More Great News: We’re the Recipient of a Windsor Endowment for the Arts Grant!
We’re thrilled to announce this, and very flattered to be in such great local company!!! Honouring leaders in Windsor’s arts community, the Windsor Endowment for the Arts (WEA) will officially present the WEAs, winners of the WEA Arts Leadership Awards and WEA Arts Grants on Saturday, May 5 at Windsor Music Theatre. Ten recipients will [...]
Deinstallation of Alive & Well
Alive & Well, our 350 ft long message painted on the city-owned parking lot for the 2011 AGW Biennial and recently captured by Google Maps, is in the process of being torn up to make way for an Aquatic Centre. We’ll be actively looking for a new parking lot, field, or rooftop to do another [...]
How to Forget the Border Completely, continued: 707PX
Following up on our How to Forget the Border Completely project from last year, collaborator Tom Provost continues to work on ideas around pedestrian border crossings (which you can read all about in the HFBC book!) Photos and text by Tom Provost In the summer of 2011, I was in dialogue with Broken City Lab [...]
Writing Art * A ‘Critical Writing’ Group
From an email from Artcite Inc… you should consider doing this! Urge to write about art? Please check out the NEW… Writing Art * A ‘Critical Writing’ Group Sponsored by Artcite Inc. So many artists pass through our city un- or under-sung that a few folks at Artcite thought we might form a group devoted [...]
Monday Night Drift: Volume 1, South Windsor
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 [...]
Reflections on Circulations
Last Wednesday I hosted an algorithmic walk around downtown Windsor with some University of Windsor Communications Studies and History grad students. The class, led by Drs. Mike Darroch and Rob Nelson, spent about an hour exploring the city, as per the algorithm, in an area between Park and Pelissier and McDougall and Tuscarora. Groups of [...]
Circulation: an algorithmic walk in downtown Windsor with students from the University of Windsor
On Wednesday, February 1st, I’ll be guiding an algorithmic walk for Dr. Mike Darroch and Dr. Rob Nelson’s history / communication studies grad seminar. I spent part of the afternoon playing around with some ideas to have the instructions, or algorithms, distributed to the class. We’ve done walks before, they’ve often been quite ambitious and [...]
Wellington Ave, Windsor, Ontario
Above, a wall between two houses covered in vinyl siding. Danielle and I were on our way downtown the other day and we took Wellington after I forgot to turn where I normally do at Partington. There were architectural and infrastructural weirdness that actually had us stop, turn around, and then pull over to take these [...]
“Alive & Well” viewable on Google Maps
Our project for the 2011 Windsor Biennial, Alive & Well, was created with the hope that it would be captured on Google Maps to make a monument or announcement of sorts to the rest of the world about Windsor as we near the end of the year and ahead of being torn up for the new Aquatic [...]
![Josh and I spent some of the day in the heat collecting some interesting flowers and plants to transplant for our magnetic planters project. Overall, it was fairly successful, as we did learn quite a lot about transplanting, but we’re still going to be looking for some more plants to finish up this stage of [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/IMG_46142-150x150.jpg "Learning to Transplant")
![Over three days this week, we got a lot done. And, as I write this, stuff is still getting done. This is why collaboration is such a valuable model for art practice. But, it’s not just about getting stuff done, it’s the challenges, the insights, the novel perspectives that can be brought up around a [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/IMG_9628-150x150.jpg "BCL Report: End of April, 2011 (the Art of Planning & Collaboration)")
![Broken City Lab is heading up to Hamilton on Friday, November 20th, 2009 to run a workshop/event on communicating through intervention in urban spaces. The workshop is being held at the Workers Arts & Heritage Centre as part of their Labour Lounge series, this time in partnership with the Hamilton Youth Arts Network. This has [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/wahc-map-150x150.jpg "Labour Lounge @ WAHC in Hamilton")
![Read Tom Lucier’s recent blog post. He spells out nearly everything he does in this city, for free. He draws on examples of other talented people in this city who continue to try to stick it out for who knows what reasons. He makes a compelling case for having to give up some of these [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/realisticExpectations-150x150.jpg "For Windsor, Realistic Expectations and Imaginative Solutions")
![On Thursday night, on what was supposed to be a test run for projecting on the side of the Jackman Building (the new drama building at the University of Windsor), Broken City Lab ended up exploring a number of locations on campus armed with a projector, a laptop, and a really long extension cord. Originally, we [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/Broken-City-Lab-is-on-the-wall-of-the-new-drama-building-at-the-University-of-Windsor-150x150.jpg "BCL Report – Oct 9, 2008")
![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!")
