Flagged For Review Launch & Open Studio and Social Practice Pot Luck

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Can you believe it’s already almost the end of April? We’ve been working out in Vancouver on a new project since January and it’s been an amazing experience, we’ve met so many incredible new friends, we’ve got to dig into our work face to face again, and we’ve got to make a bunch of new work! And so, as we wind down our residency at the Contemporary Art Gallery’s Field House Studio, we have two events to announce, both of which we’d love to see you at…

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We’ll be unveiling the flags we’ve been working on…

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…and our mobile flag beacon, which we’ll parade around (if the weather holds)!

Two Events…

Flagged for Review Launch and Open Studio
Tuesday, April 22, 7-8.30pm

Marking the end of our residency, we’ll open the doors to the Field House for an open studio gathering, as well as the launch of Flagged for Review. Look for these bright and beautiful flags to be temporarily installed in and around the building.

Social Practice Pot Luck
Saturday, April 26, 7-9pm

To celebrate Broken City Lab’s Field House residency we are hosting a pot luck and conversation regarding social practice with special guest artist and Founder/Director of the Art and Social Practice MFA program at Portland State University, Harrell Fletcher. Fletcher is visiting Vancouver as a part of the Working as an Artist workshop series at Purple Thistle. He will be giving an artist talk there on Friday April 25, 7:30pm and leading a workshop the following day, Saturday April 26, 1-4pm, with local artist Carmen Papalia. www.purplethistle.ca

Bring a snack and join in on the conversation.

The Field House Studio Residency Program is generously supported by the Vancouver Park Board and the City of Vancouver.

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

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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.

 

HOMEWORK II: LONG FORMS / SHORT UTOPIAS (Nov 8-10, 2013) + Livestream Archive

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We’re very pleased to announce Homework II: Long Forms / Short Utopias, a three-day conference and collaboratively-written publication that will aim to unfold the ways in which we construct, articulate, and practice ideas of micro-utopias, pop-up ideals, collaboration, and long-term social engagement in Ontario, across Canada, and abroad.

The conference will build on our previous conference, Homework: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices, in bringing together multidisciplinary artists and creative practitioners enacting and articulating the complexities of working in practices driven by curiosities about utopian collaboration, community, infrastructures, locality, and long-form social practice. With support from the Ontario Arts Council and Ontario Trillium Foundation, we’re looking to build an event that can frame a discussion on socially-engaged practices that span disciplines, with a particular focus on emerging practitioners.

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 – Tentative Conference Schedule

1. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8TH

Keynote Panel Discussion | Art Gallery of Windsor | 7:00pm-9:45pm

Featuring presentations from:

Jeanne van Heeswijk (Rotterdam)

Since 1993, Jeanne van Heeswijk has been working on socially committed art projects that take place in public spaces. She sees herself as a mediator, an intermediary between a situation, a space, a neighborhood and the people connected to these. Acting, meeting, and communicating are key concepts in her method of working. She has coined the term “urban curating” for her interventions. In the sedate Dutch art world in which all taboos appear to have been broken, her work – uniquely – arouses fierce controversy.

Darren O’Donnell (Toronto)

Darren O’Donnell is a novelist, essayist, playwright, director, designer, performer, Artistic Director of Mammalian Diving Reflex and Research Director of The Tendency Group, an emerging think tank and social policy laboratory. His books include: Social Acupuncture, which argues for an aesthetics of civic engagement and Your Secrets Sleep with Me, a novel about difference, love and the miraculous. In addition to his artistic practice, he is currently an Msci candidate in Urban Planning at the University of Toronto.

Steve Lambert (New York)

Steve Lambert is an artist who works with issues of advertising and the use of public space. He is a founder of the Anti-Advertising Agency, an artist-run initiative which critiques advertising through artistic interventions, and of the Budget Gallery (with Cynthia Burgess) which creates exhibitions by painting over outdoor advertisements and hanging submitted art in its place. He has also worked with the Graffiti Research Lab and as a senior fellow with Eyebeam Open Lab.


 2. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9TH

A. Registration and Opening Remarks | Art Gallery of Windsor | 8:30am-9:15am

Remarks by:

Justin Langlois, Hiba Abdallah, and Josh Babcock (Project Coordinators, Broken City Lab)

Srimoyee Mitra (Curator of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Windsor)


 

B. Thematic Panel Discussions | Art Gallery of Windsor | 9:00am-6:30pm

Thomas Provost | 9:30am-10:40am

Ad Hoc, a panel organized by Thomas Provost, will feature panelists Kaija WuolletElaine Carr, and Marcin Kedzior.

