Lansdowne Light Box by Dyan Marie

Dyan Marie's Lansdowne Light Box opens at 2 pm, May 12, 2012 with a poetry reading at the Coffee Time next to the phone booth located at the northwest corner of Bloor and Lansdowne Ave. Buy a coffee or tea and stay for some words.

Here is Dyan's description of her installation:

Lansdowne Light Box transforms a phone booth into a lighthouse and listening station. It recalls the stain glass windows of local demolished churches—places where people came to hear stories and quietly put words of their own into prayer.

Phone booths are disappearing and the Bell Telephone logo will disappear from story telling on street corners. Bell relocated their public signature to the Bell Lightbox, home of TIFF, a public space to quietly consume stories in film.

The installation in the phone booth, manifested in various shades of colour, comments on changing forms of communication ( and miscommunication) as well as the comforts, dysfunctions and needs addressed in acts of story telling.

Lansdowne Light Box is located in the phone both at the corner of Dupont Street and Lansdowne Avenue. The rapidly changing intersection is the site of an industrial rise, fall, decay and aggressive re-development process. The nominal centre of this whirlwind of urban evolution is a long-established Coffee Time drive-in restaurant.  Coffee Time’s outdoor public telephone is the site of this project.

About the Lansdowne and Dupont Intersection Location:

South-west corner Dupont and Lansdowne
The Standard apartment complex was an American Standard toilet factory until the late 1990s that sat derelict for several years until it was renovated into the current large-scale rental unit.

South-east corner Dupont and Lansdowne

Formerly a parkette fashioned from a previous TTC turnaround loop, the site has been a seven-story condo building since the early 2000s.

North-west corner Dupont and Lansdowne

This classic early-20^th-century factory structure is now flagged with advertisements announcing plans to sprout a multi-storey high-rise condo tower from its center core.

North-east corner Dupont and Lansdowne

Just north of the telephone booths, 1011 Lansdowne is an infamous rental high-rise known as one of Toronto’s 10 worst buildings in press stories that have reported its various transgressions and tragedies. In recent months, improvements efforts are underway to stucco the building’s exterior.

Coming very soon are Dyan's poem and installation images...

Applause by Francis LeBouthillier, applause Indeed!

Francis LeBouthillier has responded to Stuart Keeler's call for flags with the "APPLAUSE" flag, currently waving above the pair of booths located at Wellington and Jarvis. Through to June, Stuart is coordinating a series of flag installations. Visit often. Photo by Stuart Keeler.

"Ash Take 12": Last Call by Otino Corsano

Otino Corsano operated his booth at Finch and Bayview as a sound recording booth. He invited three professional actors (Ash, Emily and Maarika) to perform audio tracks guided only by general parameters: to invent realistic scripts ad lib - metaphorically referencing the slow extinction of telephone booths across Toronto. For each "last call", actors injected their own undirected themes and voice designs. Otino then edited their source performances and worked with Waltar Sawan, a sound technician based in Vancouver, to mix the final audio tracks for the gallery show at Telephone Booth Gallery, opening party and book launch on June 15th. The results are unexpected. Otino explains,


These brief artworks were designed as "movie trailers sans visuals" warping the sound components of telecommunication radio spots into detritus - slowly dissolving to reveal new digital bliss. 




"Ash Take 12" original voice recordings were conducted on Sun. Feb. 19, 2012.

Paradise' Lost Call by Colleen Osborn

Photo by Colleen Osborn

Exactly one decade ago tomorrow, a phone call was placed from the payphone located outside the Paradise theatre; a friend inviting another friend to see a movie. Although it is not clear from the answering machine message what film they went to see, it is apparent that Bloorcourt was a much different neighbourhood back then. The theatre closed it's doors in 2006 and the payphone no longer works.

This small stretch of unused space may be easily overlooked if it was not for the influx of trendy culture creeping up and down Bloorcourt over the last few years. Across and down the street are hipster cafes & bars, Shopper's Drug Marts and gutted church condos popping up. The artist cannot help but feel nostalgia for the old pre-cell phone days watching rep films from the balcony, yet acknowledges her part in the area's revisions as though the call she placed that day was inviting gentrification to see a show.

The transcribed answering machine recording will be posted on the marquee beside the broken pay phone for 24 hours (or until it is stolen) on May 5th 2012.