We are pleased to present the following artist talk and film screening:
Artist Talk #19: “7 Attempts to Make Art” by Daniel Young
▪Date＆Time: Monday, April 14th, 2025, 19:00 -20:30
▪Venue: Recording Studio, Acoustic Research Center, Ohashi Campus, Kyushu University
▪Language: English
*If you are interested in attending this event, please register here.
Max. 50 people
Film Screening “Every Building, or Site, that a Building Permit was Issued for a New Building in Toronto in 2006” (2008, 13 min)
▪Date: from April 10th to 18th, 2025
▪Venue: Visual and Audio Lounge, Design Library, Ohashi Campus, Kyushu University
Daniel Young (*1981, Toronto, Ontario, Canada) studied interdisciplinary geography at the University of Toronto. Since 2002, he has worked as a visual artist in collaboration with sculptor Christian Giroux (*1971, Kingston, Ontario, Canada).
In this artist talk titled “7 Attempts to Make Art”, Young will discuss seven artworks by Young & Giroux, ranging from early to recent, presented in chronological order. The works span cinema installations, public artworks, sculptures, and books.
Many of Young & Giroux’s projects center on architecture, urban structures, infrastructure, landscape, and lighting. With a detached, conceptual, and deadpan approach, they examine and document the reality of our built environments, drawing attention to the banal and formulaic appearance of most contemporary construction.
Their film “Every Building, or Site, that a Building Permit was Issued for a New Building in Toronto in 2006” (2008, 13 min) will be screened in the VA Lounge in the Design Library from April 10th to 18th. This piece is the first in a series of architecture-themed film works by the duo, followed by the three-channel video installation Infrastructure Canada (2010–12) and the two-channel installation “Berlin 2013/1983” (2016).
“Every Building…” is based on a list of 130 addresses within the city limits of Toronto, excluding single-family houses. The conceptual framework and title reference Ed Ruscha’s iconic photo book “Every Building on the Sunset Strip” (1966), though Young & Giroux use moving images as their medium. Each building is shown in a single 8-second shot, recorded on 35mm analog film with a stationary camera, always from the same perspective. The shots are edited together in the chronological order of the corresponding building permit approvals. Over 13 minutes, the work unfolds as an unseen portrait of a city at a specific moment in time.
“In summary, the film is a response to changes in the artists’ immediate environment. As Young sums up: ‘… what if the rest of the city disappeared and we were left with only these buildings?’ Every Building, or Site, that a Building Permit Has Been Issued for a New Building in Toronto in 2006 is a present-tense survey of recent and current local construction, a comprehensive assembly of facts that will inform Toronto’s civic future and have inevitable repercussions for citizens’ quality of life. The film is the work of idealists who communicate by example rather than instruction; even their choice of celluloid (rather than digital recording) is a nod to tradition, to workmanship and history, to the tangible over the ephemeral record.”
— Peggy Gale, 2009
Solo exhibitions by Daniel Young and Christian Giroux have been presented at the Prefix Institute for Contemporary Art, Toronto; the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; and The Rooms, St. John’s. Christian Giroux is a professor in the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph. Daniel Young divides his time between Toronto, Vancouver and Berlin. The comprehensive artist book Berlin 2013/1983 was published by ARCH+ in 2017.