An archaeology of the human world reveals there are infinite systemic exchanges constructing our environment: weathering, investments, labour, political forums, contracts, negotiations, among other occurrences and phenomena. Essential to this discussion on spatial-collaboration are the various exchanges a creative practice must navigate in order to create micro-utopias, pop-up-ideals, or projections of time & place. Within architecture and landscape, experimental operations have emerged despite an uncertain economic trajectory and forbearing ecological instability, under which our panelists curiously work, at least in part, ad hoc.


Reena Katz | 10:50am-12:00pm

Organized by Reena Katz/Radiodress, artist and Acting Director, Galerie SAW Gallery, Ottawa-Gatineau, Engaged to be Wary: De-authorizing Social Practice will feature panelists, Srimoyee Mitra, curator, Art Gallery of Windsor and Alana Bartol, artist and Project Manager for Neighbourhood Spaces, Windsor.

At a time when community engaged art practices are becoming ubiquitous throughout gallery, museum and institutional education systems, there is a strong need for conversations around what works and what doesn’t in this growing and chaotic field. The goal of this panel will be to discuss diverse perspectives on Social Practice, ask critical questions, and formulate some useful guidelines for its successful pedagogy and praxis. We will use the opportunity of the publication to publish the beginnings of a malleable, living manifesta on the subject, based on the presentations, discussion and ideas generated at the panel.


Maggie Flynn | 1:00pm-2:10pm

A discussion between Tities Wîcinímintôwak Arts Collective and Chris Rabideau will address themes such as intergenerational organizing, learning in the context of Two-Spirit, trans, and queer communities, and personal approaches to long-term, community-based work. This panel is organized by Maggie Flynn.


IN/TERMINUS | 2:20pm-3:30pm

The Shape of a Question: Art, Politics, Pedagogy, a panel organized by Michael Darroch and Jennifer Willet for IN/TERMINUS, will discuss historical and contemporary models and contexts at the intersection of art, politics and pedagogy.


Michael Davidge | 3:40pm-4:50pm

For a panel presentation on Saturday November 9, Michael Davidge has brought together a group of creative practitioners whose work addresses the themes of the Homework II conference through their engagement with electronic dance music. Davidge is an independent curator, artist and art critic who lives in Ottawa, Ontario. The panelists include Bambitchell (Sharlene Bamboat and Alexis Mitchell) (Toronto) who will present on their project, Border Sounds; Michael Caffrey and Kerry Campbell (Gatineau) who will discuss their “GhettoBlast Sound System;” and Chris McNamara (Windsor) will discuss his experience with the Windsor/Detroit techno music scene and describe his involvement with the audio collective “Nospectacle.” The panelists’ projects employ electronic dance music in various ways that construct, articulate, and practice ideas of micro-utopias, pop-up ideals, and long-term social engagement.


Department of Unusual Certainties | 5:00pm-6:10pm

“Support Someone Else’s Revolution” – The world is small, interconnected and formed from extensive systems that intersect with our lives. Knowingly and unknowingly our actions reinforce and resist the transformation of these systems, which do shift under the weight and energy of people and things. The Information Age is more a statement of societal arrogance than a reflection of a broader cultural understanding of the world. Gaps in knowledge exist and will not be rectified through the consumption of media nor exchanges within our personal networks.

Department of Unusual Certainties has invited four individuals to speak to the ways that we support other people and things in transition (eg. corporations, neighbours and democracy etc.). Each of these four individual’s were selected because their practices empower citizens within stable States to reflect and then to act. The panel will feature: Michèle Champagne (Founder/Creative Director, That New Design Smell), Jordan Tanahill (Artistic Director, Suburban Beast), Satsuko Van Antwerp (Manager, Social Innovation Generation), and Justin Langlois (Director, Broken City Lab) moderated by Department of Unusual Certainties. 


3. SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10TH

Workshops and General Assembly | Art Gallery of Windsor & CIVIC SPACE | 11:00am-5:00pm

A day of conversation, interviews, and workshops to inform the forthcoming publication.

Open Community Breakfast at Civic Space | 10:00am-11:00am

Join us and fellow conference panelists, attendees, and anyone else walking around the neighbourhood for some light breakfast. We’ll open our doors to serve cereal, fruit, coffee, and tea, along with some great conversations to kick off the final day of the conference.

Workshops for Publication, Part 1 at the AGW | 11:00am-2:00pm

We’ll be back at the AGW for a series of workshops, discussion groups, and interviews that will help shape the forthcoming publication. We’re asking you to consider participating in the creation of this publication by conducting at least one interview with someone else attending the conference. Meanwhile, back at CIVIC Space, Hiba will be working to compile the content she receives from the participants — interviews, photographs, sketchbook notes, manifestos, endless questions, and more.

General Assembly at the AGW | 2:00pm-3:30pm

An open community discussion on issues surrounding socially-engaged practices, the infrastructures required to support them, precarious labour, educational possibilities, the professionalization of artists, and the conference itself.

