1 (204) 943-1423
... the Portage and Main story line
It has been 32 years since Winnipeg’s fabled intersection, Portage and Main, was barricaded to pedestrian traffic.
Do you still remember crossing Portage and Main?
If so, I am interested in your story.
Please call, 1.204.943.1423 and tell me about it.
It is a voice mail box that will record your story that I will then reassemble into a new work made with all of the other stories I am told. Anyone with memories of actually crossing the streets are invited to call, but other Portage and Main recollections would be welcome too. If your story is particularly long, either leave several messages, or if you prefer, email me, jake moore, at mjake@videotron.ca, to set up a direct connection.
Why?
I am collecting these stories for the construction of an audio sculpture to be included in an exhibition called SUBCONSCIOUS CITY, curated by Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan for the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
According to the curators:
“Inspiration for the title of the exhibition comes from American cultural theorist and art critic Rebecca Solnit. In her recent book, “A Field Guide to Getting Lost”, (Viking, 2005), she posits that, “A city is built to resemble a conscious mind, a network that can calculate, administrate, manufacture. Ruins become the unconscious of a city, its memory, unknown, darkness, lost lands, and in this truly bring it to life.”
If we accept the mind as a model for Winnipeg, the unconscious (the lesser seen or ignored) makes its presence felt in unexpected ways. It burbles to the surface in ways that inform and enrich us, as well as revealing injustices and neglect. Similarly, the conscious (the affluent, the celebrated, the new) can reveal paucity (of community, of vision, of spiritual connection with each other and our past) as well as promise.”
In many ways I am beginning a conversation; an oral history of the ruins of the public site that Portage and Main once was, and the monument to the automobile and civic politics that it has become. Collective memory, or memories collected, can be the promise referred to Dempsey/Millan.
There will be a public opening on Valentine’s Day, February 14th, 2008.
Remember, “Love me, Love my Winnipeg”
for further information on this project, please contact jake moore
NB. The artist would like to acknowledge the support of Video Pool Media Arts Centre in the production of this work.
SUBCONSCIOUS CITY
February 8 to May 11, 2008
the Winnipeg Art Gallery
300 Memorial Boulevard
Public opening 7:30 p.m., Thursday, February 14, 2008
with performances by John K. Samson, Christine Fellows, and Freya Olafson.
Curated by Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, Adjunct Curators.
For the complete list of artists please visit http://www.wag.mb.ca/upcoming.asp
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2 comments:
Hi Video Pool
I just heard an interview with Jake Moore on Jian Ghomeshi’s cbc show Q. Good going!!
Winnipeg has systematically destroyed the unique characteristics of the core area for the last 50 years or more. I cringe every time I come back to the city and see the North Portage shopping mail, the Air Canada Centre, the hockey arena and the new MTS building going up. It seems that the powers to be have not learned by their failures. The decisions made seem to be based on outdated and thinking with the ultimate goal of sanitizing the inner city for Winnipeg suburbanites. I grew up just off Portage Avenue in the west end the city near Valour Road and subsequently lived in the Osborne Street area and near Wolseley Ave and Maryland Street. As an Art School Grad I had several studios in the warehouse district. In short my sense of self and the inter city were and still are intertwined.
In the early to mid 80’s the city entered into a tri-level governmental revitalization agreement called The Core Area Initiative. This program started to displace the existing communities in the city’s core. This is also when Art Space was born as way to ensure that the arts would not be displaced by the redevelopment. However, the city that I had known began to disappear being replaced by things that would be attractive to suburban Winnipeg and which (on recent visits) look like they have ultimately failed.
I had the opportunity in 84 or 85 to be part of an exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and in response created a video installation called “Core.” “Core” documented the lives of intercity people caught in the redevelopment process.
This is a crucial issue for the city and it is great to see a Winnipeg artist take it on again! Good luck with the show. Hopefully the public attention will cause the city to re-think its approach to urban renewal before the town down core is entirely destroyed or turned into a new football stadium. :)
Dear Nervh,
Thanks you for your passionate comment.
It’s very true... efforts to "revitalize" are dismayingly never about making it possible for citizens to gain more involvement in their neighborhoods. Rather, it is about corporate development taking over with its version of “bigger = better”.
If only people could start asking who really is being served with each proposed change while, at the same time, demanding REAL equity. If that were the case, I think it Winnipeggers would have a much easier time deciding between things like efficient mass transit or water slides… *sigh*
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