Strip Mining For Creative Cities

photos by Yvonne Bambrick (top Terraria by Janis Demkiw, Emily Hogg and Olia Mishchenko)
Curated by Heather Haynes & Izida Zorde
Dates: January 15, 2009 to March 1 2009
Strip Mining for Creative Cities explores the processes that strip away neighborhood and community resources and leave behind “facades” to be consumed by the market. Through the voices of artists, youth, urban geographers and architects, the exhibition critically examines the acts that displace residents, cultural practices and community infrastructure, replacing vital social safety nets with simulacra of pre-existing forms. Locating this exhibition at Toronto Free Gallery in the Bloor/Lansdowne community, the curators both recognize this neighborhood as contested space threatened by gentrification and work to engage the community in documenting and creating alternatives to the stripped-down Creative City.
Artists: Pavitra Wickramasinghe, Thorben Wieditz and Ute Lehrer, Janis Demkiw, Emily Hogg and Olia Mishchenko, Michal Maciej Bartosik, Janet Wang, Seth Porcello, Douglas Paulson, Elaine Gan, Regent Park Focus, Toronto Video Activist Collective and Pamila Matharu with students from Parkdale Collegiate Institute.
Media:
NOW MAGAZINE: Strip searching: Show probes development’s underbelly By Leah Sandals
http://www.nowtoronto.com/stage/story.cfm?content=166940
ANTIPODE FOUNDATION: Digging into the Creative City: A Feminist Critique By Heather McLean
http://antipodefoundation.org/2014/02/26/new-paper-digging-into-the-creative-city-a-feminist-critique-by-heather-mclean/
BlogTO by Dustin Parkes
http://www.blogto.com/gallery/torontofree
Curated by Heather Haynes & Izida Zorde
Dates: January 15, 2009 to March 1 2009
Strip Mining for Creative Cities explores the processes that strip away neighborhood and community resources and leave behind “facades” to be consumed by the market. Through the voices of artists, youth, urban geographers and architects, the exhibition critically examines the acts that displace residents, cultural practices and community infrastructure, replacing vital social safety nets with simulacra of pre-existing forms. Locating this exhibition at Toronto Free Gallery in the Bloor/Lansdowne community, the curators both recognize this neighborhood as contested space threatened by gentrification and work to engage the community in documenting and creating alternatives to the stripped-down Creative City.
Artists: Pavitra Wickramasinghe, Thorben Wieditz and Ute Lehrer, Janis Demkiw, Emily Hogg and Olia Mishchenko, Michal Maciej Bartosik, Janet Wang, Seth Porcello, Douglas Paulson, Elaine Gan, Regent Park Focus, Toronto Video Activist Collective and Pamila Matharu with students from Parkdale Collegiate Institute.
Media:
NOW MAGAZINE: Strip searching: Show probes development’s underbelly By Leah Sandals
http://www.nowtoronto.com/stage/story.cfm?content=166940
ANTIPODE FOUNDATION: Digging into the Creative City: A Feminist Critique By Heather McLean
http://antipodefoundation.org/2014/02/26/new-paper-digging-into-the-creative-city-a-feminist-critique-by-heather-mclean/
BlogTO by Dustin Parkes
http://www.blogto.com/gallery/torontofree