Pre-demolition Art as a Staging of Power-free Relations

There are several ways that artists can attempt effective contraventions to dominant powers in today’s capitalist world. One context in which such tactics are currently playing out is emerging artists-curators engendering installations, by invitation of developers, in buildings slated for demolition. Such projects have precedence in Gordon Matta-Clark’s “building cuts” and the Market Estate Project in London1 1  - Gordon Matta-Clark: Above and Below, David Zwirner, New York, April 2 to May 4, 2013.See www.marketestateproject.com/. where artists find unconventional public venues and ample space for experimentation. The two projects discussed here are unique both in the attention they’ve garnered within and without art circles and in their timely responses to the social consequences gentrification is currently imposing on a growing population.

Due to media attention and the widespread appeal of WRECK CITY² 2 - Wreck City took place in the neighborhood of Kensington, Calgary, from April 19 to 27, 2013. See http://wreckcityproject.wordpress.com/., a pre-demolition exhibition in April 2013 that spanned a residential block in Calgary, its concept was swept up by cSPACE, a civic organization that develops workspaces for artists. cSPACE is currently directing a massive renovation project transforming King Edward School, a beautiful sandstone structure built in 1912, into a multi-use arts hub reminiscent of the Artscape projects in Toronto. Just months after spending countless hours building WRECK CITY on a shoestring budget, four of the curators (Matthew Mark Bourree, Caitlind r.c. Brown, Jennifer Crighton, and Shawn Mankowske) agreed to do it again, this time adding curator Natalie MacLean and naming the project Phantom Wing as a marker of the presence/absence attributed to the school’s condemned 1960s addition.