A Day at the Square

The Day at the Square event took place last week and went very well.
From the great photographic portraits of Eileen Perrier all the way to the Parkour demonstrations and the film screeenings the day was really busy and the rain almost absent. The day was really useful in informing the development of the work for this place.

Here are a few snaps of the day:

Worcester Orchard

The works for The Worcester Orchard project we designed for Worcester University have now started. It was great to go on a site visit last week to see things take shape.

The project was developed with BCA Landscape architects (who came up number 3 in the list of Top 10 Landscape Architects in Urban Realm magazine this summer!)

A day at the square

We're finishing the last details on an event we're setting up in Finsbury Park (London) on Saturday.
A day in the Square will take place on a purpose built platform at the heart of the main public space in Six Acres. The platform will be in place for just 12 hours, hosting a changing program of free events: talks, screenings, demonstrations, food... The event will directly inform the permanent work we'll be designing for this place, activating the space and engaging people, testing possibilities.

A day in the Square serves as an introduction, a discussion, an experiment, a learning exercise to understand uses and users, and sets the tone of the permanent works to come. This day-long event will celebrate the future of the space and become a pre launch for this public space.

This event is part of The Secret garden Project by Up Projects commissioned by One Housing Group in partnership with Islington Council

Boston

We're delighted to be on our way to Boston to take part in a fascinating conference co-organized by the BABEL Working Group, Boston College, Northeastern University, M.I.T., Tufts University, postmedieval: a journal of medieval cutural studies, and punctum books:
"Cruising in the ruins: the question of disciplinarity in the post/medieval university".

Thus I propose an abandonment of disciplinary grounding but an abandonment that retains as structurally essential the question of the disciplinary form that can be given to knowledges. This is why the university should not exchange the rigid and outmoded disciplines for a simply amorphous interdisciplinary space in the humanities (as if we could still organize knowledge around the figure of “Man”). Rather, the loosening of disciplinary structures has to be made the opportunity for the installation of disciplinarity as a permanent question. . . . [which would] keep open the question of what it means to group knowledges in certain ways, and what it has meant that they have been so grouped in the past.
~Bill Readings, The University in Ruins

There's a fully packed programme over three days, and we'll be presenting the 3rd plenary session on Saturday.

Watershed+ website

The website for Watershed+ is now live! Still some tweakings and some tidying up but altogether it's ready. Aside from the background information on the programme we'll be able to anounce the developments as they happen.

Limelight compilation

After 12 cities visited by Limelight: Saturday night over the last 2 years, we thought it would be nice to see the action in the limelight in these different cities all together on a short video. Touzie Tyke edited a compilation of the 12 cities in this 14 minutes film, enjoy!

Limelight Saturday night from sans façon on Vimeo.

Hydrant fountains in action

The fountains were installed on the river front in Calgary for Canada Day last week-end, and people were trying them even before we finished installing them! And this week end the Stampede and Water Services have been working together to get them installed this morning on Stampede grounds, more pictures soon.

In the mean time here are a few pictures from last week end:

Fire Hydrant Fountains

The fabrication shop have been working hard and have been fantastic at making this project happen, they finished the three different fountains and they're almost ready to be put in place for Canada Day this week end. Here's a sneak preview of the two other designs and the first one - "strangers" or the "dating fountain" - being used this morning for a TV interview.

More pictures of them in use next week.

W+ residency call

We just released a call for the artist residency with Watershed+: www.watershedplus.ca/residency/res-call01.pdf Feel free to share it widely! Looking forward to reading through the applications.

Hydrant drinking fountain

First trial of the "strangers" fountain today in front of the water center. The fabrication team did a grand job and it's looking very nice.
The fabrication for the 2 other fountains is now starting, looking forward to see the developments.

watershed+ developments

Finally some updates.
The organisation and the setting up of the first Watershed+ initiatives is keeping us busy. From the initial 10 "deliverables", we now have about 25, which is very exciting but takes time.


The bowls for the fountains have arrived today.

