This piece was created as a site-specific video installation for The Complete Unknown, a group show about the Toronto neighbourhood of Regent Park, at YTB Gallery.
As someone not from Regent Park, the artist spent enough time there to know there is a depth to the community that as a visitor he cannot fully grasp. There is also a complexity and intense ambivalence within the community around the current transformation (c. 2016), with many different perspectives and nuances.
The piece depicts a drone camera surveilling the new Regent Park playground and original Regent Park housing. Between is the fenced-off construction site dividing them along the former and future Oak Street, known as the boardwalk. The drone is an outsider, hovering tentative and alien, the threat and opportunity of change. Advance conjures both progress and encroachment. While the future of Regent Park may be hopeful, the pain of displacement and change cut deeply.
Installation instructions: Can be a simple single-channel video, but ideal installation circumstances should be projected onto a lightweight fabric screen hanging from the ceiling, so that there is movement in the screen as the air in the gallery moves.