Windsor – Broken City Lab

May 26, 2014July 5, 2018

The Best of Awards: A Celebration of Windsor Documented

Earlier this month we held an event to celebrate both the closing of Civic Space–our storefront workspace project generously funded by The Ontario Trillium Foundation–and the people who make Windsor such a unique place to live. This project called upon the residents of Windsor to nominate someone they knew for a “Best of” award in any category they could think of.

We dressed up Civic Space with balloons, paper lanterns, a red carpet, and as much gold as we could find and hosted an awards ceremony to hand out 57 trophies we made for the nominees. We had these trophies engraved with the title each person bestowed on their nominee and lined the walls with them.

During the ceremony the trophies were handed out and those who made a nomination (and those who were nominated) had a chance to say a few words to the crowd. It was a memorable night for me and I hope everyone who came could say the same. Thanks to all who participated. Stay in touch!

Below are a collection of photos taken at the event.

Continue reading “The Best of Awards: A Celebration of Windsor Documented”

April 29, 2014July 5, 2018

SoVA Artist-in-Residence Speaker Series May 5th – 7th at Civic Space

Artist-In-Residence Speaker Series (May 5th – 7th)
CIVIC Space – 411 Pelissier Street, Windsor, Ontario

We’re pleased to announce that we have a full week of events next week at CIVIC Space. Not only is The Best of Awards happening next Thursday, May 8th, but University of Windsor’s School for Arts and Creative Innovation is holding a series of artist talks to introduce this year’s group of artists-in-residence.

From May 1st-31st, five artists will be accessing the school’s resources and facilities to cultivate new ideas through research, studio production, and exploration of regional arts and culture. Each resident will present their work in a FREE public lecture at the Artist-In-Residence Speaker Series, running from Monday, May 5th to Wednesday, May 7th.

Monday, May 5th – 5PM

Melanie Colosimo (Halifax, NS) Colosimo is an interdisciplinary artist whose work employs drawings, miniatures and stop-motion video to negotiate the space around the construction, creation and themes of transition and dislocation. She holds a BFA from Mount Alison University, and an MFA from the University of Windsor.

Tuesday, May 6th – 6PM

Candice Davies (Montreal, QC) Davies is a sculptor and installation artist whose practice aims to draw attention to layers of meaning within the gallery space, and questions existing assumptions about art objects by engaging the viewer in unexpected encounters. Through the subtle material transformation of everyday objects she investigates issues of interpretation, craft, value and function. Davies has recently completed her MFA at Concordia University.

Tara Lynn MacDougall (Halifax, NS) MacDougall is an interdisciplinary artist who humorously examines what makes a “good painting”. By juxtaposing historical and contemporary painting references with automatic marks and gestures, she forms an array of new visual forms. MacDougall holds a BFA from NSCAD University, is a member of the Manual Training Collective, and on the Board at Eyelevel Gallery.

Wednesday, May 7th – 6PM

Aidan Cowling (Toronto, ON) Cowling works in a variety of media including, photo, installation, maps and web based projects. His work explores the intersection of queerness and materiality and attempts to uncover the landscapes and language of sexual liberation. Cowling holds a BA in Visual Studies and Art History from the University of Toronto.

Christy Kunitzky (Toronto, ON) Kunitzky is a multi-disciplinary artist who uses various mediums to investigate obsession, the absurd, affect and gender. By regarding human action through an anthropological lens, she aims to examine the behaviours and ideas we consider to be normal in a different light. Kunitzky holds a BFA from OCAD and a BA in Gender Studies, Semiotic and Linguistic Anthropology from the University of Toronto.

For more information please contact: Lucy Howe, Residency Program Coordinator
School for Arts and Creative Innovation
University of Windsor
lucy@uwindsor.ca
Click here for more information.

