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Guerrilla Art Residencies at DIY megastores

fourniture 2.2

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]

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You Are Worth It: Biodegradable Balloons

YOU ARE WORTH IT.

As part of Green Corridor’s Open Corridor festival, I’ll be working with 500 biodegradable balloons with “YOU ARE WORTH IT.” printed on them. The balloons will be filled with helium and some wildflower seeds, 200 of them will be launched anchored throughout the Green Corridor area and handed out to those in attendance next Thursday, June 18th.

Over the next few months, the remaining 300 balloons will be used for a variety of smaller launches and handed out in small bunches.

The balloons will act as a kind of seed bomb, meant to distribute wildflowers to some of the many ideal locations across the city for new gardens.

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A Consultancy Installed

Broken City Lab: A Consultancy

Last night was the opening for a couple of shows connected to the Parking Garage on the corner of Pelissier and Park, including our project, Broken City Lab: A Consultancy. Danielle, Steven, Leesa, and I spent the better part of the afternoon (attempting to dodge the rain) in the space setting up. Along with this wall, Steven set up a Floridian Embassy, and Leesa had a huge number of balloons pushed up against one of the windows and surrounding a small stage.

The work that went into this basically occurred over the last 48 hours. Danielle and I spent Wednesday night drawing, painting, printing, cutting, and gluing, and then Thursday in the space. Thanks to Steven’s bulletin, we had a general idea of how to organize the space, but it was really amazing to spend such a concentrated amount of time working in this way alongside Danielle, Steven and Leesa.

Our projects generally get drawn out, just due to the sheer complexities, unknowns, or relationships that need to be developed to pull them off. In this case, we had the space, we had a rough idea, and we had the support to make it happen.

We’ll plan to be in and out of the space as much as possible over the coming weeks, hopefully adding to the wall, going deeper into brainstorming on the potentials for the entire buildings, as well as just shifting to conduct our general research in the space.

I’ll get some more photos in the daylight soon. In the meantime, you can read a quick one-page statement on the project.

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Broken City Lab: A Consultancy

a consultancy

We’ll be taking over 406 Pelissier from June 8th-28th and setting up a consultancy to research, investigate, and imagine alternative uses for the entire parking structure located at the corner of Park and Pelissier. Invented studies, statistics, and illustrations will be exhibited and will result in a formal report / action plan for future initiatives in Windsor’s downtown core.

Along with Julie Sando’s Contemporary Visual Culture class show, CVC Citizen Show (running at 424 Pelissier), we’ll have a reception of sorts on June 11th, from 8-11pm in both spaces.

We’ll be working in the space (406 Pelissier) off and on throughout the month.

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Braiding Grass in Windsor

Leesa Bringas (along with some fellow Windsor artists) spent the weekend braiding the long grass at Great Western Park. The process leaves spirals of braided grass around shoots of flowers. It’s quite beautiful and seems meditative (though admittedly, I didn’t venture out to try myself).

Political issues of the strike aside, I quite like seeing the riverfront in a naturalized state, and it’s great that Leesa found such a quiet way to work with the space. Given the other activity in city parks over the weekend, this project is a welcomed intervention to the strike now going into its seventh week.

You can see more photos on Steven’s site, or more video on Darren’s site, or read more about the project on the Windsor Star.

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Text In-Transit Panels off to the Printers

Text In-Transit folder

The panels for Text In-Transit have been sent off to the printers. We should be able to install these on Transit Windsor buses in the next couple of weeks!!!

We settled on 90 unique panels + 10 title card panels.

Again, we can’t thank everyone enough for the support and participation—I’m hugely excited to see these all printed and installed!

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Windsor Signage

Visit Windsor's Sculpture Garden

I almost didn’t believe this sign existed. The few times I’ve been out to the Windsor Airport, I’ve usually been coming from the south, which (if my understanding of the geographic location of this photo is correct) might explain why I’ve missed it in the past.

Thankfully, Steven has a photo of it and presents two good options for working with it (it’s either a t-shirt or a lightbox (or fodder for Ron Terada)).

Signage has been discussed before at BCL, and while we’ll leave it to Steven to work with this sign in one way or another, it actually collapses two things that I often loosely discuss in introducing Windsor’s cultural landscape (so to speak) to people who aren’t from the area. The level of design (demonstrated above) and this kind of amassing of public art in the form of a dumping ground, ghetto, “tax shelter,” park while the rest of the streets remain the place for bland infrastructure and advertising is a prime example of what may be wrong in Windsor.

And, if you aren’t already reading Steven’s blog on a regular basis, do yourself a favour and add it to your reader.

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Text in Knitted Tags

Text Knit Tag

At last night’s Media City screening, I ran into Samantha and Laura whose schedules unfortunately hadn’t been able to align with BCL’s Office Hours in the last couple of weeks. I asked about their progress with their yarn bombs, which have been installed in numerous locations in downtown Windsor, and are gradually covering the entirety of the bike racks outside of Phog.

I wondered about the potential of adding text to the tags, which could lead to a really large intervention / eventual collection of handmade scarves.

This could be an amazing project! Sam already posted her efforts from last night on her blog, and the results are really encouraging!!! I think this could be one of our next summer projects.

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Temporary Downtown Space for BCL

406 Pelissier, Windsor, Ontario

For the month of June, Broken City Lab will have access to 406 Pelissier (pictured above) in downtown Windsor, thanks to Julie Sando and Leesa Bringas who are teaching the Contemporary Visual Culture class during Intersession at the University of Windsor.

We’re still just starting to plan what we might do in the space, but we’re thinking of running a type of consultancy for the month. Details to follow.