Call for Participation: Regret & Resolve
With the start of the new year, we wanted to take stock of the regrets we have about the city or our roles within it, and the resolutions we might make to change this place for the better. We want to ask two questions: What are the things that we know we should be doing, [...]
Surrealism and Refusal – Gavin Grindon
For some artists, the systematic self-criticism of art meant autonomy-as-a-value comes to stand for something other than the production of art objects. The working role of the ‘artist’ is thrown into crisis. Avant-gardes often did not conceive of themselves as a vanguard of artists leading the way, but as artists refusing the role of artists. [...]
Pg 113 Waking Up from the Nightmare of Participation
“…the specific openness or porosity of contemporary art for instance has functioned as a weird kind of hosting system: as a kind of asylum for various cultural forms and encounters apparently impossible elsewhere.” – from Michael Hirsch’s Professional Amateurs, Outsiders, Intruders – On the Utopia of Transdisciplinary Work in the Cultural Field in “Waking up [...]
pg 92, Afterall Autumn / Winter 2011
“…making art entails a permanent state of negotiation with many nodes of the circuit network — so that reaching the actual artwork is only possible after outrunning mediator after mediator; layer after layer; ultimately, what can be considered an artwork is a cluster of multiple explicit interests, including, fortunately, the artists’ proposals.” –from the article, “Post-Participatory Participation” by Ricard [...]
pg 228, the Nightmare of Participation
“Don’t wait to be invited. Otherwise things will never happen.”
ATTC Calgary Day 6: Mapping Calgarian Kindness
Wednesday morning we set up for our last day of Urban Discovery with Truck Contemporary Art‘s CAMPER, this time stationed in Central Memorial Park. The theme for the day was “Finding Urban Sophistication and Warm Western Hospitality.” What we wished to explore was the notion that Calgarians are on average a kinder population. We also were [...]
ATTC Calgary: Projecting New Narratives of a City
Our work on ATTC Calgary with Truck Gallery’s CAMPER Urban Discovery project continued with a couple day’s break from events, allowing to focus on planning the remainder of our residency activities and starting work on our publication. Tuesday night was our projection event around the edge of Central Memorial Park — an impeccably well-manicured green space in the middle [...]
INSIDE OUT: A Global Art Project
TED Prize Winner JR & INSIDE OUT from TED Prize on Vimeo. A simple and gorgeous project from the artist, JR. I wrote about his last project a little while ago. INSIDE OUT is a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Upload a portrait. Receive a [...]
Candy Chang’s Before I Die in NOLA
Josh posted on Candy Chang‘s last project, I Wish This Was, late last year and it was really inspiring. Such a simple gesture is such a powerful tool for re-imagining a community. Today, I saw Chang’s latest project, Before I Die in NOLA — another lovely participatory public art project. Perhaps not quite as transformative [...]
Temporary Allegiance
A 25 foot flag pole was installed on the UIC campus at 1240 W Harrison St. in front of Gallery 400 in May 2005. In October 2008, Philip von Zweck resumed the project on the UIC campus at 400 S. Peoria St. in front of the College of Architecture and the Arts building. This space [...]
![The last Friday we had before the upcoming Dance Party and Seedbomb Demo… We now have flyers, seedbomb containers, seedbomb germination (in the wild), and tea container labels. Michelle begins the process of spraying 50-something flyers after expertly cutting out the detailed info of the party. Many, many flyers (I like the silver ones the [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/Broken-City-Lab-Friday-August-29-2008-stenciling-origami-seedbombs-150x150.jpg "BCL Report – August 29, 2008")
![We’re in New York for Conflux 2009 and we’re participating as part of Conflux City! We spent the first day catching up on some sleep, then venturing out into the city and touching base at Conflux HQ. There were a number of presentations we wanted to see, all of which helped us to start articulating [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/IMG_0170-150x150.jpg "Conflux 2009 Day 1")
![The Eco-House was bumpin’ Friday night! Amongst a slew of other undergoing projects, Michelle, Rosina, Josh and I we’re all hard at work, trying to get everything organized for our upcoming event and final installment of Save The City that’s taking place this Friday at the Art Gallery of Windsor! Rosina and I tackled the Save The City [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/IMG_4835web-150x150.jpg "Getting things done!")
