watershed+

July 31, 2014July 5, 2018

Varying Proximities: A New Series of Works by Broken City Lab

For the past year or so, we’ve been working on a residency with Watershed+ in Calgary, Alberta. Watershed+ is a unique public art residency program that creates a climate of opportunity for water initiatives to build an emotional connection between people and Calgary’s watershed. Our task was to embed ourselves within the Water Centre (and Calgary in general) and really take the time to explore what the watershed means to Calgarians and us as visitors.

The Bow River and Elbow River are Calgary’s main sources of water and during our residency we explored ideas inspired by their physical structure, social implications, and municipal infrastructure. We went on a number of tours and took hundreds of photographs, audio clips, and short videos. After months of brainstorming, meeting, and reconfiguring, we have produced a series of works called Varying Proximities. An exhibition of the project was generously hosted by Stride Art Gallery Association in Calgary and will remain on view until Saturday, August 2nd, 2014.

Varying Proximities (Connecting to the Bow Hotline)

“Hello. One moment as I connect you to the Bow River.” With this simple introduction, you are transported to the river’s edge and begin to experience the Bow’s rushing, gurgling, and babbling efforts to connect to you. Whether nearby or across the world, anyone can attempt to connect to the Bow, and begin to explore its wisdom, or its secrets, or its songs, creating a unique opportunity to explore proximity and access as fundamental components of our relationship to the Bow River.

The toll-free number to connect is 1-844-OUR-BOW-RIVER (1-844-687-2697) and the hotline will remain active for the foreseeable future. We installed a retro telephone at Stride Gallery to allow visitors to call the hotline.

Varying Proximities (Bow-Inspired Hard Candy)

What does the Bow River taste like? What colour is the water flowing through it? How does one savour the Bow? With the creation of Bow-Inspired Hard Candy, residents of Calgary can start to explore these questions through a fun and interactive public art work. Candies made from colour and flavour inspirations of the Bow allow residents to wonder about where the flavours and colours of the candies end and their own subjective experiences and memories of the Bow begin.

The installation consists of 10 jars, each filled with about 100 candies of a specific colour. Municipal water from the Bow River was used in the production of these hard candies.

Varying Proximities (The Results of Searching for “The Bow River”)

In order to understand how images and ideas about the Bow River change over time, we produced a small booklet consisting of images pulled from a Google search of “The Bow River”. This collection of halftone images suggests a moment in time and further explores the notion of “varying proximities” in terms of web search language.

Copies are available in Stride Gallery and we encourage visitors to grab one from the two shelves mounted in the main gallery space before the exhibition ends on August 2nd.

Varying Proximities (Subtext: River Signs)

Distributed along the Elbow and Bow Rivers and affixed to the stormwater outfall signs, Subtext: River Signs, will aim to engage the public to consider a number of questions about the rivers that have come to define the City of Calgary. Playfully asking a series of questions, Subtext: River Signs, will be installed on up to 100 posts for three months and encourage thousands of residents and visitors to think about the ways in which we collectively and individually experience the rivers and how these questions might cue new relations, memories, and stories of the Bow and Elbow.

Nearly 100 signs were installed in the second room of the gallery and demonstrate the breadth of the questions posed. Viewers are invited to ponder these questions and how they might relate them to their ideas about the river.

The signs on display will be installed on posts around the Bow and Elbow Rivers this fall, so stay tuned for more updates!

February 13, 2014July 5, 2018

In Calgary: Absence & Science

Our trip continues in Calgary. We’re keeping track of unconnected details and losing track of time. We’re wondering about missing information. Are there gaps and absences waiting for us, or do these things wait for no one? We’re inundated with time and arrows. The infrastructure is massive and the number of human hours spent anticipating, planning, shaping, and repairing it must, in turn, be staggering. And so, is it about trying to find new ways to present it, articulate it, hide it, or reason with it? Is it our participation in this larger structure or the aim of fostering participation outside of it that might guide our work here?

