Slow Dirt

Description:

Slow Dirt (2015) was a three-part project by Other Sights for Artists’ Projects that celebrated the slow, deep, and generative production of the humble earthworm in response to the accelerated conditions of real estate development in east Vancouver. Presented as part of Urgent Imagination: Art and Urban Development, Part 1, a massive inflatable earthworm was installed on the exterior of Western Front. Pinkish in hue and carnivalesque in appearance, the oversized “invasive” worm wriggled down the front of the building. Its presence served as a reminder of the potential for art to facilitate new models for development and transformation. On the occasion of the two-day conference Urgent Imagination: Art and Urban Development, Part II, writer Meredith Quartermain read her poem  “How to Remember” (2015) beneath the earthworm intervention. 

Slow Dirt also spread offsite and into the city through a series of photographic development application permit signs by Vancouver-based artist Al McWilliams. Depicting tangled masses of worms transforming dirt into soil, McWilliams’s series reoriented the ubiquitous form of Vancouver signage—which often signal residents of upcoming condominium-based projects—to remind viewers of a different, more organic inevitability.

Urgent Imagination: Art and Urban Development was a two-part project that proposed creative alternatives to developer-driven architecture and urban planning in Vancouver. The project generated events, artworks, conferences, and an online platform for critical inquiry into issues concerning urban development, spatial justice, and critical theory.

Curated by Caitlin Jones.