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Opt0ut Man: A Department of Unusual Certainties Project

DoUC_Postcard_Outlines

Opt0ut Man: A Department of Unusual Certainties Project

November 8th to 30th – CIVIC Space (411 Pelissier Street, Windsor, Ontario)

Join us November 23rd, between noon to 5pm, to talk taxes!

We’re thrilled to announce that our good friends Chris & Simon of Department of Unusual Certainties (they have worked with us here and here and will be part of Neighbourhood Spaces 2014) are back in Windsor putting together Opt0ut Man, the first stage of a project exploring issues around taxation.

Opt0ut Man is everyone – the belief that we give, but do not receive. Our society has been built on the ideal that we are all in this together. Increasingly we stand witness to changing ideas of what building a society means – a strong individual, means a strong country. The old adage that there are only two certain things in life, taxes and death, begs the question of what life do we want?

Opt0ut Man is an exploration of thoughts, opinions, opportunities, facts and consequences responding to the premise “What would happen if an individual had the option of opting out of the tax system?” expressed as a story. Seen for the first time in CIVIC Space, it is the first stage of longer term project.

Department of Unusual Certainties // www.DoUC.ca

Founded in 2010, Department of Unusual Certainties integrates the partial perspectives gleaned from its members committed explorations of a range of disciplines towards the creation of a truly Public Art. Over the last 24 months, DoUC has published work in magazines in North American and European. They have also exhibited projects across Canada, as well as at the 2012 Venice Biennale of Architecture and at the Prado Media Lab. They were strategic partner to Migrating Landscapes Organizers, curators of the Canadian Pavilion 2012 Venice Biennale of Architecture; and were the 2011 Innovators in Residence at the Design Exchange, Canada’s design museum.

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Flint Public Art Project – Call for Proposals

Silos and Grass

Flint Public Art Project – Flint, Michigan

Call for Proposals for Temporary Installations at Spring Grove Silos – Deadline: Wednesday, June 26th

Our friends over at Flint Public Art Project, an initiative which helps to organize engaging public events, workshops and temporary installations in the city of Flint, Michigan, are preparing to fund new site-based installations at the end of this summer. Flint Public Art Project aims to inspire Flint residents to reimagine their city, reclaim vacant and under-utilized areas, and use innovative methods to help influence Flint’s long-term city planning. It’s a very cool project and all the better that they’re continuing to open up opportunities to participate and collaborate. Here’s the latest:

Flint Public Art Project is currently seeking proposals for temporary installations incorporating two, 65-feet-tall concrete silos at Spring Grove, a restored wetlands and open space near downtown Flint. Two artists will receive up to $3,500 each for their projects, which will be installed August 1 and September 5. These installations will be part of Spring Grove Nights, a new summer program featuring music, dance, and theater performances as well the silo projects. These events will help residents and visitors re-imagine the site, establishing a public space unlike any other in the city and informing a long-range community plan to re-use the silos.
 
Submit a proposal by Wednesday, June 26. More information can be found here.
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Justseeds Artist Cooperative in Residence for Mayworks 2013

Justseeds Posters

Prints by Shaun Slifer of Justseeds Cooperative

Broken City Lab presents: Justseeds Artist Cooperative in Residence for Mayworks 2013

April 30th – May 17th, 2013 at CIVIC SPACE (411 Pelissier Street, Windsor, Ontario) and Drouillard Park (1247 Drouillard Road, Windsor, Ontario)

Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative is a decentralized network of 24 artists committed to making print and design work that reflects a radical social, environmental, and political stance. With members working from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, Justseeds operates both as a unified collaboration of similarly minded printmakers and as a loose collection of creative individuals with unique viewpoints and working methods. They believe in the transformative power of personal expression in concert with collective action. To this end, they produce collective portfolios, contribute graphics to grassroots struggles for justice, work collaboratively both in- and outside the co-op, build large sculptural installations in galleries, and wheatpaste on the streets – all while offering each other daily support as allies and friends.

