Months have passed since we were in Moscow, building a second edition of CLOUD for Garage Center for Contemporary Culture. Months, but also universes. As is becoming usual, the whole world is different on a tri-monthly basis for Wayne Garrett and myself, and we’re scrambling always to stay on top of this swiftly tilting planet.

For those of you who weren’t there, perhaps we should start with the CLOUD concert performed by Wayne Garrett & Wren Elai during our last few days in Moscow:

In other news, Wayne and I are presently in Chicago, Illinois, beginning work on another giant CLOUD-based project (this time utilizing 15,000 light bulbs!) but in the meantime, I would be remiss not to mention the gargantuan project we undertook between Moscow and Chicago in our own hometown. It was called WRECK CITY.

WRECK CITY was a community-based art experiment transforming 9 houses, 3 garages, and a greenhouse scheduled for demolition into temporary art, installation, and performance spaces. The biggest project of its type in the history of Calgary (perhaps even all of Canada), Eight Artist-Curators invited 100+ Artists, Musicians, and Performers to participate. Artist participants were free to radically alter the architecture of entire houses, re-shaping the homes using materials from the houses themselves, without need for repair at the end of the project. This newly formed community of artists produced a neighbourhood of magical and critically-engaging spaces, made possible only by the freedom of working inside houses soon to be destroyed. You can see some of the finished works here or watch a mini-doc I made about the project below.

The seed of WRECK CITY was planted just before we left for Moscow at the end of November 2012. Old pals from the Calgary art community, Brandon Dalmer and Shawn Mankowske, e-mailed me to say that eleven houses were being destroyed, one of which hosted Calgary’s first garage-based gallery space called 809 Gallery. Brandon and Shawn were co-founders of 809, and wanted to see the gallery go out with a bang! They hatched a plan and I became part of the evolution of that plan. Not long afterwards, Wayne jumped on-board as one of over 100 artists, and the rest is history – or something like it.

Now, almost a month after WRECK CITY ended, Wayne and I are in Chicago, ready for a new adventure…