Memories to Futures: Views(Ruins) from the Court.

Introduction to Views(Ruins) Digital Exhibit

The socially engaged art project is presented as a digital gallery, which displays a short audio-visual component of footage that I have collected over the demolition years, the video is 3 minutes long.The audio-visual and photographs are supplemented with an ethnography of spatial memories such as a place for youth to congregate, create music and play whilst adults use the court to host community events, such as BBQs. My focus is on discussing each aspect of the imagined space and their meanings. I use storytelling as a methodology.

Jane Firgrove is a Toronto Community Housing neighbourhood that has been undergoing revitalization which required the demolition of 236 Rent-Geared-to-Income (RGI) units. Over the last seven years, residents have been and continue to be uprooted from a community they have created through networks of support, culture and meaning even through decades of neglect from the state. The disruption of their everyday life happened abruptly once the massive public transit infrastructure projects, the Eglinton LRT and the Vaughan subway extension were underway. Transit-oriented development inevitably increased the value of land due and initiated the process of urban renewal in the Jane Finch community.

The financialization of housing and revitalization has allowed for the production of more unaffordable units in an area designated for social housing. What the community has faced has led me to pursue a socially engaged art project that allows me to showcase socio-spatial contradictions and lived realities in Jane-Firgrove through the decades it has existed. The central focus of this project are spatial challenges that have become a vessel of community cultural reproduction. Although all RGI units were demolished in 2022, the basketball court is the last remaining structure. I use the basketball court, specifically, as a point of reference in this exhibit. The basketball court represents the minimum investment of recreation that was provided during the planning of a dense social housing community. The space as a focus allows me to appropriately present a film that encompasses footage from different community events, music videos from the youth in a way to archive and honour the legacy of this place I call home.