Strategies for Wayfinding

March 26, 2020 to April 29, 2021

Strategies for Wayfinding

Strategies for Wayfinding is a study of day-to-day navigational tools. It names landmarks, sensorial signs and patterns, storytelling and choreographed place-routines as information to better understand our role, and responsibility, in shared-space. Strategies of Wayfinding features work by Lauren Runions with Maryanne Casasanta, Heddy Graterol, Mélika Hashemi, Alie Lavoie, and Mary Patsiatzis in partnership with Smallʼs Creek Ravine, Bloordale Beach/Brockton Learning Centre, Trinity Bellwoods Park.

Exhibition 1 Introduction 4

Biography 6 Opening Essay 9 What's Safe 10 A FLOOR, A FLORA 13 A Landmark! a series 17 Wayfinding, a score 21 Footfall 28 Programming 29 Thanks to 31

Exhibition

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Strategies for Wayfinding (2021) exhibition at Kunstmatrix

A FLOOR, A FLORA (2021) & A Landmark! a series (2021)

A Landmark! a series (2021) & What's Safe? (2021)

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A Landmark! a series (2021) & Wayfinding, a score (2021)

Wayfinding, a score (2021) & What's Safe? (2021)

What's Safe? (2021), Wayfinding, a score (2021) & A FLOOR, A FLORA (2021)

Find Gallery 1265's online exhibitions at www.kunstmatrix.com/en/gallery-1265

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Introduction

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By Yixin Ma, Curator of Strategies for Wayfinding (2021) Creating art that is equal parts calming, poetic, beautiful and powerful, Lauren Runions documented her navigation with shared space from the perspective of an artist with a background of both architectural sciences and performance dance studies. Strategies for Wayfinding presents her imaginative and spontaneous ways of navigating and embracing the traditional land of Tkaronto, in which the artists respond to their exploration of their role and responsibility in shared space. A Landmark!, on display for the first time, reflects the unexpected relationship among past, present and future of the land with its nature, ecology and human.

The works of art on view reveal how Runions navigates the complexities of contemporary life, while also asking us to consider the Anthropocene experience. At the centre of this exhibition is Wayfinding, A Score, a series of maps featuring various wayfinders. Each of the scores is a pattern of wayfinding. Marking over 480, these scores form a bridge across her practice, exploring the tension between space and human and connecting her performance actions with her love of the land. We invite you to explore and help complete this evolving map by identifying the wayfinding in your community. Where do you see the score? What does the score mean to you?

Wayfinding, A Score is an ongoing project that invites

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people to submit the scores and its location to the map.

Strategies of Wayfinding, with the opening essay written by Alie Lavoie, features work by Lauren Runions with Maryanne Casasanta, Heddy Graterol, Mélika Hashemi, Alie Lavoie, and Mary Patsiatzis in partnership with Small's Creek Ravine, Bloordale Beach/Brockton Learning Centre, and Trinity Bellwoods Park.

Other Resources Bell hooks. Belonging, A Culture of Place David Seamon. Body-Subject, Time-Space Routines, and Place Ballets (1980) Douglas Cardinal. Architectural Principles from an Indigenous Perspective (2019) Michelle Parrish & Edmund Li. Making the Wayfinding Journey Accessible

Biography

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Lauren Runions

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Lauren Runions is a contemporary dance artist, choreographer, urbaner and educator based in Tkaronto/Toronto, ON. Lauren would like to acknowledge the Indigenous land and waters systems of Tkaronto. This is the territory of many nations including Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wyandot peoples. She is grateful to be here, working and being on their land and all its beautifully complex ecologies.

Lauren's work deals with borders and boundaries we and others form around ourselves. These borders exist in (what we are constantly redefining as) public space, and in the intimacy of our own places. Working with the intersection of body and site, their urban embodiment practice playfully challenges the course in which oneʼs body interacts with urban and natural ecologies in the City. Through experiments of scores, improvisation, video, sounding, walking and routine dailiness she questions how our own embodied awareness relates to developing our Cities.

Currently they are questioning if site-responsive improvisation can act as a medium to support accessibility justice and placemaking equity in our lived environments.

Lauren's project I/O Movement offers performances,

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community workshops and residencies with the intention to activate spaces, considering the flexibility of place and inviting movement into daily life. Through this project, they have installed site-specific work across the city in parks, closets, elevators, living rooms, ice cream shops and under stairways. I/O Movement has facilitated their own public space dance residency This is Our Place. Most recently This is Our Place was supported by The Bentwayʼs Community Incubation Program. Community development increasingly drives her practice. She has hosted public workshops including Movement at the Mall (Art Starts), Dancing + Drawing (I/O Movement), Field Guide for Performance in Public Space (Maximum City). To mark the opening and closing of MOCAʼs 2020 winter exhibitions, they choreographed and performed Intervening “A Sudden Beginning” taking place within and alongside Carlos Bungaʼs large-scale cardboard installations.

