UPBAG

2006-11-17T01:54:00.000-05:00

does anyone actually use this? can i be removed please.?

suburban show

2005-11-23T09:39:00.000-05:00

hey bags,
the proposal for the suburban show is due in a week, so perhaps it's almost time to write something up?

looking at it again, it seems like the show is supposed to be about the suburbs and the city centre reversing roles somehow, as urban areas get gentrified and the poor folks have to move outward.
Is our plan to just make some suburban-type buildings out of felt?
or will the felt version reimagine the suburbs in some way other than miniaturizing and making soft?
Both seem like ok approaches. If we're just doing a soft suburb that looks pretty much like a reguar suburb, only maybe with weirder colours, then we probably should come up with some deep-sounding explanation of how making it soft and small is somehow a comment on gentrification.
any ideas?

On the practical side, I've made a bunch of Pittsburgh-looking houses, in the scale of about an inch to an inch and a half tall, per floor. And I made the house next door to my house. So conceivably, I could work on making an entire street of Minto (the developer that made the neighbourhood I grew up in, and many more like it) cookie cutter homes, as well as a streetful of Pittsburgh-style houses (tall rectangular boxes in pastel colours). Although we should aim not to get too freaky with scale, one way to negotiate the issue of us all working in different styles and scales might be if we each made a street. But on the other hand, the only way of reimagining the suburbs that I can think of would be if all the houses didn't look identical. So we could do something where the streets are laid out in crescents and cul-de-sacs and weird round shapes, like they typically are in the suburbs, but then not have all the houses on a street look identical. A bunch of different styles could coexist on a single street, as though people tore down their cookie-cutter houses and built something else on their plot, or if people embelished their houses with crazy additions. just an idea...

c-bag

another soft city

2005-11-11T16:34:00.000-05:00

our friend cindy sent this link to Y-bag and I. a jello replica of san francisco. it's awesome. and it uses a bunch of the ideas that we'd been thinking of, like mini christmas lights, lighting effects, smoke...

http://www.lizhickok.com/assets/portfolio/pages/01city.html

diplomatic immunities @ canzine

2005-11-08T21:45:00.000-05:00

I posted some canzine pics on flickr. same url as before...
www.flickr.com/photos/deadpan
there are more, but it won't let me upload them, dammit.

delayed reaction

2005-10-15T01:53:00.000-04:00

i finally posted my alley jaunt pictures on flickr...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/deadpan/

telegram from PA

2005-08-22T21:55:00.000-04:00

hey baggies,

maybe this is just a dumb excuse for a visit to toronto, but what would you think about doing an "art hotel room" at the gladstone for canzine? it could be pretty much the same as what we did on the garage floor, except we could use the hotel bed, dresser, chair, etc as city surfaces instead of the floor. soft city + levels. or we could even go off in some other direction. that's just the most basic idea.

i'm going to e-mail canzine to ask about it. they're apparently looking for ideas.

all those pictures are great! i'll upload mine sometime soon.

emergency baggin'

2005-08-04T20:51:00.000-04:00

for those of you who weren't there on tuesday, and for those who were, just to confirm, we're meeting at the Bloor Street sauna (aka my apartment) again tomorrow (Friday) night to work some more on the city grid and whatever else needs to get done. Let's say around 8ish. It's going to be a boozerific Friday night sort of affair (assuming y'all bring beverages), and I promise not to start any fights with Jason, so hopefully it will be fun AND we'll get lots done.

in other matters, Y and I were talking yesterday about how we like the name UPBAG better than BAG and both better that what they stand for, so we were thinking it might be an idea to phase out the long version of the name and just be known from now on as UPBAG. What it once stood for could become a curious historical fact that our biographers have to dig up from blog archives. how does that sound?

meeting tomorrow!

