I Know What I Want: Open Studio
I Know What I Want: Open Studio
In July 2013, Other Sights collaborated with The Western Front and 221A on a publicly-sited research intensive about the possible futures of the Kingsway, Broadway and Main Street neighbourhood in Vancouver. The process began by conducting interviews with local independent business people, cultural leaders and members of the design and planning community.
Between July 22 and 28, 2013, members of the Other Sights collective held an Open Studio at the Kingsgate Mall, developing small models of residents’ desires for the future of the neighbourhood. Using materials from the mall’s dollar store, residents’ ideas were adapted, combined, and recombined into an aerial model of the Broadway-Kingsway intersection as the public consultation progressed.
The ideas proposed ranged from the whimsical, such as a pony ranch, to the highly pragmatic, such as public housing and senior residences. Other Sights REPORT proposes an alternative to community consultation practices that includes the generative and resisting principle of friction.
The project sought to evaluate space using the tools that artists have at their disposal: networks and ideas. Central to this endeavour is the idea that these everyday spaces possess potential creative projects and can be envisioned beyond the familiar narrative of building up and over what exists. I Know What I Want posed the question: What if artists, curators, architects, thinkers, and citizens were invited to imagine these potentials?