Eye Level

Eyelevel
Adrian Blackwell, Ossi Kajas, Rufina Wu & Stefan Canham
Curated by Tomas Jonsson
February 1 - March 16, 2010

Pith Gallery
1018 9th Avenue S.E.
Calgary Alberta T2G 0S7
403-269-2022

Gallery Hours: Saturdays 11-5, or by appointment
Web Address: www.pithgallery.com
Opening Reception: February 6th 1 -4 p.m.


Eye Level brings together the work of artists and architects Adrian Blackwell, Stefan Canham, Rufina Wu and Ossi Kajas whose recent work critically engages with representations of informally organized and contested places. Looking critically at patterns of urban space development, Finnish Urban theorist Panu Lehtovouri identifies a fundamental source of tension between notions of ‘Concept City' and ‘Weak Place': "...the ordered visual representation (concept city) is often taken as real, leading to the belief that cities and their public urban spaces can be designed with no deeper problem...Throwing meaning in unlikely sites creates ephemeral attachments or deeply felt moments (weak place). The idea entails a redefinition of the notion of place so that it is not closed and physically bounded but rather open and porous, more about experiential nearness than physical proximity." Eye level considers the way that photography is used to create new opportunities for understanding these spaces beyond conventional planning or development visions, and how local uses and desires can be articulated. What role do these photographs, and their photographers, play in influencing the degree of precarity or stability of these spaces? How does photography operate as a tool for creating agency and awareness?


Reading series and discussion: Saturdays Feb 13th & 27th, March 6th & 13th, 1- 4:00 p.m.
Exploring the possibilities of photography as artistic research into informal developments in urban form. How can photography and other forms of representation articulate the subtle interrelation of people and the environments they inhabit, and to what aim?

The following texts will be available for purchase during the run of the exhibition:

February 13th:
Adrian Blackwell. "Not Architecture Not Performance: Reworking the Expanded Field" in Unboxed: Engagements in Social Space. Edited by Jen Budney and Adrian Blackwell. Published by Gallery 101, Ottawa (2005)

February 27th:
OASE 77: Into the open -Accommodating the public. Edited by Tom Avermaete, Klaske Havik and Hans Teerds with contributions by René Boomkens, Abram de Swaan, Hans Teerds, Panu Lehtovuori, Tom Avermaete/Klaske Havik, Ana Luz, Quentin Stevens, Ruth Baumeister, Catharina Gabrielson and Mayslits Kassif Architects. Published by NAI Publishers, Rotterdam 2009


March 6th
Portraits from Above - Hong Kong's Informal Rooftop Communities.
Chinese / English edition.
Photographs: Stefan Canham; Architectural drawings and texts: Rufina Wu.
With an essay by Dr. Ernest Chui.
Published by Peperoni Books (Berlin) and MCCM Creations (Hong Kong), 2009.

EXTRA 2: Portraits from Above - Hong Kong‘s Informal Rooftop Communities.
By Rufina Wu and Stefan Canham , with a text by Brett Bloom: ‘Unhoused. Creative Engagement with Global Housing Crises‘.
Exhibition catalogue published by Kunsthaus Hamburg, 2009

March 13th Open forum and discussion


Artists and projects:
Ossi Kajas (Helsinki): images of Makasiinit and Suvilahti districts
The Makasiinit district in Helsinki was a warehouse area occupied in the early 90s by cultural producers as a production, exhibition and community space. Markets, concerts and other informal activities became increasingly popular, but despite efforts to maintain this quality, development pressures finally gave way to new proposals for the site. Makasiinit was lost in 2001 with the city council voting in favour of moving forward on development plans for the area. Despite protests, the site was finally lost in a fire in 2006, which destroyed almost all physical traces of the former use of the site. Images of Makasiinit that exist on the internet are predominantly of the fire and resulting demise of the site, while few other images exist. These photos are of a time and places that no longer exist in real life, but instead as virtual places.

Rufina Wu & Stefan Canham: Portraits from Above
Photos: Stefan Canham (Hamburg); Drawings / Texts: Rufina Wu (Vancouver)
"Portraits from Above aims to uncover the creative cultural energy of Hong Kong's rooftop communities to a wider public. In the absence of officially sanctioned space, marginalized groups develop innovative tactics to make room for themselves. Such informal building practices typically occupy a subordinate position in the formal discourses on the city. The project reveals how rooftop communities are inextricably linked to their local neighbourhood and social networks. In face of the government's current tabula rasa approach of urban renewal, however, the future of this Hong Kong legacy remains precarious." - Portraits from Above, Stefan Canham and Rufina Wu

"Portraits from Above" is a collaborative project by Rufina Wu and Stefan Canham, documenting informal settlements on the roofs of high-rise buildings in Hong Kong through a combination of texts, drawings and photographs. Measured drawings reveal the structure, functionality, and creative energy of these self-built spaces. Text records convey residents' stories as they relate to the specific modalities of life on the roof; high-resolution photographs present interior and exterior spaces in all their detail for the viewer to "read".

Adrian Blackwell (Toronto): Evicted May 1, 2000 (9 Hanna Avenue)
A camera is a small room into which light enters through an aperture. These photographs are made using a pinhole camera that is a scale model of the room it is intended to photograph. Five of its six interior surfaces are lined with film, each one capturing a different surface of the room. The camera itself is fixed to the ceiling so that the room can be described in its totality. These images are part of a thirteen image series documenting workspaces in a former munitions plant in downtown Toronto. These spaces were cheap to rent, generous in volume, well lit and easy to adapt. The building's final occupants were all evicted on May 1, 2000.

Night Equals Day
Canada 2008, 30 min, 35mm, Dir: Adrian Blackwell
Presented by EMMEDIA Gallery and Production Society

Filmed in Regent Park from sunrise to sunset on October fourth 2008, Night Equals Day was shot at one frame per second with a 35mm film camera mounted on a motorized tripod head, rotating one tenth of a degree every second, or one full rotation each hour, capturing twelve daylight panoramas from 7:00am until 7:00pm. The installation is governed by a simple mathematical logic of shutter and pan speeds and the symmetrical relationship between the time of filming and the time of projection. It is intended to raise questions about the temporality of urban renewal and the equality between successive forms of the city's fabric. The film rotates at the intersection of Sackville and Oak Streets, at the boundary between the neighbourhood built in the 1950s and the construction site of the new buildings which are replacing it.

Eyelevel is presented with the support of the Exposure Festival of Photography: www.exposure2010.ca