Opening Essay

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by Alie Lavoie How can we take care of each other at armʼs length? How do we create a language for wayfinding that is collaborative and practical? How can we engage in dynamic placemaking that is rooted in spontaneous partnership?

We stumble into these acts so easily: symbols and markings laid down by many hands, in between spaces with ephemeral borders, memory maps recited to self or to other.

We become architects and cartographers of shared space.

Flux. Reflection. Negotiation.

— The structure and its seams splayed out, exploded diagram.

Fulcrum stretch // collapse to form the skeleton and leave a bookmark in that spine.

What's Safe? (2021)

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Opening image begins framing grass and a painted white circle, bird's eye. Two people enter the frame. One is dressed in all purple. One is dressed in all red. The camera pulls upwards and away revealing many more painted circles (3 x 5). The two people walk along the circle, then leave walking right towards new circles. They stand inside them and pause. FInally they meet again at one circle again.

They walk and dance along the edge. Moving through unsynchronized and synchronized dances. They leave the circle and begin to walk independently. Tracing then leaving to trace a new circle again. They meet on their own circles, but in the same position along the line. They perform the same path. They complete a full circle and meet again at a central circle and lay down 6 feet apart. They take pause then open their arms and legs to reveal an X-shape. They roll to their right, stand-up and leave the frame. The last shot is all of the circles (3 x 7).

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180 x 150 x 2.5 cm (h x w x d) Film

180 x 150 x 2.5 cm (h x w x d) Film

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180 x 150 x 2.5 cm (h x w x d) Film

A FLOOR, A FLORA (2021)

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Opening image begins with 7 orange Tangram pieces in a straight line from above. Two larger triangles, one medium triangle, two smaller triangles, one square and one parallelogram lay in a reddish baseball field. A person enters and begins to move the pieces to reveal different images. First, a bag of seeds tipped over pouring. Next, a square. The person walks over to stand in the centre of it.

They move the pieces again to reveal an arrow pointing to the left corner. The camera circles and the person walks over the pieces in the direction of the arrow. This repeats three times. The person then moves the two larger triangles to flip the direction of the arrow. This repeats twice. Next they reveal a square shape with an arrow in negative space.

They lay down with their feet at the tail of the arrow. A pause. They stand and begin to pile all of the pieces on top of one larger triangle piece. They dance in the space around. This involves spinning and lunging. Next, they reveal a large triangle with a square missing from it. They stand where the square piece should be. Lastly, they form a flower, maybe a lotus flower shape. They walk away and pause.

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180 x 150 x 2.5 cm (h x w x d) Film

180 x 150 x 2.5 cm (h x w x d) Film

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180 x 150 x 2.5 cm (h x w x d) Film

180 x 150 x 2.5 cm (h x w x d) Film

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180 x 150 x 2.5 cm (h x w x d) Film

A Landmark! a series, part I (2021)

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Opening image begins with a split screen. On the left, a creek over sand takes on a beige colour and flows constantly top to bottom. On the right, a dry sandscape. On the right a small body appears wearing something over their head. They walk slowly for the two minutes upwards, and cut right almost exiting the frame. Text Reads: You've found a rare friend, the ravine. From here you can see the creek.

There are two clear paths. To your left there's a slope, step tender. To your left there's a metal cactus, act surprised. Two staircases emerge. The stairs are where the people are.

From here you see the trees. There are 267 marked with fabric. Red yellow blue. You know this because you read this.

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100 x 100 x 3 cm (h x w x d) Film, Two-split Screens

100 x 100 x 3 cm (h x w x d) Film, Two-split Screens

A Landmark! a series, part II (2021)

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Opening image begins with a split screen. On the left, a building being demolished with a construction tool slowly poking at it. On the right, a gravel lot. On the right one person enters running, arms splayed. They leave the frame.

Two people run the same path. They leave the frame. They enter again, slower. They pause at the top of the frame.

One nods. The other points. Text Reads: You've found a rare friend, the beach. From here you see the shore. A diagonal. the short cut. Ahead you hear the waves. Salutations from the neighbours. Passing in solidarity. A shared practice of connecting corners.

