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Neighbourhood Spaces Artist-in-Residence Announces Call to Community for New Music Resource Centre

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Neighbourhood Spaces Artist-in-Residence Announces Call to Community for New Music Resource Centre at Sandwich Teen Action Group (STAG)

Tuesdays from 4-7pm, Starting June 25th – July 16th @ STAG – 3735 King St. just off of Prince Road

Local Musician, Singer-Songwriter, Bandleader and Teacher, Kenneth MacLeod is one of 10 artists selected for Neighbourhood Spaces: Windsor & Region Artist in Residence Program, a new initiative of “The Collaborative”: Arts Council Windsor & Region (ACWR), Broken City Lab (BCL) and The City of Windsor. After receiving 150 applications, Neighbourhood Spaces (NS) has selected 10 Canadian artists to be located in community sites throughout Windsor and Essex County for 4-6-week artist residences.

As a NS artist-in-residence, Kenneth will be developing and creating a new drop-in music resource and education centre at Sandwich Teen Action Group (STAG), a community-based charitable organization in the west end of Windsor, providing programs and support for at-risk youth. A former school, STAG offers an ideal location for the Centre, which will function as a music classroom, drop-in space and practice area. Kenneth will also be partnering with the Windsor Youth Centre (WYC), a drop-in Centre for homeless and at-risk youth ages 13-20 located in Wyandotte Town Centre. As an NS artist-in-residence at WYC, he will be there Wednesday evenings encouraging youth to write and share songs about their own experiences, communities and neighbourhoods. At the end of the residency, youth will have the option to participate in a performance that will celebrate and showcase their talent.

Throughout his 6 week residency, Kenneth will oversee the project and offer free music instruction and workshops to neighbourhood youth ages 13-20. Drawing on connections to local musicians and community members, Kenneth and the NS Program will bring volunteers, equipment and resources to the Centre.  After the residency, Kenneth aims to continue the Centre, creating a permanent space for youth to develop and expand their musical skills and abilities in Windsor.

In preparation for his NS residency, which begins on August 6th, Kenneth is asking for donations of new or used instruments of all kinds such as drums, tambourines, keyboards, guitars and ukuleles, as well as other sound equipment and music resources such as music books, sheet music, amplifiers, audio cables, microphones, guitar racks and other items.

Supported by the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Neighbourhood Spaces will allow artists to pursue research and create artwork that explores and responds to the stories, triumphs and challenges of various communities. Residencies will begin July 15th, 2013 and be staggered over the next year, concluding in August 2014. A final exhibition and symposium will be held in the fall of 2014 and an online publication will be created documenting the program. The 2013-2014 NS Artists will be announced in July 2013.

If you have a donation for the NS Music Resource Centre at STAG or questions about the NS Program, please contact Alana Bartol, Program Coordinator for Neighbourhood Spaces at 226-975-1732 or ns@acwr.net.

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Flint Public Art Project – Call for Proposals

Silos and Grass

Flint Public Art Project – Flint, Michigan

Call for Proposals for Temporary Installations at Spring Grove Silos – Deadline: Wednesday, June 26th

Our friends over at Flint Public Art Project, an initiative which helps to organize engaging public events, workshops and temporary installations in the city of Flint, Michigan, are preparing to fund new site-based installations at the end of this summer. Flint Public Art Project aims to inspire Flint residents to reimagine their city, reclaim vacant and under-utilized areas, and use innovative methods to help influence Flint’s long-term city planning. It’s a very cool project and all the better that they’re continuing to open up opportunities to participate and collaborate. Here’s the latest:

Flint Public Art Project is currently seeking proposals for temporary installations incorporating two, 65-feet-tall concrete silos at Spring Grove, a restored wetlands and open space near downtown Flint. Two artists will receive up to $3,500 each for their projects, which will be installed August 1 and September 5. These installations will be part of Spring Grove Nights, a new summer program featuring music, dance, and theater performances as well the silo projects. These events will help residents and visitors re-imagine the site, establishing a public space unlike any other in the city and informing a long-range community plan to re-use the silos.
 
Submit a proposal by Wednesday, June 26. More information can be found here.
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Zine Night Continues this Summer: Wednesdays Biweekly at Civic Space

Zine Night

Zine Night: A Free Biweekly Micro-Publishing Forum, Open to All!

Zine Night, a biweekly micro-publishing workshop series hosted by BCL’s Rosina Riccardo continues throughout the summer. Join us as we cut, paste, tear, discuss, remove, rethink, reshape, bind, print, and share (in no particular order).

Upcoming Dates

June – 5th & 19th

July – 3rd, 17th, & 31st

@ CIVIC SPACE – 411 Pelissier Street, Windsor, Ontario

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Reshaping Rochester: Transforming Spaces Lecture with Justin Langlois & Dr. Ian Wilson

Rochester

Reshaping Rochester Lecture Series – “Transforming Spaces” Lecture and Exhibition with Justin Langlois & Dr. Ian Wilson

Wednesday, June 5th, 7-9pm – The Little Theatre, Theatre #1, 240 East Avenue, Rochester, NY

Reshaping Rochester is an annual lecture series hosted by the Rochester Regional Design Center (RRCDC). The series focuses on the efforts, strategies and successes accomplished by cities that face challenges similar to Rochester, New York.

On June 5th, Justin will be heading to Rochester to co-present the final lecture, “Transforming Spaces”, with Dr. Ian Wilson, a radiologist and co-founder of Wall/Therapy from Rochester, NY.