December 3, 2013July 5, 2018

Sphinxxx: The Sound of Windsor by Chris Flanagan

Exhibition on view from December 5th to 30th – Opening Reception on Thursday, December 5th at 7pm – CIVIC Space (411 Pelissier Street, Windsor)

Chris Flanagan has created a site-specific installation work based on Windsor’s musical history and hypothetical stories based on the city’s relationship with Detroit and waves of migration. He will be presenting this work (artifacts, sound clips, and process documentation) at CIVIC Space and around the city.

Please join us on Thursday, December 5th at 7pm for an opening reception and to explore the artifacts Chris has uncovered. The artist will be present and is looking forward to discussing Windsor / Detroit’s musical histories. If you’re unable to make it to the opening, the exhibition will be up in CIVIC Space until the end of December.

Chris Flanagan is a Toronto-based installation artist. His work is concerned with music, secret societies and fabricated historical narratives. He has exhibited widely in public galleries across Australia and Canada.

For more information, please visit: www.chrisflanaganart.com

December 2, 2013July 5, 2018

No Experience Necessary: A Workshop Series by Momentum Film & Video Collective

No Experience Necessary – Experiments with Video: Hosted by Momentum Film & Video Collective

Saturday, December 7th from 12-5pm – CIVIC Space (411 Pelissier Street, Windsor)

This workshop, hosted by Windsor’s very own Momentum Film & Video Collective and happening at Broken City Lab’s CIVIC Space, will explore several historical and contemporary concepts and practices of experimental video through screenings, discussions and a hands on video production and editing project. If you’re interested in digital and analog video, this workshop will help you sharpen your skills in visual experimentation and allow you a chance to create with others. We hope to see you there!

Feel free to bring your own camera for shooting & computer for editing.

WORKSHOP OVERVIEW

Presentation / Discussion / Screening
Tech Talk: Digital and Analog Video Capturing / Editing Strategies
Themes / Concepts / Imagery for Experimenting
Shooting & Editing
Present in-workshop Experiments

There is a nominal fee of $10 to attend this workshop. Please pre-register by emailing momentumfilm@live.com.

November 2, 2013July 5, 2018

Learn More About… Steve Lambert! Homework II: Long Forms / Short Utopias Keynote Panelist

Capitalism Works For Me! True/False (2011), Image courtesy of visitsteve.com

Homework II: Long Forms / Short Utopias is less than a week away and we’re incredibly excited to be welcoming so many new and old friends to Windsor. The conference is aiming to foster a conversation around the ideas, infrastructures, and risks embedded in socially-engaged practices that unfold over years or moments at a time. For more information and to register to attend, please click here.

Now, you could read Lambert’s bio on his website to learn more about where he comes from and what he does, but we thought that reposting his artist statement might help to illustrate why we’re so excited to have him to be a part of the conference. For us, it seems to capture some of the overarching concerns we’re looking to discuss at the conference. In his words, here’s how Steve Lambert approaches art:

For me, art is a bridge that connects uncommon, idealistic, or even radical ideas with everyday life. I carefully craft various conditions where I can discuss these ideas with people and have a mutually meaningful exchange. Often this means working collaboratively with the audience, bringing them into the process or even having them physically complete the work.

I want my art to be relevant to those outside the gallery – say, at the nearest bus stop – to reach them in ways that are engaging and fun. I intend what I do to be funny, but at the core of each piece there is also a solemn critique. It’s important to be able to laugh while actively questioning the various power structures at work in our daily lives.

I have the unabashedly optimistic belief that art changes the way people look at the world. That belief fuels a pragmatic approach to bring about those changes.

Lambert’s sense of art as a bridge to everyday life, civic practices, and public spaces has always resonated with us. From his public performances, to collaborative interventions, to his large-scale signage works, Lambert’s practice implicates art into a larger set of politics and concerns that reminds us of the ways in which art can help generate new conversations and reframe old ones.