Workshops for Publication, Part 2 at the AGW | 3:30pm-4:30pm

The work continues at the AGW and at CIVIC Space towards compiling the contents for the publication, with follow up discussions driven by the General Assembly.

Closing Remarks at the AGW | 4:30pm-4:45pm


Homework II: Long Forms / Short Utopias runs November 8 – 10, 2013 at Art Gallery of Windsor, located at 401 Riverside Drive West, Windsor, Ontario and CIVIC Space, located at 411 Pelissier Street, Windsor, Ontario.


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HomeworkIISponsors

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

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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.

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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 CouncilOntario Trillium FoundationArt Gallery of Windsor, and IN/TERMINUS.

HomeworkIISponsors

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

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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.

Scapegoat Journal 05 – Excess!!! (art is excess, artists are not excessive, art is not enough)

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SCAPEGOAT: Architecture | Landscape | Political Economy is an independent, not-for-profit, bi-annual journal designed to create a context for research and development regarding design practice, historical investigation, and theoretical inquiry. Edited by friends like Adrian Blackwell, Adam Bobbette, Nasrin Himada, Jane Hutton, Marcin Kedzior, Chris Lee, Christie Pearson, and Etienne Turpin, SCAPEGOAT should be considered required reading.

In the latest issue of  SCAPEGOAT, focused on EXCESS,  BCL Research Fellows, Justin Langlois and Hiba Abdallah tackle the language of excess around valuations of design, art, and civic life. This work comes alongside along work from approximately 60 other contributors (including upcoming Homework II panel organizer, Tom Provost)… and here’s the full epic list:

Contributors to EXCESS include: Ariella AZOULAY, Georges BATAILLE, Jean BAUDRILLARD, Alex BERCEANU, Diana BERESFORD-KROEGER, James BRIDLE, Melissa CATE CHRIST, Tings CHAK, Steven CHODORIWSKY, Vicki DASILVA, Heather DAVIS, Sara DEAN, Amanda DE LISIO, Seth DENIZEN, EMIL, ÉPOPÉE, FALA ATELIER, Valeria FEDERIGHI, Natasha GINWALA, HEBBEL AM UFER, Lisa HIRMER, Gary HUSTWIT, David HUTAMA, Kate HUTCHENS, Jennifer JACQUET, Martti KALLIALA, Prachi KAMDAR, Stuart KENDALL, Chris KRAUS, Abidin KUSNO, Emily KUTIL, Clint LANGEVIN, Justin LANGLOIS, Sam LEACH, Stanisław LEM, Sylvère LOTRINGER, Filipe MAGALHAES, Danielle MCDONNOUGH, Meredith MILLER, Srimoyee MITRA, Jeffrey MONAGHAN, Jon PACK, Keith PEIFFER, Rich PELL, pHgH, Rick PRELINGER, Thomas PROVOST, raumlaborberlin, John Paul RICCO, Erin SCHNEIDER, Ana Luisa SOARES, Scott SØRLI, Raphael SPERRY, Anna-Sophie SPRINGER, Antonio STOPPANI, Maria TAYLOR, Eugene THACKER, Kika THORNE, Emily VANDERPOL, Kevin WALBY, Eyal WEIZMAN, Jason YOUNG, Vivian ZIHERL, and Joanna ZYLINSKA.

The issue is now available online for purchase today. Please share with your friends and colleagues. SCAPEGOAT is an awesome independent Toronto-based journal that’s worth supporting.

New Publication Out Now: Invented Emergency (For Small Cities & Big Towns)

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We just received a few boxes of our newest publication, INVENTED EMERGENCY (For Small Cities & Big Towns), published through White Water Gallery. They look so good, we can’t wait to give them out!

INVENTED EMERGENCY is built on the research developed for Surviving North Bay, a residency and exhibition by Broken City Lab, hosted by White Water Gallery in the summer and fall of 2012. Surviving North Bay developed as a series of exploratory public interventions, micro-gestures, and tactical responses to North Bay. Each of these exploratory initiatives called on public participation to engage with North Bay, its infrastructures, and its communities. Throughout the residency, we collected research on the city in support of an exhibition that aimed to not only examine the practice and production of a northern locality, but also present a range of resistive tactics that can help the community survive, or help one survive the community. Emergencies became shorthand for this series of resistive tactics and gestures and INVENTED EMERGENCY extends these ideas towards developing a series of starting points and positions for new (and revisited) radical practices.

Pick up your copy at CIVIC SPACE, or let us know if you want one, and I’m sure we can arrange getting one in the mail to you!

Huge thanks to Clayton and Robyn and everyone at White Water Gallery for making this possible!

This project was generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.