor with Justin Langlois [Broken City Lab], Tom Lucier [Phog, tomlucier.com], Melinda Munro [City of Windsor], and Jeff Noonan [Philosophy, University of Windsor]. Cash bar.

Wednesday 23 September • MASSH Lecture on the history of medicine in Windsor and Detroit, in a talk entitled “Border Cities Medicine: Towards a History of Medical Practitioners in Windsor.” Lecture 4.30pm • Room 1115, Medical Education Building, University of Windsor

Thursday 24 September • HRG Distinguished Speakers’ Series 7.30pm, Jerry Herron, professor of English and American Studies, Wayne State University, will give a talk entitled, “Borderama Detroit,” which will explore the city as a spectacle, and what Detroit, that ‘life-in-death’ city, means for the future of urban areas around the world. • Freed Orman Centre, Assumption University

Friday 25 September • HRG Colloquium 10am • Location to be communicated – “How Not to See Detroit: What Tourists Always Get Wrong When They Come to Look at Us, and What One Got Exactly Right” is a wide-ranging discussion with Jerry Herron about Detroit and the way it has been documented by the photographer Corine Vermeulen-Smith. Seating is limited; contact the HRG office for more information and to register.

There’s a lot going on this week, so contact HRG for more information on any specific part of the activity you see listed above, but plan to attend at least one of these events if your schedule permits!

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Windsor Signage

Visit Windsor's Sculpture Garden

I almost didn’t believe this sign existed. The few times I’ve been out to the Windsor Airport, I’ve usually been coming from the south, which (if my understanding of the geographic location of this photo is correct) might explain why I’ve missed it in the past.

Thankfully, Steven has a photo of it and presents two good options for working with it (it’s either a t-shirt or a lightbox (or fodder for Ron Terada)).

Signage has been discussed before at BCL, and while we’ll leave it to Steven to work with this sign in one way or another, it actually collapses two things that I often loosely discuss in introducing Windsor’s cultural landscape (so to speak) to people who aren’t from the area. The level of design (demonstrated above) and this kind of amassing of public art in the form of a dumping ground, ghetto, “tax shelter,” park while the rest of the streets remain the place for bland infrastructure and advertising is a prime example of what may be wrong in Windsor.

And, if you aren’t already reading Steven’s blog on a regular basis, do yourself a favour and add it to your reader.

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Detroit UnReal Estate Community Lab

Detroit UnReal Estate Agency

Detroit UnReal Estate Agency has been making some considerable headway in their project that aims at “new types of urban practices (architectural, artistically, institutional, everyday life, etc) that came into existence, creating a new local ‘normality’ and a new value system in the city of Detroit.”

For a while, I had some difficulty in pinning down exactly what the Agency was doing—certainly, they were doing research and writing on Detroit and its history and current conditions and putting up custom real estate signs  indicating specific unrealities. Beyond that though, I had some difficulty in understanding what the project was, likely limited by my own capacity in keeping up with their site and a fluctuating amount of posting ranging from solely photographs to heavier lengthy texts.

However, they’ve recently been very active again, no doubt thanks to the visit of their Dutch counterparts. They’ve recently published on their blog, a new strategic plan of sorts. Their most recent post reads, “One plan we’re working on now is a combination of a new masterplan + a cooperative ownership system + a business plan – A Community Lab.“

This is incredibly exciting! Crisis leads to ingenuity.

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First 5 Text In-Transit Panels Installed

Everything is Possible - on the tunnel bus

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.

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BCL’s 1 Year Anniversary

a cake, courtesy of the Evernote blog

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.

GREENING THE REVOLUTION

Christian Robert-Tissot’s Nature Morte  (via vvork)

In Hard Times, Public Places are More Important Than Ever

Happy March 19th!

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Highlighting / Decorating Derelict Buildings

Buildings In Liverpool

Though I’m not sure that “decorating” is the correct term (my vocabulary is failing me right now), I know that this idea has come up a number of times in various discussions on what to do with the houses on Indian Road, and other abandoned properties throughout the city. Doing something like painting the boards over the windows on abandoned buildings highlights them in a way that helps to keep them from fading into the periphery, while also arguably helping to raise the aesthetic of the surrounding area.

A similar project involving literally highlighting urban blight that’s probably more well-known was the Detroit Demolition Disneyland series of interventions where buildings marked for demolition by the city of Detroit were painted bright orange by an anonymous group. I think it worked for what is was, though the issue is entirely different than what’s going on here in Windsor. 

So, do we need to consider tackling the vacant property throughout the city? I would be curious to figure out just how many vacancies we face, but beyond that, does a project like the one above, which is in Liverpool, do anything else other than decorate the neighbourhood, and is that enough?

[via Wooster Collective]

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Visiting Detroit

Detroit, Riverside Extension fence

Danielle and I went over to Detroit yesterday to meet with Aaron Timlin (from the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit) at the LadyBug Gallery to discuss some potential collaborative projects over the summer. After getting a quick tour of the gallery and some of the other studios and workspaces in the building (which we unfortunately didn’t get any photos of, though next time), we headed out into the neighbourhood for a guided tour with Aaron to start brainstorming some future projects and project sites.

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