Continue reading “In Calgary: Absence & Science”

February 12, 2014July 5, 2018

In Calgary: Sidewalk, Storm, San(itation), Water Standard Operating Procedure Manuals

We (Josh, Hiba, and Justin) are back in Calgary continuing work on the Watershed+ residency project. Our studio for the week is the Crew Shack, a converted trailer. There are remnants of past crews in the cabinet.

We’ve been working together and apart at a range of different speeds since the summer and this residency will offer a chance to think about what that means going forward. We’ve spent time tossing around ideas that seem to involve the people working in and around the Water Centre, supporting the infrastructure, rather than the infrastructure itself. In some ways, it feels like a departure, and yet maybe this is an honest response to being invited into an infrastructure, more or less for the first time. What is the standard operating procedure from the inside?

More soon.

August 13, 2013July 5, 2018

Day 3 & 4: Glaciers and Wreckage

Over the weekend, we took a trip out to the Bow Glacier to see first hand where Calgary’s only water source begins. The three hour drive proved to be rather scenic with beautiful mountains in the background.

Anticipating the scary scenario of encountering a bear, we equipped ourselves with a bear bell and bear spray. Both those items became useless when we spotted a bear and her cub on the side of the Trans Canada Highway. The black bear was so uninterested in us taking photos, she never looked up at us and just wandered back into the forest. I guess they’re not as scary as we thought.

Josh getting his first glimpse of the Bow Glacier.

After spending a few minutes staring at the glacier, we realized that we still had to hike to the top.

About an hour later, we arrived to the top of the waterfall. Seen above in the top right, this waterfall is spilling glacier water directly down into the Bow Lake and eventually feeding the Bow River. It’s pretty amazing to imagine the distance the water travels; from the glacier all the way to the homes and gardens of Calgarians. The theme of time, flow, and repetition keep coming up in our research.

Yesterday, Randy Niessen, the Programming Coordinator at TRUCK Contemporary Art in Calgary and the Project Implementation and Development Lead for WATERSHED+, took us on a bike ride to see what’s left of the damage that the flood left behind.

Above: The 10 foot mark on the meter next to the bridge is how high the river rose in this area.

Trees completely ripped out of the ground.

Temporary fences mend the completely eroded trail.

Josh observing the wreckage. Behind him, once cemented stones have been completely ripped out of the ground.

This part of the trail is now completely gone.

A lot of sites throughout Calgary are still under repair. However, it’s quite amazing to note that the majority of flood issues were taken care of during the first week after the flood.

This bridge collapsed as the water rose and began eroding it. A cargo train was crossing over at the same time and it took search and rescue crews 12 hours to back the train safely off the bridge. They’re still working on its reconstruction.

More soon.

August 9, 2013July 5, 2018

Watershed+ Residency Day 1: Getting Acquainted

We have finally arrived to Calgary, Alberta after a delay in travel due to the insane flooding that has happened in the area. The city seems as though nothing even happened, but our minds will soon be changed. Upon arrival we were given a schedule filled with people to talk to and things to see for the next week.

We started our day at the Water Centre. There’s such a huge amount of people that work that this place, it reminded me a lot of Chryslers back in Windsor.

Tristan Surtrees, Watershed+ Residency’s lead artist, started our morning off by giving us a brief history of the Water Centre, its architecture, the types of people that work there, and the impact that this type of facility can have on a city like Calgary.

Our first official meeting at the Water Centre was with Sylvia Trosch, who is the Lead for the Outreach at City of Calgary Water Resources. We had a great conversation with her about how it’s important for the citizens of Calgary to understand the watershed, especially in light of the recent flooding.

Tristan and Sylvia survey a map of where the watershed extends to. The Bow Glacier is the starting point for Calgary’s water source and is our destination spot for Saturday.

Mapping.

Sylvia gave us examples of booklets that she created for Calgarians to begin understanding better ways of conserving water and most importantly, understanding the water cycle.

There’s also a kid friendly version.

