In our studio this week, two members of SYN - atelier d'exploraine urbaine, Jean-Maxime Dufrensne and Jean-François Prost, talk with us about their project INFRACAMPUS and their work in re-organizing public space. Working with university students and staff, SYN explored misused, underused, or ambiguous spaces to answer the question: How can we engage the campus as a place for fostering new kinds of actions and social configurations? SYN has been working with the built environment to bring us together. How can we solve solitude?

Janet Morton talks with us about time, money, and the value of everything. Morton’s playful work critically addresses crafting and labour, as Morton herself knits works to address “measured time” and the value we associate with the handmade. In a culture where most of our products are made wherever cheaper labour can be found, Morton’s practice aims to critically analyze our notions of value.

This week Ed Video curator Scott McGovern Joins us to talk about hacker culture, the spirit of exploration, and their relation to the art community. We talk about University of Guelph student Edward Kim’s, Science Hack Day at Ed Video Gallery. We explore hacking as a way of combining technology to create unique solutions to sometimes complex problems. We call in recent SOFAM grad Omar Elkharardly to break down hacking in the spirit of re-invention, working with existing systems, and creating your own rules.

Today we have Shawn Van Sluys, Executive Director of Musagetes, in the studio to talk about the current projects in Rijeka and Lecce. His most recent paper, A City and its Pier, looks at the projects that are happening in Rijeka, to address questions of social responsibility, de-industrialization, and the pains of transition. Artists Laetitia Sonami and Matthew Mazzotta are both working on projects that position Rijeka’s breakwater pier as a transformative space. We move from curiosity to metaphor in our investigation of how smaller cities envision new futures during transition times.

Van Sluys, Shawn. "A City and Its Pier - Musagetes." Musagetes. October 6, 2013. Accessed October 9, 2013. http://musagetes.ca/document/a-city-and-its-pier/.

This week we reflect on the events and happenings of the Musagetes Guelph Café, which happened from September 25th – 28th. Postcommodity’s visit as part of the weekend encouraged stimulating dialog, mobilizing language to challenging the structure of the Café itself. Postcommodity’s own performance invited local Guelphites to join them in creating a playable instrument, Game Remains: Golden Horseshoe, that encouraged strategic planning and respectful collaboration in ways that responded to Guelph as a city and a site. Using Pablo Helguera’s book, Education for Socially Engaged Art, as a lens, we discuss the evolution and dismantling of communities as the people who occupy them change. How have our communities changed with participation?

Helguera, Pablo. Education for Socially Engaged Art: A Materials and Techniques Handbook. New York: Jorge Pinto Books, 2011.

Postcommodity join us in our studio. The members of Postcommodity are interdisciplinary, and work together to build trans-disciplinary work through a shared indigenous lens. We discuss their practice and what it means to create discourse through complexity and confusion. Comprised of Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martinez, Kade L. Twist, and Nathan Young, they have currently installed a four person musical instrument that is designed as a video game in Guelph’s own Boarding House Arts. Game Remains: Golden Horseshoe requires four players, and produces a new sound and game with every different interaction. The artists goal is to create spaces that mediate dialog and also create situations for dialog to occur.

Artist Jenn E Norton is talks with us about her latest project, Site Lines. Norton made a suggestion box in which ideas for how St. George’s Square could be reimagined can be entered. The big ideas shared by individuals in the space will later be rendered by Norton as a form of concept art, placed in the square itself as a poster. The work itself addresses need and lack through our desire, using a playful and imaginative process that allows individuals to both participate in the work, but also to find themselves in a space where they can imagine what their inventive idea would appear like in their community. How would you like a hot air balloon transit system?

This week we talk with artist Janet Morton about her project for the Musagetes Guelph Café, The Stack. This stack for the creative and artistic production happening in the building is made up of a couple thousand cassette tapes, recycled doilies, and some resin. Morton herself refers to the work as a vessel of memory; a mix tape is a vehicle for love and connection. We discuss capital and value in art; elitist value, social value, and the idea that “time equals money”. What gets sacrificed for the sake of capital?

Sontag, Susan. Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963. Edited by David Rieff. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

In today’s episode, we interview artist and Guelph grad Joshua Cleminson to discuss the Treehouse Residency in Brooklyn, New York. Cleminson worked with a group of seven artists who host a residency in their gallery space, allowing others to experience New York. His own practice touches on humour, simplicity, and absurdity. One of his recent works was a re-interpretation on Gerald Ferguson’s piece, A Million Pieces, from 1977. 36 Dollars an Hour saw Cleminson walking around Madrid dropping pennies. If a passerby were to pick up the coins, and if they dedicated themselves to it full time, would be able to make $36 an hour just off the pennies Cleminson dropped. Talk about an absurd amount of pocket change.

"The secret ingredient in art for me is having the time to experience. You can’t analyze and create at the same time. Spend time with work, view it, talk about it with other people. Time is something that needs to be paid in terms of experiences in art." - Joshua Cleminson

This week, start by chatting with musician Gordon Monahan about his experimental practice and then hear about Scott McGovern’s art curatorial philosophy. Monahan’s work is influenced by the New York Scene, John Cage, and his own experiments with music and science. Monahan explores sound in many facets in his own practice: it’s physics, culture, and in the context in which it can be manipulated. Ed Video curator Scott McGovern talks about using his position there to facilitate exhibitions and art.

"The secret ingredient in art is being open to discovering new things. Don’t have too much of a fixed opinion about things until you experience some new ones!" - Gordon Monahan

"The secret ingredient in art for me is relating to people emotionally in new forms that are all-encompassing. It is about figuring out ways that are outside of traditional means to punch them right in the middle of their soul; something that just feels right and makes sense about it." - Scott McGovern