Designing first thing in the morning —potential posters for our recommended motto for the city of Peterborough as part of our Extended Field Trip #001.
Extended Field Trip Day 2: Mapping
We spent the better part of Day 2 of our Extended Field Trip #001 in Peterborough at the wonderful Artspace talking to some new people, synthesizing some questions from our broad understanding of the city so far, and trying to get a sense of what if anything there is to change about this place.
We also explored some more of the downtown core on foot and discovered some really specific things about the city that are starting to add up and answer our questions about how it is that things seem okay here.
Mapping Peterborough, its residents’ feelings about it, and then comparing those maps of sorts to Windsor is revealing in helping us to understand the very specific view so many Windsorites have of our city. I’m not sure that we’ve been able to articulate this yet, maybe tomorrow when it’s not so late.
Extended Field Trip Day 1: Stable City
As part of our Extended Field Trip #001, we’re in Peterborough staying at the artist-run-centre, Artspace. We’re hoping to conduct some intercity research where we’ll attempt to understand the similarities and differences between Peterborough and Windsor and hopefully find some intersection thereof to which we can respond. We arrived in Peterborough in the late afternoon and did some exploring immediately. We’ll be posting more of our general observations and assumptions about why we saw what we saw later, but for now, we thought we’d give a visual introduction to this city.
Above, a path that follows the Otonabee River, which sits tucked away beyond the visual border of the downtown core. Somehow, this describes the general sense of Peterborough—nice, strangely well-maintained, and a place that just seems to work.
The city is considerably different than Windsor, and we’re hoping to figure out why it is that this city of 75,000 north of Toronto is a place that few people want to leave.
Basically, this post will present most of what we saw, much of which we’re still trying to reflect on and figure out. The discussion we had last night with some of the Artspace folks helped to frame and confirm what we saw—this place is okay and stable.
Bureau for Open Culture: DESCENT TO REVOLUTION
Descent to Revolution, and exhibition / residency created by the Bureau for Open Culture, features five international artist collectives and collaboratives that use urban spaces and social spheres as means of production and inspiration. During the course of the exhibition, participating artists visit Columbus in a series of residencies to make projects specific to the city. The work does not take place inside the space of the gallery but in concert with community and physical mediums outside of it.
Contributing to the exhibition is Claire Fontaine, Learning Site, Red76, REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT, and Tercerunquinto, and all will be working within some relation of the city of Columbus and its community.
Pictured above is Audible Dwelling by Learning Site, a combination loudspeaker and dwelling that responds, in part, to the proliferation of abandoned malls, parking lots, and housing in downtown Columbus. Audible Dwelling is situated in a parking lot on CCAD’s campus. During their dates of residency visitors follow the arrows on the floor out the gallery door to visit Audible Dwelling, to experience it by listening and by leaving a story that is eventually projected into public space via loudspeaker.
Will there by time for a road trip to Columbus???
This project is really exciting to see for a number of reasons, maybe the top one being that it’s nearly exactly what I wish we could do… I wish we had the money to do something as large-scale as this, or even money just to pay for materials for projects we’d like to realize through a program like this. For now though, our Micro-Residency project is getting some great submissions, and hopefully we’ll be kicking it off in the next few weeks, and doing a bunch of amazing things for free.
[via Art&Education mailing list]
Broken City Lab: Micro-Residencies
We’ll give you a place to stay and resources for 72 hours. You’ll help us fix the city.
For the last year, we’ve been working away on a number of initiatives that have come out of our very specific examinations of Windsor, Ontario. The ways in which we see, experience, and move through the city have defined our tactical investigations and have, by design, been based on our deeply embedded concerns about our city.
We’re now looking to expand our research and our understanding of our city by inviting other artists, designers, writers, curators, architects, filmmakers, philosophers, musicians, mathematicians, scientists, and students to come stay with us for 72 hours. We’re looking for collaborators who are generous, energetic, and interested in understanding Windsor. We’re not necessarily looking for completed ideas, but rather general concerns you would like to investigate and workshop over three days.
We can’t offer any money, but we can offer a bed.
We won’t do anything illegal, but we will give you our energy and ideas.
If you can get to Windsor, we can make this happen.
Should this opportunity interest you, please apply using the Micro-Residency Submission Form.
Guerrilla Art Residencies at DIY megastores
In Paris, there is a new (guerilla) residency program initiated by Paul Souviron and Antoine Lejolivet through the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD. The residencies consist of spending some time in a DIY megastore and creating temporary installations.
There’s numerous ideas about artist residencies that don’t necessarily take place in the traditional space of galleries or centres, but instead focus on the potential for artists having a role in more everyday places. Schools, landfills, and city halls have been the site for artist residencies, and I have to wonder about the possibilities of artist residencies here in Windsor; and I’m not even that interested in thinking about residencies at the Big 3, Caesars Windsor, or city hall.
What about residencies at the library, at the riverfront, at Walkerville Brewery, at the corner of Randolph and University, at the corner store, at Milk, at the parking garage, at the bridge, or at the bench on Wyandotte near Kildare? And why wait for someone to make one? Why don’t we create a series of residencies? Why don’t you offer your front porch for a week-long artist residency?
Steven’s ideas from last week are looking more and more enticing (and possible).
[via we make money not art]