In our recurring feature What's the Meaning of This?, we explain what those weird public-art installations you walk by every day are supposed to represent. This week: NFB urban-renewal project HIGHRISE goes underground.
Name of installation: HIGHRISE/One Millionth Tower
Artist: Katerina Cizek
Location: Various locations throughout the TTC
Date of origin: The project was launched on Jan. 2 and will run until Feb. 29.
What’s it supposed to be?: TTC riders may have noticed that, since the beginning of this month, there have been a series of unique platform posters (pictured above) at nearly 60 stations, as well as 30-second silent films displayed on the Pattison Onestop LCD screens throughout the transit network. Co-sponsored by the National Film Board and Pattison Onestop, this public-art project has been adapted from a much larger interactive web documentary—HIGHRISE, by artist and director Katerina Cizek—that looks at urban, vertical homes and re-examines the highrise world in which we live. The original project brought together architects, urban planners and the residents of an apartment block on Kipling Avenue and asked them to reenvision their surroundings.
In the HIGHRISE/One Millionth Tower project for the TTC, Cizek took many of the more poignant moments from her documentary to make an interactive piece of art that works both as a multi-work installations and as separate pieces that can stand on their own. ”No matter if you see one or four or all the videos and posters, what we’re seeking to do with this is to excite people’s imaginations, to think about this vertical city above them in a different way,” Cizek says.
Using the images created by both architects and highrise residents, Cizek was able to design a series of different posters, juxtaposing images of the area as it is now, and what it could become. Moreover, Cizek edited parts of her documentary into six, silent 30-second clips that are presently shown throughout the TTC. “In meeting the architects, urban planners, housing advocates and all the researchers I have through the HIGHRISE project, I’ve really learned that the city is something that we can shape as citizens, so it’s ours to own and ours to build for the future.” Cizek says. “And I don’t think that’s utopial, that is part of responsible citizenship.”
