Entangled Territories August 6, 2006
Toronto, Ontario
Entangled Territories
A Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry event
With/in Adrian Blackwell's carpool + Republic of Safety
Sunday, August 6, 2006
4:00-9:00pm
Location TBC: check www.tsci.ca before the event
The gentrification of Toronto's downtown has displaced low-income residents. New
immigrants, often precariously employed, are warehoused in high-density structures within
low-density suburbs. City land is rezoned for optimum profit extraction rather than for
livability. The costs of using public transit are rising as new programs of surveillance
carefully monitor the smog-saturated city
This neoliberal agenda remains contested by urban social movements committed to the
building of a new commons: street protests, squats, community gardens, housing co-ops,
public-space interventions, regularization campaigns
Toronto's territory is entangled in divergent forces of neoliberal enclosure and public
commons. Animating this play of forces is a triad of actors: capitalists, governments,
and multitudes. At stake in their balance of power is access to affordable places to
live, sources of healthy food, a secure income, mobility, pleasurable forms of life
ß How is capital capturing urban territories? Which spaces are currently under threat of
enclosure?
ß What possibilities exist for the state to protect existing public spaces or initiate
new ones, when its role has increasingly become the policing of space?
ß What capacities do we have for escaping existing enclosures, in the name of
constructing new urban commons?
Join us for a conversation in and about the city's entangled territories. We'll move
ourselves through a series of small-group discussions, and then end off the event with a
collective conversation.
The event will be held in a parking lot near Downsview Park. This space is entangled, at
the end of a subway line, yet in the middle of the city: in the inner suburbs, next to an
army base, big boxes, and warehouses, at the confluence of highways, subways, and an
airport. Our site is an abstract space of pause within this non-place of circulation.
Guests
Yvonne Bambrick (Streets are for People) + Sue Bunce (Planning Action) + Rob Gill (York)
+ Heather Haynes (Toronto Free Gallery) + Joe Hermer (UT) + Luis Jacob (artist) + Peter
Nyers (McMaster) + Darren O'Donnell (artist) + Jay Pitter (artist) + SYN- (artists) +
Leah Sandals (Spacing) + Jeff Shantz + Jeff Thomas (artist) + Kika Thorne (artist) +
Rinaldo Walcott (OISE) + others TBC
About TSCI
Collaborating with a network of activists, artists, and theorists, Toronto School of
Creativity & Inquiry initiates events that inquire into the new enclosures and creative
pathways beyond them.
About carpool
carpool (apparatus of capture) is a tent that connects four cars to form a larger
composition. The cars are caught in fabric, creating a structure as they move apart from
one another, temporarily immobilizing them while opening their private interiors to
public use.
Official Website: http://www.tsci.ca
Added by cwhardwi on July 21, 2006