2005-08-01T16:58:00.000-04:00

hey bags,

so we're meeting at my place tomorrow night. i haven't heard back from the garage host yet, but will probably hear tomorrow morning (it seemed to be her work e-mail). So hopefuly we can meet at the garage (316 Shaw) at 7:30, but if not, then you can come straight here for around 7:30 instead. I'll let you know if I hear from her tomorrow. If you can't make it to the garage, I'm sure we'll be back at my place by 8:30, so come on over then.

remember, bring all your buildings and any supplies you want to use for the city grid.

uuuuuuupbag!

2005-07-23T09:05:00.000-04:00

UPBAG Logo

2005-07-01T14:44:00.000-04:00

hey baggies,

at the meeting yvonne, sarah and i were discussing an upbag logo. a couple of ideas were a stack of hands doing the upbag cheer (either a side-view like a stack of pancakes with arms attached, or a top view like a starburst) or the word upbag made of bricks or something. so we were hoping any interested parties could continue the brainstorming, chime in on which ideas you like, and maybe even draw up some samples. the plan was to make t-shirts or something to sell at the alley jaunt. i guess we could make more than one type of shirt if there are multiple good options.

there's also been some talk of assembly line action for making the kits. personally, i think we should strike up little committees to take care of all this sort of stuff we need to get done. if the responsibility is spread a little less widely, maybe things will actually get done? so the possible committees are:
- kit
- blanket
- soundtrack
- logo/t-shirts
- am i forgetting anything?
maybe we could each be on 2 committees max?
or we could keep on procrastinating as a big family unit. but eventually i will crack and start making the kits in secret by myself.

and the next meeting will be at sarah's air-conditioned apartment july 12th.

tuesday is 2 days away

2005-05-29T20:29:00.000-04:00

hey baggies
so we're supposed to have a meeting on tuesday. and nobody has suggested a meeting place yet. brenda teased me with the possibility of her place, then realized she can't do it. so here i am asking for trouble... we can meet at my place.
will anyone come? please? 7pm?
let me know if you need the address.

(UP)BAG field trip suggestion

2005-05-13T15:08:00.000-04:00

if we make some more CN towers tonight, we could fashion them into party hats or something nerdy like that. we are meeting tonight, right?
================
You are invited to Toronto the Good.

[murmur] and Spacing Magazine are teaming up with ERA Architects to throw a party - part of Toronto's Festival of Architecture and Design. If you are in Toronto this Tuesday, May 17th from 6pm-12am, head on down to the Fermentation Cellar in the Distillery District and celebrate our city. Toronto's Poet Laureate, Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, will give a short talk on the beauty of the city. If you haven't yet heard him speak, this is your chance to see and hear our civic treasure in person. You can play the "Name That Toronto Intersection" game, help create a giant map that will show where Toronto lives and works, or gaze up at over 1,000 images of Toronto projected onto the cellar walls. Djs Will Munro and Christopher Thinn will provide the music throughout the night.

A suggested donation at the door of $10-20 will include food and drink service between 6 and 9pm - with drinks and entertainment to follow until 12.

We hope to see you there. The full invite and further information can be found here:

www.torontothegood.org

This event is a fundraiser for [murmur] and Spacing. It's also an excuse to get the people who care about the city in one place.

why does everybody hate my house?

2005-05-10T18:03:00.000-04:00

(just got home with a load of stuffing, felt and snacks... slightly PO'd at the last minute bail-fest, so excuse the hostile tone.)

if JVH can't be bothered to respond in person, I don't think his availability should be a factor in scheduling meetings. it seems ridiculous to wait a month before meeting again just because he can't come. but yeah, with 3 baggies down, it would have been a sad little gathering.

so let's reschedule sooner rather than later. i could meet friday, sunday, monday or tuesday. but my place is no longer available for meetings, since it's obviously cursed. Rose, do any of those days work for you? Yvonne, how is early next week?

it's that time again

2005-05-08T04:10:00.000-04:00

We're due for a meeting this coming Tuesday, May 10th.
How about my place? 7:30?
Sarah, I'll e-mail you directions.
Rose, remember our plan to get Ryan to come? and how is the alley jaunt application coming?
Jason, the Ossington bus can bring you north from King St.
Yvonne, any other Disney movies you want to see, in case nobody shows?

