Zine Night Continues this Summer: Wednesdays Biweekly at Civic Space
Zine Night: A Free Biweekly Micro-Publishing Forum, Open to All! Zine Night, a biweekly micro-publishing workshop series hosted by BCL’s Rosina Riccardo continues throughout the summer. Join us as we cut, paste, tear, discuss, remove, rethink, reshape, bind, print, and share (in no particular order). Upcoming Dates June – 5th & 19th July – 3rd, [...]
New Publication Out Now: Invented Emergency (For Small Cities & Big Towns)
We just received a few boxes of our newest publication, INVENTED EMERGENCY (For Small Cities & Big Towns), published through White Water Gallery. They look so good, we can’t wait to give them out! INVENTED EMERGENCY is built on the research developed for Surviving North Bay, a residency and exhibition by Broken City Lab, hosted [...]
Zine Night End-Of-The-Year Party with RIOT GRRRL Tuesdays!
Zine Nights will be slowing down for holidays with a very awesome end-of-the-year wrap up party in collaboration with Riot GRRL Tuesdays, a monthly feminist collective hosted by 99.1 fm’s Milk and Vodka. Our next and last zine night will be held on Tuesday, December 18th, at Phog Lounge. Beginning at around 9pm, we’ll begin working together on [...]
The Free Paper project
I received an email from JP King a couple weeks ago about a project he did at the fantastic, Whippersnapper Gallery in Toronto. You can read the details about the project at http://www.freepaper.ca/ Here’s an overview of the Free Paper project, as it unfolded last summer: The paper, developed over the past three weeks has been [...]
Contribute to our Upcoming Book!
We received this from our friends (and Homework artists-in-residence) Brennan and Chloé, who have been compiling content for our upcoming book on our latest conference and residency, Homework: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices. Hi All, I hope all is well. We have received a number of contributions from most of you, but there are a few [...]
…and then the city told itself the same old stories
For the first time in over 25 years McIntosh Gallery and Forest City Gallery have joined forces to bring the latest contemporary art to audiences in London and further afield. Together, the two galleries have published …and then the city told itself the same old stories by Broken City Lab. This publication documents our recent exhibit at [...]
HFBC Book Ready for you to Explore (& get a copy for your collection!)
Remember a couple of weeks ago, we received some copies of our How to Forget the Border Completely book? Well, there were a couple of print issues that have now been resolved, so if you’ve been waiting to get your hands on a copy, now’s the time! HFBC was an 8-month research project that looked [...]
Guess what showed up today?
So … the book we created from our research project, How to Forget the Border Completely, finally showed up!!! I’m really happy with how it looks and I can’t wait to have some time to read through it all. After this week’s activities, we should plan some kind of launch for the book.
How to Forget the Border Completely, submitted for print!
Months of work and research culminated in a 3am submission to Blurb to print our How to Forget the Border Completely publication. It’s about 150 pages long. I’m really happy with this, and I can’t wait to get it back in print. Above, a screenshot of some of the pages in the PDF. In terms [...]
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 [...]
![Official Day 1 of SRSI kicked off, lots of new folks starting their projects, vinyl is up, rooms are painted (and almost done), floors are clean, the storefronts are open!!! Come see us. The day started off with a bit more painting and cleaning up of 410 Pelissier. As no one was moving in this [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/IMG_9860-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Official Day 1: Welcome Julie, Eric, Daragh, Andrea, Julie and Jefferson")
![For the month of June, Broken City Lab will have access to 406 Pelissier (pictured above) in downtown Windsor, thanks to Julie Sando and Leesa Bringas who are teaching the Contemporary Visual Culture class during Intersession at the University of Windsor. We’re still just starting to plan what we might do in the space, but [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/img_0032-150x150.jpg "Temporary Downtown Space for BCL")
![We’re playing catchup. Between vacations, short hiatuses, and our summer schedules, we’ve been busy. However, getting back together, working together again on a more regular basis, and starting up on these projects again has been so great and incredibly rewarding. Our to-do list above is a small start to all of the projects we have on [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/IMG_0359-150x150.jpg "A Look at Process: building for CAFKA & designing for HFBC")
![Today, a very brief summary of some things that I’ve been thinking about and noted over the last few weeks… Above, a portal. Perhaps a cross-border portal. An under-used, long forgotten relic of a portal prototype. Cordoned off, waiting for a new route. Partington and Wyandotte on our side, where’s the related neighbourhood in Detroit? [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/portals-150x150.jpg "A Summary of Things I’ve Been Thinking About")
![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")
![Day two of Create Here‘s City Share Conference was just as busy as the first, but we got tons of work accomplished, and we were even able to take a short tour of the city at lunch! After breakfast, we broke off into our groups once again. We were still trying to come up with [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/IMG_0531-150x150.jpg "Day Two of the City Share Conference in Chattanooga, TN!")
