Another Friday evening at Lebel with the crew in action — making letters stand up, cutting maps, interpreting law, and designing impossibilities.
Above, Michelle, Josh, and Mike Marcon discuss what materials will work best to line the extruded part of the plywood letters.
It was, in short, a great night.
Continue reading “BCL Report: March 4, 2011 (Design & Play)”
We spent Friday back at Lebel, reminding us of the meetings we used to have a couple years ago when all this was just starting up. Given the size of the school and the resources readily available (like tools, multiple desks, ample light), we split up into smaller groups to tackle some “next steps” for each project on the table.
First though, we watch parts of the interview that Michelle and Rosina did with Stephen Lynn for How to Forget the Border Completely.
Continue reading “BCL Report: February 24, 2011 (back to Lebel)”
Around the maps, we’re beginning to imagine two cities collapsing into one.
As part of How to Forget the Border Completely, we’re doing and planning all sorts of things — border portals, border etiquette classes, new maps, new tourism guides, interviews, stories, and imaginary architecture.
Michelle and our dear friend, Lee Rodney, spoke about HFBC and the Border Bookmobile on Friday on CJAM‘s The Shakeup. You can listen to it here. It’s a lot of fun so far, and we’re just getting started!!!
Continue reading “BCL Report: Feb 18, 2011 (Maps & Portals)”
To get a jump start on laying the groundwork for our upcoming How to Forget the Border Completely project, we have decided to interview a small group of individuals who may be considered “experts” of the Windsor-Detroit border in some way.
Kero, a musician/graphic designer/video artist, was our first candidate for a video interview. He has had the frustrating experience of having to cross the border into Detroit quite frequently, many times spending up to an hour being screened upon entry.
Kero shared some border crossing stories–some of which truly highlight the absurdity of current border protocol–and shared ideas for how to improve the border-crossing experience, if even slightly.
On Saturday, Eric, Danielle, and her sister, Jessica, and I headed over to the Power House neighbourhood walk in Detroit.
I’d been hoping to finally see this project in person, as it’s been a little over two years since I first wrote about it here. I’d missed their residency at the DIA (saw the installation, but didn’t get to see Mitch or Gina) and also missed them at MOCAD (but seeing their Neighborhood Machine on exhibition was very cool). So, to be able to get a tour and talk to Mitch about their project was really, really great.
Above, a to-do list from artist-in-residence, Monica Canilao, who plan to return to purchase the upper-half of this duplex.
Continue reading “Power House Walking Tour: Understanding the Incremental”
A few weeks ago I met with Andréanne Baribeau of Windsor’s local French CBC radio AM 540 on the Y a pas deux matins pareils show to speak about Broken City Lab’s ongoing projects Make This Better and How To Forget The Border Completely.
The Episode aired the morning of Monday, January 31st. Check it out if you understand French or would like to try to decipher what I’m saying:
CBEF interview (link is fixed)
With our ongoing How to Forget the Border Completely research project in mind, I’m just about to sit down and watch Two, Countries, One Street on the National Film Board of Canada website.
Filmed in 1955, this short documentary visits the 3 Québec border towns of Rock Island, Stanstead and Beebe, and the Vermont town of Derby Line to see how residents and officials cope with a civic life that is cut down the middle by an international boundary.
It will be good to think about how residents and officials living in Windsor and Detroit might begin to cope with the reality of the border today and in the future, in relation to a similar situation in Québec circa 1955. Mind you, the wide river is what visually distances Windsor and Detroit from each other, and it seems that the communities of Rock Island, Stanstead, Beebe and Derby Line are not separated by a body of water.
It’s only 22 minutes, so check it out!
A Friday with everyone around the table usually translates into a lot of excellent new ideas, and yesterday was no exception!
We spent the evening reviewing the progress we’ve made on some initial research and may have sparked an entirely new direction for the project. All of the excitement is after the jump!
Continue reading “BCL Report: February 4, 2011 (Repairs and Reviews)”
Friday night was especially fun. With next week being our first research report for How to Forget the Border Completely, we basically spent the evening casually going over some preliminary research, planning out some new directions, and getting more acquainted with the collection of border books next door.
Continue reading “Quality Time with Books & Imaginary Spaces”
Timing is everything. There’s been so many conversations had, links passed, and emails exchanged in the last few weeks are we embark on our How to Forget the Border Completely project that I’m still sorting through it all.
What’s missing, in all of this, is more time to make a visit to our neighbours to the north. But in the meantime, I thought I’d share some quick links that are well worth perusing…
First off, from our friend, Eric Boucher, a thoughtful critique of the idea of ruin porn and its many forms over at Guernica by John Patrick Leary.
Next, a quick read by the always insightful Diana Lind calling for plans for urban redevelopment to extend beyond the physicality of the process, in her first column in the New York Times, The Bright Side of Blight.
And then, some recent news on the revival of a new border crossing, the DRIC plan, while we imagine inventing our own.
As well, pointed out by Danielle, an extensive interview over on Juxtapoz with Mitch Cope and Gina Reichert (of PowerHouse fame) … still making my way through it, but some great contextualizing stuff so far.
Anyways, hoping this continues to build our research archive … if you have a chance to read over any of this stuff, would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.