After our meeting with Sylvia, Tristan gave us a manual for Watershed+ that is full of valuable information on Calgary, its watershed, and how artists have been interacting with it.

Introduction.

Pipes.

Here is a grid of images related to Calgary’s water infrastructure.

One of the incredible things about Calgary’s rivers is how much they bend and turn. The results are some pretty incredible arial shots of the city, making it look like someone’s doodle/sketch pad.

Text/Colour.

More.

Information on how the residency is run. We are lucky enough to have been chosen to take part in the first ever version of this residency.

Watershed+ brand image and logo graphics.

More old construction photographs.

Concept sketches.

Joshua hard at work.

Uploading, scanning, capturing.

The water bottle for the water resources in the Water Centre…WATER.

Rachel Duckhouse is a fellow artist-in-residence who has been in Calgary for almost 6 months. Her residency has been extended until October, so her studio has been relocated from Ralph Klein Park to Spark.

Interesting.

As we walk up to Rachel’s studio, she points out to us that the Spark Science Centre offers younger children their own studio space where they are encouraged to build, destroy, collaborate, and think through new ways of problem solving.

All projects are open-ended with the intention that on the next cycle, a new group of kids will be able to come in and re-imagine something someone else has made.

Real tools develop real skills.

Dissembling stuffed animals only to re-sew them back with new parts.

This is the workshop that Spark has given Rachel access to if she need to cut or build anything larger than her studio. They have a really amazing laser cutter set up in there.

Notes.

The second meeting of the day was with Twyla Hutchison, who is 1 in 2 planning engineers for the City of Calgary. She shared with us a lot of amazing information about the flood that occurred in June and how her research and emergency planning from all these years past was crucial in the evacuation of a lot of Calgarians. She leant this book to Rachel for her research.

Flipping through all the data.

Rachel shares with us the body of work she’s created during her residency.

Drawings.

The body of work she created in Calgary is based off of the way water flows, whether it be in the rivers, through the sanitation plants, or even the homes that were affected by the flood.

Lines.

The Bow River.

Rachel encapsulated her project aims for us while we toured her studio. She has been thinking through the many ways of representing the movement of water in rivers and around objects. This has been accomplished mostly with ink and paper, but also with plasticine and slices of transparent plastic. Awesome stuff.

Tomorrow we have another day of exploration ahead of us. Stay tuned!

August 5, 2013July 5, 2018

Watershed+ Residency Phase 1 (August 7th-15th)

Watershed+ Residency (Phase 1)

August 7th – 15th, 2013 at Ralph Klein Park and the Surrounding Area, Calgary, Alberta

Watershed+, hosted by the Utilities and Environment Protections department of the City of Calgary, is a unique art program which embeds artists and their individual processes within the Calgary watershed. We will be heading to Ralph Klein Park for Phase 1 of the project this Wednesday, August 7th, to visit the studio and surrounding wetlands, and to start thinking through our project happening next summer. We’ll be staying until August 15th, during which time we’ll be asking many questions, exploring the social and physical boundaries of the region, and using this information to inform our future project at Ralph Klein Park. Stay tuned for more info!

Unfortunately, CIVIC SPACE WILL BE CLOSED UNTIL AUGUST 19th, but please register and stop by for the ACWR workshop, Modes of Documentary, happening here tomorrow, August 6th at 4pm and the Interactive Media & Video Installation workshops happening August 13th and 20th.

July 16, 2012July 5, 2018

This one goes out to Josh for his love of play, design, and Calgary…

Innovative drinking fountains are being installed in Calgary. Linked to the drinking water system through fire hydrants and designed to have their workings exposed, the fountains have three distinct design “characters” suggesting different gathering around water: “strangers” (or the “dating fountain”), “family” (set up like an family picture with bowls at different heights and the dog bowl), and “group”. Each fountain also has taps to fill bottles and dog bowls.

This initiative was developed by the City of Calgary UEP department through the WATERSHED+ art program, the fountains were designed by Sans façon and built by the municipal fabrication workshop.

via WATERSHED+.