Archive for the ‘events’ Category

CURL Featured in Continuum

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Regulating la Cité Imaginée: Innovative Urban Governance Research at Osgoode

For almost two years now, the Collaborative Urban Research Laboratory (CURL or the ‘Lab’), under the auspices of Osgoode’s Critical Research Laboratory in Law & Society (www.criticalresearchlab.org) has been adding a complex and layered perspective to the study of cities through an unusual mix of research and artistic production. CURL takes an innovative, interdisciplinary as well as visual approach to the study of cities and urbanity today. Global cities such as Toronto, Paris, London,Tokyo or Mumbai have long been the research target of social scientists, lawyers, geography and urban studies scholars. CURL builds on this work, but challenges the boundaries between the academic enterprise and the cité imaginée, the city in its centuries-old artistic, visual and literary depiction and representation. This presents an unprecedented and unparalleled opportunity for lawyers and urban studies theorists to interact with photographers, digital media artists and documentary filmmakers with a view to mutual exchange, challenge and collaborative production.

EXPANDING THE STUDY OF CITIES

Why now? Urban studies have become a regular component of today’s interdisciplinary social science curriculum at leading universities, at York and around the world. By connecting scholars of local government, global cities or transnational migration with artists exploring these themes through traditional and digital media, the Lab reinvigorates the meaning of interdisciplinarity.Why Osgoode? At a law school, the creation of the Lab constitutes an altogether daring, risky initiative, but it is driven by the belief that legal scholars and practitioners can be both drivers and beneficiaries of this type of research innovation. CURL explores and pushes the compatibility of different approaches, vocabularies and methodologies.This process presents inevitable challenges for lawyers to question the strengths and weaknesses of their own discipline. Besides the fruitful interaction between academia and art, CURL marks the crucial and still rarely found introduction of law to the increasingly comprehensive disciplinary mix, which constitutes urban studies. Approaching urban governance as a regulatory field of crucial importance, law must rethink notions of property, public and private, access to local infrastructure and services, and even larger questions of democratic representation.

RESEARCH INNOVATION
CURL was made possible through Osgoode’s second substantive infrastructure grant awarded in the winter of 2007 by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and the Ontario Innovation Trust (OIT) and through in-kind contributions from leading firms in multimedia production. During Osgoode’s renovation, CURL is housed in the Computer Methods Building onYork’s Keele campus,offering a state-of-the-art multimedia and research facility for scholars, faculty and students as well as practitioners and artists.They have access to a unique and unparalleled environment for research and artistic multimedia creation with individual working spaces, a gathering area and small conference room with screening facility for seminars and lectures, along with suites with photo/film/video and sound editing equipment.The Lab’s equipment is available for approved project proposals on urban governance that demonstrate a strong collaborative element, says Mars Horodyski, a filmmaker and CURL’s artistic director for 2009-2010 (www.cinemars.ca).“There are a lot of artists doing really interesting work on cities,” says Horodyski, whose work won several prizes and who in 2009 shot: “Where the Sidewalk Begins:The University and the Global City, CURL’s first documentary featuring interviews with Toronto’s university presidents and some of the world’s leading urban governance experts.With a script co- written by Horodyski and Zumbansen, it was produced for and with support from York’s 50th Anniversary, screened in June 2009 and is now available on the CURL Web site at http://www.criticalresearchlab.org/curl/.

COLLABORATIVE SPACES

CURL has started the ‘Reading Lab’, a weekly, university-wide, multidisciplinary research forum.‘We discuss work by legal and other scholars, filmmakers and art theorists brought together as widely varied as we can in order to explore the multifaceted nature of the City’, says Gregory Smith, a PhD student at Osgoode and CURL’s acting academic director.The Lab further hosts Artists-in- Residence (CURL-AiR) and offers a Screening Series of classical and new films on cities. CURL’s first annual conference was convened in March 2009 under the theme of “The Learning City”, organized by Osgoode faculty and graduate students with support from the ‘Harry Arthurs Fund’ and York. Inspired by the conference’s great success, featuring speakers such as Toronto Mayor David Miller, along with numerous lawyers, activists and scholars, CURL will publish the presented papers in a collection under the leadership of Danielle Allen, who holds a BA in Urban Studies fromYork and a 2009 JD from Osgoode.The other follow-up project from the ‘Learning City’ is the inauguration of the “The Knowledgeable City” public forum, starting in the fall of 2010, as an unprecedented platform for multi- stakeholder discussions of current urban governance issues inToronto and beyond.For more information on how to get involved, visit the CURL Web site. ❂

Download PDF of Article:

Zumbansen 2010 CURL feature Continuum Magazine

Tags:
Posted in events | No Comments »

Followup on CURL’s Official Launch featured in Y-File

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

CURL mixes academics and visual arts in ongoing discussion of cities

The Collaborative Urban Research Laboratory (CURL), under the auspices of the Critical Research Laboratory in Law & Society at York’s Osgoode Hall Law School, has officially been launched, bringing together an unusual mix of the academic and creative, and adding a complex and layered perspective to discussions about cities.