on the agenda:
- eating
- drinking
- sewing
- stuffing
- picture-taking
- UPBAG-kit planning
- and more!

mini city + sewing at sarah's

2005-04-28T01:00:00.000-04:00

some action shots:

some city shots:

(as usual, click to see big. there are lots more city shots, going from 1 to 20... you can figure out the filenames)

(UP)BAG garage city

2005-04-21T00:02:00.000-04:00

what do y'all think of making a mini city in a garage?
---------
ALLEY JAUNT
local art in local garages

ALLEY JAUNT is Toronto’s alternative, urban, community arts event. The
event gives exposure to local artists, encourages public interaction with
art, and reaches out to a diverse community of all ages within the Trinity
Bellwoods Park neighbourhood setting. ALLEY JAUNT specifically programs
art exhibits, installations, and performances that respond to the
environment of the garage, the alley and the local urban community.
Proposals should reflect this programming mandate. The 3rd annual ALLEY
JAUNT will be held on August 13 & 14, 2005

Call for Submission
Deadline: May 15, 2005

Submission Requirements
CV
A short description of project (max. 250 words)
Support Mateiral (Max 10 slides/jpgs on CD)
Include SASE if you want support material returned

Please send submissions to:
ALLEY JAUNT
195 Bellwoods Ave.
Toronto, ON
M6J 2P8

party pics

2005-04-14T22:33:00.000-04:00

click a picture to see it big

present but not pictured: the growing city, ryan, catherine, that girl who was sititng beside me (Jaclyn?), and a guy in a scarf who brought bowls

ERROR! ERROR!

2005-04-10T19:01:00.000-04:00

i am a techno-tard.

unless i get a solemn promise from everyone that they didn't read the embarassing stuff that I accidentally posted here then quickly deleted, but that got e-mailed to everyone anyway, i might have to move to pittsburgh immediately instead of going in the fall.

shamefully yours,

multiple bags

2005-03-13T22:36:00.000-05:00

Yvonne and i ran into this guy Gabe on Friday night at the Inbreds show and he gave us flyers for a show his band was playing (today), and you'll never guess what the name of the band was: ***Bag*** so we told him about our BAG, and we sparked an idea of having a show where the Bag band plays on an (UP)BAG soft city stage. I realize now that I don't know any way of getting into contact with Gabe. I've always just randomly run into him at shows. but maybe I can dig up the info if I put my feelers out. What do y'all think of that idea? Maybe it needs a little more to it. something that would let people know a bit about the BAG experience. Maybe an interactive BAG environment to explore, or some tie in with a public space type of event? or not to volunteer other people's houses for stuff, but maybe a tie in with the April 1 party the Lansdowne house was thinking of having? just an idea. Actually, the Anarchist Free U is probably having their end of term party that night, and it sounds like it will be cooler than usual, like with bands playing and stuff. not sure if that matters or not. there might not be much overlap between BAG and the AFU geeks.

Little Cities

2005-03-11T08:23:00.000-05:00

read about their Little Cities party

Begin forwarded message:

From: Red76ArtsGroup@aol.com
Date: March 10, 2005 4:29:16 PM EST
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
Subject: First We take Vancouver, Then We Take Berlin

Hello Dear Mailing List Friends,

So much to say, oh so much to say...

1. Red76 goes and visits their friends Instant Coffee in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and does
    a full weekend of Little Cities parties w/ friends along to amaze and enlighten

2. An Explanation of our project Little Cities

3. Blowback, the overview of Part's 1 - 2 of the NY Public Archive Project going into its final weeks at
    Reed College, Portland, Oregon, USA
.......................

1.
Red76 presents:
Little Cities
w/Instant Coffee
March 11 - 13
@ 69 Pender St.
Vancouver, B.C.
Canada

This upcoming Friday thru Sunday we will be in Vancouver, B.C., Canada participating in Instant Coffee's Bassbed installation. We will be doing our continuing project concerning cardboard houses and ideas of home called Little Cities (read more below on the ideas behind that project).