The first of these initiatives to become live is the temporary fountains. We've been working with the UEP Public Art Program and the City's metal fabrication team to develop some fountains that can be fixed onto fire hydrants for festivals and other events. Temporary fountains attached to fire hydrant are a fairly common practice in North America, but often limited to a very functional set up and/or as a bilboard for messaging. For Watershed+ the fountains design became an opportunity to play with their social role as gathering spaces and expressing the invisble systems underground. We've designed 3 different fountains which should be ready for Canada day, 1st July. More soon and we'll post pictures as they get built.

We're also having a blog/documentation/source site being developed for W+ which should be ready before the end of the month. In the mean time you can have a look at our daily picture on watershedplus.tumblr.

Watershed+ Mentees

It is now the second week of the artists mentees working with us on the Watershed+ programme. We initially had the intention of having one mentee, but in light of the W+ opportunities it made sense to extend it to 4!
Like most of the initiatives so far, the scope is expanding but that's one of the great thing about this project, the general enthusiasm for the whole program and its potential.

We're currently working on building a virtual place where the content of W+ can be accessed, more new soon!

In the mean time, you can enjoy our visual musing on the Watershed+ tumblr site.

updates

A few updates of the last month or two.

The baroque garden viewed for the clock tower
We are currently in Copenhagen to complete our DIVA residency with Gl Holtegaard as part of the Show time exhibition.
Gl Holtegaard is a contemporary and modern art gallery set in a 1750's house built by the Queen's architect (for himself), with a restored full baroque garden, including its own orchard and beehives.
The combination of the exhibition, the settings and the gallery team makes for a very interesting context to work with. By the end of the residency (24th of this month) we will implement a new project that will respond to these different aspects of the place.

Design session in O2 offices
In the mean time Watershed+ has been picking up speed and momentum and is coming along nicely. As yet there still isn't a website to share more of the developments but it's coming soon! Just before we left we selected 4 mentees to work on different facets of Watershed+ and we're looking forward to work with them on our return to Calgary.
One of the project that is being developed is a design for a new park incorporating a storm water pond system, working with O2 Landscape Architects.

The site has started to be shaped in preparation for the project
On other projects, the art landscape project we are developing for Worcester University is now going through planning, thanks to the hard work of BCA landscape architects with whom we've been refining the initial design.

And last month we took down Iconic Site from the Fort Hotel in Margate

Limelight on ice

Last night we installed Limelight on the ice rink in Down Town Calgary, a nicely straight forward install and as soon as the light was on the show started! The official first night is tonight but we couldn't resist snapping some of the action, so here's a couple of pictures before we left. With a low of minus 12 predicted for tonight, it's a fairly nice night ahead.

Limelight in Calgary

Limelight will be in Olympic Plaza this week end as Part of High Performance Rodeo, if you feel like coming and dancing (or running, singing, skating, playing, ... ) in the spotlight or just watch the reactions, do come and join us!

Strip appeal

Just before we left for the festive season, we went up to Edmonton to be part of the jury for Strip appeal (http://www.strip-appeal.com/).
Strip Appeal is an ideas design competition, and traveling exhibit, intended to stimulate and showcase creative design proposals for the adaptive reuse of small-scale strip-malls.
The jury was really interesting with some great discussions on the short listed entries. You can have a look at them on http://www.strip-appeal.com/, with a public vote active until Jan 9. The winners of the jury vote and the public vote will be announced on Jan. 16.

New Year

Happy new year to all!

After a short spell over the festive period in the UK and in France, we're now back in Calgary.

The preparations for Watershed+ continue and some actions will be visible soon, watch this space!

In the pipeline for the beginning of this year is Limelight in Calgary for High Performance Rodeo where for the first time the lights will be on the ice!

Also in Spring we are excited to take part in Show Time, Choreography in Contemporary Art, where we'll develop an installation for the exhibition. The show will be at the Gl Holtegaard in Denmark. Show Time is curated by Liberty Paterson.