PiGEON Psycho-Geographic-ExcursiON

Special Exhibition Program

Ticket sales for this event are now closed.

⋛⋋( ‘◇’)⋌⋚ PiGEON ⋛⋋( ‘◇’)⋌⋚

The growth of dense urban areas poses a threat to migratory birds. One of the leading causes of bird death in North America is collisions with human-built structures. Bird collision detection offers a “canary in the coal mine” to signal troubling changes in our own everyday patterns of movement through the city. Harnessing the practice of psychogeography—which aims to produce new perspectives of urban environments by observing and moving through them playfully—PiGEON will guide participants through the Bloor St. Cultural Corridor on a psychogeographic birding excursion led by Toronto-based artist collective Friends of Ogden Park and FLAP Canada.

The excursion will be a fantastic flight into the way human stories intersect with the stories of other species, forming a multi-species worldview. As Donna Haraway proposes, “it matters what stories tell stories and what worlds world worlds.”

The walk will be follow by a DIY paracord-string crafting demonstration as a preventive tool for bird-window collision at your home or workplace. PiGEON also includes a brown bag lunch and admission to Janet Macpherson: A Canadian Bestiary.

Please meet on the Gardiner Plaza at 8:45 am.

Rain Date: May 6

About Friends of Ogden Park

Friends of Ogden Park is a Toronto-based artist collective spearheaded by artists Ella Dawn McGeough and Dustin Wilson in 2014, whose purpose is to organize games and activities that function as forms of research. Transdisciplinary in scope, Ogden Park exists without the context of a fixed place. It is a disembodied mind that temporarily occupies various hosts. Whether park, gallery, or online platform, Ogden Park’s host-body functions as an experimental computational device, transforming these sites into a virtual field for game-based research. Recent sites include Younger than Beyonce Gallery (Toronto), BiWay Arts Foundation c/o The Wrong Digital Arts Biennial, Forest City Gallery (London, ON), DNA Artspace (London, ON), Katzman Contemporary (Toronto), as well as several self-organized projects within Toronto’s High Park and Regent Park.  Visit ogdenpark.ca.

About FLAP Canada

FLAP Canada’s mission is to safeguard migratory birds in the urban environment through education, policy development, research, rescue and rehabilitation. Since 1993, volunteers with FLAP have combed the Financial District of Toronto searching for birds stunned, injured or killed by collisions with lit towers during their nocturnal migration. A few years later, the non-profit organization discovered that daytime collisions with glass is of even greater concern, responsible for the deaths of billions of migrants worldwide. As a result, its rescue zones have increased covering Scarborough, North York, Markham and Mississauga. FLAP now works with many other cities across North America in efforts to create safe passage for migratory birds.

FLAP also address this issue at the source, finding creative and cost-effective ways of minimizing the threats to birds presented by night lighting and reflective surfaces on buildings. From its Bird-Friendly Building program launched in 1995 to their collaboration with the City of Toronto which resulted in the launch of the Bird-Friendly Development Guidelines—the organization works with all sectors of society to safeguard birds. Visit flap.org.