TALK: Let’s Talk – Saturday @ CUTMR (28 Jan, 2012)

Let’s Talk – CUTMR / Toronto International Design Festival

Let’s Talk – DISPOSABILITY

Come Up To My Room 2012, Toronto, Canada

Saturday, January 28, 2012 – 11:00am to 1:00pm

Taken in its broadest, strictest, object-oriented or ephemeral sense, these talks explore disposable, ubiquitous objects and the reactionary repurposing of such objects, while also investigating abstracted notions of disposability.

The After Party: Coming of Age Stories

Kerri Flannigan

The After Party: Coming of Age Stories is a performative slideshow-lecture that functions as an experimental documentary, visual archive, narration and artist talk. With humour and candour, The After Party will showcase the impermanence of adolescent rites of passage and present a collection of individual anecdotes of coming of age, identity-forming epiphanies. Kerri Flannigan is a Montreal-based interdisciplinary artist, originally from Deep River, Ontario. Flannigans work uses unconventional narrative forms to examine themes of memory, monuments, history and identity. In 2011, her zine collaboration Nailbiter 2 won ‘Best English Zine’ at the Expozine Awards.

Hoarding Unpacked

WE-3

There seems to be a strong inclination toward collection and repurposing, even as our objects and appliances become increasingly disposable. This talk will examine, through projects and examples, these contrasting tendencies to trash and to accumulate, and the difficult problem of a designer/cultural producer’s role and responsibility in this mounting kingdom of stuff. WE-3 is a collective of architects, graphic designers and designers (well, one of each) united for CUTMR 2012. WE-3 is interested in creating experiences that are layered in meaning, specifically/spatially located and impeccably executed. WE-3 is Dominique Cheng, Kristina Ljubanovic and Lauren Wickware.

Film, Vinyl and Paper – Books Unbound

LeuWebb Projects

At a time when information is more readily accessible than ever, does it matter whether a book is saved or destroyed? In exploring this question, Christine Leu and Alan Webb of LeuWebb Projetcs, will discuss their installation from the 2011 Scotiabank Nuit Blanche titled ‘Film, Vinyl, Paper’. LeuWebb Projects were Come Up To My Room participants in 2010 and continue to explore the perception of spaces, both banal and exceptional. Christine Leu is an intern architect, writer, photographer, and teacher. Alan Webb is a licensed architect, and dj with projects in graphic design, music and an interest in field recordings.

CRAFT // Resilient Production

Wendy W Fok

This talk will explore the processes of digital tooling and analogue production. The highlights of the discussion will proceed onto the craft and fabrication processes for the built environment, and the waste that is generated by the product of the built industry. Dynamic infographics will be developed to illustrate various facts and figures, yet, the larger discussion will be on how the built industry (Architecture and Construction) treats “disposability”. Wendy W Fok, director/founder and team member of WE-DESIGNS.ORG, LLC (Architecture) and studio-WF (Art), winner of the Hong Kong Young Design Talent Award (2009), and a selected designer of the Perspective 40 under 40 Award (2011), has a Master of Architecture & Certification of Urban Policy/Planning from Princeton University. Notably, WE-DESIGNS.ORG, LLC has been selected by Twenty+Change (co-curated by Heather Dubbeldam and Lola Sheppard) as one of twenty “Emerging Canadian Design Practices” (2011) in Canada.

Politics, Challenges and Opportunities

Sean Martindale

This talk explores the critical role of post-consumer materials in Martindale’s sculptural interventions and discusses how similar approaches can apply to other practices. Sean Martindale (BDes, MFA) is an interdisciplinary artist and designer currently residing in Toronto, Canada. His interventions activate public and semi-public spaces to encourage engagement, often focused on ecological and social issues. His playful works question and suggest alternate possibilities for existing spaces, infrastructures and materials found in the urban environment.

Free City Paper: If You Want To Be Rich Tomorrow Buy A Landfill Today

Jp King

Jp King considers the future of the objects we make, use, love, and destroy, by presenting the findings of his Free Paper Project; which ran as a pop-up newspaper office in Whippersnapper Gallery this past summer, and invited responses surrounding waste, labour, and art. King concludes with his argument that we must come to understand our waste as a resource. Jp King is an artist, writer & publisher whose works explore contemporary mythology, masculinity, garbage, and collective activity. His collages have been exhibited throughout Canada, Brooklyn, Minnesota, and Stockholm. He runs a Risograph printing operation called Paper Pusher that focuses on affordable, limited-edition, innovative publications.

What is CUTMR?

Come Up To My Room (CUTMR) is the Gladstone Hotel’s annual alternative design event. CUTMR invites artists and designers to show us what goes on inside their heads. Coming together in dialogue and collaboration, participants are limited only by their imaginations, making CUTMR one of the most exciting shows in Toronto. The four-day event is in its ninth year at the Gladstone Hotel, featuring 11 room installations and 13 public space projects.