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Micro-Residency #4: Iga Janik

Iga Janik is an artist, curator, and the director of Artspace in Peterborough. We got to hang out with her back in October for about a week. It was awesome, and now we get to hang out again, but this time, in Windsor.

For her Micro-Residency, Iga will be bringing some micro radio transmitters, which you can see above.  We’re not sure what she’ll do with them over the course of the weekend, but their signals can be picked up by car radios, and hanging out in a parking lot or bugging a city block could be a lot of fun.

However, for Iga, the important part of all of this is what transmitters can do, not how they do it. Consider us very excited!!!

If you want to catch up with Iga, send us a note, we’ll get you connected.

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Eric Boucher’s Micro-Residency Project, Windsor: a Micro-Documentary

As part of Eric Boucher’s ongoing micro-residency, he created a trailer for the documentary (see it above) and is now looking for music (preferably from Windsor and preferably instrumental) to complete the project!

If you have music that you’re willing to pass along under a creative commons license or something to that effect, get in touch with Eric via his Twitter page. Or just let us know and we can pass along the info.

We can’t wait to see how this turns out!!!!!!

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Michelle Wybenga’s Micro-Residency: Love Letters to the City

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Michelle Wybenga is asking people for love letters to Windsor.

As part of her ongoing micro-residency, she’s requesting from a number of people that she knows in the city for a contribution to an eventual publication of sorts containing these letters among many others.

She spent the weekend at BCL HQ working towards the beginnings of this project and we’re anxious to see it evolve.

Included below are her photos and notes from some of the conversations she had over the weekend.

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Eric Boucher Micro-Residency Iteration 6/6

Eric Boucher interviews Sam as part of his Micro-Residency

This past Saturday I did my portion of the BCL collab/micro-residency with the lovely and talented wunderkind, Mr.Eric Boucher.

For the collab I had Eric interview my sister’s good friend, Sam. Aside from her notable charm, I think Sam was a good candidate for the project because she is a student who came from Sarnia to study at the University of Windsor and could provide us with an honest “outsider” perspective. Under the supervision of Sam’s curious cat Joseph, she and Eric chatted about her first impressions of Windsor as well as the similarities and differences between the two border cities, Sarnia and Windsor.

What I found most interesting about the process was the organic way in which the conversation unfolded and continued to unfold after the camera was off between Sam, Eric, my sister and I(as I am sure was the case for the other interviews as well), which was a clear indication of the desire to participate (Windsorites and new windsorites alike) in the pro-Windsorian discourse……we love to talk about our underappreciated city!

I also think it is interesting to note that neither of us are native Windsorites (although my sis, Eric and I are county kids), we all had post secondary education as a common draw to the city, yet, I got the sense that we all seemed to feel like true Windsorites, ready to defend our city to the naysayers, the uninformed, the tresoners and the ones who lost hope.

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Eric Boucher Micro-Residency Iteration 5/5

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Yesterday, Eric Boucher met with my uncle, Lou Tortola, to interview him for his Micro Residency.  Lou immigrated to Windsor from Italy in the seventies, when he was about ten or eleven, and is now a successful entrepreneur, established writer, and CEO of eliquidMEDIA.  Over some espresso and biscotti, he talked with Eric about his first impressions of Windsor and Detroit as a child, and gave his perspective on the cultural aspects of the city. Because his line of work allows him to travel frequently to all sorts of places, he also discussed cities with similar qualities as Windsor and the lack of enthusiasm for home-grown talent.

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Eric Boucher Micro-Residency Iteration 4/5

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For part 4 of Eric Boucher’s Micro-Residency, we trekked all the way out to Harrow to interview my good friend, and local musician, Derek Harrison.  I met Derek way back in my first week of University and became friends very quickly.  Since that first semester in Windsor, Derek has been leaving Windsor left and right, moving to Ottawa, London, Montreal and even studying abroad in Lithuania, yet something keeps pulling him back to his roots, to Windsor.  I’ve always found Windsor’s handle on Derek interesting, so what better way to explore this then through a BCL interview!

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Eric Boucher Micro-Residency Iteration 3/5

Terry Marentette

In order to keep things moving with Eric Boucher’s Micro-Residency project, I invited Eric to interview my oldest (in terms of age) friend Terry Marentette yesterday afternoon. I met Terry two years ago in an Art History class at the School of Visual Arts and was immediately astonished by his immense knowledge of Windsor’s past. Eric’s interview sparked some great conversation about Windsor during the Depression, the Ambassador Bridge and its effects on Windsor, the history of Walkerville, the amount of people who leave Windsor after school, etc. Overall, Eric and I were both pleased with the amount of Windsor-related information Terry provided. I am excited to see the footage!

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Eric Boucher Micro-Residency Iteration 1/5

Last night Eric Boucher came to visit myself and my grandma Margaret Mongeau to interview her for Eric’s Micro-Residency with BCL.

Each fellow of BCL will be introducing Eric to a person whom he has never met. Eric then will be interviewing each person exclusively on the topic of Windsor.

Eric`s interview with my grandma was the first one, and it went extremely smooth and successful. Good footage was captured that will most likely lead the direction of the following interviews. Maraget spoke of times in Windsor during the depression and had extensive knowledge and  insight on the history of our city.

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Micro-Residency #1: CreateHere.org

CreateHere

“CreateHere works with one guiding principle in mind: we love our city for what it is, has been and could become.”

The non-profit organization started in 2007 and does things like provide over $300,000 in artists grants to area creatives, connecting talented artists to homes in Chattanooga, and asking everyone in their city what they want for their city.

They also work closely with small businesses in the city on a variety of initiatives, including providing 8-week business planning courses, access to expert advice, and offering peer roundtable discussions once a month. And they do things like the 48Hour Launch (48HL), which unites creative individuals to launch start-up businesses in two days.

They do this based on the responses they get from handing out 25,000 surveys to the community.

They were also recently included in The GOOD 100.

And a few of the Fellows from CreateHere are coming to Windsor (via Detroit) for one day this week (Tuesday, November 10th) to share, brainstorm, discuss, and in all likelihood, inspire (us).

This is going to be our first Micro-Residency and we’re not exactly sure yet what we’ll do for the day, but surely we’ll be touring the city, making many introductions, and figuring out how exactly they’ve been able to do what they have in just two years, and how a similar model of activity might work in Windsor. It’s going to be incredible, stay tuned.