Joining us will be a bunch of friends:

Fri. Mar. 11
9pm till late...

Join us for a Little Cities Build Yr. Own House Party w/
- Matthew Stadler giving a talk about the desire for a city made to order
- Matthew Yake spinning 60's and 70's Psych Rock records found on Red76's Eastern European Tour
of last winter, plus records in the same vein found on various other tours
- A slideshow of all 2300+ photos taken by Sam Gould on the Red76 Eastern Europe Tour

Sat. Mar. 12
9pm till late...

Join us for a Little Cities Build Yr. Own House Party w/
- "Hello Vancouver" a video walking tour made by Khris Soden and Sam Gould concerning Portland,
   Oregon history and the reasons why Khris couldn't make it through the border to Canada with us
- Beautiful music by the very special Portland Vampires

Sun. Mar. 13
11am till a little while later...
We will be getting together for coffee and deciding on a spot to homestead our new community of cardboard houses. Then it's off on a walking tour of Vancouver to plot out our new home.

That's that. If you happen to be in the western part of Canada this weekend come and join us. Anyone coming from as far away as Moose Jaw gets a free hug.

2.
A little bit about the Little Cities project...

Red76 Presents:
Little Cities

Some rooms? A roof? When we come home at night, tired and toughed out, what is it that we are coming home to? What are the qualities, the subjective, the personal, that we use to define shelter? For that matter, when do we get home anyhow? Talking with Paige the other night she mentioned how the longer she has been living at her space the more the area surrounding her becomes her home. Far before she steps through the doorway to the building she lives in even. As she glides up the street on her bike, blocks away from her building, home starts to arrive earlier and earlier as the months and years living in the area pass her by and accumulate at her feet. She becomes her own doorstep, arriving home each day quicker and quicker.

Between the period 1995 - 2005 I have lived in nine different cities, by my count, and moved into new spaces within that timeframe fourteen times. I could count other moves - living with a girlfriend and her family in Vermont for a few months in the mid-90's, etc, etc... - but I'll leave it at that. Oddly, in all that time, I didn't really stop thinking of New York, where I grew up, as my home till only about two years ago. Always in the back of my brain, genetically stuck inside me like a virus. New York was ingrained within me. And then, suddenly, it was gone. After that point I was a ghost in New York all the subsequent times I went to visit my family. Free of the past, walking through the streets unnoticed and unwatched, my home somewhere else, my memories of New York packed away in filing cabinets, accessible, but not out in the open for everyone to look at. At that moment I wasn't quite sure where my home was exactly, but I knew that I was free to decide on how I wanted to define it's upcoming stages. Not everyone is so lucky. Defined by so many odd conditions and circumstances our homes are so often decided for us rather than with us. Decided not on the merits of comfort and care, but on class or family or religion or race or simply habits or symptoms so out of our control.

Conversely, or actually, maybe hand in hand with these varied conditions to be more precise, the homes we choose for ourselves, the ones that do bring us comfort and care are deemed, at times, so out of sorts for what a home should be. Uprooted by others we are told that our idea of home is no home at all, and that they know better than we do and are looking out for us. And you know, sometimes they're right. And sometimes not. Who knows. It's tricky, right? One of those topics that spins in circles. Everyone with an opinion, almost everyone right in one way or another. Everyone wrong in all the same ways. It's just that there are no right answers, just right timeframes.

With more questions than answers we set out on our project Little Cities. Designed as a series of parties Little Cities is a project set in place to try to investigate these complicated questions through simplistic, childlike actions. While at the same time, a process designed to create new homes, new communities, and new ways and situations for people to think about what a home is.

Little Cities Build Yr. Own House parties are pretty simple. Guests are greeted by a room filled with cardboard and various supplies, markers, paint, glue, etc, etc...And, for the rest of the night we make houses out of cardboard, listen to music, have some drinks. That's that. The following morning we ask that party guests return to the site of the previous nights party. We'll have some coffee, sit around and talk. Try to figure out a place that we all agree on that is a special place, a place that we, collectively, would like to homestead. Taking our homes in hand we venture out onto the streets taking the trek towards our new homeland. Placing our homes in this newly homesteaded area we are all the new stewards of this land. There to look over it, see that everything is okay, watch out for it.

