Karaoke And Public Space

Can Karaoke Transform Public Space?

by Rachel Smith

Government agencies and marketing bureaus across the globe strive to find ways to get people into parks and using public spaces. Some spend millions with extravagant firework spectaculars, while others import international music acts or host an almost continuous string of farmer’s markets and craft fairs, many of which fail to deliver a certain je ne sais quoi.

But in a not-so-pristine park in Berlin, an Irish guy named Joe draws crowds of more than 3,000 people … with karaoke. Which got me thinking, can karaoke transform our public spaces? It seems an odd thing to say, but yes, I believe it probably can.

I first learned about Joe from my trusted Lonely Planet guidebook, which told me that Bearpit Karaoke was a ‘must see’ for a Sunday afternoon in Berlin I couldn’t resist investigating! I arrived at Mauerpark amazed at the activity. The Flea market was in full swing with hundreds of people buying and selling old bikes, vintage clothes and ‘maker movement’ crafts. People, young and old, relaxed on the unkempt grass surrounded by complimentary entertainment from skateboard tricksters, circus performers and wannabe rock stars. In the stone amphitheatre a contortionist was pleasing a small but happy audience. As I sat watching and waiting it was apparent that something big was going down. Within minutes the crowd of a hundred or so had swelled to at least a thousand; families, locals, students and tourists, and in less than half an hour it was standing room only. As the contortionist took her final bow, the crowd broke into rapturous applause as a scruffy looking guy in a checked shirt and baseball cap walked across the stage. This was it, Joe Hatchiban was here and my opinion of karaoke was about to be changed.

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Painting The River Through Town

From Henk Hofstra, “In April 2007, het Moleneind, a road in Drachten, The Netherlands, is painted blue to symbolise the water. It is 1000 meters long and 8 meters wide. It was created to form an urban river and recreate the path of a waterway that used to be where the road currently runs. They will start to dig a new canal here in 2008. The text WATER IS LEVEN is written on the blue road. The water will bring back life again in the centre of Drachten.”

I would love to see this done at Turcot bringing the Riviere Saint Pierre back to life, if only symbolically, for a little while. Anyone interested in this kind of idea should email me at neathatturcot@yahoo.ca

And here is a bonus image for those who like the potential of art on ground level. More here.

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Help Save Meadowbrook

This just in.

This is a very crucial time in the fight to save Meadowbrook. The owner of the land, Groupe Pacific, is preparing plans for a development on the Lachine side of the golf course.

Many people have been working very hard to keep Meadowbrook preserved as a park, which would link up to the Falaise St Jacques, Angrignon Park, Douglas Grounds and the Lachine Rapids Park. This would be a green belt where all Montrealers could enjoy activities such as cross country skiing, cycling, walking, and bird watching.

On Wednesday, May 6th, the Agglomeration Council will be holding hearings on natural spaces. Les Amis de Meadowbrook and others will be presenting papers advocating the preservation of Meadowbrook.

It is essential that we demonstrate to the politicians and the press that there is a wave of support for Meadowbrook that is unstoppable. Please come and show your support. The politicians can’t do it with out us.

Montreal City Hall – Council Room
275, rue Notre-Dame Est
Wednesday May 6 at 7PM

Bring your friends, neighbours, and your kids. You can make signs, banners or whatever will show that Les Amis de Meadowbrook is there.

If you need a lift, or if you can offer to drive someone, please contact

Wendy Dodge
514-488-3737
wendyldodge@videotron.ca Alice Assaly
514-486-3577

Jo Ann Goldwater
Les Amis de Meadowbrook
Member group of the Green Coalition and
Green Right of Way Movement
http://www.lesamisdemeadowbrook.org
514-484-8668

Meadowbrook
More

And down the hill

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Is Your City A Great City?

The folks over at Project For Public Spaces have put up a checklist in regard to the above question.

Here are a few…

In Great Cities…

Community goals are a top priority in city planning

Citizens regularly participate in making their public spaces better and local leaders and planning professionals routinely seek the wisdom and practical experience of community residents.

Residents feel they have responsibility and a sense of ownership for their public spaces.

Neighborhoods are respected, fostered and have unique identities. There is a sense of “pride of place.”