CURL provides an innovative and visual approach to discussions involving globalization and cities by giving social scientists, lawyers, urban studies scholars and geographers an opportunity to interact with photographers, digital media artists, documentary filmmakers and their works. It brings an understanding to the issues that wouldn’t be possible without weaving an interdisciplinary academic approach together with the artistic, says Gregory Smith, CURL’s acting academic director, 2009-2010.

Left: A guest at the CURL launch studies the photos by artist-in-residence Jorge Uzon. Photo by Uzon.

The space itself is a state-of-the-art multimedia and research facility designed to bring people in and get them talking about urban places. There is a gathering area, a small conference room and two labs with equipment for filmmakers and photographers, which include sound mixing and studio recording capabilities, editing software, as well as high-definition digital cameras, lighting equipment and more.

“On the academic side of things, I think the real genesis for this…came from the fact that there was this really great body of literature that was being written, at least for the last 10 years, about globalization and cities, but that there really wasn’t any input by those who focus on the academic side of law,” says Smith, a PhD candidate at Osgoode whose research focuses on the role played by law in constructing urban space and society. “The idea was to open lines of communication between people who would traditionally do urban studies and lawyers….and bring the legal community into the discussion of how cities are run.” That idea grew to include not only other disciplines, but visual arts.

Right: From left, Greg Smith and Mars Horodyski at the launch of CURL. Photo by Jorge Uzon.

One of the ways visual arts and the academic side of things will come together is through an ongoing reading lab. “We have readings, for example, of work written by filmmakers about cities, as much as we would have, say, a reading from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, literature, law, urban studies, geography, as widely varied as we can put together,” says Smith. The first reading lab in January will look at Toronto, focusing on its growth and the planning decisions that have affected it over the years.

There will also be an online artist-in-residence every month showcasing work that represents some aspects of cities. Photographer Jorge Uzon is the current artist-in-residence. His black and white images of Mexico City and Toronto, which look at how the two cities have changed over the years, are on exhibit at CURL and can also be seen on the CURL Web site.

Left: Greg Smith mingles with guests at the official launch of CURL. Photo by Jorge Uzon.

The equipment is available to those with project proposals related to issues that include city life, urban growth, governance and development, that are accepted by CURL. The project leaders need to show a willingness to collaborate with other CURL members to help nurture the cross-fertilization of ideas and techniques between artists and academics, says Mars Horodyski, a filmmaker and CURL’s artistic director, 2009-2010. Already there has been interest from faculty members wanting to partner with CURL and use the equipment. CURL is unable to provide funding, so artists must have their own in place.

Left: A guest at the CURL launch reads about the lab’s mandate. Photo by Jorge Uzon

“There are a lot of artists doing really interesting city work,” says Horodyski, winner of Ryerson University’s 2003 Norman Jewison Filmmaker Award for her film Lemonade and of the 2007 WorldFest Houston International Film & Video Festival Golden Remi Award for her latest short, Spoonfed. “The challenge is figuring out how they fit into our mandate. The global cities theme is a pretty broad one.”

Horodyski co-wrote the script for Where the Sidewalk Begins: The University and the Global City, a documentary film celebrating York’s 50th anniversary with York law Professor Peer Zumbansen, CURL’s director and founder of the Critical Research Laboratory in Law & Society at York’s Osgoode Hall Law School. Zumbansen holds the Canada Research Chair in the Transnational & Comparative Law of Corporate Governance. A preview of Where the Sidewalk Begins can be seen on the CURL Web site.

Right: Peer Zumbansen

CURL will also host a screening series in the new year beginning with Radiant City, which looks at 21st-century suburban sprawl. The second film, Vernon, Florida, will explore whether or not a place defines the people within it or vice versa.

“In terms of the long term…it’s more of the process, that’s the most important aspect, to find engagement with academics and artists,” says Smith.

Left: Mars Horodyski

In addition, there will be ongoing blogs with Smith and Horodyski, as well as others, and book reviews and articles to do with cities in the future on the CURL Web site. “There are lots of ways people can get involved,” says Horodyski. In 2010, CURL will also host a conference.

Anyone interested in providing essays, book reviews, urban musings, blogging or photography for online publication, should contact Horodyski at mars@criticalresearchlab.org or Smith at greg@criticalresearchlab.org. For larger project proposals, there is a set of application criteria available. For more information, visit the CURL Web site.

The Collaborative Urban Research Laboratory is at 218 Computer Methods Building on the Keele campus.

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Posted in events | No Comments »