As time goes on, and more and more people get together for these parties, an invisible community of Little Cities will start to grow across the country, linked by the people and ideas that came to the parties, sat down, cut up some card board, listened to some Steely Dan and maybe drank a beer with someone they hadn't met before. Invisible communities of Little Cities comprised of people who spotted an outcropping of discarded cardboard, junk and trash strewn across the grass or pavement, who realized upon a closer look that it wasn't trash at all.

3.
Red76 Presents:
Blowback
February 1 – March 27, 2005
Hauser Memorial Library & Kaul Auditorium Foyer
Reed College
3203 se Woodstock blvd
Portland, Oregon
curated by Stephanie Snyder
http://web.reed.edu/gallery/case_works/upcoming.html
http://www.red76.com/blowback.html

In the summer of 2004 Red76 was asked to take part in an exhibition called Playpen at the Drawing Center in New York City. For this show we created the NY Public Archive (www.red76.com/nypublicarchive.html). The project, housed in the Drawing Center's Drawing Room Annex (an exhibition space located across the street from the main space, accessed through a roll up garage door) was outfitted with a number of voting booths that folded out from metal suitcases. The insides of the booths were retrofitted into drawing tables. Colored pencils were provided with each voting booth. Within the space, along with the booths, there was hand written text on the walls explaining the project, and a list of instructions. A sign welcoming people to the NY Public Archive, made out of construction paper, was tacked up at the far end of the space. Along with all of this there was a column of drawing paper (restocked each day by the Drawing Center staff) and a large plywood box to drop submissions into.

The thrust of the NY Public Archive was to invite the public into the space to write and draw whatever it was that they might have been thinking, feeling, seeing on the streets and in their homes in NY that summer. All in all we received roughly two thousand submissions. Pleas for peace, confessions of infidelity, lists of things people had seen that day, abstractions, love notes, diary entries, and tons more.

From the beginning the point was to glean an archive of the thoughts and hopes of random New Yorker's and redistribute the material back to the citizens of New York to facilitate the sharing of stories. The power of openness. This December, through a variety of different means, we did just that. Culled directly from submissions to the NY Public Archive we disseminated the submissions to the archive back onto the streets of NY. Through the use of stickers (14 different kinds), a matchbook (in an edition of 2500), a book, postcards (3000 of them in all mailed out randomly to various New Yorker's), t-shirts, buttons, door hangers, and more, we spread these thoughts far and wide to the five boroughs. All in all over 11,000 separate multiples were produced from archive submissions and sent back out to the New York public at large.

For February - March of 2005 Red76 has been invited to share this process of redistribution, as well as selected archive submissions, at Reed College in Portland, Oregon through the colleges Case Works program. On display for this exhibit will be a selection of archive submissions, photo and video documentation of the archive redistribution process, as well as selections of the over 11,000 multiples created to send these thoughts and stories back to the people and the city that created them in the first place.

(We would like to thank Stephanie Snyder, the curator of Reed College's Cooley Gallery, for her work on this exhibit and being super nice in general)
.......................

Over and Out,
R76

www.red76.com
ask@red76.com

more action shots

2005-03-10T14:10:00.001-05:00

Yvonne and Brenda hard at work

Yvonne and the CBC

Jason and Rose getting crafty

Jason making felt billboards

DJ Darren looking wiped

Also present: Ryan and Catherine

anyone want to come see this tomorrow night?

2005-03-01T16:52:00.000-05:00

Cinematheque Ontario's THE INDEPENDENTS presents . . .