To accompany the discussion and support the topics covered by Ian and Justin, the RRCDC is also showing a selection of works by Broken City Lab and Ian’s mural initiative, Wall/Therapy in the Design Gallery (1115 E. Main Street). The exhibition will be up until mid-June and includes a wide variety of past Broken City Lab interventions, publications, and other documentation.

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

WINDSOR ISSUES V4

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.

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Uprisings: Images of Labour, A Print Exhibition by Justseeds Artist Cooperative

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If you haven’t stopped by Civic Space in a while, the last two weeks have consisted of a very substantial labour-inspired print exhibition featuring works from Justseeds Artist Cooperative and a residency with Justseeds member Mary Tremonte. Mary came to stay with us at the beginning of May, just in time to participate in the annual May Day Parade. Besides the public silkscreening event she held at the end of the parade, Mary also led a workshop on May 7th at Civic Space as part of National Youth Arts Week. Mary also coordinated a printmaking exhibition of Justseeds Artist Cooperative works, centered around the issue of labour rights and the ethics surrounding the employer/employee relationship. It was a fantastic showcase of Justseeds’ print works, and we highly recommend checking out the rest of them here.

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The prints were mostly the same size, with a few being a bit smaller and some being in landscape format. Some were silkscreen and some were relief prints, and they represented a variety of styles.

Mary set up her DJ equipment amongst the exhibition with the bandanas printed during her residency adorning the DJ booth.

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The combination of live music, large paper prints, and overhanging fabric prints activated the space in a marvelous way. Thank you to everyone who was able to come out; it really was a celebration.

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Erica, a student completing an internship with us, made these delicious cookies for the dance party with a custom letter-punching kit.

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DJ Mary Mack (Mary Tremonte) brought two turntables, a mixer, and a stack of her favorite records to spin during her dance party / closing reception. It was a blast and we hope we can work with Mary/Justseeds in some capacity again.

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19th Annual Media City Film Festival (May 21-25, 2013)

Saul Levine - Film Still

Image: Film Still by Saul Levine

19th Annual Media City Film Festival (2013)

This Tuesday, May 21st, our friends at Media City will be kicking off the 19th Annual Media City Film Festival with an opening night at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD). Then, on Wednesday, May 22nd, there will be an opening reception at the Capitol Theatre & Arts Centre in Windsor. This year, Media City will be screening more than 60 new artist’s films from 20 countries, presented in 10 programs over 5 days. Dozens of filmmakers and cinema professionals will be in attendance from across Canada and the USA as well as England, France, Palestine, Ecuador, Argentina, South Korea and more.

On Friday, May 24th, Broken City Lab’s own Hiba Abdallah will be presenting Program 5 at the Capitol Theatre & Arts Centre at 9:30pm.

Tuesday, May 21st, 8pm – Opening Night at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) (4454 Woodward Avenue, Detroit)

Live performance by legendary free music orchestra CCMC, featuring distinguished Canadian artists Michael Snow (Companion of the Order of Canada), John Oswald and Al Mattes, and Detroit’s own avant-noise trio Wolf Eyes (on the cover of Wire magazine this month!). Also that night: launch party for the vinyl re-release of CCMC Volume Three, a recording lost for 35 years, now reissued by Media City and MOCAD in a limited edition of 500 LPs.

Wednesday, May 22nd  to Saturday, May 25th – Film Screenings at the Capitol Theatre (121 University West, Windsor)

The best of new artist’s film from around the globe, screened in two or three programs nightly. Highlights include a retrospective screening celebrating the career of US filmmaker Saul Levine, spanning forty years, the Canadian premiere of Stemple Pass, the new film by James Benning, plus new films by Kevin J. Everson, Basma Alsharif, Sergei Loznitsa, David Gatten, Friedl vom Gröller, and many more.

Wednesday, May 22nd, 6:00 pm – Opening Party in Windsor at the Capitol Theatre

The opening party will include a special announcement from Windsor-West MPP Teresa Piruzza and Shannon Prince of the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

Get on the Bus! Sponsored by the Detroit Bus Company, Media City offers a FREE shuttle service for US patrons each night of the festival, with pick-up and return locations in Detroit (MOCAD) and Ann Arbor. Schedules and Reservations through the festival website. Ride the one and only cross-border film shuttle in the world! 

Below is a link to the online catalogue which has more in-depth information about this year’s festival:

Media City Film Festival – Online Catalogue

Media Contacts: Jeremy Rigsby / Oona Mosna, Program Directors
Direct: (519) 973-9368 or mediacity@houseoftoast.ca

Hope to see you there!

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Silkscreen Power with Mary Tremonte: This Tuesday, 4pm at Civic Space!

Windsor Youth Arts Week - Poster (2013)

Silkscreen Power: A Printmaking Workshop Hosted by Justseeds Artist Cooperative Member Mary Tremonte

Tuesday, May 7th at 4pm – Civic Space (411 Pelissier Street, Windsor, Ontario)

We are proud to be involved in Windsor Youth Arts Week 2013, this city’s contribution to National Youth Arts Week, a weeklong celebration of creativity in Canada. Windsor Youth Arts Week will provide an opportunity for youth ages 13 to 30 to express and exchange ideas, get excited about creative activity, and celebrate their contributions to their communities and to Canadian culture.

On Tuesday, May 7th, join Mary Tremonte, Justseeds Artist Cooperative member and current Broken City Lab artist in residence, as she reveals the magic of silkscreening, using posters, bandanas, pennants, and t-shirts as canvasses. Also, feel free to bring your own materials for printing (t-shirts, etc.)!

To view a list of the other events happening during Windsor Youth Arts Week, please visit here.