Views of the West Coast of Scotland

In spring of 2014 the Glasgow School of Art suffered a fire that destroyed the famous Mackintosh Library and all its content. Cristine Garriga, a Master student from Glasgow School of Art, has responded to the fire with a video work called My Bookcase, where through filmed interviews with artists who had books held in the original collection, she is helping to reconstruct the Mackintosh library with stories regarding their books and reconstituting the collection.

Sans façon's contribution to the Library is 'Views of the West Coast of Scotland' which was made while in residency at Cove Park, in 2001. The publication was in collaboration with writer John Calcutt.

For more information about Cristine's project and to see her interview with Tristan click here.

 Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty

CREATIVE CITY SUMMIT

Join us for the Creative City Network of Canada Summit in Hamilton this week! We will be participating as both keynote speakers and in the Peer-to-Peer Presentations!

For more information click here.

CREATIVE CITY SUMMIT, HAMILTON 2014

Just confirmed we are Keynote Speakers for Creative City Network of Canada Summit in Hamilton, Ontario from June 11-13 and also taking part in the Public Art Round Table and panel discussions.  We are delighted to be invited and hope to see you there!

ACAD Panel Discussion

A big thanks to ACAD and the Illingworth Kerr Gallery for inviting us to be part of the Panel Discussion following Jørn Mortensen’s fabulous talk on the 31st of March. It is timely conversation to be had and we found the discussion thought provoking and enjoyable.

CACHER POUR MIEUX MONTRER

We'll be returning to Saskatoon on Friday to conclude Cacher pour mieux montrer by unveiling the 12 covered works. We have also been invited to give a talk about our work, making this project, and the public's response to date. The talk is open to the public.

Date: Friday, December 6
Time: 4:00-6:00 p.m.
Location: The Gallery at the Frances Morrison Central Library
311 - 23rd Street East, Saskatoon, Saskatchwan

This week's talks

The first one is the Watershed+ artist in residence Rachel Duckhouse who will be talking about her work with the City of Calgary's Watershed + program. She will be joined for the talk by Twyla Hutchison, a Water Resources Engineer with Infrastructure Planning at the City of Calgary. Twyla is involved with river monitoring and forecasting, emergency response planning, design of erosion control and emergency mitigation as well as other development in the river valley. Together they will talk about Rachel’s work, data representation, collaboration between engineers and artists and complementarities of disciplines.

Date: Thursday, October 24
Time: 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Location: Faculty of Environmental Design
Kasian Gallery, Room 2145
Professional Faculties building, University of Calgary
2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AB, T2N 1N4

For the other talk we are very pleased to welcome Kevin Robert Perry from Urban Rain|Design for his first public presentation in Calgary. We first came across his work in a post in Pruned. Kevin will present his approach to green infrastructure visioning and planning developed through experience at the City of Portland’s Sustainable Stormwater Program. His innovative techniques to retrofit the urban fabric with sustainable stormwater management uses the landscape to not only manage stormwater, but to also create highly successful urban spaces.
RSVP to charles.blanc@calgary.ca

Date: Friday 25th October
Time:: Coffee and pastries from 7.30, talk from 8 till 8.45 AM
Location: Bow Room @ the Water Centre
625 25 Ave SE, Calgary, Alberta T2G 4K8

Urban Künste Ruhr

We've been invited by OSA Office for Subversive Architecture and Urban Künste Ruhr to be part of the Urban Lights Rhur Symposium, alongside the nice company of Marco Canevacci (Plastique Fantastique), Jan ehlen (RaumZeitPiraten), Alexander Stublic, and Mona El Khafif (CCA URBANlab).

A very nice series of presentations and discussions, looking forward to the rest of the day.

And whilst we're in Scotland we've also been invited by the exciting Velocity to do a presentation at the Lighthouse on our recent projects and our current work in Calgary, Watershed+, about the innovative integration of artists and creative practice in the City's departments.


VELOCITY presents a series of regular talks and conversations inviting international, UK and Scottish speakers to address issues arising from the VELOCITY programme. The events also offer networking opportunities for VELOCITY stakeholders: professionals working in city planning and urban regeneration, creative practitioners, artists, architects, designers, producers and arts professionals.

Limelight in Vancouver

For its first venue in 2013, Limelight: Saturday night will be in Vancouver this week end.
We're setting up the lights tonight in 2 different places along Grandville Street. The spotlight will be happening at the same time in these 2 locations on Friday night and Saturday night.
Look for the limelight on Hastings and Grandville and 68th and Granville this week end!

And on sunday night we will have an informal evening of conversation and dialogue about Limelight: Saturday night with Bryan Newson, Public Art Program Manager for the City of Vancouver and Dr. Cameron Cartiere, Dean of Graduate Studies at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
Sunday 27th January, 17.00 till 19.00, at the Metro Theatre, 1370 SW Marine Dr, Vancouver, BC V6P 5Z9.
More info here


Hope to see you in the Limelight or at the discussion!

The installation of Limelight in Vancouver is part of chART: Public Art Marpole, a creative collaboration between Emily Carr University of Art + Design and the Marpole BIA. The project aims to support public art and community engagement through creativity and innovation. This collaboration is led by Dr. Cameron Cartiere, Dean of Graduate Studies at Emily Carr.

