IMAGINE ANYTHING

During the group project ‘I_Wanna_see_you_overslag/ YYZ’ we were fascinated by the overabundance of positive slogans we found in the city centre. We started reading and collecting all these positive texts from billboards, posters, banners and stickers. The majority of the slogans we used in this project refer to the possibilities to do something meaningful or they try to stimulate a creative awareness among the consumers.

All these signs have emphasis on hospitality, friendship, freedom, change and creativity. During the workingprocess the slogans that referred to creativity started to intrigue us the most. These slogans clearly derived from the idea of the creative city. A clear sign of the influence by the theories of Richard Florida, a professor that, not surprisingly teaches at the University of Toronto and whose notion that cities must become trendy, happening places with emphasis on a creative worker class is widely spread. Florida's theory focuses on the correlation between the creative city and a higher level of economic development.

We felt ambivalent towards this believe in the exaggerated hospitality, individual achievability and the emphasis on creativity within this commercial context, so we decided to collect these slogans in order to gain more understanding of this particular aspect of the city. We thought of a way to present our collection of slogans within a contrasting context in public space. We placed the different texts in a certain order and asked a performer to read them out loud on a speakers’ corner in front of the city hall. The speakers’ corner is designed by the city council as a dedication to the freedom of speech. The podium is rarely used, probably because of its top-down construction and functions more like a static monument. For a short moment we made use of our right of the freedom of speech although you can question the status of the proclaimed freedom.