Please note, we are officially finished collecting surveys for this project as of November 10, 2017. We are leaving this webpage online as an archive of our process. If you wish to fill out the Survey below, it will only be used for our personal reference.

INVISIBLE CITY SURVEY

Intended to trace ‘desire lines’ through (and beyond) our city, you are invited to participate in the Invisible City Survey above. By answering these questions, you are contributing to a new public artwork by Calgary artists Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett.

This Survey is open to everyone. You may answer the questions however you choose – literally or figuratively. You are intended to answer while in a place of transit (on the bike path, on the bus, on the train, etc). The most interesting responses will be inscribed onto brass Survey Monuments and embedded in our new glittering public artwork for the Delta Garden in West Eau Claire Park (located at the South bank of the Peace Bridge in Calgary, Canada).

Inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, the Invisible City Survey emphasizes the disconnect between manmade methods of dividing land (surveying), the land’s natural divisions (rivers), and the power of people’s perception to transform any given place. Perhaps by collecting a diverse spectrum of perspectives, our own invisible city will be illuminated.

With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear. Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.

– Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Selected text will be used anonymously. If your answer is too long to fit on a monument, we will abbreviate it into a shorter increment of text.

To learn more about the final public artwork, stay tuned to our blog.

The Invisible City Survey is an independent blog and questionnaire by Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett. These questions will help inform research for a public artwork designed for Delta Garden in West Eau Claire.

If you want to follow the progress of this project, you can find us on facebook or instagram – or follow this blog!