The Forgetful City

Landfill: Yvette Nolan, Gein Wong and Donna-Michelle St Bernard

The first event in our brand-new arts and ideas series, Deeper Dialogues, is part of Doors Open Toronto 2011. Join us for The Forgetful City - an interactive installation created by Yvette Nolan, Gein Wong and Donna-Michelle St Bernard, plus a panel discussion on Sunday that explores what as a society we collective decide to forget and what we choose to hold on to through memory and its embodiment in our physical city.

When: May 28 & 29, 2011 - 10 am to 5 pm
Where: RC Harris Water Treatment Plant, 2701 Queen Street East

Saturday: Give us your history of Toronto

On Saturday, visit the pump house to experience our interactive, changing sound and image installation called Landfill. This installation is made up of your photos and stories!

Located on the shore of Lake Ontario, the “Palace of Purification” has become a part of the long and storied history of Toronto’s continually changing landscape. A landscape built up, torn down, artificially created, covered over, hollowed out, filled in with layers upon layers of change and process. Landfill is curious about these layers, and what stories they might tell - and we need you to help us unearth them.

So what is your history of Toronto? If we were to unearth it, what would we find? That red bicycle you rode along the lake when you were a kid...the bones of a long-dead pet companion...the dog-eared books and novels from which you learned the history of this town?

Or would it be pizza boxes, whether from Pizza Pizza or Pizza Pide? Chopsticks? Hot dogs from the street cart? Noodles, flat rice or udon? A thousand spicy beef patties that got you through high school?

Perhaps you fell in love for the first time by the Beach boardwalk, or spent cold winters as a teenager at Square One with your friends. Is your main experience of Toronto the long hours stuck in your car on the Gardiner overlooking the lake? Maybe it’s evenings spent on transit, travelling home along the furthest reaches of the TTC.

Tell us your stories, your Toronto moments; or bring us images of the things you held dear, remember fondly, wanted desperately to get rid of. We will add them into our evolving story of Toronto. We will add that bicycle into our landscape, that bouquet you caught, that raccoon you faced down. We will record your words and add them to the million stories this city holds.

Before Doors Open (until Friday, May 27)

• You can submit .jpg photo images to us via e-mail (NOTE: As this event has passed, we are no longer collecting photos)
• You can phone us and record your story. (NOTE: As this event has passed, we are no longer collecting stories)

During Doors Open (Saturday, May 28 and Sunday, May 29)

• Bring your .jpg photo on a memory stick or a CD
• E-mail your .jpg photo

Landfill is an installation created by Yvette Nolan, Gein Wong, and Donna-Michelle St Bernard.

Sunday: Join our panel discussion

Our growing Landfill continues into Sunday, culminating in a special panel discussion with panellists Ceta Ramkhalawansingh, Steven Loft, Yvette Nolan, and moderator Amy Lavender Harris.

Informed by your visual and aural histories unearthed in Landfill, the panel discussion will explore the relationships between personal/collective memory, history, and the ever-evolving urban landscape. As a city, what have we chosen to remember - and to forget? How are these choices reflected in the way the city's landscape has been changed or preserved? In the common stories we tell and hear about Toronto? What cultural and social "infrastructures" exist to keep our city functioning despite these changes? What have we collectively discarded, and what do we continue to build around?

Join us on Sunday May 29 at 1:00 p.m. in the pump house's control room for this free panel discussion.