Pop Up Spaces‘ newest project, ±92, is a hybrid of art show, history lesson, architectural exhibit, planning study, performance and interactive experience. It will be unlike anything you or I have ever seen.
±92: Downtown Master Plans, 1932-2009
Soft Opening: Friday, October 2, 4-7pm
Grand Opening: Saturday, October 3, 6-10pm
Exhibit Hours: October 10, 17 and 24, 6-10pm
McLellan Building, 63 E. Congress (NW corner of Scott Ave. and Congress)
Tucson artists Bill Mackey, Julie Ray, Rachelle Díaz and Kimi Eisele, representing several collectives and entities including Worker, Inc., Pop-Up Spaces and Design Co*op, present ±92: Downtown Master Plans, 1932-2009, a compilation of over 100 Downtown Tucson master plans, comprehensive plans, studies and projects. The exhibition will include realized and unrealized plans authored from the early 20th century to 2009. An interactive timeline will help viewers track world events, economic and social trends, and Tucson’s history in relationship to the plans’ origins, realization, or death. This is a rare opportunity to see ALL of the planning for downtown Tucson in one space at one time.
Also included in the exhibition will be 92 images (by photographers including Josh Schachter) of spaces and places that make our downtown unique—some of these are a direct result of planning, some of which are not. A crew of official performing “apparatchiks” (i.e. officials in a large organization, usually a political one), will be on site to collect public input for current and future downtown master planning, for which there are no funds, of course. A small booklet entitled “A Guide to the Master Plans of Downtown Tucson” will be available for purchase.
Worker, Inc., Pop-Up Spaces and Design Co*op received pertinent plans, information, space, and materials for this exhibit from Pima County Planning Department Archives, City of Tucson Department of Transportation, Tucson Pima Arts Council, Poster Frost Architects, BWS Architects, Rob Paulus Architects, Wheat Scharf Landscape Architects, PARKWISE, Earl Wettstein, Alex Kimmelman, Donovan Durband, Sy Schorr, J.T. Fey, John Wesley Miller Companies, MOCA Tucson, Wilko, and others.
Created in 1995, Worker Inc. is a company that specializes in promoting change in the built environment. In 2007, Worker Inc. saw the need for science based research of the more mundane processes of popular culture and formed the Neighborhood Residents Resources Ethnography Studies Unit.
POP UP SPACES seeks to produce temporary, interactive, site-specific installations in empty spaces in which the visitors are not just expected to be passive viewers, but asked to be active participants. The goal of these art-based experiences is to enhance economic vitality and public engagement in downtown Tucson through promotion of the area’s culture, history, architecture and business community.
Design Co*op is a collective of Tucson-based architects, designers, and artists working across disciplines to raise public awareness of the value of affordable and appropriate urban design.
For more information, contact Bill Mackey, workerarchitect@yahoo.com; Julie Ray, juliegraphics@gmail.com; Rachelle Díaz, info@popupspaces.org; Kimi Eisele, kimi@kimieisele.com. Visit popupspaces.org to view past projects.
Press for ±92
- Zocalo magazine: “Actualized & Discarded Designs for Tucson” — August 5, 2009
- Tucson Weekly: “Designs for Downtown” — October 1, 2009