Fence Love
I’m sure there will never be a lack of fence-related interventions, but this one in particular seemed worth posting. Small and simple, but the technique is so obvious and effective (if likely slow-going), I had to add it to our research archives.
[via Radical Cross Stitch]
![To continue the progress of our cardboard letter project, I took the remaining pieces home on the weekend to finish T, E, and R. Though the first stage may be over, there’s still plenty left to work on in terms of researching and experimenting with various materials which I looked into as well. After constructing [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/IMG_3279-150x150.jpg "Fun with Cardboard Letters")
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![Broken City Lab is heading up to Hamilton on Friday, November 20th, 2009 to run a workshop/event on communicating through intervention in urban spaces. The workshop is being held at the Workers Arts & Heritage Centre as part of their Labour Lounge series, this time in partnership with the Hamilton Youth Arts Network. This has [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/wahc-map-150x150.jpg "Labour Lounge @ WAHC in Hamilton")
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![Tonight was the final night of this suite of Cross-Border Communication. We sent another set of messages to Detroit, and hopefully there were some receivers across the river, as I got to talk about the project on WDET’s Detroit Today earlier in the afternoon. Given the winterish weather that’s setting in, we’re almost certainly done [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/IMG_4080-150x150.jpg "Cross-Border Communication: Want to Be Friends? (and other things we needed to say)")
![We spent last night watching a rough cut of some of Eric’s ongoing micro-residency project, did a lot of measuring, used Google Earth, did some math, drew some diagrams, and brainstormed a new project (because Cristina wants to sew, a lot). With the semester basically over now, we’re hoping to wrap up a couple things [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/IMG_6230-150x150.jpg "Math, Markers, and Measurements + Eric’s micro-documentary")
ooooh i really like the idea of fence spaces being diagonal pixels of sorts.
Yeah, it could be great to try this, assuming we could get a fence for an extended period of time.
Any ideas on where?
i’m not really sure. it probably depends what the image/text would be, and who you would want to see it.
i agree with what leesa said about indian road. you’ve talked about installing knitting on those fences, but since that is SO time consuming, perhaps this can be a smaller alternative.
Yeah, that could be a good halfway point.
What about just knitted text-scarves? Doable?
it is definitely doable. we just need a lot of time, devoted manpower and yarn.
i’ve been trying to think of a big group project that cnap can work towards. i feel like that group lacks focus in a way. a lot of people show up and expect to be told what to do, and when we say, “oh, you just work on whatever you want” they leave and never come back, lol.
so this could be a good project to work on during cnap meetings. we can measure the fences and figure out a good size for the scarves, and then relay the measurements to the cnap members (who are willing to help). then they can knit or crochet (or sew, patchwork, weave, quilt, etc etc?) scarves that we can put the text on. do you have a block of text in mind?
That could be awesome to harness the power of CNAP to work on this, but I’m sure we’d all be more than happy to learn some knitting skills too.
Group work is tough, in terms of keeping people interested and the energy level up. I think it’s great you’re continuing to work on CNAP, for the brief time I stopped by, it was a lot of fun!
There’s no block of text in mind yet, but we should start brainstorming. I don’t think the project necessarily has to be tied to a location, but if it is, that will certainly inform the block of text. Indian Road seems like a really good fit though.
We should catch up at some point and take a walk down Indian Road and get some ideas and then work out a general estimated timeframe to pull this project off.
we can definitely teach bcl how to knit : )
i had a lot of fun with the bunting project. it’s simple things like that that make cnap a success.
are there any office hours coming up? will these continue in the new space?
ps this isn’t really related, but i thought you might like to read this post: http://www.yarnbombing.com/identity-school
i’d love to do this on the fences on indian road. those houses and neighbourhood needs some lovin’.
Thanks for that link Samantha! I think DIY techniques in various media should be part of every secondary school education!
Office Hours in some form will pick up again in September. I think we’ll be working on specific and more short-term projects in larger groups, along with holding a number of workshops/events. And come September, we’ll definitely be taking you up on your educational offer. :)
I thought I recognized this.. It’s a few minutes from where I live. There’s a few fences that have been used for quite a few different things like this in that area.
It’s pretty awesome that you can live around the world and see the things I like posting on here in real-life!
Are these fences especially interesting socially or politically (do they enclose some sites of contestation?), or do they just so happen to be on a high-traffic street?
As mentioned in the article, those fences are next to a large motorway that’s a “bypass”.
The motorway was added sort of recently to make it easier for cars to get through the city, so it cuts right through where a neighborhood once was. A lot of old historic houses and buildings were in the way, so they moved a bunch of them and restored them. Now they just sit in awkward places around the city and almost all of them are unused. The radical community centre that I volunteer at has a house right on the edge of this road, with all the houses next to it torn down for the motorway (I think the gov’t just knew better than to tear this one down, so the motorway goes RIGHT next to it).
As for where the little hearts are, it’s in an area where there’s always little tidbits of graffitti because it’s one of the few places in the city that isn’t as actively cleaned up. Whether the hearts are actually a response to the motorway, I seriously doubt it.. This is just where you go to do stuff like this because there aren’t people around. There have been a lot of responses to the motorway though and there still are. There’s currently a large art project underway near this area where someone is building a replica of one of the historic buildings that got torn down, but completely hollow and out of metal.. like a ghost. Very neat..
Hey Mike,
Can confirm that it is a response to the bypass of sorts… it seems the Council went ahead with the bypass despite huge public opposition… (I wasn’t really in town for that bit) but the bit that gets me is that they’ve left parts of it totally unused and wasted. Like the historic houses you mention… and this site here. They’ve removed the buildings and just left NOTHING there. It could be such a cool place for so many things (community oriented). As you said, it’s an area that doesn’t get cleaned up often so is used for street art etc.I guess we wanted to claim a bit for our own street art and get people smiling about what is such a desolate piece of land.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention that we added a whole pile more hearts to the fence last Sunday.
You can check ‘em out here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26708421@N07/sets/72157621590744465/
Nikki, great work! I really liked this one:
Can’t wait to see more!