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100 x 100 x 3 cm (h x w x d) Film, Two-split Screens

100 x 100 x 3 cm (h x w x d) Film, Two-split Screens

Wayfinding, a score (2021)

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Image I is pulled from Google Maps around Magwood Park and the Humber River Recreational Trail. Colour scheme is white, beige and orange. On the left you see the Humber River in white, vertical. In the middle there are brown dashed markings identifying trails. Three orange lines acknowledge wayfinding, a desire path. Text Reads: Playground, West Track, Magwood Park, River Recreational Trail

30 x 30 x 2.5 inch (h x w x d) Google Maps Stills

Wayfinding, a score (2021)

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Image II is pulled from Google Maps around Toronto Island.

Horizontally there are three layers of colours. At the top, a beige. In the middle, a light orange. At the bottom, a white section. There is an orange arrow pointing to the left acknowledging the suns' movement.

30 x 30 x 2.5 inch (h x w x d) Google Maps Stills

Wayfinding, a score (2021)

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Image III is pulled from Google Maps around Yorkville and the ROM. The background is beige with a light orange pentagon emerging in the frame. There are 14 orange shapes in a row starting left towards right, and then curving downwards. Text Reads: Entrance / Exit

30 x 30 x 2.5 inch (h x w x d) Google Maps Stills

Wayfinding, a score (2021)

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Image IIII is pulled from Google Maps around Etienne Brulé Park and Catherine Street. Catherine Street runs horizontally across the image's middle. There are three brown lines on the top left corner. The river, in white, frames the bottom left corner. There are two orange lines on the right side of the image, acknowledging a gate. Text Reads: Etienne Brulé Park, Mill Rd, Catherine St (5 times)

30 x 30 x 2.5 inch (h x w x d) Google Maps Stills

Wayfinding, a score (2021)

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Image V is pulled from Google Maps around Bloor-Yonge.

A light orange building, very simple and graphic, sits over a beige background emerging from the top towards the bottom left corner. There is another building cut off in the frame at the bottom right corner. Seven orange shapes like the left edge of the building. Text Reads: Scaccia Takeout Delivery, Eataly Takeout - Delivery

30 x 30 x 2.5 inch (h x w x d) Google Maps Stills

Wayfinding, a score (2021)

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Image VI is pulled from Google Maps around the West Bend. A white road intersects the image diagonally. There are seven buildings outlined from above. In the fifth building there is an orange scribble drawing.

200 x 200 x 2 cm (h x w x d) Google Maps Stills

Wayfinding, a score (2021)

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Image VII is pulled from Google Maps around the Jack Layton Ferry Dock. Three dotted lines fray from the top left corner over a white background. There are two orange arrows pointing left and diagonally down to the right.

200 x 200 x 2 cm (h x w x d) Google Maps Stills

Footfall

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25 wayfinding signs lay dispersed in a frame with a white background. They make a square. In order you see: an arrows with a line, a tall line, a hollow square, a medium line, a short line, two thick lines together, a flat line, a small up-side-down L-shape, an arrow head meeting a line, a thick flat line, a circle, a thin up-side-down L-shape, footprints in a box, a long flat line, a dashed arrow meeting a line, a Lshaped arrow, a box with a diagonal line through it, a paw, a plus sign, two boxes crossed-through connected by a line, an arrow head, a hollow circle, an asterisk, an arrow right, a square.

Programming Strategies for Wayfinding Exhibition "Strategies for Wayfinding presents Lauren Runions' imaginative and spontaneous ways of navigating and embracing the traditional land of Tkaronto, in which the artists respond to their exploration of their role and responsibility in shared space. The works of art on view reveal how Runions navigates the complexities of contemporary life, while also asking us to consider the Anthropocene experience."

Yixin Ma, Curator of Strategies for Wayfinding

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Programming

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Mapping Inside/Outside Workshop Lauren Runions will be leading a movement-based workshop playing with ideas of mapping inside/outside. Mapping as Performance will include a warm-up series, internal (cognitive) mapping and tracking our outdoor experience(s) through dancing and drawing. This is an open workshop for anyone looking to move. No dance experience necessary!

Suggested things to have: drawing materials, enough floor space to laydown or spread out. This workshop can be practiced from a chair.

Thanks to Sanaz Mazinani & Arnold Koroshegyi, Supervisors Department of Arts, Culture & Media at the University of Toronto Scarborough TD Insurance, MBNA & Manulife Financial The Gallery 1265 team: Lauren McAusland, Director, Yixin Ma, Exhibitions & Programming Curator Ebo Sackey, Facilities & Exhibitions Coordinator Iris Su, Scheduling & Volunteer Coordinator Alicia Leon, Communications & Community Outreach Coordinator

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