Martha Street Studio Residency Day 2: Another Day in Manisnowba

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.

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Martha Street Studio Residency Day 1: Winnipeg / Winterpeg

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.

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Next Week’s Adventure: Martha Street Studio in Winnipeg

Next week, Justin, Michelle and Josh will be stationed at Martha Street Studio in Winnipeg to do a quick residency involving workshops, walks, and a lot of on-the-ground research leading up to an exhibition.

In Winnipeg? Check out the Martha Street Studio facebook page for more event information!

Here’s the details:

Martha Street Studio houses an exhibition gallery open to the public 5 days a week from 10–5pm. Martha Street Studio also has an inventory of artists’ work for sale and an archive of work produced at the studio since 1988.

“All the Stories We’re Not Telling About Winnipeg”

We know a city from the stories we tell about the city. But, we can also know something about a city from the stories we don’t tell about it. Winnipeg is no different. Some of these stories we tell are about celebrating everything the community has to offer, while others are about all of the things that make the city a difficult place to love. However, there are still other stories that fall somewhere between the two, based on the personal narratives we all chart as we live, work, play, and move throughout the city. These stories of our everyday experiences are the ones that we don’t hear enough about.

You are invited to participate in the creation of a sprawling series of posters featuring the titles of all the stories Winnipeg isn’t telling, written by you. Facilitated by Broken City Lab, this workshop will begin with shared story telling, community mapping, and DIY design tactics and culminate in an exhibition at Martha Street Studio, of all the posters.

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WORKSHOP INFORMATION:

Monday, November 21st, 6-9pm
Tuesday, November 22nd, 6-9pm
Each workshop costs $10.
Sign up now, space is limited!
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EXHIBITION INFORMATION:

“All the Stories We’re Not Telling About Winnipeg”
Broken City Lab Exhibition at Martha Street Studio
Opening November 23rd 5-8pm
Exhibition runs November 24th-January 5th

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And, we’ll definitely be trying to blog as much as we can about the trip! More soon.

Homework Residency: Day 4, by chance

The report for Day 4 of our Homework Residency has arrived with photos and notes from the residents themselves. Be sure to check out more on our Artists-in-Residence.

This post marks the final instalment of documentation from our residency — at least in this form. There’s more ahead that you can anticipate from the Homework publication, videos of the conference presentations, and somehow, more. We’d like to again sincerely thank everyone who made Homework possible and for all the artists in residence for participating. Now without further adieu, here’s some reflections on the final day of the residency, which would be followed by Day 1 of our conference.

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Homework Residency: Day 3, Collaborations Under Umbrellas

Day 3’s report of our Homework Residency comes courtesy of the residents themselves!!! Be sure to check out more on our Artists-in-Residence.

From Artist-in-Residence, Simon Rabyniuk:

Its overwhelming to try and write a blog post about what’s happening… it’s messy to try and recount exactly how things unfold and I mostly don’t remember… There are reflections to be made about the projects we are setting up for ourselves and of course the different decision making models we are using. I feel fine discussing the projects but mostly forget how we arrive at any specific decision. Here are some brief notes Rodrigo, Megan, and I put together this afternoon, with some feedback from Leah tonight. Also, here are some photos from Leah’s, Andrea’s, and my own camera.

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Homework Residency: Day 2, Voting on Rooftops & Other Endeavours

So, the report on Day 2 of our Homework Residency is going to be delayed, as we’re still gathering documentation. But, this picture seemed like a good start to introducing the day.

More to come, soon. Updated: there’s lots of photos that attempt to document the day, but it’s impossible to chart together a narrative to cover it all.

In the meantime, you can check out more on our Artists-in-ResidenceGet acquainted with everyone here!

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Homework Residency: Day 1, Terms of Reference

Any report on Day 1 of our Homework Residency needs to begin with a huge welcome to all of our Artists-in-Residence. Get acquainted with everyone here!

As a preface, it’s important to note the difficulty in trying to document such an involved process with any meaningful artifacts and with such little time for reflection. Photos cannot do justice to the hours of exploratory conversations, tangents, and negotiations that took place. Nor can my attempts to record some of the overarching concerns that I picked up on appropriately document the frustrations, insights, and moments of meaningful critical engagement, do any part of the day justice.

But, to try to make this as useful as I can, there are large things that need to be framed — in particular, a way of approaching a residency that explicitly asked residents to be prepared to not tackle a pre-designed project, alongside a number of other artists. Throughout the day questions were raised around the possibilites and limits in collaboration within such a large group, the ways in which to facilitate collaboration over participation, and the terms of reference that we all bring, but need to forget about.

Today focused on tackling a set of possible directions and the ways in which 17 people might move there, together.

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Keynotes Announced for Homework!

We are very pleased to announce our Keynote Speakers for Homework: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices!

Gregory Sholette, Marisa Jahn, and Temporary Services (represented by Salem Collo-Julin) will join us on October 21 and 22, 2011 to deliver a keynote panel and round-table discussions.

There’s still time to register — and it’s free!

HOMEWORK: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices is four-day residency, two-day conference, and collaboratively-written publication aimed at generating conversation around the following:

  • alternative infrastructures,
  • radical collaboration,
  • social practice,
  • art implicated in social change,
  • neighbourhood-level activities,
  • city-wide imaginations,
  • site-specific curiosities,
  • tactical resistance,
  • new models for art education and research.

Facilitated by Broken City LabHOMEWORK calls on artists, scholars, writers, thinkers, and doers interested in any of the above to join us in Windsor, Ontario on October 21 and October 22, 2011.