THE NEW YORK TIMES SPECIAL EDITION (2008), image courtesy of visitsteve.com

We’ve been writing and thinking about Steve’s work for years, and we can’t wait to hear him speak in person. He’ll be a part of our Keynote Panel on Friday, November 8th at 7pm at the Art Gallery of Windsor with Jeanne van Heeswijk and Darren O’Donnell and joining us for discussions and reflections over the rest of the conference.

P.S. We have just a few seats left for the conference! Want to join in on the fun? Email us at homework@brokencitylab.org to register!

Homework II will run November 8-10, 2013 in Windsor, Ontario at Art Gallery of Windsor and CIVIC Space.

Our featured keynote speakers this year will be Jeanne van Heeswijk (Rotterdam), Darren O’Donnell (Toronto), and Steve Lambert (New York). In addition to our keynotes, we’ve also invited a series of curatorial partners to develop panels that tackle the conference themes. And, to top it all off, everyone who attends will be co-authors of a book that captures the ideas and conversations from this year’s conference through a series of interviews with presenters, attendees, and organizers alongside collected materials from our 2011 conference.

For more information, please email homework@brokencitylab.org

Homework II: Long Forms / Short Utopias is made possible with generous support from the Ontario Arts Council, Ontario Trillium Foundation, Art Gallery of Windsor, and IN/TERMINUS.

October 30, 2013July 5, 2018

1W3KND: On Social Practice and Collaboration, 48 Hours at a Time – New Book Available Now!

Late last year, we started hosting a series of weekend residencies at CIVIC Space. They were designed to bring together two people (and sometimes more) to write about socially-engaged practices. We wanted to provide a platform, or an excuse, or at least a quiet space to spend a bit of focused time writing. We wanted to do this because we were curious about the gap in writing from emerging practitioners, and that curiosity was driven as much out of our desire to read more from our peers as our realization that we have done very little writing on our own.

So, we posted a call for submissions on our website under the title of 1W3KND.

1W3KND stood for One Weekend, Three Thousand Words, No Distractions. It would be a brief, yet focused two days, just long enough to pull away from everyday life, but not so long that the itch to overly-polish any of the writing would arise. It would ideally put people into a dialogue, maybe even with a stranger, to try to tease out new entry-points into likely familiar conversations and capture an urgency around itself. It would concentrate this activity in a specific place without necessarily insisting on a response to it.

Between November 2012 and February 2013, we were happy to host the following artists, writers, curators, designers, thinkers, and scholars:

Penelope Smart & Erin MacMillan, Irene Chin & Megan Marin, Jason Deary & Mary Tremonte, Zoe Chan & Sarah Febbraro, Mike DiRisio & Nathan Stevens, Amber Ginsburg & Siobhan Rigg, VSVSVS & Julian Majewski, Jacqui Arntfield & Emily DiCarlo, Nathan Swartzendruber & Mike Fleisch, and Allison Rowe & Rhiannon Vogl

We compiled what they wrote into a book. It’s available now on Blurb for just $10.

The residency as an experiment, as a site of production, or as simply a retreat, spurred writing that reflects a diversity of approaches towards articulating the concerns, ethics, aims, and ideals of socially-engaged practices. Largely written by emerging practitioners and minimally edited, this is not necessarily a cogent collection of essays — in fact, such an expectation would arguably be missing the point. This book captures an energy and urgency around a complicated set of ideas still unfolding in relation to a world rapidly shifting around them. To have the opportunity to collect the texts, at the early stages of so many of the contributors’ practices is a gift and hopefully a tool for further reflection and dialogue across geographies, politics, and practices.

If we had more time at Civic Space, we’d probably do this again. Maybe someone else can pick up where we left off.