Members of Justseeds will be coming to Civic Space to host a series of labour-inspired events and an exhibition titled Uprisings: Images of Labour.

JUSTSEEDS’ EVENTS FOR MAYWORKS 2013

April 30th @ 7:00PM (CIVIC SPACE)

Pre-May Day Parade Printing Party: bandanas, penants, and signs will be made for the May Day parade @ BCL Civic Space, 411 Pelissier

May 1st @ 6:30PM (Drouillard Park)

May Day Bandana, Penant, and Sign Distro: after parade @ Drouillard Park

May 10th @ 7:00PM (CIVIC SPACE)

Uprisings: Images of Labour: exhibition opening @ BCL Civic Space, 411 Pelissier

May 17th @ 7:00PM (CIVIC SPACE)

Justseeds Closing Event, w/ DJ Mary Mack @ BCL Civic Space, 411 Pelissier

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The (Nearly Complete) Letter Library Archive

When the Letter Library was up earlier this month at CIVIC SPACE, each participant had the option to borrow a disposable camera from us, photograph their letters, and bring the cameras back. Well, after developing nearly all the cameras (still a few more to come) here is the nearly complete archive of all the photos we received from the project.

Feel free to comment below if any of these photos are yours, and please link us to photos that aren’t up in this archive that you took yourself!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Letter Library and captioned the city.

Continue reading “The (Nearly Complete) Letter Library Archive”

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Grades for public infrastructure

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Has this already been done somewhere? The idea of creating grade sheets for things in the city and then a space for comments or something? Might we take it on too?

This photo is of a page in the book Waking Up from the Nightmare of Participation, I think it’s a template of an evaluation form for an academic paper, by Melanie O’Brian of Meissen’s thesis, The Nightmare of Participation.

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Marcos Zotes’ CCTV / Creative Control

Marcos Zotes, an architect and artist living in New York, recently completed CCTV/Creative Control, an intervention consisting of the projection of “an over-sized eye onto the lower surface of the 10-storey-hight Milton Street water tower in Brooklyn, New York.” This particular tower is a very ideal fit for an oval-shaped projection and since it does not display any external lighting fixtures, allows the projection to take center stage.

About the water tower: “Still the highest point in the area, until it is dwarfed by new gentrification plans, the water tower exists as a relic of the neighbourhood’s industrial past. The intervention temporarily transforms this iconic landmark into a discernible CCTV tower, raising questions of private control over public space in the urban context. By intervening in the everyday order of contemporary urban life, CCTV/Creative Control aims at both producing moments of antagonism –however transitory, fragmentary or ephemeral– and finding new ways to practice the city, not simply as consumers but as creators.”

On a conceptual level, “CCTV/Creative Control seeks to question the oppressive mechanisms and discourses implemented in the city through the temporary appropriation of public space.” I find this project interesting in principal, but also because it was executed by an architect who probably looked at the water tower with a special kind of criticism.

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Make This Better: Drouillard Road

Here is some good news:
Amidst the biased newspaper articles and the rumoured reputations, Drouillard Road is actually in an okay place.
A year or two ago, I was irked by a few things I had read in a familiar news source, depicting residents as downtrodden and troublesome, crimes and drug deals treated as the norm. But I knew better than to believe one reporter’s opinion and assume that Drouillard Road was a place with no hope.

Continue reading “Make This Better: Drouillard Road”

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Building a Wooden Test-Letter

Back in 2010 we conceptualized numerous iterations of Kitchener-Waterloo border installations for Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener + Area (CAFKA). We decided on an ambitious wooden installation which will sit in a shallow pond at the city hall nearby. Our text installation, which will read REFLECT ON HERE, will need some thorough planning. For this reason, we spent most of yesterday evening constructing the faces of a test-letter (R) from plywood sheets measuring 8’x4′ each.

Continue reading “Building a Wooden Test-Letter”