act 2

the opening

the Opening of the project took place at Arlington 5 on February 27th, 2022, from 4 to 6 pm. The co-organizers (Chiara, Vincent, and Jessie) provided an overview of the project, how it started, how to participate, and the project goal and relevance. Informal conversations on how everybody perceives Ottawa followed this brief introduction -  a warming up for our next activities.

we (the co-organizers) shared our understanding of the project as a platform to promote long-term exploration of what the city could offer, reconnection with the urban space and the other beings that inhabit it, and dialogue on what we would like the city to be.

we understand that we are in an era where everybody feels disconnected from urban space. There are several reasons for this, such as: being constantly split between in-person and digital; the impossibility of a shared experience of the public space due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the contemporary attitude of transiting through it instead of being in due to the thousand of tasks of our current life. In this specific framework, creating the time and space for rediscovering, understanding, and reconnecting with our environment is crucial for becoming protagonists in defining its characteristics and what it could offer to the variety of people that inhabit it.

this is the aim of this project. It is not oriented to provide short-term solutions to the several situations that we have to face in our everyday experience of the urban environment, but the space for thinking about it together and prompts for its discovery.

throughout the activities that we designed for this first edition of the project, we will explore and understand the city through different senses. Hearing and sound will be the core of several of our activities, but we will also explore sight and (a bit) smell.

@ Arlington 5 on feb 27, 2022 @ 4 - 6 pm