Public spaces are planned and managed in a way that highlights and strengthens the culture of a particular community.

More here.

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Spare Change

That s the name of this photo by factotum who writes this,

The City of Montreal has installed electronic parking meters, but some of the old mechanical parking meters have been converted to accept donations to L’Itineraire, an organization that assists an estimated 30,000 street people in Montreal. “L’Itineraire is counting on you. Thank you. Help Montreal’s homeless. Aidez les sans-abri de Montreal”

It’s a wonderful, irony filled idea. Pass it on!

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Excellent Turnout

It was a full house last night at the Gadbois Centre for the information session presented by various community organizations that work directly with the communities that will be most affected by the rebuilding of the Turcot Interchange and it’s offshoot interchanges.

I would like to thank the presenters for their efforts as they are doing something they strongly believe in and have worked very hard to make this evening a great success. Like most people in the non profit sector they are overworked and underpaid, so their efforts are very much appreciated.

Solidarity was a constant theme than came from both the presenters and the participants with their comments and questions. There were a few people from the east end in attendance who are concerned with the proposed Notre Dame East “Decarie Style Trench” that is being planned for that street. And it was suggested that the Notre Dame, Bonaventure, and Turcot road projects be rethought as part of the same transportation plan for the city. The left hand needs to know what the right is doing and, on principle, these massive changes and their impacts should indeed be an integral part of an overall sustainable development plan for the city. Most importantly, the people who live closest to these projects need to be part of the decision making process.

Someone pointed out that the Turcot Interchange sees 280,000 fossil fuel burning vehicles per day. If you look at all highways on the island it works out that any given section will see an average of 7,700 vehicles per hour. At Turcot that hourly average jumps to about 11,000 per hour, thus making that area significantly more prone to noise and air pollution. It is very easy when you are driving through to not realize that people live there.

I would also urge people from the West Island, even the South Shore and Laval, to take a look at this project. A lot of this is all so that you can get downtown as quickly as possible. Out of sight, out of mind is an attitude that has put the planet in trouble. You need to start asking yourselves how you can be of help instead of how many seconds you can theoretically knock off your commute . Start asking your local politicians to lobby for more parking at train stations and take that train.

Health concerns were at the top of the agenda. People who live within 200 meters of a freeway are at considerably higher risk of death or respiratory illness than the general population. This spikes to 30% for children and adults over 60! Lowering the Turcot Interchange will expose the populations of Saint Henri and Cote Saint Paul to even higher levels of carbon emissions.

The idea of rebuilding Turcot on an embankment in order to save on maintenance costs is perhaps the show stopper. The aerial views of Turcot “after” presented by the Ministry of Transportation look all nice and green. But for those on ground level it will be like having a wall built around their neighborhoods, the views being cut off, the already difficult access between these neighborhoods being completely cut off. The embankment will put traffic on average about 6 meters above street level and that is unacceptable.

The number of people being expropriated is another story. MTQ likes to minimize the numbers but whether you call it units or buildings to make it sound insignificant, the fact is at least 300 people are going to have to move under the current plan. And three months rent and a moving allowance just doesn’t cut it anymore. This is not the 1950′s where people in poor soon-to-be-demolished neighborhoods should be grateful for such attention. I like to think we live in a society that treats it’s own people better than that.

Most of the people present seemed to agree that Turcot Rebuilt would work best either as a system of tunnels or remain elevated. The embankment seems to be the worst possible solution in sustainable and social terms.

It was also suggested that for each housing unit torn down during the project, the MTQ be responsible for creating a new unit in the neighborhood.

To further understand the environmental dynamics involved, someone suggested that the number of trees needed to absorb the pollution at Turcot would require a space 40 times the size of Angrignon Park! So much for the series of trees and shrubs in the MTQ plan.

The rising cost of fuel raised some ideas about even the need for such freeways in the future, as there seems to be a shift to trains, trams, and trolleys in so much urban planning debates these days. let alone that a good percentage of drivers won’t be able to afford it.

People want to be heard. They want to be dealt with fairly. It isn’t a lot when you think about it.

All in all an excellent evening indeed!

Here is the petition. Please fill it in and email it to info@concertationspe.qc.ca

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Banksy

Just a tad late but this weekend he organized The Cans Festival in London.

