14 Dec September 30, 2015

Regular meeting at Post Image Lounge

In the previous meeting, Velibor suggested that we should see more of each other’s work in progress and what everyone’s current interests are. So Velibor brought his work in progress, his work on Notman street, a mysterious failed urban planning project. He brought a diagram that illustrates his thought process on the project, from the conception of the work, starting with the gathering of the facts, to its transformation into a realm of fiction and imagination through the creation of images and text.

“You know that Notman’s house downtown was also going to become a photography museum at one point? That plan was also overturned around the same time.”

Velibor says that his project has become more about the idea of potential, rather than about following the city’s unrealized vision and narrating the facts that surface. There is a mythical quality to the overturning of the Notman street project, and his process around the story is developing towards creating a bridge between its mythical aspects and the facts. The ruins of the Notman street project are found on Google Maps, in photographs of the sites, and in official documents from the city’s administrative archives—all of which intimate something that could have been real but never materialized. Velibor found that in the course of his research, the reality has become even more opaque.

Interestingly, Velibor asserts that the project is departing from the real story. He is a lot more interested in the potential fiction that lies in the site for him.