Limelight: Saturday Night in Vancouver is hosted by chART: Public Art Marpole, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Downtown Business Improvement Association, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Marpole Business Improvement Association and the City of Vancouver Public Art Program.

A couple of updates

After some quiet months without any posts on this blog, here are a couple of updates on some of the events we are taking part of in the coming weeks whilst continuing our work on Watershed+.

On January 17th we will be leading a conversation about innovative artist residency programs around the globe and the potential for expanded residency programming at the Lawrence Arts Center with artist Yvonne Mullock, and Lawrence Arts Center executive director Susan Tate.

The following week we'll be in Vancouver installing Limelight: Saturday night on its first venue in 2013. In partnership with Emily Carr University, the City of Vancouver, the Downtown Vancouver BIA, Limelight: Saturday night will be installed at 2 locations similtaneously

We will also take part of the 2013 Lulu Series: Art in the City on January 23rd.

If you're around for any of these events we'd love to see you.

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.

ALBERTA COLLEGE OF ART & DESIGN

This coming Thursday we shall be talking about our work and our plans for the next 18 months in Calgary with Watershed+ at ACAD.

PECHA KUCHA CALGARY - WEDNESDAY 28TH SEPTEMBER

Next week we will be taking part in Calgary's Pecha Kucha 9 organised by Calgary Arts Development. The night kicks off with pre-show entertainment on River Walk. The main event starts at 7pm at the Golden Age Club on 610 8th Ave. SE. Seats can be reserved by visiting CalgaryCulture.com.



It would be great to see you there!

University of Oxford

Last week we took part in a seminar at the University of Oxford, Creative ecologies: conditioning inventiveness.
The other people invited were eminent geographers, archeologists, political theorist, musicologist, philosopher and anthropologist, an amazing combination of knowledge.
To put it simply, we were looking at creativity in its wider sense, basing the discussions on some of the objects from the awe inspiring Pitt Rivers Museum which hosted us for 3 days. The objects used, which we were allowed to manipulate,
included a tupilak,
a mandrake root,
a desiccated heart encased in a heart-shaped lead container and a Micronesian Nautical chart.pictures from the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

From the introducing paper by Charlotte Bates, Joe Gerlach, Thomas Jellis, Wendy Morrison, and Sefryn Penrose, the seminar aimed to engage "with objects which are in some ways unfamiliar to us, which will stimulate us to engage and to talk in ways unusual in an academic meeting. As we have stressed above, the idea of mutual making of people and objects is key to many current approaches to the material world. Academics tend to write and talk about this mutuality, rather than engage with it. There is risk as well as potential in such engagement, but we are hoping not just to consider creativity from a distance, but also to set up some of the conditions in which creativity occurs."
As part of our engagement for the seminar we devised a workshop session looking at the importance of individual recollection of objects and their personal meanings.

We felt very privileged to be able to spend a week discussing and exploring such notions in the company of fascinating people and with the access to such unusual objects.

Charmouth bridge on site

Construction work on the new Charmouth footbridge we designed with engineers from Dorset County Council has begun. Below are images of the first elements - piles are in place, and work on the abutments is underway. The steel frame should be delivered to site in the next couple of weeks and if all goes to plan it should be open for the easter holidays.
The old bridge (the one which needs replacing) is still in place and usable so you can get a good look at how things are progressing with the new one.


view of pile taken from the old bridge


the two piles neatly alined next to the old bridge


heavy foundation works for the abutments on which the bridge frame will sit

Biennale Internationale Design

Tuesday 29th we will be presenting our practice at a "Study day Conference" in the International Design Biennale in Saint Etienne, France.

Pluri-multi : multidisciplinary and multicultural in the design of public spaces
Organised by: Master Espace public : design, architecture, practices (master in paternship between the Art and Design School of Saint-Étienne, the Architecture School of Saint-Étienne and the Human and Social Sciences department of Jean Monnet University).

Kansas City Art Institute

On our last day in Kansas City for Limelight: Saturday night we did a presentation of our practice at the Kansas City Art Institute, a very good turn up and again some nice discussions afterwards.

Kansas City lecture

Later on this week, we will be giving a lecture at the University of Kansas School of Architecture as part of 2010 Fall Lecture Series, amongst very nice company.


Friday November 5th : 11.30
Spencer Museum of Art Auditorium

The Canadian Water Innovation Lab 2010

Last friday we took part in the Canadian Water Innovation Lab 2010 with a presentation on the role and place of art in the consideration of infrastructures in the city, focussing on water infrastructures and sustainability through our Watershed+ project.

The presentation was very well received and the following discussion session, where we were the "resource guests", was very interesting, with questions and issues raised by people from a whole range of backgrounds. A very good day, thanks for all the questions and the discussion and for inviting us.

Experimenting with Geography

Today, we presented at the week-long Experimenting with Geography Workshop: See-hear-make-do, held at the University of Edinburgh, and this afternoon we shall be leading a practical workshop on site-specific audio work.

The week is dedicated to developing a diverse range of craft skills associated with audio, visual and site-specific methodologies. For further information on the wider Experimenting with Geography project click here.


The project is managed by Dr Michael Gallagher, Research Fellow at the university's Institute of Geography and runs until the end of July 2010.