Many thanks to MJ Bole for donating a box of horseshoes for our horseshoe pit! She just had them laying around. Doesn't everybody?
Thanks MJ!
4/30/08
Horseshoes!
Interim Use
The City of Columbus currently lists 78 infill lots available for interim use. A formal letter requesting the identified site’s parcel number from the city’s website and a sketch of the plan is all it takes to acquire a lease. For us, these sites are thresholds where community, economics, land and desire collide. It is in want of activity. How do we regenerate these peripheries, this Drosscape with meaningful interaction? The simple idea of creating perhaps memorable, immaterial, spontaneous experiences in a temporary space seems like a start for this particular site.
4/29/08
Eco-Minded
In our aspiration to examine community-making as we work the plot, we also wanted to consider the steps we are taking in the bigger scene. Can we create a productive urban spot and at the same time be ecologically minded? How can we contribute to the ledger of environmental gains? We want to find ways to work in which expedient visible gains are not prioritized. Rather, we want to cultivate an appreciation for patience, perhaps an attenuated way of making intangible and invisible gains in the long run.
CCAD donated 2x4s left over from a previous show. To make the wood usable, 5 hours were put into cleaning up 21 staple-studded studs. New 2x4x16s cost $4.50 apiece. To pay someone a fair wage ($15?) to remove these staples would still be considerably less than purchasing new. It translates to about $ 22.00 of savings, but the invisible gain is that by reusing these studs we’ve prolonged what little sequestered carbon there is a while longer.
Digging A Bed
We have 180 sf. of beds to be filled with 7 cubic yard of organic soil in the coming week. One of the challenges facing urban farmners is lead-contaminated soil.
Invasive Plants
Field of Garlic Mustard in a yard adjacent to the site. Insidious and seductive at once, it thrives without our attention. Common to most invasive plants, these were once introduced to our ecology for useful purposes.
Lady Morgan
Lady Morgan, a neighbor’s puppy stopped by to visit. While we are devising a way to capture rain water for irrigation needs, we have also asked our neighbor to supply water for our vegetable beds as plan B. They have agreed and we are glad they are very generous people.
Dug Out
Matt, Jim, Nate and Caroline put in a half day of work on the site. We went the manual way. We tore up grass patches with shovels while a Roto-tiller roared in the yard adjacent to the plot.
Third Landscapes
Saturday was the first physical day of work on the plot of land. Cleaning up all the plastic debris and waste we were reminded of the architect Gilles Clément and his concept of the Third Landscape which describes experiments in the way the natural world conforms to human interventions.
4/23/08
How to Get Involved
If you'd like to be involved in the project, please email
us at bureauforopenculture@gmail.com
4/4/08
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)