Based on a conversation at our last meeting on Thursday morning, I think it’s safe to say that we’re going to start on some new projects in January focused back on Windsor. Seeing at this mason jar was at the core of our conversation, it seemed like a good idea to post it on here, maybe as a starting point.
Also, Happy Holidays.
Our project for the 2011 Windsor Biennial, Alive & Well, was created with the hope that it would be captured on Google Maps to make a monument or announcement of sorts to the rest of the world about Windsor as we near the end of the year and ahead of being torn up for the new Aquatic Centre. We did the project with full expectations that the timing might not be right to ever have it appear on Google Maps, but this morning on a random search, I found out that there was a little update — Alive & Well is now on Google Maps, when you zoom into Windsor’s downtown core.
We created the work with this in mind:
The city appears to have survived the lowest lows of the economic crisis and our social, cultural, and political realities seem to hold some sense of hope and possibility. Even while the auto industry continues to hold precarious sway over the future of the city, the opportunity to own our history and commemorate it should, appropriately enough, be explored in a vast parking lot. In celebration of our community’s continued survival, we propose to demarcate the launch of a cultural future for the city, as demonstrated by the starting date of the 2011 Windsor Biennial along with IAIN BAXTER&’s curatorial role, and the very fact that the city has, despite any hardships, not yet imploded, with the following text, “AS OF 2011.09.21, WE ARE ALIVE & WELL.”
Huge thanks to the Art Gallery of Windsor, MacDonald & White Paint, and Google for making this possible.
After a full night’s rest and a wholesome breakfast at The Tallest Poppy, we headed back to Martha Street Studio to formulate a game plan for our second work session and workshop later that evening. Knowing that we had an inordinate amount of work to do before our opening, we decided to spend the bulk of the day getting the visual material (posters) completed and ready to hang.
Our workshop participants from Monday night left us with a very good chronological story and a number of great Letraset statements on paper. Our intention is to combine the posters and text from both sessions into a body of work. We also had pockets of time to consider our exhibition layout and what we should include.
Pictured above is a rough layout of the workshop poster series colour options, each of which may or may not denote an emotion or theme.
Continue reading “Martha Street Studio Residency Day 2: Another Day in Manisnowba”
Arriving in Winnipeg late Sunday night, we were met with our first taste of winter for the year. It seemed like the right introduction to Winnipeg. This residency and exhibition is all about exploring the narratives that are (and are not) circulated about the city of Winnipeg, and perhaps any story of Winnipeg should indeed begin with the winter.
Suzie from Martha Street Studio picked us up at the airport and gave us a quick driving tour before we settled in at MAWA‘s apartment. Monday morning, we headed in to Martha Street Studio and got started right away sorting through the materials and work spaces available to us.
Among many things, we also got (re)acquainted with silk screening, which is now officially one of our favourite things to do.
Continue reading “Martha Street Studio Residency Day 1: Winnipeg / Winterpeg”
Above, Homework Artists-in-Residence presenting their work, Photo by Eduardo Aquino
It’s a week later than we had hoped to be making this kind of wrap-up post, but we also know this is just the beginning of a larger conversation that will span far beyond this space.
Homework: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices hosted over 120 artists, writers, community activators, curators, thinkers, and doers from big and small places across North America (and, incredibly, at least one person from overseas). From the first day of the residency to the last day of the conference, the schedule was beyond jam-packed, but the things we discussed, together, made the two-day conference an incredibly rewarding experience for us. We are exceptionally happy with how Homework turned out and we can’t thank you enough for attending and supporting it.
There’s still more ahead though — the publication will be assembled over the coming months, and if you’re still looking to contribute, you should get in touch. There’s also been some questions about another edition of Homework, and we’re considering it. We’d love to see these kinds of conversations given a bit more time and space to unfold.
As happy as we are with how things went, we know there’s definitely room for improvement. If you have any feedback for us on your experience of the conference, it’d be great to hear from you. Please consider filling out this response form: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEpMczJtVTVtZEhoNWgyeUp4SWZyNVE6MQ
We’re also working on cataloguing all the video documentation and we’ll be working to make these video archives available as soon as we can, stay tuned. And, if you have any documentation of the residency or conference, please pass it along.
And finally, we’d like to extend our most sincerest thanks to everyone who participated and attended Homework, including our conference panelists and our incredible keynotes! Thank you!
So … the book we created from our research project, How to Forget the Border Completely, finally showed up!!!
I’m really happy with how it looks and I can’t wait to have some time to read through it all. After this week’s activities, we should plan some kind of launch for the book.
This week, Rosina and I spent two days in Hamilton researching for our upcoming project at Hamilton Artist’s Inc. Two Tales of a City will uncover, celebrate, and imagine a future for lost histories of Steel City.
Months of work and research culminated in a 3am submission to Blurb to print our How to Forget the Border Completely publication. It’s about 150 pages long. I’m really happy with this, and I can’t wait to get it back in print. Above, a screenshot of some of the pages in the PDF.
In terms of distributing the content, it’s now really difficult to imagine parting it from this kind of collected format. We’ll offer the book for sale through Blurb, but maybe a PDF as well? Hard to say, it’s 70mb, a bit of an unruly download I suppose. The version I ordered was excessively expensive, but it seemed only fitting to get at least a few copies with a nice image wrap, matte pages, and no Blurb logo.
Anyways, huge thanks to my BCL colleagues and the always generous Lee Rodney and Tom Provost for working with us on this. On a side note, the more I work with InDesign, the more I love it.
It’s election day in Ontario, you should vote.
How to Forget the Border Completely is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.
We’re gearing up for Homework. It’s going to be fun and you should really consider attending! There’s a few spots left.
If you do decide to attend, you can look forward to receiving one of these fine sketchbooks. Designed by Liisa Salonen, the sketchbooks are recovered paper sample books, rewrapped. They still need to be stamped, maybe this week?
Next week, I’ll be heading over to Detroit to join a panel discussion hosted by rogueHAA entitled, Defiance: Obedient Design. They’ve been doing a lot of great programming over the last year or so, and here’s some more information:
As part of the Detroit Design Festival presented by the Detroit Creative Corridor Center, rogueHAA is pleased to announce the third event in its 2011/2012 series: PROVOCATIONS: Challenging Detroit’s Design Discourse. This bi-monthly lecture series began in June and will continue through the end of 2012. Each panel discussion will invite local, regional, and national figures to discuss what makes Detroit provocative. Set in a variety of under-utilized, contested, and historically charged spaces throughout our city, each event seeks to challenge the participants through candid discourse and direct engagement of the built environment. It is the aim of each panel discussion to explore new urban strategies that promote social equity and advocacy. We believe good design (and good design discourse) is a proactive and critical act, toeing the line between conflict and resolution. While each event exists for only a moment, the entire series will provide a lasting catalogue of constructive dialogue, informing Detroit’s shared creative consciousness.
Event 03 DEFIANCE : Disobedient Design.
I’m quite excited to participate, if you’re in the neighbourhood, check it out on Tuesday, September 27th from 6-9pm, 2690 Wight Street.
