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.
This week, Rosina and I spent two days in Hamilton researching for our upcoming project at Hamilton Artist’s Inc. Two Tales of a City will uncover, celebrate, and imagine a future for lost histories of Steel City.
Hiba and I took a trip down to the Art Gallery of Windsor (our gracious host and community partner for our upcoming conference) to check out the possibilities for using Livestream to make the conference available to the folks who can’t make it down to Windsor.
We had Kevin on another connection to check and it looks like we’re set for livestreaming the conference portion of Homework: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices next Friday and Saturday — you can check the schedule here: http://www.brokencitylab.org/homework/homework-conference-schedule-presenters/.
And, on those days, you can find us livestreaming here: http://www.livestream.com/brokencitylab
photo courtesy of Windsorite.ca
Thankfully, Owen over at Windsorite.ca grabbed a shot of this (above, our work, AS OF 2011.09.21, WE ARE ALIVE & WELL.), since we still need to schedule a plane ride to get some photos of our own — above, you can see a shot of our work as part of this year’s Windsor Biennial at the Art Gallery of Windsor.
Speaking of the Biennial, there’s an opening this Friday, and it promises to be a huge party with all of Windsor and Detroit’s finest. It starts at 7pm with a curator’s talk with food, drinks, and music running until 10pm.
If you’re looking for something to do ahead of the Biennial opening, you might consider checking out Interminus‘ first guest speaker as part of this year’s lecture series. Dr. Will Straw will be giving a talk on Culture and the Urban Night at Rino’s Kitchen starting at 4:30pm.
And, finally, next week, if you’re in Windsor (or just heading here to attend Homework), we can recommend you check out some FREE Grant Information Sessions on Thursday, October 20th from 6:30pm-9pm at the Art Gallery of Windsor hosted by the Ontario Arts Council‘s own (and our very favourite grant officers), Lisa Wöhrle, Associate Visual Art and Crafts Officer; Loree Lawrence, Community and Multidisciplinary Arts Officer; and Mark Haslam, Media Arts Officer. If you want to attend, RSVP to Martina Roncarelli, Program Assistant, mroncarelli@arts.on.ca, 416-969-7417 or toll-free in Ontario, 1-800-387‑0058, ext. 7417.
Hope to see you around!
Are you involved with an arts-related event taking place in the Windsor-Detroit region around October 21 & 22? Broken City Lab would love to include information or promo for your local arts event in our Homework Conference Welcome Packages.
Please mail or drop off 150 copies of handbills or flyers (no larger than 8.5×11″) by October 17 to
BCL Homework Welcome Package Promo Material
3-307 Josephine Ave
Windsor, ON
N9B 2K9
Questions? Concerns? Email Michelle@brokencitylab.org
Are you an avid photographer / videographer looking for some real work experience? Get involved and help out with the upcoming Homework conference and get free promo on our blog!
Broken City Lab is looking for volunteers to document the conference through video and photo.
Please e-mail Michelle@brokencitylab.org by Monday, October 17th and be sure to specify:
-your contact info
-your availability on Friday, October 21 from 9am-9:30pm and Saturday, October 22 from 9am-6pm (we’ll divide the days into shifts)
-the type of camera you use
-any career or volunteer related experience with photography/videography you may have
-3-5 photos or up to 1 min of video, content must include people.
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We’re also looking for enthusiastic volunteers to help us out with Guest Services. This is a great way to network with local, national and international artists, scholars, writers, thinkers, and doers and learn about social practice!
Please e-mail Michelle@brokencitylab.org with your contact info and availability on Friday, October 21 from 9am-9:30pm and Saturday, October 22 from 9am-6pm by Monday, October 17th.
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 of distributing the content, it’s now really difficult to imagine parting it from this kind of collected format. We’ll offer the book for sale through Blurb, but maybe a PDF as well? Hard to say, it’s 70mb, a bit of an unruly download I suppose. The version I ordered was excessively expensive, but it seemed only fitting to get at least a few copies with a nice image wrap, matte pages, and no Blurb logo.
Anyways, huge thanks to my BCL colleagues and the always generous Lee Rodney and Tom Provost for working with us on this. On a side note, the more I work with InDesign, the more I love it.
It’s election day in Ontario, you should vote.
How to Forget the Border Completely is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.
We’re gearing up for Homework. It’s going to be fun and you should really consider attending! There’s a few spots left.
If you do decide to attend, you can look forward to receiving one of these fine sketchbooks. Designed by Liisa Salonen, the sketchbooks are recovered paper sample books, rewrapped. They still need to be stamped, maybe this week?
After months and months of work, we finally installed our project for CAFKA.11. Led by Josh, Hiba, Kevin, and myself, the project took an incredible amount of research and build time, but we were incredibly excited to see our efforts finally in place in front of Kitchener’s City Hall when we wrapped up the installation last night.
Reflect on Here calls on passersby to think on the infrastructure of the city, the attempt to create place with architecture, and the materiality of the text itself. This project was made possible with the generous support from the Ontario Arts Council‘s Exhibition Assistance Program and the incredible team at CAFKA.
It was a beautiful day in Windsor yesterday. Something like 30 degrees fahrenheit cooler than it was just a couple days ago when we were installing at Forest City Gallery.
We started and finished our project for this year’s Windsor Biennial. We’ll have a lot more photos soon. The show opens on September 21, 2011, and it reads, “AS OF 2011.09.21, WE ARE ALIVE & WELL.”
More soon.