In Toronto, the railway underpass at Queen and Dufferin streets is a hot graf and paste-up spot. Now, with the city doing a reno, it wants to put in some official public art. The finalist proposals—from Ken Lum, Isabelle Hayeur, Vera Frenkel and Luis Jacob—are pretty cool but one wonders how graffiti folks will respond. Read more at my Torontoist post on the topic. An excerpt:
Vancouver artist Ken Lum, best known for photo-text works on themes of migration, discrimination, and belonging, proposed a series of digital clocks. On one side of the underpass, the clocks, titled Sunrise Today, would report the sunrise time at locations around the world, from Dubai and Delhi to Toronto. Clocks on the other side of the underpass would do the same for sunsets, with the idea of differing geographic awarenesses being a fact of everyday multicultural metropolitan life...
[But a] key issue is whether graf artists will regard new, official public art as an invasion of space. City of Toronto public art officer Clara Hargittay thinks not. "Statistically," she says, "it’s true that if a work of art exists it is seldom tagged. This is also one good reason to put public art in, because artists respect other artists' work."
Image of the Dufferin railway underpass from Torontoist
Why don't we get a party that is really in touch with culture, like the organizers of Luminato. In doing so maybe we can actually see a byproduct of all those provincial and federal dollars. If you count all the street cars, ignoring the cars, trucks, bikes...etc, that pass through it would definitely add up to thousands of viewers each day.
ReplyDeleteSomeone should alert the Luminato people to this glowing praise. It's the first I've heard for them in a long time.
ReplyDeleteYeah... wow Anonymous, you must be so proud of the fest that you'd rather not put your feeble name to their great praise. Interesting.
ReplyDeleteThe art projects proposed are actually pretty damn good, I think. But the issue of official vs. informal public art still remains.
Hey Leah,
ReplyDeleteI don't have have a blog and wanted to respond without jumping through even the tiniest of hoops. That said, I must profess my sarcasm doesn't translate so well in digital.
Mark
PS: Though admirable projects, I have to admit I am quite skeptical of the actual will to see them to full fruition.
Oh hey, thanks Mark!
ReplyDeleteYeah... I find sarcasm hard to translate to blog comments too... I've gotten myself in trouble a few times that way, so I hear ya.
I do wonder what will happen too with these projects in real life. I guess we'll know more when the jury chooses their winner May 22.