![Day 2 of SRSI went awesome! We are almost all settled into 406, 410 and 424 Pelissier. I started off the day by cleaning and organizing my desk in the entrance of 410. I’ll be stationed here throughout the residency so come and say hi! Over at The Breakroom in 406, Jolie had some fresh [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_0714-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 2 : The People’s Museum, The Breakroom and More Painting")
![We had an incredible turnout for Sing to the Streets. The response was overwhelming, and despite the cold, we managed to get a great overview of some of the folkloric history of Windsor and Detroit and learn some Francophone folks songs along the way. The Save the City project is really giving us a lot of insight into [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/IMG_8029-150x150.jpg "We Sang to the Streets!")
![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 [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/IMG_6230-150x150.jpg "Math, Markers, and Measurements + Eric’s micro-documentary")
![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, [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/derek-150x150.jpg "Eric Boucher Micro-Residency Iteration 4/5")
![We spent last night sketching out all of the repairs we could think of for the coming year (a Broken City Lab strategic plan of sorts). It took a couple of hours, 15 markers, and about 30 square feet of paper (see the whole image), but we came up with some very exciting ideas. Among [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/strategicplan2009-web-150x150.jpg "2009 Strategic Plan")
![Broken City Lab is heading up to Peterborough, Ontario for all of next week (October 12 – 17, 2009) for an extended field trip to collaborate with Artspace for a series of community and inter-city research initiatives, workshops, and interventions to understand the city of Peterborough, its infrastructures, and its communities. We’ll be blogging extensively [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/peterboroughmap3-150x150.jpg "Extended Field Trip #001: Artspace in Peterborough")
![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. [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/042-150x150.jpg "Eric Boucher Micro-Residency Iteration 3/5")
![I stopped by the Ecohouse today (where our collective studio is housed) to check out one of our new neighbours — The Border Bookmobile Winter Reading Room. Collected and curated by Border Bookmobile founder, Lee Rodney, the books assembled as part of the winter reading room are going to be incredible helpful for our upcoming [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/IMG_5136-150x150.jpg "Anxious to Explore the Border Bookmobile’s Winter Reading Room")
![Last night Danielle and I went to the downtown Transit Windsor terminal to install the first five test panels we had printed for Text In-Transit. The panels read: everything is possible, YOU MADE MY DAY, YOU ARE THE CITY, YOU CHANGED EVERYTHING, and changing the world starts by changing this city. We had to install [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_9143-150x150.jpg "First 5 Text In-Transit Panels Installed")
![There’s a lot of BCL-related events coming up… First off, I’ll be giving an artist talk at the University of Windsor’s School of Visual Arts tomorrow, November 16 at 12noon. I’ll be discussing Broken City Lab and how I think about collaborative social practice in general. The talk along with follow up questions should run for [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/IMG_2420-150x150.jpg "You’re Invited: Artist Talks, Conferences, and other upcoming events")
![The rain held off, so today was a good day to get out and do some field tests for our magnetic planters. We just stuck around the neighbourhood, but did a general test to see what surfaces were magnetic. Unfortunately, the street signs that I had anticipated being a perfect surface for these are not [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_2255-cc-150x150.jpg "Magnetic Planters: Field Test #1")
![Day 2 of our trek to New York was filled with excellent adventures, some more great lectures, and lots of discussion. It was amazing to get to see some of the artists we’ve talked about before right here on the blog, and it continued to inform what we were continuing to try to define as [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/IMG_02913-150x150.jpg "Conflux 2009 Day 2")
![In what feels like the first time in months, we got together and worked on making something (that is, as opposed to planning something). We’re getting started on what is going to be an epic project, time-wise. We’re making a bunch of large 3D cardboard letters. Collaborative Apartment Studio is very fun. Danielle and I [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/DSC_07931-150x150.jpg "A New Project Begins: Cardboard, a projector, and lots of editing")
![Another Friday night open house gave the SRSI participants a great opportunity to show projections and engage in discussions about their experiences and feelings about working in Windsor. Denise St. Marie came down from Toronto to install her work Talk 2 Strangers. The piece is made from cut vinyl on easy to transport plastic sheeting [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_06824-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 15: Evening Projections & Conversations")