Hello. We're artists working through collaborative social practice and creative research to understand the ways in which locality is shaped and enacted in the city.
Back in January, we asked nearly 40 people two questions: Why did you first come to Windsor? and Why are you still here? We asked those questions at an event called, Listen to the City, which was the first part of the five-month long project, Save the City. It was an incredible night.
The answers we got over the hour and a half we spent together at Phog Lounge in downtown Windsor presented not just answers to those two questions, but sprawling conversations about what it means to live in Windsor, how we’ve shaped this city, and how it’s shaped us.
The five-minute edit you can listen to below is just a slice of everything that was talked about that night. Initially, we thought we might be able to cut a lengthier audio documentary together, but there were pragmatic implications that kept us from doing that. Hours of audio with conversations that covered more ground than we could have ever imagined meant that it was a lot more difficult to piece something much larger together.
There were many voices that we unfortunately couldn’t include in the edit below, but only because of the amazing conversations those folks had, which in turn didn’t offer the kind of brief samples similar to those that we cut together. We added some music and tried to capture a general direction of conversation that we gathered from gradually listening to all of the conversations (Danielle took on the considerable task of doing just that and creating the assembly edit of this excerpt– hours and hours and hours of work, but we’re so excited to finally be able to share this).
So, while this excerpt in no way does justice to the range of conversations that we had that night, we hope it might be a good introduction, or a good marker in time, of what a group of 40 Windsorites thought about this city at the start of 2010.
Listen to the five-minute excerpt: (updated – thanks to Stephen Surlin for finessing our mix)
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For good measure, we can also provide the original recordings in their entirety in a zip file if you’re interested. We make no promises about the audibility/legibility of every minute of these recordings, but if you have the time, they’re worth listening to as a whole. However, the zip file is over 700mb and so not easily uploaded to our servers. However, as promised, we will be officially handing over a copy of the five-minute excerpt and the raw audio files to the Windsor Archives soon.
We need to sincerely thank everyone who came out that night and shared with us.
Daragh Sankey has been working hard to release this promo video documenting Andrea Carvalho‘s three tactics to engage in non-places in the city of Windsor. Daragh is filming, logging and editing as much as he can during his residency, and will complete the post-production of the documentary later on this year.
Josh Babcock starts working on his Invention Solution Hub, Robin Fitzsimons trains hard for her big trip to Caesar’s Windsor, Kids’ crafts are on display in 424 Pelissier, The Department of Unusual Certainties are holding consumer surveys, and Thom Provost talks to the community about his ideas.
We had a lot of changes happen this weekend down on Pelissier Street. Eric Cheung’s Interior sod was uninstalled Saturday, Leesa Bringas’ Indian Road Postcard project launched, and Merry Ellen Scully Mosna’s pie-making was a big hit on Sunday.
As part of Eric Boucher’songoing micro-residency, he created a trailer for the documentary (see it above) and is now looking for music (preferably from Windsor and preferably instrumental) to complete the project!
If you have music that you’re willing to pass along under a creative commons license or something to that effect, get in touch with Eric via his Twitter page. Or just let us know and we can pass along the info.
This past Saturday I did my portion of the BCL collab/micro-residency with the lovely and talented wunderkind, Mr.Eric Boucher.
For the collab I had Eric interview my sister’s good friend, Sam. Aside from her notable charm, I think Sam was a good candidate for the project because she is a student who came from Sarnia to study at the University of Windsor and could provide us with an honest “outsider” perspective. Under the supervision of Sam’s curious cat Joseph, she and Eric chatted about her first impressions of Windsor as well as the similarities and differences between the two border cities, Sarnia and Windsor.
What I found most interesting about the process was the organic way in which the conversation unfolded and continued to unfold after the camera was off between Sam, Eric, my sister and I(as I am sure was the case for the other interviews as well), which was a clear indication of the desire to participate (Windsorites and new windsorites alike) in the pro-Windsorian discourse……we love to talk about our underappreciated city!
I also think it is interesting to note that neither of us are native Windsorites (although my sis, Eric and I are county kids), we all had post secondary education as a common draw to the city, yet, I got the sense that we all seemed to feel like true Windsorites, ready to defend our city to the naysayers, the uninformed, the tresoners and the ones who lost hope.
Yesterday, Eric Boucher met with my uncle, Lou Tortola, to interview him for his Micro Residency. Lou immigrated to Windsor from Italy in the seventies, when he was about ten or eleven, and is now a successful entrepreneur, established writer, and CEO of eliquidMEDIA. Over some espresso and biscotti, he talked with Eric about his first impressions of Windsor and Detroit as a child, and gave his perspective on the cultural aspects of the city. Because his line of work allows him to travel frequently to all sorts of places, he also discussed cities with similar qualities as Windsor and the lack of enthusiasm for home-grown talent.
For part 4 of Eric Boucher’s Micro-Residency, we trekked all the way out to Harrow to interview my good friend, and local musician, Derek Harrison. I met Derek way back in my first week of University and became friends very quickly. Since that first semester in Windsor, Derek has been leaving Windsor left and right, moving to Ottawa, London, Montreal and even studying abroad in Lithuania, yet something keeps pulling him back to his roots, to Windsor. I’ve always found Windsor’s handle on Derek interesting, so what better way to explore this then through a BCL interview!
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 before the new year before starting on some bigger new projects in the new year, which you will hear about soon!
In order to keep things moving with Eric Boucher’s Micro-Residency project, I invited Eric to interview my oldest (in terms of age) friend Terry Marentette yesterday afternoon. I met Terry two years ago in an Art History class at the School of Visual Arts and was immediately astonished by his immense knowledge of Windsor’s past. Eric’s interview sparked some great conversation about Windsor during the Depression, the Ambassador Bridge and its effects on Windsor, the history of Walkerville, the amount of people who leave Windsor after school, etc. Overall, Eric and I were both pleased with the amount of Windsor-related information Terry provided. I am excited to see the footage!