![I’ve been mulling over some potential designs (the 8.5×11 pictured above is just one sketch of an idea) for the promo for our upcoming Broken City Lab: Save The City project, which will start at the very end of January, 2010. There’s still much to finalize, in terms of dates and locations, and we’ll need [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/IMG_5849-sm2-150x150.jpg "Designing Promo for “Save The City”")
![We’re on to priming the letters now, in anticipation of the bright red coat we’ll be giving them in the coming weeks. Things are moving ahead at a good pace, and hopefully will continue to, as we’d love to not be working with these finished letters in snow. While we do get together every week, [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/IMG_4165-150x150.jpg "Primer: Another Friday Night’s Worth of Collectively Making Things Happen")
![We spent another Monday night at BCL HQ planning out this Windsor-Detroit hyper-local tourism idea and doing some basic research for another upcoming project. We all have some homework to do, but things are moving along nicely on a number of projects, and with the semester winding down, things should be able to push ahead [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/IMG_5412-150x150.jpg "Monday Night Research: Lightbulbs & Lists")
![Don’t mind the mess. A lot of the stuff on there is really just old ideas still scattered. These are early stages in using Max to try to figure out how to trigger some audio recording with some basic video tracking, and we’re not sure exactly how best to move forward. This is a new project [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Screen-Shot-2012-09-13-at-10.47.41-AM-150x150.png "Any Max Experts out there? Slow steps towards a new interactive project")
![For 30 days, this project will call on over 25 different artists, writers, designers, restauranteurs, musicians, architects, archivists, and other interested parties to occupy a space in downtown Windsor for up to one month in June and July 2010 to attempt to intervene with the everyday realities of skyrocketing vacancy rates, failing economic strategies, and a place [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/SRSI-storefronts-520-150x150.jpg "The Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation: Launching June 11, 2010")
![After a full night’s rest and a wholesome breakfast at The Tallest Poppy, we headed back to Martha Street Studio to formulate a game plan for our second work session and workshop later that evening. Knowing that we had an inordinate amount of work to do before our opening, we decided to spend the bulk [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/IMG_5976-150x150.jpg "Martha Street Studio Residency Day 2: Another Day in Manisnowba")
![We had a very productive day over here on Pelissier Street. Chris Pandolfi joined Simon Rabynuik to form the Department of Unusual Certainties and began setting up shop in 410. Jodi Green’s knitting machine was in motion for most of the day, and Andrea Carvalho arranged a game of Badminton on Eric Cheung’s interior sod. [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_0973-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 6: Arrival of Department of Unusual Certainties, Playing Badminton Games")
![Yesterday was just lovely! Andrea Carvalho did a parking garage performance as part of her study of Non-Places, Kero set up his interactive installation, and a lot of familiar local friends rolled through The People’s Museum to contribute to the giant map. Andrea has been trying to perform in this space for a few days [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/IMG_0449-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 8: Rethinking Parking Garages")
![Next week, I’ll be heading over to Detroit to join a panel discussion hosted by rogueHAA entitled, Defiance: Obedient Design. They’ve been doing a lot of great programming over the last year or so, and here’s some more information: As part of the Detroit Design Festival presented by the Detroit Creative Corridor Center, rogueHAA is pleased to announce the third [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/disobedient-design_A-150x150.jpg "Defiance: Disobedient Design Panel Discussion")
![I’ve been meaning to take a look at this location for a potential projection project that we’re looking into for Harvesting the F.A.M. The wall is dark brick, but we need to work out the logistics of projecting onto such a surface anyways for another project we’re working towards. What exactly we’ll be projecting is [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/FAMFEST09-sm-150x150.jpg "Projection Site for Another Project?")
![Remember Letraset? Here are some examples of what we’ve done with it in the past. Join us tonight for another edition of All Tomorrow’s Problems. We’re making a series of posters with vintage letraset. I’m not sure what else you really need to know, but for some background, ATP is a weekly design night where [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/IMG_5550-150x150.jpg "All Tomorrow’s Problems: Tonight we’re Asking New Questions, making posters with vintage Letraset, and you’re invited")
![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. Michelle brought a tourism Detroit magazine she [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/IMG_8505-150x150.jpg "Quality Time with Books & Imaginary Spaces")
![Earlier this week we received a couple of samples of various retroreflective materials for use on our letters for CAFKA. One material, the one on the roll, is a vinyl (3M Scotchlite Reflective White Vinyl), perhaps most famously used in the Bright Bike project, while the other is an industrial substrate (3M Engineer Grade White [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/IMG_9505-150x150.jpg "Retroreflective Materials Test")
![Armed with an algorithm from Sara, Michelle, Rosina, and I headed out on a walk on Monday night. We had decided at our last meeting to roam around some South Windsor neighbourhoods — seeing as we rarely get a chance to venture into that part of town — and we were surprised by how much [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/IMG_6686-150x150.jpg "Monday Night Drift: Volume 1, South Windsor")
![Danielle and I spent a number of hours last night going through photos of the Parking Garage and starting to imagine new treatments for the infrastructure, space, signage, walls, and streetscape. We’ll be heading down early this afternoon to start getting all of this visual research up on the walls, with the opening tonight at [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/img_2608-we-150x150.jpg "Planning for 406 Pelissier")
![Last night Hiba, Danielle and I met to do some more prep work on the letters for the Letter Library launch on June 21st. We painted another test letter E a different shade of grey and started to populate a wall with some more of the tests. It was excellent to see more than a [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/IMG_96051-150x150.jpg "Nothing like being thorough: how we make decisions, slowly")