Yesterday was just lovely! Andrea Carvalho did a parking garage performance as part of her study of Non-Places, Kero set up his interactive installation, and a lot of familiar local friends rolled through The People’s Museum to contribute to the giant map.
The start of the week brought two new residents to the Storefronts: Sara Jane French and Jodi Green. There was some crazy changes in the exterior landscape due to construction today as well.
It was a bit of a quiet Sunday, but things were still happening down at SRSI. In particular, Julie and Jefferson were hard at work all day, preparing their project, “The Peoples Museum & Fabulations de Windsor.” Above, and in between visits from some neighbours and friends, Julie preps a large piece of paper for a stencil.
Continue reading “SRSI, Day 3: Quiet Sunday, but things were still happening”
Day 2 of SRSI went awesome! We are almost all settled into 406, 410 and 424 Pelissier.
Continue reading “SRSI, Day 2 : The People’s Museum, The Breakroom and More Painting”
Official Day 1 of SRSI kicked off, lots of new folks starting their projects, vinyl is up, rooms are painted (and almost done), floors are clean, the storefronts are open!!! Come see us.
Continue reading “SRSI, Official Day 1: Welcome Julie, Eric, Daragh, Andrea, Julie and Jefferson”
Day 1 of the Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation: we get the keys and begin massive clean up. Vinyl is being cut, walls will be painted, carpets are vacuumed, windows are washed, but still things to do.
However, great things are ahead.
Josh and Michelle at the very start of the day, before the cleaning really began. Not sure how far they made it, though I’m confident we’ll be nearly finished tomorrow, as the first residency projects start up. Daragh Sankey was already with us today, putting in a huge effort clearing out the 410 Pelissier. Then we had some lunch at the Drunken Burrito — delicious, despite its name.
We’ll be back at it shortly after 9am Friday morning, where we’ll await the arrival of Jolie Inthavong, Eric Cheung, Andrea Carvalho, Julie René de Cotret & Jefferson Campbell-Cooper, and Sara French.
This project is generously supported by the City of Windsor: Cultural Affairs Office, Arts Council Windsor & Region, Windsor Pride, and the Ontario Arts Council.
For 30 days, this project will call on over 25 different artists, writers, designers, restauranteurs, musicians, architects, archivists, and other interested parties to occupy a space in downtown Windsor for up to one month in June and July 2010 to attempt to intervene with the everyday realities of skyrocketing vacancy rates, failing economic strategies, and a place in need of new imagination.
We’ve been planning this for months, and we’re incredibly excited to see it finally launch this Friday, June 11, 2010.
Michelle will be posting constantly for the next month, and we’ll be noting the open and close times for each day soon. In the meantime, feel free to download the entire schedule in PDF.
The Schedule: All projects take place in either 406, 410 or 424 Pelissier Street in downtown Windsor.
|
Participants |
Dates |
Project Description |
|
Daragh Sankey |
June 10 – 13 June 17 – 20 June 25 – July 11 |
How To Make a Documentary: Live documentation of the residency in its entirety/video editing workshops. |
|
Jolie Inthavong |
June 11 –17
|
The Breakroom: A Profit-Free Cafe and Lunch. |
|
Eric Cheung |
June 11 – 21
|
Creation of an interior urban green park. |
|
Andrea Carvalho |
June 11 – 21
|
A series of actions and tactics challenging Windsor-specific Non-Places. |
|
Julie René de Cotret & Jefferson Campbell-Cooper |
June 11 – 23
|
The Peoples Museum & Fabulations de Windsor: Bilingual community-based story telling and story gathering. |
|
Sara French |
June 11 – July 8
|
Norman Eberstein: An interactive, live performance involving surveillance cameras and a security guard at work. |
|
Nicole Grinstead |
June 13 – 19
|
Swap Shop. |
|
Jodi Green |
June 14 – 25
|
The Sweater Factory: process-based performance involving the unraveling and re-assembly of sweaters. |
|
(Department of Unusual Certainties) |
June 15 – July 11
|
Storefront Success Stories: Based on admiration for the local shopkeeper, the project aims to create new connections, knowledge, and theories between Windsor’s different businesses, people, and sites of productivity. |
|
Kero (Windsor, ON / Detroit, MI) |
June 17 – 20
|
An interactive motion-sensored installation engaging outside pedestrians and interior viewers. |
|
Leesa Bringas (Windsor, ON) |
June 18 – 30
|
Collaborative letter-writing campaign to vacant homes on Indian Road. |
|
Stephen Surlin (Windsor, ON |
June 20 – 29
|
An experimenting / prototyping / recording research phase for the collecting of urban sounds through contact microphones. |
|
Terre Chartrand, Garth Rennie, Zoey Heath, Phil Beaudoin |
June 20 – 27
|
A visual exchange between Kitchener-Waterloo and Windsor: a ride down the highway dialog through photographic and sound experience. |
|
Lea Bucknell |
June 22 – July 1 June 30, 7pm (opening) |
Community-shaped, Interactive Interior garden space. |
|
Thea Jones |
June 23 – 26
|
Multimedia installation using process-based research of the Detroit-Windsor bridge and tunnel which cross the Detroit River. |
|
Thom Provost |
June 24 – 30
|
Storefront projection installation using Google Street View stills of Windsor. |
|
Denise St Marie |
June 25 – 27
|
Talk To Strangers: a text-based outdoor window installation. |
|
Ayesha Drouillard & Nicolette Westfall |
June 27, 28, July 4, 5 (workshops), July 7-8 (show) |
IMAGINATION LAB: walk-in art workshops for kids accompanied by their caregivers. |
|
Merry Ellen Scully Mosna |
June 28 – 29
|
Portraits, Pies and Peace: Sunday afternoon discussions, and sharing of homemade pie, plus some drawing and painting. |
|
Logan Davis |
June 28 – July 1
|
Interactive Light Board Window Installation. |
|
Robin Fitzsimons |
June 28 – July 2
|
Donation-based in-store training to improve gambling skills – geared towards subverting the economy in Windsor. |
|
Doodle Heads: Elizabeth Prosser & Nicolette Westfall |
June 29, 30 (workshops), July 1-July 3 (show)
|
Graffiti Workshops and Showing.