October 2, 2013July 5, 2018

AGW’s Border Cultures: Part One (homes, land) Exhibition Wins OAAG Award

Earlier this year, we were part of an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Windsor called Border Cultures: Part One (homes, land). This exhibition, curated by Srimoyee Mitra (Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Windsor) and featuring works from an international roster of artists, also featured a project we made called Together Forever / Never Apart. The project used the icon of childhood friendship lockets to comment on the complex and often disconnected relationship Windsor and Detroit have with one another. One half of the laser cut and etched acrylic locket was installed on Pelissier Street in Windsor, Ontario, while the second half was installed on Gratiot Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. For the exhibition, we mounted another copy of the broken heart along with documentation from the install in Windsor and Detroit.

We just recently found out that the exhibition received an Exhibition of the Year Award from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries (OAAG)! Huge thanks to all the artists involved, the Art Gallery of Windsor, and Srimoyee Mitra for curating the exhibition.

Participating artists: Broken City Lab (Canada), Campus in Camps (Palestine), Iftikhar and Elizabeth Dadi (USA), Willie Doherty (Ireland), Marcos Ramirez Erre (Mexico/USA), Sanaz Mazinani (Canada), Christopher McNamara (Canada/USA), Dylan Miner (USA/Canada), Ed Pien (Canada), Leila Sujir/Maria Lantin (Canada)

Together Forever / Never Apart (2013) – mounted on Pelissier Street in Windsor, Ontario.

July 30, 2013July 5, 2018

The Peripatetic Library: Drouillard Versions, a Project & Residency by Dan McCafferty

In Residence until August 8th at Civic Space – 411 Pelissier Street, Windsor, Ontario

Daniel McCafferty, a local artist, educator, and member of Public Design Unit is currently in residence at Civic Space developing a mobile library / studio site in the Drouillard neighbourhood of Windsor, Ontario.

The project will be used as an opportunity to establish a space to gather many types of information from the neighbourhood, whereby residents of the community can contribute material to the library. Materials produced will also be made available to community members for their own personal use.

Acting as your convivial librarian, McCafferty will represent the collected materials, and establish a method for distributing, disseminating, archiving and providing access.

The hope is to contribute an image of the dynamics of the Drouillard neighbourhood. Stop by Civic Space for opportunities to contribute to the project and engage with Dan over the next week.

July 16, 2013July 5, 2018

Neighbourhood Spaces Artists-in-Residence Announced, Lisa Lipton Starts this Week!

Aaron McKenzie Fraser - photographer - http://www.amfraser.com

The 2013 – 2014 Neighbourhood Spaces (NS) artists-in-residence have been announced! Residencies kick-off this week with Lisa Lipton (Halifax, NS) at Atkinson and Forest Glade Skate Parks in Windsor, ON with her project: BLAST BEATS: Phase Three.

BLAST BEATS: Phase Three is an exploration in alternative methodologies for building a feature film on the road that spans the scope of Lisa’s experiences as a visual artist, musician and director. Each scene is being constructed in different locations across North America and explores the potential within transforming multi- media installations and performance into film sets and scenes. The narrative evolves with each place and space, and is informed its local community members and conversations with participating collaborators. Through mixing landscapes, people, artistic practices and genres of music, the project aims to unite a vast linage of creative energy in order to create a diverse story and feature film that transcends time and space. For her 6-week NS residency, Lisa will facilitate the making of a“Windsor-based SCENE” at the Skate Parks of Windsor to be included in the larger docufictional film.

Check out the full 2013 – 2014 NS artist line-up at www.acwr.net/ns

May 27, 2013July 5, 2018

Windsor Issues V.4: An Exhibition by UWindsor Emerging Artist Research Residency Members

May 30th to June 28th, 2013 with an opening reception held Thursday, May 30th at 7pm – Civic Space (411 Pelissier Street, Windsor, Ontario)

Windsor Issues is a culmination of the Emerging Artist Research Residency at the University of Windsor 2013. For one-month, five artists from across the country have been living, working and making art in Windsor. Research documentation, works in progress and experimental investigations are just some of the results of their labours. The exhibition will run from May 30th to June 28th, 2013, with an opening reception on Thursday, May 30th at 7pm. The participating artists include Andrea Kastner (Kamloops, BC), Thea Jones (Toronto, ON), Didier Morelli (Vancouver, BC), Natalie Nadeau (Essex, ON), and Elisa Yon (Vancouver, BC).

