Stop spadina
2016
Thread on Matte Photo Paper
33 in. x 25.5 in.
STOP SPADINA stemmed as a response to the controversy that arose due to the proposal of the Spadina Expressway in downtown Toronto, which had been proposed as a solution for making the downtown core more accessible for Torontonians living in the suburbs, but would have had ghastly consequences for the people living in the area of the proposed site, as it would have resulted in their displacement. The Expressway was never built as protesters were successful in making their voice be heard.
The artwork, a 33 in. x 25.5 in. poster, focuses on the communication aspect of the controversy, wherein the two opposing sides were initially unsuccessful in making each other understand their viewpoints. The artwork represents the web that communication creates in conflicts and protests, where the spoken words uttered by one party may be perceived differently by the opposition, as the two parties more often than not have different priorities. Thinking about the different ways in which miscommunication can occur—such as the use of words that could have multiple meanings, or the use of slogans that can trigger negative thoughts in the minds of the opposition, etc.—and by taking into account the theory of miscommunication as proposed by Robert M. Krauss and Ezequiel Morsella—wherein four models of communication have been proposed: encoding-decoding model, intentionalist model, perspective taking model, and dialogic model,*—I was thinking about using slogans and phrases that the protesters against the construction of the Expressway used in order to communicate their concerns, along with the kind of questions those phrases may have raised in the minds of the opposing party, and connecting them in a “match the following” sort of format. I used thread as a metaphor of the act of perception to connect phrases from the two columns where the end result would be a complicated network of thread-work, representing just how complex and tangled the process of communication is when dealing with conflicts, while simultaneously looking at the perspectives of both parties.
*Robert M. Krauss and Ezequiel Morsella. "Communication and Conflict." Morton Deutsch and Peter T. Coleman, eds., The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice (San Francisco: Jossey-Bas Publishers, 2000), pp. 131-143