May – August, 2013

In this next phase our main focus is on the brokering of the site we intend to use in green Square. There will be a number of outcomes that manifest as part of our process in developing the work. Among them:

Participating in a group exhibition called Baadlands at Tin Sheds gallery

Curating 3 provocative conversation nights for August – October

Two day lab 19th and 20th July at the Green Square Tote building to drift, explore and collaborate

Here is a little summary on the position of Yurt Empire as regards the brokering of the site:

The Yurt Empire is an experiment in the making of an urban commons in the midst of accelerated gentrification and urban renewal. Key to this experiment is the brokering of the site, as artists negotiate with developers to temporally occupy a key site slated for multi-million dollar development. In making the brokering of the site a key component of the work, the Yurt Empire intends to make visible how artists are engaged in processes of urban renewal and gentrification, and to test the limits of that inclusion.

Through a critical exploration and exposition of the site brokering process, the project aims to expose the dynamics that underpin the currently pervasive ‘pop-up’ model of artist inclusion in the city, even as it acknowledges its own ephemerality. Yurt Empire is the exploration of the tensions between the production of community and ephemerality, between the production of an urban commons and the development of renewed surfaces for finance capitalism.