Gregory Sholette is a New York-based artist, writer, and founding member of Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D: 1980-1988), and REPOhistory (1989-2000). A graduate of The Cooper Union (BFA 1979), The University of California, San Diego (MFA 1995), and the Whitney Independent Studies Program in Critical Theory, his recent publications include Dark Matter: Art and Politics in an Age of Enterprise Culture (Pluto Press, 2011); Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945 (with Blake Stimson for University of Minnesota, 2007); and The Interventionists: A Users Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life (with Nato Thompson for MassMoCA/MIT Press, 2004, 2006, 2008), as well as a special issue of the journal Third Text co-edited with theorist Gene Ray on the theme “Whither Tactical Media.” Sholette recently completed the installation “Mole Light: God is Truth, Light his Shadow” for Plato’s Cave, Brooklyn, New York, and the collaborative project Imaginary Archive at Enjoy Public Art Gallery in Wellington New Zealand, and is currently working on an installation for the Queens Museum of Art, and the Tulca Arts Festival in Galway, Ireland. He is an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Queens College: City University of New York (CUNY), has taught classes at Harvard, The Cooper Union, and Colgate University, and teaches an annual seminar in theory and social practice for the CCC post-graduate research program at Geneva University of Art and Design.

gregorysholette.com
darkmatterarchives.net

The editor of “Byproduct: On the Excess of Embedded Art Practices,”, Marisa Jahn is an artist, writer, and community organizer embedded in various social and economic justice groups since 2008. Her work has been presented at venues such as the MIT Museum, The Power Plant (Toronto), ICA Philadelphia, The National Fine Art Museum of Taiwan, New Museum (NYC), ISEA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Boston Museum of Science, and more. A graduate of MIT and an artist in residence at MIT’s Media Lab, Jahn has been recognized as a leading educator by UNESCO and has been a CEC Artslink cultural fellow in Tajikistan, Estonia, and Russia. Her work has been written about in media such as The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Clamor, Punk Planet, Art in America, and Discovery Channel. In 2009, she co-founded REV-, an organization dedicated to socially-engaged art, design, and pedagogy; she is currently the Deputy Director at People’s Production House, a journalism training and production institute that works with low-wage workers, immigrants, and teens to produce groundbreaking news that has been seen and heard on BBC, ABC, PBS Newshour, Mother Jones, The Nation Magazine, The New York Times, and more.

marisajahn.com
rev-it.org
peoplesproductionhouse.org

Temporary Services is a group of three people: Brett Bloom (based in Copenhagen), Marc Fischer (based in Chicago), and Salem Collo-Julin (based in Philadelphia). They collaborate on producing projects, publications, events, and exhibitions. Making a distinction between art practice and other creative human endeavors is irrelevant to Temporary Services.

The group started as a storefront arts and events space in a working class neighborhood in Chicago in 1998. Since then, Temporary Services has been responsible for the publication of over 91 books and booklets (including 2003’s Prisoners’ Inventions and 2008’s Public Phenomena), and have created many projects in public and shared spaces, in spaces often dedicated to art and spaces often used for other things, and on the internet. Most recently, they participated in an exhibition on the Lower East Side organized by Creative Time. The members of Temporary Services founded Half Letter Press in 2008 as a experimental web store and publishing imprint in order to help support themselves and champion the work of others.

Salem Collo-Julin is a Chicago native. In addition to her work with Temporary Services, she writes, edits, and performs. She is a co-founder of The Free Store Chicago.

temporaryservices.org
halfletterpress.com
artandwork.us
http://thefreestorechicago.org/
halfletterpress.tumblr.com
publiccollectors.org
messhall.org
http://www.letsremake.info/
about.me/hollo

Homework: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council, the University of Windsor’s School of Visual Arts, and our community partner the Art Gallery of Windsor.

ATTC Calgary: Projecting New Narratives of a City

Our work on ATTC Calgary with Truck Gallery’s CAMPER Urban Discovery project continued with a couple day’s break from events, allowing to focus on planning the remainder of our residency activities and starting work on our publication.

Tuesday night was our projection event around the edge of Central Memorial Park — an impeccably well-manicured green space in the middle of a downtown neighbourhood, and a welcomed surprise. A few logistical concerns aside (like having to connect seven extension cords to reach the edge of the park), we had a pretty ideal spot. A blank light-cemete wall always makes for a good projection screen.

The projections themselves were a series of text-based statements articulating of a set of narratives around Calgary that were originally based on the responses to our fill-in-the-blank statements and eventually moving on to real-time feedback and participation from those community members in attendance.

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ATTC Calgary Day 3 & 4: the Tales & Timelines of a City

On Day 3 of our ATTC Calgary with Truck Gallery’s CAMPER Urban Discovery project, it rained, and so we planned. We planned and discussed and reviewed some of the answers we had received from our activities on Day 2 — glimpses of the state of Calgary, from a ground-level perspective.

For Day 4, we had to condense our planned events into an single afternoon, collecting answers to a series of fill-in-the-blank statements and eventually creating a CAMPER-wide chalkboard to collect a timeline of Calgary.

Working to understand Calgary through these gestures provides insights to a city in between many things — a military fort and a sprawling urban centre, a longtime home and a temporary situation,the site of the first roadhouse and the place that Tim Hortons amalgamated with a small coffee shop, a celebrated Olympic site and the place of someone’s first concert. All of these experiences, memories, and invented histories create a space for dialogue around the narratives that create the social shape of the city and not only how we interact with it, but how we interact with one another.

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