Urban Playgrounds

by Puja Uppal

Imagine a typical day of riding the subway and at the next stop a group of teens dressed in outrageous costumes pile in and begin having a party.  Well that’s what the group that calls themselves Newmindspace did in the middle of the night last December.  The subway party which they called Ride the Reindeer, attracted close to 200 people all looking for a fun party.

So who are these people? Well, they’re two 19-year-olds with creative imaginations and the desire to have fun in non-conventional ways. Lori Kufner and Kevin Bracken are Newmindspace.
It all started back in March 27th of 2005 when the dating couple decided to have a massive egg hunt in the streets of Toronto.  Kufner and Bracken along with their friends and other enthusiasts hid plastic eggs around the downtown core with little messages hidden inside them, and in the middle of the night, the hunt began. 

After the success of that event, the two teens decided to continue using the streets of Toronto as an “urban playground”; so began the Internet driven project, Newmindspace; an ideology of using urban space to create art.   

“We like using public space as a medium for creative expression,” says Bracken.
What first began as a form of spontaneous playfulness among a couple of creative minds is becoming a growing organization of dedicated individuals seeking to inspire and motivate people to use their city as a tool for unconventional acts of creativity.     

“We like to change the way people interact with their city,” says Bracken. “I mean you can entertain yourself.  There’s no need to pay money for a movie when you can go watch life instead.”

Since their first event, Kufner and Bracken, who both attend the University of Toronto, have hosted a number of events both here in Toronto and down south in Bracken’s native New York.  Just this past February, they hosted a pillow fight in the middle of Union Square in New York City which attracted close to 450 people.

Other events have included a party on a TTC street car, a capture the flag game in the streets of Toronto and New York and blowing massive bubbles on Queen St.. They say they are inspired by Christo and Jeanne-Claude who did The Gates in Central Park, New York City, the Toronto manhunt crew, the Pillow Fight Club in London, England, and Improv Everywhere in New York. 

“The first truly internet promoted pillow fight, as far as we can tell occurred in London and then we had our pillow fight in Toronto,” says Bracken.  “We borrowed ideas from London, we borrowed ideas from New York.”

Newmindspace say they have inspired ideas among fellow artists who are looking to throw their own streetcar party or other urban events.

Nineteen-year-old Gwen Graovac of Hamilton was one of the participants in an event this past February called The Queen of Hearts which had enthusiasts painting pink hearts along Queen Street West in celebration of Valentines Day. 

“When I went there I was like we should do this more, it kind of made you question why more people aren’t doing this that’s what was going through my head,” said Graovac. “I mean there were only 40 people and there’s like how many million people in Toronto?” 

But is a pillow fight on city streets or a subway party, art?  

On their Internet site, Newmindspace is described as interactive public art, creative cultural interventions and urban bliss dissemination.  But do the events put on by Newmindspace qualify as interactive art, performance art or is it intervention art?

Interactive art tends to involve the spectator in some way; usually using some form of technology where the viewer can participate and sometimes influence the outcome of the art.  Performance art is usually classified as a ‘show’ where the audience is not necessarily invited to participate.  Intervention art seeks to create moments of disruption in the state of orderly, monotonous and taken-for-granted urban lifestyle.  It tries to challenge the conventional way of seeing, using and engaging with the city.  So maybe Newmindspace is all three.

Tanya Mars, a performance artist and teacher of visual and performing arts at the University of Toronto in Scarborough says as an artist you must examine the reason for partaking in an act of creativity.

“I guess I would say, well what was the energy of the pillow fight and what was the point of it?  Was it to address issues of playfulness? You have to look carefully at your motives as an artist about why you choose to do certain things.”       

With no formal art training, Newmindspace say the events they throw can be defined as art because it allows for creative expression that is seen and experienced by the public.“Some people say it’s performance theatre, some people say it’s more like street theatre,” says Bracken. “Instead of splattering paint upon a canvas we splatter feathers upon a grey public square.  And the photography that comes out of the events…we’re transforming a landscape.”

Graovac agrees,  “You’re affecting tons of other people.  You’re putting something out there, where people, and they literally don’t have a choice,  see it and they have to respond.  It’s not like you have to go in a gallery to look at it, it’s right in your face, for whoever is outside at that time.” 
Other than coming up with ideas on how to have fun and be creative in the city, Newmindspace has another objective: A political agenda.  Kufner and Bracken have been attending Toronto Public Space Committee meetings for about a year.

The TPSC is an non-profit organization trying to improve the state of the city by avoiding commercial influence and privatization.  One of the on-going projects they are involved in is the reduction of big commercial billboards being put up around Toronto.     

Todd Irvine a member of the TPSC says Newmindspace fits in well with the committee’s mandate. “We do similar things that they do in just being fun ideas in public space and things that get people engaged,” says Irvine. “I think they’re coming a bit more from the artistic perspective than us but what they’re doing is getting people interested in public space and getting them interested in spending time in these spaces and places.  We appreciate the work that they are doing.”

Although Kufner and Bracken say they believe in reducing the amount of commercial adds in public spaces and increasing urban sprawl, their main agenda is getting people to think differently about the city they are living in. “In Toronto a lot of people didn’t hold their own city in very high regard until very recently,” says Bracken.

“We just want it to turn around and fall in love with it self,” adds Kufner. “It would be great if everyone was like hey yeah Toronto is awesome, I love it here.”

As Newmindspace continues to gain popularity among the urban crowd, so does their desire to expand the type of art they do.  Kufner says she’d like to do installation art perhaps involving sculptures where spectators decide on the placement and colour of the piece. 

“I’d like to throw some more technology in there too,” says Bracken who is interested in web and graphic design. He’s also the one who designed the Newmindspace website.

Whether it challenges, motivates or inspires people to think about using their city as a medium for creative expression, Newmindspace plans to continue pushing the artistic envelope.   

As for future events Bracken says he’d love to see Newmindspace inspiring others to use the city as an urban playground.  “(I want) more people having creative fun and people thinking of ways to enjoy themselves and interact with their city.”