Housing Crisis: Shock Value Interventions

In response to the current housing crisis, the Shock Value Fellowship has launched a series of artistic interventions in the streets of Montreal. Come discuss with the artists the follow-ups to the urban projections Concrete Capital and discover what’s in store for Summer 2021!

Using art as a tool for subversion, pedagogy and decision-making, the Shock Value Fellowship highlights and critiques the dominance of financial mechanisms in real estate development and unearths non-financial forms of value with public audiences, leading to the development of rent-free residencies as an economic instrument for non-financial value creation. Throughout this process, the theme of “value” is used as a support beam to enact public interventions around the city: whether on the construction site of a future luxury condo mega-project, on vacant lots, or in cyberspace. These interventions attempt to engage a wider public in challenging financialized conceptions of land, speculate on the development of new value frameworks and provide grounds for the de-commodification of land.

Participate in the discussion by registering for the Zoom meeting or watch live on our Facebook. 

Have questions? Send them to info.4@concordia.ca

This event is part of the Office Hours conversation series presented by the Office of Rules and Norms in collaboration with 4th Space. The ORN is an arts-based transdisciplinary studio at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Concordia University that engages with regulations, the rule of law, cultural norms and market standards. These engagements reveal, comprehend, play with, subvert, and transcend current ways of understanding and acting in relation to regulatory forces in order to make room for more equitable alternatives. In its attempts to query legal and behavioral urban infrastructures, the ORN specifically deploys art and design practice, culture, and methods along three axes:

● Art as Decision-Making | Reorienting modes of knowing and deliberating

● Art as Pedagogy | Making public various forces and forms of influence

● Art as Decision-Making | Reorienting modes of knowing and deliberating

Visit our website at orn.studio

Panelists

Gabriel Townsend Darriau has a BA in Urban Studies from Concordia, works in community-driven real estate and is pursuing a certificate in real estate studies at UQÀM. He rents a 4 ½ for $815/month on a 635 m2 property worth $ 1,970,100.

Maddy Capozzi holds a BFA in Design from Concordia. She has explored her creativity in settings ranging from a social innovation hub, an arts-based transdisciplinary studio, a reuse center, and a research lab for sustainable urbanism. She rents a 4 ½  for $1260/month on a 185 m2 property worth $ 1,187,300.

Christine White is completing her bachelor’s degree at Concordia University with a major in Intermedia and a minor in Sociology. Combining research with intervention, she uses mobile disruptive architecture to imagine public space that acts to serve the common good rather than corporate interest. She rents a 3 ½ for $900/month on a 1 005,80 m2 property worth $ 2,387, 000.

Thomas Heinrich holds a BFA in Design at Concordia University. Throughout his degree he has worked on various subjects including the modernization of Montreal in the 1960s, the reuse of large infrastructure materials and social/ecological architecture. He currently rents a 6 ½ for $1,550/ month on a 153,30 m2  property worth $844 000.