Urban Interventions symposium taking place this weekend
to explore ways to better our cities
TORONTO, April 8, 2005 -- The die-hard city dwellers that live, work and play in Canada’s largest metropolis may be buying into a lifestyle that no longer really exists, according to York University professor Janine Marchessault.
“In North American cities, condo and loft developers are cashing in on the nostalgia of lost urbanism, and you can certainly see this in Toronto,” Marchessault says.
Marchessault, Canada Research Chair in Art, Digital Media and Globalization in York University’s Department of Film and Video, says the modern city has become a giant field of ‘urbanized suburbs,’ surrounded by a hyped up downtown core fuelled by its own brand of urban mythology.
She points to recent condo developments which evoke images of a bygone era by relying largely on a retro look to their marketing materials. Loft developments do the same, Marchessault says.
”Especially with lofts, they’re very focused on this idea of authenticity. It’s all intended to evoke a bygone era where people actually did live sustainable lives in cities.”
She says it's ironic that what was once affordable for working class people is now the arena of the wealthy.
”You pay extra money to live downtown in a converted warehouse with exposed brick and beams, in a building where the poor used to work, in a neighbourhood where they used to live,” she says.
Marchessault is conducting her research into the theory of cities – an area that is only just beginning to be probed by scholars – as part of the Visible Cities Project and Archive. She has organized the Urban Interventions symposium taking place April 9-10 at the Drake Hotel in order to examine how artists have changed the look and feel of our cities and how creative practices can be used to help us better understand and transform the experience of urban dwelling and planning.
The symposium is hosted by the University’s Faculty of Fine arts in conjunction with the Images Festival of Independent Film. It is co-sponsored by the Robarts' Centre for Canadian Studies at York, the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art.
WHAT: Urban Interventions: A Symposium on Art and the City
WHEN: April 9-10, 2005
WHERE: Drake Hotel, 1150 Queen Street West, Toronto
MEDIA Melissa Hughes, Media Relations, York University,
CONTACT: 416 736 2100 x22097
MORE INFO: Visit www.visiblecity.ca for full agenda and ticketing info
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