Curated by the Curatorial Research-Creation Collective (Treva Legassie, Matthew-Robin Nye, karen wong)
The four day field-intensive was inspired by the Bauhaus’ paradigm-shifting approach to art, design, and education. The intensive focused on La Station, the decommissioned Nun’s Island gas station (1969) designed by Mies van Der Rohe (last principal of the Bauhaus), which has been recently converted into an intergenerational community centre (2011), as a material entry point and guide, to collectively imagine and propose material and ecological transitions toward post-Anthropo-/Capitalo-cene futures.
At the intersections of critical theory, environmental studies, artistic research, speculation, architecture, and design, we used La Station as a starting point to investigate how we might rethink the monumental infrastructures of our carbon-based cities, economies, and modes of living. La Station afforded a means to imagine a way of transitioning such sites into more just and livable post-Anthropo/Capitalocenic futures. Initially a part of the broader masterplan for Nun’s Island, the gas station - with its historic link to Bauhaus - offered the opportunity to engage with issues of processual methodologies, experimental pedagogy, landscape, performativity, and expanded considerations of simultaneous and multiple living phenomena. Equally representative of a then idealized ‘carbon future’, the station accommodated inquiries of environmental interferences and mutations at both micro and macro (molecular to planetary) scales.
We proposed a through-line between the pedagogical and design innovations of the Bauhaus and potential modes of transitioning into an uncertain future. We considered how the radical pedagogy of the Bauhaus might allow us to rethink our research methods through, for example, research-creation, qualitative exploration and ethnographic enquiry; offering tools to attune to the micro and macro scales of the local landscape and its social and technological entanglements. By engaging with both past and current states and uses of the station through architecture, ecology, art and critical theory over four days of programming, we attempted to develop and propose speculative futures for a world in transition. Participants engaged in lectures, discussions, and guided workshops to work with: the site’s written and unwritten histories through (an)archival work, art-based research, ethnography, literature, and other creative and research-based practices; the multiple entanglements of species, their resiliencies, complexities, and adaptabilities; the physical reality of the island itself as host to such varied ecosystems; and Modernist applications and consequences of then-contemporary energy infrastructures, with projections towards (other) possible futures.
Presenters included: Dr. Orit Halpern (Concordia University), Gabriel Pena (Concordia University), Stefana Breitwieser (CCA_Archives), Tricia Toso (Concordia University), Kregg Hetherington (Concordia University), Erin Manning (Concordia University), Joel Mason (Maritime Social Innovation Lab), Buildings + Grounds Concordia, k.g. Guttman, Monika Gagnon (Concordia University), Shauna Janssen (Concordia University), and the CRCC (Treva Michelle Legassie, Matthew-Robin Nye, and Karen Wong)
Transitions was developed jointly with Dr. Orit Halpern.
Photo Credits : Treva-Michelle Legassie, Matthew-Robin Nye, Karen Wong, and Sarah-Claudia Ligondé.
Transitions was curated by the Curatorial Research-Creation Collective (Treva Legassie, Matthew Robin-Nye, karen wong).
The four day field-intensive was inspired by the Bauhaus’ paradigm-shifting approach to art, design, and education. The intensive focused on La Station, the decommissioned Nun’s Island gas station (1969) designed by Mies van Der Rohe (last principal of the Bauhaus), which has been recently converted into an intergenerational community centre (2011), as a material entry point and guide, to collectively imagine and propose material and ecological transitions toward post-Anthropo-/Capitalo-cene futures.
At the intersections of critical theory, environmental studies, artistic research, speculation, architecture, and design, we used La Station as a starting point to investigate how we might rethink the monumental infrastructures of our carbon-based cities, economies, and modes of living. La Station afforded a means to imagine a way of transitioning such sites into more just and livable post-Anthropo/Capitalocenic futures. Initially a part of the broader masterplan for Nun’s Island, the gas station - with its historic link to Bauhaus - offered the opportunity to engage with issues of processual methodologies, experimental pedagogy, landscape, performativity, and expanded considerations of simultaneous and multiple living phenomena. Equally representative of a then idealized ‘carbon future’, the station accommodated inquiries of environmental interferences and mutations at both micro and macro (molecular to planetary) scales.
We proposed a through-line between the pedagogical and design innovations of the Bauhaus and potential modes of transitioning into an uncertain future. We considered how the radical pedagogy of the Bauhaus might allow us to rethink our research methods through, for example, research-creation, qualitative exploration and ethnographic enquiry; offering tools to attune to the micro and macro scales of the local landscape and its social and technological entanglements. By engaging with both past and current states and uses of the station through architecture, ecology, art and critical theory over four days of programming, we attempted to develop and propose speculative futures for a world in transition. Participants engaged in lectures, discussions, and guided workshops to work with: the site’s written and unwritten histories through (an)archival work, art-based research, ethnography, literature, and other creative and research-based practices; the multiple entanglements of species, their resiliencies, complexities, and adaptabilities; the physical reality of the island itself as host to such varied ecosystems; and Modernist applications and consequences of then-contemporary energy infrastructures, with projections towards (other) possible futures.
Presenters included: Dr. Orit Halpern (Concordia University), Gabriel Pena (Concordia University), Stefana Breitwieser (CCA_Archives), Tricia Toso (Concordia University), Kregg Hetherington (Concordia University), Erin Manning (Concordia University), Joel Mason (Maritime Social Innovation Lab), Buildings + Grounds Concordia, k.g. Guttman, Monika Gagnon (Concordia University), Shauna Janssen (Concordia University), and the CRCC (Treva Michelle Legassie, Matthew-Robin Nye, and Karen Wong)
Transitions was developed jointly with Dr. Orit Halpern.
Photo Credits : Treva-Michelle Legassie, Matthew-Robin Nye, Karen Wong, and Sarah-Claudia Ligondé.