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CARTographyTO hacks Astral info pillars

Via BlogTO…

Several months in the making, CARTographyTO formed through word of mouth when the first Astral Media pillars were sunk into the sidewalk in Toronto: concerned citizens, artists and others with a creative streak came together with the desire to reclaim the lost public space in their neighbourhoods.

A spokesperson for cARTographyTO stated, “These structures are billboards masquerading as sources of useful public information. When you look at the pillars, it’s hard to find the maps, and this goes against the City’s own public space guidelines. How could City Hall allow this to happen? Beyond mere visual pollution, these pillars are a safety hazard. And Astral’s influence on our city is a public insult and embarrassment – more power has been given to those who already have the loudest voices, to the detriment of all who use these spaces.”

Love that this happened.

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ATTC Calgary: Unfolding the Cycles of a City on Billboards & in Print

On the final day of our ATTC Calgary residency, the billboards launched. We headed out in the early afternoon with Randy to document them all.

Alongside highways, on the sides of buildings in the downtown core, and mixed in with other urban-fringe architecture. The billboards stood deeply embedded and clearly removed from the landscape, at times being rotated amongst advertisements, and in other instances, acting more directly as annotations to the site of installation.

As a final trajectory of ATTC Calgary, these billboards were installed around the city noting a series of cyclical narratives. Using the phrasing, “…and then the city…” each billboard features a different statement that referenced an overarching narrative or perhaps a brief moment in time about the city, read either internally or externally. These billboards are aimed at creating a space for a momentary discussion around the possibilities in narratives themselves, which is centred on one’s personal connection, history, and knowledge on the city.

In total, TRUCK had secured us seven billboard locations spread throughout Calgary, concentrated in the downtown core and in the city’s industrial edge.

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…and then the city…

Though we’re still very much in the middle of thinking about, beginning to write about, and generally talk about all of the amazing things that we learned as part of Save the City, these billboards are the last part of the project to be launched.

These two statements are among the many, many, many that we came up with after thinking through the experiences that we had and the people that we got to meet with Save the City, and maybe in particular, our final event, How to Save a City.

I think we wanted to suggest the end of one part of a conversation and the beginning of another. In terms of our own research, I think we’re ready to start looking at problems in different ways, as a kind of continuum of ideas, rather than points from which to react.

So, you can see these billboards in Windsor. The first, “…and then the city knew it wasn’t alone.” is at University and Church, visible when traveling west.

And the second, “…and then the city started to feel better.” is at Wyandotte and Parent, visible when traveling west.

More ahead, and in the meantime, SRSI.

Broken City Lab: Save the City is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.

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Later Nights, since it’s summer now

Michelle and I spent hours and hours together yesterday. With everyone’s schedules fairly ridiculous at the moment, we’re trying to steal what little time we can to keep working. Lately, the time that we’ve all spent together has been framed exclusively almost exclusively by planning for Save the City or organizing the Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation, and so we’re usually burned out after a couple hours of that. Last night though, we pushed past the moment of getting burned out, and I think we got somewhere because of it.

We started our Friday night with a Skype call to Chris from the Department of Unusual Certainties regarding their project as part of the Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation (they are very enthusiastic, and their projects is going to be really, really great), had some dinner, tried to imagine what will come after SRSI, and then moved on to sorting out the billboards for the last part of Save the City.

We had a lot of bad ideas. Had we stopped earlier on, today and tomorrow would have been filled with some scrambling efforts to find the finish the design, emailing it out to everyone, trying to integrate everyone’s suggestions (and likely failing to do it well), sending it out again, getting more input, etc., etc., etc. Not entirely effective, nor can that process really capture the really great sparking moments of working together in the same room (the reason, I love collaborative work).

We really want these billboards to not just cap off Save the City, not just describe or some how summarize what we’ve learned, but continue with this conversation that we’ve been having. So, we had some terrible ideas for a long while, but we moved through them, we wrote them all down, then crossed them all out eventually, and it was the process of doing that, of really talking about where we were trying to go without knowing where we were going that was entirely worth it. I think we started the billboard brainstorming around 7:30pm were ready to give up around 9pm and we were there until 11pm still finalizing things. And, they’re still not finalized yet, but they’re close.

And we didn’t just brainstorm, we did the preliminary layout(s) together, we critiqued as we went, and it was so completely worth the exhaustion. Danielle called, thankfully, so we could check our work with someone outside of that room to make sure we hadn’t missed anything obvious, and then we were done, and we’re very, very excited to see these go up.

I hope the summer allows more opportunities for this — a lot of time spent together doing things, working through problems together, in the same room, until we get somewhere better than where we started.

The artwork goes out Monday, and I think the billboards launch mid-month.

Broken City Lab: Save the City is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.

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How We Spend Friday Nights: Planning, Writing, and Mapping

Meeting twice in a week can make such a difference in terms of how much we can get done. We’re still in the thick of planning for the first event of Save the City. We met earlier last week to go over the basics of finalizing our adjusted budget, put together the first round of promo, and just to sort of regroup after the holidays.

It also really helped to keep us from losing track of where we were, which seemed to be the case when we went a week (or sometimes more) between meetings. Certainly, it’s a bit more intensive, but it gave time and brain space to start talking about some larger ideas (about projects and our practice in general), and really helps to keep multi-tasking things moving.

It might seem like a lot of sitting around and talking and writing, but this is how we get things done!!!

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Phone Calls and Budgets – Tuesday Morning Productivity Extravaganza

Tuesday felt like the first day back from the holidays should. We were tired, well Josh and I were tired, we were motivated and anxious to get to work, and we got a lot done. It was a very great way to start the new year!

We spent the better part of the morning and early afternoon planning for our upcoming project, Save the City, which will involve a number of community events over the coming months, and the details of which we’ll be announcing soon.

Basically, we’re hoping to start a larger conversation with the City of Windsor, trying to determine all the details that make this place what it is, while also imaging new ways to document it at this moment in time. It’s going to require the participation of as many people as we can get, and it’s going to be the start of something even bigger. Needless to say, we are excited!!!

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