UPDATE: Sean Martindale’s tents remained in Trinity Bellwoods Park for nearly four weeks, but the city evicted the project for, among other things, “camping in a public park without authority,” Torontoist reports.
Photo by Spacing Magazine‘s Jenn O. Yim
Toronto’s public space advocates are no stranger to guerrilla reclamation efforts that target illegal signs. Sean Martindale counts himself among their ranks; he’s turned wheatpasted posters into potting for plants, and is now constructing tents from the illegal condo advertisements that populate Toronto’s streetscape.
These subverted ads function in a way similar to the originals; they, too, are illegal, and, since the tents aren’t meant to actually be used, they become symbols pointing at the underbelly of this creative city. The condo marketing scheme employs the stereotyped artist chic, while the dwellings themselves are priced considerably out of the average artist’s budget. To Martindale, it’s an offensive irony that artists, trying to make due on a low income, are being priced out of their own neighborhoods by none other than a real estate company’s image of them.
The artist is careful not to make the condo the sole focus of his criticism, and makes it a point to return the conversation to the blight of advertising in public space. The abusive strategies employed by the real estate agencies and their marketing cohort are more the issue Martindale wants to discuss.
The conversation continues with Sean Martindale’s solo show at 107 Shaw Gallery, opening this Friday.
UPDATE: We’ve released a compilation of the maps made for Notes for a People’s Atlas of Greater Boston as a PDF. Get it here!
Experimental geographers who were able to attend last night’s event, and others who couldn’t be there, can download the template of the Notes for a People’s Atlas of Greater Boston map below.
Download the Notes for a People’s Atlas of Greater Boston PDF here
Submissions can be made in hard copy until September 1st and only digitally thereafter. Please mail to the address below, or send your map as a PDF via e-mail.
Groundswell
991 Massachusetts Ave #1
Cambridge MA 02138
You are encouraged to map out sites that are significant to you as someone who lives, work and plays in this city. You can map out sites of past or current political struggles, lost histories, cultural spaces, environmental devastation, personal histories, real estate speculation, social movements of the past, places of formal/ informal education, sites of gang violence, where to get the best coffee, places where tourists do not go, the periphery of the city, proposals for alternative uses of public space, distribution of wealth, anything. You are encouraged to combine, intersect, contrast, flip upside down themes or topics of your maps. You are encouraged to map out personal histories and points of interests as well as what else they relate to, why are these points important, and to whom are they important to?
Many thanks to the Design Studio for Social Intervention for hosting, and to the attendees and participants!
Copenhagen Poverty Walks invites residents and tourists to “experience the city from the perspective of homeless people.” The guided tours are directed by people experiencing homelessness, who offer their stories and personal experiences.
Poverty Walks is organized by the NGO project Udenfor (Outdoor).
City Life/Vida Urbana and Greater Four Corners Association have teamed up with Groundswell Journal contributors John Hulsey, Ilaria Minio Paluello and other members of the community, to recapture a group of foreclosed houses in the Four Corners part of Dorchester, a neighborhood of Boston. The intervention begins this Saturday (March 13th, 2010) at 5:00PM, at 21 Bullard Street in Dorchester.
72 Hours, an audiovisual intervention comprised of a series of video projections evoking the personal histories of neighborhood residents, will be seen through the building’s windows, and one unit will be opened to the public for a walk-through sound installation that evokes lives of former owners.
A still from 72 Hours
From the artists’ description:
Walking through an empty foreclosed unit in the building, visitors will encounter sounds of a family in its daily life cycle, relayed by hidden speakers. In the kitchen, people will be heard washing dishes and discussing the day’s events. Upstairs in the bedroom, a father reads his children a story before going to bed. As visitors explore the vacant rooms, they become animated by the sounds of former residents.
The houses, clustered together in the space of a city block, are owned by Deutsche Bank and other international banks. During the Block Rebellion, demands will be made to immediately cease all no-fault post-foreclosure evictions and begin negotiations to sell back the vacant units at real value.
John Hulsey’s portfolio site has more on 72 Hours. Keep up with this and other actions at the City Life/Vida Urbana website.
The Urbano Project and Artists in Context lend a hand to Mel Chin’s collaborative art piece, Fundred, this weekend, as the project celebrates its Boston kick-off. Fundred is an advocacy strategy to garner $300m in federal funding for lead decontamination efforts in New Orleans. Participants draw interpretations of U.S. $100 bills, and after 3,000,000 have been collected, they will be delivered to Congress in a vegetable oil-powered armored car, along with the request that the fake bills be exchanged for real funds.
A hand-drwan Fundred from Fort Wayne, IN
The city of Boston has pledged to raise fifteen thousand Fundreds. Participants needn’t wait for the Fundreds to come to town, as an online template will help you get involved now.
Mel Chin explains the project in his own words in the video below, from Art21.
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