![Once again, we gathered at Lebel for another fun Friday full of brainstorming and map making. This particular Friday we met with Mel, a jewelry designer with his BFA from Yugoslavia, to discuss the best design for the CAFKA letters. We are currently deciding whether it would be best to stick with our original plan [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/IMG_2379-150x150.jpg "BCL Report: March 11, 2011 (Maps & Letters)")
![A note from Stephen Hargreaves after our conversation last night about the bus system in Detroit and possibilities for cross-border transportation… the image above is of a different Detroit map just to give some reference. On the map Stephen mentions, the routes go far beyond Detroit’s city limits. Check out the “System Map”, where the [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Screen-shot-2011-01-03-at-1.35.48-PM-150x150.png "Detroit bus services…")
![Whether making your own guerrilla celebration, working on a gallery installation, or even getting ready for some upcoming holiday festivities, we think our little automagic bunting app will make everything a little bit easier. We got tired of hand-setting each letter when we’ve made bunting in the past, so we cooked up this simple little web app that [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/makebunting-150x150.jpg "Micro-Project: Make Your Own Bunting (Web App)")
![This afternoon at CIVIC SPACE started out with a video chat with Jason Sturgill from Portland about a really awesome project we’ll be collaborating with him on in the spring of next year. There is also talk of Homework II happening this fall…stayed tuned for more info on this. Also, our Akimbo ad was released [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/IMG_9573-150x150.jpg "Grey Paint Test, Tattoos, and Talk of Homework II")
![I made some huge progress over the last week or so on this ongoing Arduino / LCD project — it’s finally gone wireless! With some more silly mistakes behind me, I’m finally getting a better handle on how to break down the problems I run into and solve them a lot faster. I remember back [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/IMG_9593-150x150.jpg "XBees, Arduinos, Serial Data")
![The wild flower seeds from last year are still good—I planted these seeds on Thursday or Friday and they’re growing like crazy already. The paper planter shaped around the spray paint can lid and reinforced with some wheat paste is holding up, as is the magnet. We have an idea for a better shape and [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_4085-150x150.jpg "An Update on Our Planters")
![The day before our launch. Rosina paints with Kiki. The table of letters, ever-changing as each layer dries. The letters that remain to be painted as of this afternoon. Josh and Kevin’s project for the day… Sara and Rosina headed out to do a bunch of short installs and photograph them. The single-use camera Hiba [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/wpid18548-IMG_0126-2-150x150.jpg "12-06-20 4:39:10 PM")
![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. Daragh has been hard at work in his [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_07621-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 18 & 19: Gambling, Crafts & Plans")
![We spent yesterday evening out around town with our projector and new power inverter, testing sight-lines and potential backup locations for the Cross-Border Communication project. We’re getting close to knowing exactly how and when we’ll get to do this project, and you can see our research and field tests after the jump. We’ve been anxious [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/IMG_3801-150x150.jpg "Projection & Battery Tests Around Downtown")
![At Windsor’s riverfront, SAVE A CITY, installed this afternoon. We opted out of using monofilament to hang the blocks of ice because there was a nice snowbank already there, and probably the last thing the Detroit River needs is more garbage in it. I’ll post some photos of the process of making these soon (definitely [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/img_2536-2-150x150.jpg "Save A City")