|
|
Joshua Babcock |
June 29 – July 11
|
Invention and Solution Hub (ISH): ongoing brainstorming and mapping activity. |
|
Brad Tinmouth |
June 30 – July 2
|
Pro-Click Factory: digital, interactive open-mic nights. An evening lecture and their techniques for cultivating the best YouTube videos. |
|
Laura Paolini |
July 1 – 11
|
Bell Payphone Labs: PL1999 and GMBLL. Payphone intervention workshops. |
|
And And Collective |
July 3 – 11
|
The Amalgamated City of W: Imagined merging of Windsor and Waterloo through campaign office meetings, consultations and presentations. |
|
Lee Rodney |
July 5 – 8
|
Border Bookmobile: A reading station. |
|
Emily Colombo |
July 5 – 10
|
Multiple public Interventions based on analysis of debt-accumulation, poverty, city-beautification, and community engagement. |
This project is generously supported by the City of Windsor: Cultural Affairs Office, Arts Council Windsor & Region, Windsor Pride, and the Ontario Arts Council.
Michelle and I spent hours and hours together yesterday. With everyone’s schedules fairly ridiculous at the moment, we’re trying to steal what little time we can to keep working. Lately, the time that we’ve all spent together has been framed exclusively almost exclusively by planning for Save the City or organizing the Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation, and so we’re usually burned out after a couple hours of that. Last night though, we pushed past the moment of getting burned out, and I think we got somewhere because of it.
We started our Friday night with a Skype call to Chris from the Department of Unusual Certainties regarding their project as part of the Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation (they are very enthusiastic, and their projects is going to be really, really great), had some dinner, tried to imagine what will come after SRSI, and then moved on to sorting out the billboards for the last part of Save the City.
We had a lot of bad ideas. Had we stopped earlier on, today and tomorrow would have been filled with some scrambling efforts to find the finish the design, emailing it out to everyone, trying to integrate everyone’s suggestions (and likely failing to do it well), sending it out again, getting more input, etc., etc., etc. Not entirely effective, nor can that process really capture the really great sparking moments of working together in the same room (the reason, I love collaborative work).
We really want these billboards to not just cap off Save the City, not just describe or some how summarize what we’ve learned, but continue with this conversation that we’ve been having. So, we had some terrible ideas for a long while, but we moved through them, we wrote them all down, then crossed them all out eventually, and it was the process of doing that, of really talking about where we were trying to go without knowing where we were going that was entirely worth it. I think we started the billboard brainstorming around 7:30pm were ready to give up around 9pm and we were there until 11pm still finalizing things. And, they’re still not finalized yet, but they’re close.
And we didn’t just brainstorm, we did the preliminary layout(s) together, we critiqued as we went, and it was so completely worth the exhaustion. Danielle called, thankfully, so we could check our work with someone outside of that room to make sure we hadn’t missed anything obvious, and then we were done, and we’re very, very excited to see these go up.
I hope the summer allows more opportunities for this — a lot of time spent together doing things, working through problems together, in the same room, until we get somewhere better than where we started.
The artwork goes out Monday, and I think the billboards launch mid-month.
Broken City Lab: Save the City is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.
This is the third calendar iteration for SRSI. We’re getting close to having things finalized, which means we’ll be announcing the whole list of artists, activities, and events very soon.
Michelle put this particular calendar together after the whole crew assembled a working calendar last week.
We’re also anticipating on making a long, timeline(d) calendar for display, but that’s sort of low on the priority list.
Danielle and I were on a panel with InCUBATE last week as part of Open Engagement, where they spoke about their radical arts admin practice. Making calendars, planning schedules, revising budgets, and organizing so many people / spaces / ideas certainly makes me wonder about what we’re doing now that could actually help inform other projects. How do we keep track of the tactics we’re using to pull off SRSI that could be discussed alongside our other projects? Or is this just part of the process of pulling together another project?
The Eco-House was bumpin’ Friday night! Amongst a slew of other undergoing projects, Michelle, Rosina, Josh and I we’re all hard at work, trying to get everything organized for our upcoming event and final installment of Save The City that’s taking place this Friday at the Art Gallery of Windsor!
Rosina and I tackled the Save The City Micro Tool-Kits that will also be distributed THIS Friday night. We did everything from editing the recipes, to creating a layout, to drawing little doodles, and we’re very excited to share them with you! While Rosina and I were busy working away on one end of the table, Josh and Michelle were just as busy on the other end organizing and creating a calendar and list of needs for all the SRSI participants.