From Wiki,

Banksy is a well-known pseudo-anonymous^[1] English graffiti artist. He is believed to be a native of Yate, South Gloucestershire, near Bristol^[1] and born in 1974,^[2] but there is substantial public uncertainty about his identity and personal and biographical details.^[3] According to Tristan Manco, Banksy “was born in 1974 and raised in Bristol, England. The son of a photocopier engineer, he trained as a butcher but became involved in graffiti during the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980s.”^[4] His artworks are often-satirical pieces of art that encompass topics such as politics, culture, and ethics. His street art, which combines graffiti writing with a distinctive stencilling technique similar to Blek le Rat, who began to work with stencils in 1981 in Paris and members of the anarcho-punk band Crass who maintained a graffiti stencil campaign on the London Tube System throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s. His art has appeared in cities around the world.^[5] Banksy’s work was borne out of the larger Bristol underground scene which involved collaborations between artists and musicians.” More here.

Probably thought of as a graffiti artist by many, Banksy takes it well beyond simple tagging. He has worked on a few continents including work on the West Bank Wall in Israel in 2005. Story here.

Banksy has been perhaps the most talked about artist on earth in recent years, and some of his works have sold for over 200,000 dollars. In fact there is a site that directly compares his work with that of Andy Warhol.

There is already a Flickr page with pictures from The Cans Festival.

Banksy is very concerned with social justice issues as seen in his “mainifesto” which is actually an extract from the diary of one of the first british soldiers to liberate nazi death camp Bergen-Belsen in 1945.

A couple of videos from this weekend.

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Mountain Plans Not Etched In Stone

Article in today’s gazette about a public hearing last night on plans to maintain Mount Royal as an all natural park. Some are dissatisfied with the city for not creating “untouchable” zones, which does leave developers with cause to at least drool a bit. There really should be, once and for all, a clear and strong zoning of the mountain. Way too much of it has been chipped away over  time and it’s absurd for City Hall to not have the gonads to finally just say, “That’s it”! Or are they intrigued by some as yet unmentioned “possibilities”?

Found this paragraph to be highly ironic.

“Nina Gould, of the Nuns’ Island Heritage Protection Committee, said the master plan does not spell out how mountain views will be preserved. Six apartment buildings planned for Nuns’ Island will block the view of the river from Mount Royal “like a wall of Florida-style towers.” “

Nun’s Island certainly could have used that type of an organization 40-45 years ago when development began in earnest on what was once described as one of the most important ecological zones  in the area (a marshy wetland to name just one aspect of it). There already is a bunch of towers on the island that confuse the view from many places. You would hardly know Verdun had a waterfront, or is not dominated by condo towers, from many viewpoints.

And on it goes….

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Factotum

Here and there at Turcot Yards….

You may visit Factotum’s Moblog here.

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Pieces Of Resistance/ Flags For A Vengeance

Heather Utah has been posting flags.

“The images themselves call out the space between people in public places; I have become increasingly agitated with this designated space – this is my calling out and reclaiming the space which belongs to EVERYBODY. I suggest we start using it & loving before it is too far gone. The faces are meant to represent everyone who has felt this way – the bus scapes are the mundane, everyday places this space exists. I want to believe that love exists in the spaces between.”

And this one at the west gate of Turcot Yards on Pullman road.

You can catch the full set here.

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New York City Waterfalls

In January it was announced that the artist Olafur Eliasson will present 4 installations of “waterfalls” in New York City from mid- July to mid-October of this year.

“In developing The New York City Waterfalls, I have tried to work with today’s complex notion of public spaces,” said Eliasson. “The Waterfalls appear in the midst of the dense social, environmental, and political tissue that makes up the heart of New York City. They will give people the possibility to reconsider their relationships to the spectacular surroundings, and I hope to evoke experiences that are both individual and enhance a sense of collectivity.” From here.

I would guess that comparisons with Christo (and very specifically The Gates) are inevitable. The very first thing that came to my under the freeway brain was that 8 million toilets get flushed numerous times per day in NYC, though I am not sure I want to pursue that line of inquiry, and will  just leave off by saying it should be a very successful project.

From Lego Cities To New York City Waterfalls 

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