PROGRAMME 7: AGNÈS VARDA'S MUR MURS

A visual voyage which captures the beauty and originality of Los Angeles's
outdoor mural paintings, MUR MURS (France 1981, 81 minutes) includes
interviews with many artists, including Judy Baca, who observes: "I started
painting because I realized that I had never seen a Chicana in a museum." A
terrific study of public art, the film explores such questions as 'who
paints them, who pays for them, who looks at them, [and] how this city,
which is the film capital of the world, reveals itself by its whispering
walls' (Varda). An 'exhilarating poetic documentary on the murals. . . .
Liberated by Varda's magical camera each of these artists becomes an
articulate charmer' (Mary Corliss, The Soho News).

Please note: while many of the interviews are in English, the film's
narration is in French and is not subtitled.

Wednesday, March 2 at 6:30 p.m.

suicide-site

2005-02-28T17:43:00.000-05:00

if you want to come to the opening on thursday at 8pm at buddies then hit me with an email:
darren@mammalian.ca

phallus of learning

2005-02-28T15:50:00.000-05:00

i forgot to tell yvonne that the HPS offices in Pittsburgh that I will be visiting are in the 10th floor of the "cathedral of learning", the gigantic phallus in the middle of the U Pitt campus with themed classrooms that she told me about when she went to a conference there. I'll definitely have to make a replica.

working in theater

2005-02-27T08:11:00.000-05:00

so based on a couple of super-short conversations i've had with some baggies, i've included you guys in a grant i'm writing about an upcoming show. at this point, these are simply ideas - no committment is required. i talk about soft city cause that's the only think i know about. let me know if this is okay. it's going to the tac and the oac - where we get stable funding and to the cananda council where we are trying to get stable funding. let me know if any of this is problematic.

The Encyclopedia of Us – workshop

The Encyclopedia of Us is a new work and a cross-country collaboration between Mammalian Diving Reflex and Vancouver’s Theatre Replacement, a new company formed by former Boca Del Lupo members Maiko Bae Yamamoto and Jaime Long. In January 2005 Darren went to Vancouver to collaborate with Theatre Replacement on their inaugural show, The Empty Orchestra, serving as co-writer and director of the piece. During rehearsals The Encyclopedia of Us was conceived.

The Encyclopedia of Us will combine the interests of both companies, utilizing Mammalian Diving Reflex’s obsession with text-based idea-driven works, and Theatre Replacement’s dedication to a physical vocabulary and developing material in rehearsal. With Mammalian Diving Reflex, we usually have at least a first draft of the script before we enter rehearsal, while Theatre Replacement begins with improvisation, working on their feet to find characters and circumstances, and only later sitting down to hammer out text where required. With The Encyclopedia of Us we will challenge both companies by combining these processes, spending time as a group in rehearsal at our laptops, as well as jamming on our feet.

At this point the details of the piece remain vague but the parameters strict. Traveling through the alphabet we will share with the audience small details of our lives that explore the theme of friendship, the mechanics of friendship, what it means to be friends, the lifeline of friendships and the challenges to friendships. Building on the more recent relational approach in Mammalian Diving Reflex’s work, we will use ourselves and our lives as material, creating a gently interactive piece that attempts to bring the possibility of friendship into the theatre.

The Encyclopedia of Us will begin its creation process with a two-week workshop at Toronto's Theatre Centre as part of Mammalian Diving Reflex's annual residency. Theatre Replacement, (Maiko , Jaime, Vancouver director and broadcaster Adrienne Wong, and actor Hazel Venzon) will come here to work with Darren, Naomi and videographer Jon Sasaki to amass the base material for the show.

Discussions have begun with Toronto craft collective Benevolent Arts Guild (BAG) to possibly use their work as a set, in particular their current project Soft City, a replica of a city made from felt and other soft materials. BAG members include Darren, Yvonne Ng, Jason Van Horne (from the City Beautification Ensemble) Rose Bianchinni and Catherine Stinson.

In preparation for our workshop a year from now, Mammalian Diving Reflex and Theatre Replacement have set up a Yahoo Discussion Group and have begun to toss ideas back and forth across the country. A workshop in the fall of 2006 will be hosted by Theatre Replacement in Vancouver, with the goal of premieres in both Toronto and Vancouver in the spring of 2007.