{"id":1840,"date":"2007-05-02T10:17:28","date_gmt":"2007-05-02T14:17:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=1840"},"modified":"2007-05-02T10:17:28","modified_gmt":"2007-05-02T14:17:28","slug":"making-contact-with-transit-art-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/05\/02\/making-contact-with-transit-art-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"Making CONTACT with transit art issues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"241\" height=\"300\" src=\"http:\/\/www.contactphoto.com\/upload\/profile\/947.jpg\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"238\" height=\"300\" src=\"http:\/\/www.contactphoto.com\/upload\/profile\/948.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>As ample local coverage reminds us, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contactphoto.com\/\">CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival<\/a> &#8212; which is apparently, now the world&#8217;s largest photo fest in terms of number of venues &#8212; kicks off officially this week.<\/p>\n<p>And while there&#8217;s a slew of urban-themed photo exhibits amongst more than 200 on view, I&#8217;m going to hold off discussing those for now and instead address the issue of why CONTACT has cut its transit-based installations in half this year. (Full disclosure: I was a writer and editor for the festival magazine.)<\/p>\n<p>Now, as I hinted at in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nowtoronto.com\/issues\/2007-04-26\/goods_travel.php\">my piece<\/a> on London UK&#8217;s terrific <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tfl.gov.uk\/tfl\/corporate\/projectsandschemes\/artmusicdesign\/pfa\/about.asp\">Platform for Art<\/a> program in this week&#8217;s edition of NOW, art on transit platforms and in transit shelters can be a really great thing. Not only is it generally more appetizing than looking at stairways transformed into globby seas of pizza cheese, as is currently the case at a few of our TTC stations, but, when curated imaginatively, it can be a low-cost opp for non-AGO-member citizens to see great art up close. What&#8217;s more is the art can even be used to comment on the transit experience, or on experiences of public space.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s great about this year&#8217;s official transit art program for CONTACT is that they&#8217;ve chosen artists who are really direct, accessible and humorous in their way of working. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contactphoto.com\/view.php?sec=exhibitions&amp;eventid=947\">Erwin Wurm<\/a>, for instance, hands off random objects to volunteers and instructs them to make \u00e2\u20ac\u0153instant sculptures\u00e2\u20ac\u009d using the objects in interaction with their bodies. And <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contactphoto.com\/view.php?sec=exhibitions&amp;eventid=948\">Philippe Ramette<\/a> creates these dreamy, impossible-looking actions, like walking up a tree trunk, that are actually not Photoshopped at all, but created with ingenious concealed prostheses. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contactphoto.com\/view.php?sec=exhibitions&amp;eventid=943\">Douglas Coupland<\/a>&#8216;s work, with its collages of flowers and guns, is a little more thinky, but he&#8217;s a big name that people can relate to, which is nice. But overall it&#8217;s the kind of stuff that you can like even if you supposedly \u00e2\u20ac\u0153don&#8217;t like art\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and it also helps us reimagine city and park spaces in a different way.<\/p>\n<p>But what&#8217;s not so great about this year&#8217;s official transit art program is that they can&#8217;t afford to install in more than one TTC station (St. Patrick) and five transit shelters (on Queen West between Ossington and Gladstone). The reason? The ad rates for arts orgs were, according to festival organizer Bonnie Rubenstein, jacked up 400% last November by CBS-Viacom.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In a slightly different spin on this issue, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.onestopmediagroup.com\/\">OneStop Network<\/a> (you know, the company that runs those video screens at TTC stations) is trying to up its public profile by doing a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.onestoptoronto.com\/contact\/\">CONTACT-related project<\/a> that encourages Torontonians to upload their \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mini-narratives\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the city in still photos, which will be broadcast every ten minutes across the system.<\/p>\n<p>While it&#8217;s nice to see an opportunity to use the OneStop screens for a different purpose than straight advertising and ADD-styled news reportage, it&#8217;s notable that the works are not by professional artists. Why? Because then OneStop would likely have to pay for them. This provides free content for their screens, basically &#8212; and ample debate among public space advocates about whether the project is a good thing (ie. bringing art by actual TTC users to transit stations) or a bad thing (ie. a cop-out\/PR thing).<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, Toronto needs more art in its transit stations. But if CBS-Viacom (or, in an actually shelling-out sense, OneStop) isn&#8217;t supportive of this, we have to find other ways to make it happen &#8212; either by using spaces that the ad co&#8217;s don&#8217;t, like the covers of transit maps or selected ad-free walls as happens in London, or by perhaps initiating a kind of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nyc.gov\/html\/dcla\/html\/panyc\/panyc_main.shtml\">1% for Art<\/a> program for advert co&#8217;s, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.toronto.ca\/planning\/urbdesign\/public_art.htm\">just as we have for condo developers<\/a>. For the latter, the ad company in question (could even be Astral now, right?) would have to donate a certain sq. footage or funds per year to public art.<\/p>\n<p>At least then we might make contact with something other than commercialism during our daily commute, and bring a bit of art out of the not-always-welcoming white cube too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As ample local coverage reminds us, the CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival &#8212; which is apparently, now the world&#8217;s largest photo fest in terms of number of venues &#8212; kicks off officially this week. And while there&#8217;s a slew of urban-themed photo exhibits amongst more than 200 on view, I&#8217;m going to hold off discussing those<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/05\/02\/making-contact-with-transit-art-issues\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;Making CONTACT with transit art issues&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4020,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3,8],"tags":[5586,2052,5584,359,21,5585,316,5588,19,2104,464,690,5587],"class_list":["post-1840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-events","category-transit","tag-bonnie-rubenstein","tag-douglas-coupland","tag-erwin-wurm","tag-london","tag-other-cities","tag-philippe-ramette","tag-queen","tag-straight-advertising","tag-toronto","tag-ttc-station","tag-united-kingdom","tag-viacom","tag-writer-and-editor"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Making CONTACT with transit art issues - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2007\/05\/02\/making-contact-with-transit-art-issues\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Making CONTACT with transit art issues - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As ample local coverage reminds us, the CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival &#8212; which is apparently, now the world&#8217;s largest photo fest in terms of number of venues &#8212; kicks off officially this week. 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