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Scavenge The City

Scavenge the City: An Algorithmic Walk with Broken City Lab

SCAVENGE THE CITY: An Algorithmic Walk with Broken City Lab is happening on Sunday, March 29th at 6pm. Starting at Phog Lounge, we’ll be handing out a custom algorithm (a set of instructions), using a fancy computer program that we write, to take you and whomever you want to walk with, around the downtownish area of Windsor to discover, uncover, note, photograph, and invent. 

This isn’t a traditional scavenger hunt—we won’t be placing anything around the city for you to find—instead, the instructions will ask you to do specific things in less specific places, to try to encourage not just experiencing new places, but experience them in new ways.

The walk should wrap up by 10pm and then back at Phog we’ll share stories, videos, photographs, drawings, etc, of our adventures. Whether you’ve already come out to one of the previous hugely successful walking themed events in Windsor (Big Walk, or the Spacing Walk) or haven’t taken a stroll downtown in years, we would love to have you share on this adventure with us!!!

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BCL’s 1 Year Anniversary

a cake, courtesy of the Evernote blog

Today is the 1 year anniversary of the conversation I had with Danielle that sparked the idea for Broken City Lab. We had just finished eating dinner, I was doing the dishes, and we were talking about what protest means today, and  how to move beyond protest towards social change. Right after the conversation, I wrote a one-page description of what a concentrated effort to change things in the city incrementally through artistic practice might look like and titled it Broken City Lab.

It wasn’t until later on in the summer last year that a few of us got together as Broken City Lab, and we started to carve out, rewrite, rethink, and actually do the things that has made BCL what it is now. I just wanted to make a little note, even just for myself, about what was happening a year ago and what we’ve done since then. 

So, as an anniversary gift to you, here are some interesting things I’ve read and seen recently:

Detroit House: $100. Bold New Ideas for the City: Priceless.

GREENING THE REVOLUTION

Christian Robert-Tissot’s Nature Morte  (via vvork)

In Hard Times, Public Places are More Important Than Ever

Happy March 19th!

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Installing YOU ARE AMAZING

Michelle installing YOU ARE AMAZING

We got up early and headed down to the EC Row pedestrian overpass between the Dominion and Huron Church exits to install YOU ARE AMAZING! It’s hard to describe what it felt like to do this—taking on this project gave us all a genuine excitement about participating in changing a part of Windsor and the way we interact with it, even if it’s just for a moment. Windsor needs a lot of things, but I think maybe most importantly, it needs a little encouragement.

There was a lot of great documentation, with many photos after the jump, and a video on the way.

Continue reading “Installing YOU ARE AMAZING”

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New Text In-Transit Submission Form!

Text In-Transit Submission Form by Steven Cochrane

Courtesy of the always brilliant Steven …

There’s now a new submission form that allows you to get a quick preview of what your Text In-Transit panel could look like, along with a fun little colour swatch. If you’ve already submitted, it’s worth submitting more just to try this out, and if you haven’t submitted yet—get on it!!!

Check out the NEW Text In-Transit Call for Submissions page!

Or if you’re more comfortable with an old fashioned email, that’s still fine too.

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Text In-Transit: Call For Submissions

Text In-Transit: Call for Submissions

Text In-Transit is a Broken City Lab project where we’re partnering with Transit Windsor to install a number of text-based creative works amongst the ads in the headspace on buses. We’re looking for submissions of short statements, poems, and stories from anyone in the city that will help to change the conversation about Windsor!!!

*** Please send your submission(s) to info@brokencitylab.org by March 20, 2009.

We’ll be curating the submissions, so feel free to send more than one. As well, this project is made possible by Transit Windsor, OPIRG, MYAC and The Arts Society at the University of Windsor.

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Rewriting Windsor

Smorgasborder 02: Rewriting Windsor

This Thursday, March 5th we’ll be in the basement of Lambton Tower: Studio A to remix / rewrite Windsor’s history. We’ll be remixing visuals and sounds from Windsor’s history, but also looking to collaboratively and collectively write a personal / fictional / “what you can remember” history of Windsor, which we’ll later publish as a book with everyone in attendance as a co-author.

The event is free and starts at 7:30pm sharp. Presented as part of NoiseBorder.

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Visiting Detroit

Detroit, Riverside Extension fence

Danielle and I went over to Detroit yesterday to meet with Aaron Timlin (from the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit) at the LadyBug Gallery to discuss some potential collaborative projects over the summer. After getting a quick tour of the gallery and some of the other studios and workspaces in the building (which we unfortunately didn’t get any photos of, though next time), we headed out into the neighbourhood for a guided tour with Aaron to start brainstorming some future projects and project sites.

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Caesars Windsor Sign Install

The “heroic” time-lapse video of the installation of that retina-burning Caesars Windsor sign that now pwns Windsor’s skyline. It’s also the first Windsor (the city, not the knot) result that comes up when searching YouTube for Windsor. I’m surprised we didn’t see this earlier.

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Talk 20 – Pecha Kucha Windsor

Talk 20, Windsor

“Talk20 is not a lecture but a gathering, an open forum for the dissemination of ideas in art, architecture and design.  Produced in cities around the world talk20 has emerged as a live catalogue of contemporary creative production that seeks to instigate a conversation within and without the design community.”

Last night’s Talk 20, put on by Jodi Green was absolutely fantastic.  I don’t think I’ve ever left an event feeling so inspired, motivated and informed.  There was an overwhelming turnout.  Artcite was so jam packed that people had to grab some chairs from Phog Lounge and carry them through the cold, down University.  But even with the added seating, there they still didn’t have enough chairs for everyone.  People were lined up against the wall, standing around the back, crouched down at the front, all trying to squeeze into a little room to hear the presenters give their 7 minute presentation.

More photos, some details on the presentations, and the video of the Broken City Lab presentation after the jump.

Continue reading “Talk 20 – Pecha Kucha Windsor”