Crash Course in Critical/Creative Urban Intervention

Course facilitators: Rose Bianchini and Christopher Smith

Contact: urbanintervention@graffiti.net

(course description)

There is a growing community of artists and activists in Toronto who engage in ‘urban intervention’. Broadly defined as the practice of intervening in the conditioned, taken-for-granted patterns of everyday life in the city, urban interventions seek to create moments of rupture and inter/dis-ruption in the state of order, boredom, monotony, and acute social alienation that have come to characterize contemporary urban life. Encompassing a broad spectrum of different critical/creative techniques and models, urban interventions can range from carnivalesque direct actions involving large numbers of people, to individual, performative acts of guerilla street theatre.

Often artistic and always political, the modern practice of urban intervention carries on the avant-garde project of attempting to unite art, politics and everyday life, actively challenging conventional ways of seeing, inhabiting, moving through and engaging with the city. While they can take an infinite number of forms, most kinds of urban intervention generally share a number of common criteria. Firstly, urban interventions are public- directly or indirectly they seek to critique and engage with the shifting politics of public space. Secondly, interventions are often performative- they encourage the adoption of identities and modes of being that are different from the everyday (which is itself often critiqued as being a performance). Thirdly, many kinds of intervention are participatory- they actively seek to inspire and incite interactivity, problematizing the role of the passive spectator. Fourthly, interventions are political- consciously drawing attention to social, political and economic issues within the city. And finally, interventions are playful, illustrating how acts of (political) protest and critique can be accomplished without violence or the traditionally somber tone that characterizes most formal demonstrations.

Composed of a series of interactive discussions with local, Toronto-based practitioners, this course will seek to examine and critique a diverse array of different forms and models of (critical/creative, political/poetic) urban intervention, including autonomous acts of urban beautification, attempts to disrupt the state of social alienation that pervades the city, performative anti-consumerist actions, and collective, carnivalesque assertions of the right to public space. After the introductory class meeting, where we will work on collectively defining and debating the notion of ‘urban intervention’, the remainder of the course will be devoted to participatory, interactive workshops with local artists and activists whose work can be seen as being interventionist in nature, including the Toronto Public Space Committee (TPSC: www.publicspace.ca), the Urban Beautification Brigade (UBB), the City Beautification Ensemble (CBE: www.beautification.ca), and the Free Dance Lessons project. As opposed to simply showcasing the work of different interventionist projects, however, the course will ideally come to resemble the form of a DJ ‘battle’, where different practitioners can playfully face off against— and thereby creatively challenge— one another on some of the critical issues involved in ‘urbanvention’. By creating an open, anarchist-oriented forum for critically examining contemporary practices of urban intervention, the course will aim to both strengthen and challenge the existing community of Toronto-based urban interventionists, and inspire and generate new critical/creative models for disrupting the everyday urban cityscape.

(tentative course outline)

Week 1

• defining and debating the notion of ‘urban intervention’ (collective finalization of course schedule by course participants)

Week 2

• spontaneous social interaction and/in the city (Free Dance Lesson project, subway parties)

Week 3

• the poetics of urban beautification

Week 4

• civic engagement and/in the politics of public space

Week 5

• public art and anonymity

Week 6

• design, architecture and urban intervention

Week 7

• public performance and guerilla street theatre

Week 8

• queer and transgendered urban intervention

Week 9

• intersections of art and resistance

Week 10

• models for action: concluding the course

(readings etc.)

Although this is primarily designed as a participatory, workshop-based course, short readings may be assigned from week to week. Participants will be expected to bring their own critical/creative energy and ideas to the course, with the intention of both challenging already existing models of urban intervention, and contributing to the construction of new collaborative projects.