This month Cohabitation Strategies kicked off the collaborative project From Here, Convening Place at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton. The project is a local response to the current neighbourhood restructuring taking place in the vicinity of the gallery which is affecting a number of long-term residents and local groups rooted in downtown Edmonton. From Here, Convening Place sparked a dialog among individuals, artists, designers and civic organizations invested and concerned about the area through a workshop designed and facilitated by Gabriela Rendón and Lucia Babina. Seeking to understand new ways of defining home, participants discussed a number of questions. How can our urban habitat be more hospitable to the act of convening or gathering? What is the role of habitat/home as it relates to multiple generations? And, what opportunities are there for a deeper re-connection with the land in an urban setting? The outcome of the discussions led to the acknowledgment of the challenges to achieve such perceptions and visions and the creation of a number of statements which will be distributed as posters across the city and displayed at the upcoming Cul-de-Sac exhibition at the Art Gallery of Alberta which opens next month.
Cohabitation Strategies is collaborating in this project with Edmonton-based artist, curator, intern architect, and core member of Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective Tiffany Shaw-Collinge along with Matthew Kennedy and Mark Erickson, founders of the design+build practice Studio North in Calgary. The research will involve a partnership with local community organizations in Edmonton and result in an installation on the terrace that draws together ideas about community, indigenous definitions of the land and sense of time, and the notion of shared habitat.
From Here, Convening Place is part of the upcoming exhibition Cul-de-Sac also organized by the Art Gallery of Alberta and curated by Amery Calvelly. For more information about this project please click here.