Artist in Residence Elisa Yon will be holding a workshop outside Civic Space on Thursday, May 30th from 1-4pm (Rain Time: 7pm the same day) which will invite conversation and participation with visitors surrounding the types of foods created and consumed within the artist studio.

About the Artists

Andrea Kastner (Kamloops, British Columbia)

Andrea Kastner is a painter living in Kamloops, BC, who creates work exploring the sacred nature of rejected things. Born in 1984 and raised in Montreal, she holds a BFA at Mount Allison University and an MFA at the University of Alberta. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across Canada. Her plans include upcoming solo exhibitions at Harcourt House, Hamilton Artists’ Inc., and Comox Valley Art Gallery. In 2012, she was finalist for the RBC Canadian Painting Competition.

Andrea Kastner’s paintings of basements, alleyways and trash bring to light the hidden underbelly of things we seek to ignore. As part of the University of Windsor’s Emerging Artist Research Residency, she has been documenting the area of Windsor around her husband’s childhood home, which is now abandoned and boarded up. “Small Disasters” is a series of paintings which takes these images of Windsor and then uses a collage aesthetic to build them into surreal and ghostly cityscapes.

Thea Jones (Toronto, Ontario)

Thea’s research in Windsor has been focused on producing A Video Novel for Windsor, which is a multi-channel video installation featuring the local social and environmental landscape. Featured at Civic Space and during the Windsor Issues exhibition are drafts of the chapters (or channels) for A Video Novel for Windsor. (audio composition by Michael James)

Thea has also been conducting an ongoing mending service in her studio at the University of Windsor’s School of Visual Arts, where you bring her an article in need of mending and she will mend it for you. This is how she will save the world.

Didier Morelli (Vancouver, British Columbia)

Morelli uses his body as a site for exploration and change. Through performance and social practice he revisits urban spaces in an effort to reconfigure “our conception and use of the everyday.”

During his stay at the Emerging Artist Research Residency, he has interacted with and in physical space and places around Windsor. Various individuals were encountered and a dialogue between his body and the city was developed through a series of task-oriented actions. The work remained experimental and process driven, focusing on play and chance. Featured at Civic Space for the duration of the Windsor Issues V.4 exhibition is a book documenting his one-month residency. It is composed of texts, images, collages, and drawings.

Natalie Nadeau (Essex, Ontario)

Questioning conventions regarding the role of women and their relationship to domestic spaces in alliance with notions of time has driven my current artistic practice. The history of North American social attitudes towards domestic roles has led to further my interest in modern day suburban dwellings. Sculpture is one of the mediums in which I use to explore concepts of decorative and utilitarian objects found in domestic spaces.

Elisa Yon (Vancouver, British Columbia)

Elisa Yon is a Vancouver-based interdisciplinary designer and artist with a practice in socially engaged public art. As an architect by training, her research-based practice examines place-making through interventions that often engage a reflexive and ethnographic experience. Her experiments in designing cultural probes provide a framework for visitors, audiences and communities to intersect, contest and produce knowledge within public space. Using architecture and mixed- media installation, Yon examines the relationship between the social realms of design and site-specific practices in the making of place.

The role of the table in the engagement of conversations, negotiations and the making and consumption of food became the focus of this research-based artist residency. Thinking of the table as a tool within the creative process became a way to explore some of the more subtle and intimate relationships we have with these everyday objects. The work, together with the workshop (on Thursday May 30th, 2013 from 1 – 4pm) invites conversation and participation with visitors surrounding the types of foods created and consumed within the artist studio.

Artist-In-Residence Speaker Series (May 5th – 7th) CIVIC Space – 411 Pelissier Street, Windsor, Ontario