Future Perfect: New Bylaws for Civic Spaces is a hopeful, positive act of re-configuration. By-laws that regulate behaviours in civic spaces – in this case, Toronto’s Streets and Sidewalks Municipal Code – are cut up word-by-word and meticulously rearranged into a new set of rules for a transitioning world.
From this new poetic script, selected phrases are enlarged and re-inserted back into the architecture of the cityscape on billboards and posters, acting as playful instructions, permissions or manifestos; a collection of imagined alternative behaviours unfolding throughout the city. From the words of Toronto’s existing by-laws an accidental poetry emerges that re-constructs, re-engineers, and rehearses possible futures.
A large-scale remnant of the cut-up process, the billboards and signs work against the fast-moving digital dialogues of the internet, media, and advertising. As the signs appear in the urban landscape, a slow-moving narrative develops that invites the reader to imagine alternative ways to move through civic space.
collaborators
This new collaboration between Action Hero and Mia + Eric was formed after the duos were introduced during an artist double-date in Calgary, and each realised they’d met their artist doppelgangers. They decided to work together to create a project for public space.
supporters
British Council, the Government of Ontario, Farnham Maltings, Arts Council England, The Lindy Green Family Charitable Foundation, Spring Board, Summer Works, Concord Place.
