Party in the metro!

>> Toronto’s Newmindspace gives Montrealers a taste of their politicized playground

ROCKING THE ROCKET:Sub-TO subway party

by MICHAEL-OLIVER HARDING

In our post-flash mob, high-tech and light-speed communication age, the gatherings organized by Kevin Bracken and Lori Kufner might seem more restrained than those of their forebears like ’80s party monster Michael Alig. But they do promise to deliver a similar ephemeral and collective enjoyment to all Internet-bound thrill seekers. The sprightly founders of the Toronto-based urban arts organization Newmindspace will pay our metro a surprise visit tomorrow, Friday, March 30, when, along with enthused Montrealers, the group carries out what it describes as a “metromorphosis” by dropping a subterranean fun bomb of free controlled chaos on unsuspecting orange line commuters.

Bracken and Kufner, two University of Toronto students who met on the way to a rave in 2003, founded their donation driven organization two years ago with the intent of reclaiming public space from commercial interests. “The state of public space in Toronto is really deplorable,” says Bracken. “There really aren’t that many gathering places apart from plazas and public squares. In North American cities, when people want to see other people, they invite them to their homes. But in European cities, they go out in public spaces.”

Spreading the urban love bug

The pair describes their events as “guerrilla poetry” and “urban bliss dissemination.” In less than two years, they’ve organized bubble-blowing gatherings, Easter egg hunts, cell phone-based capture-the-flag games and sporadic pillow fights, to name but a few. Information about their events finds its way into the electronic ether via the Newmindspace Web site, city-specific blogs, mailing lists and word-of-mouth.

Their steadfast commitment to throw merry shindigs without charge and cultivate a sense of community quickly compelled the pair to attend monthly meetings with the Toronto Public Space Committee (TPSC), a non-profit organization that fights against the corporate takeover of public spaces through advocacy projects. For Bracken, whose studies delve into the design of urban spaces, Newmindspace offers a platform to literally bring his course pack to life. Jonathan Goldsbie, the TPSC’s campaign coordinator, describes Newmindspace as “one of the greatest things about Toronto because it gets the ‘reclaim public space’ message out to people who wouldn’t otherwise be involved with the TPSC. It reaches out to a younger crowd of high school and university students, especially those who wouldn’t consider themselves politically active.”

Aside from having become Hogtown media darlings, Bracken and Kufner’s unique art interventions have been reenacted in countless cities around the world, a feat largely attributable to their Web site’s downloadable DIY guides. “We wrote the guides because we’d really like this free event culture to become more of a widespread phenomenon,” says Bracken.

Corporate charges

Two weeks ago, Newmindspace came under fire courtesy of a contentious Eye Weekly piece that suggested that Newmindspace might be “co-opted by the corporate world” and that its attendees’ overwhelming middle-class whiteness could be equated to “a form of neighbourhood-level imperialism.” Bracken responded by criticizing the article’s “many factual inaccuracies and fabrications,” he says. For one, he describes his and Kufner’s loose partnership with Cundari AMP, which bills itself as “the social media arm” of marketing firm Cundari, as something that is completely distinct from Newmindspace. “We’re not employed by Cundari, but we’d partner up with them on certain events that match our ideological stance, like we did with the World Wildlife Fund,” says Bracken, referring to a fundraising event they threw last November.

Judith A. Nicholson, a lecturer in popular culture at various Toronto universities, believes the gentrification charge is also somewhat unfair. “The people creating trends and cutting edge stuff are youth,” she says. “They’re not afraid to do something crazy, or create an organization without the goal of making money, even if it might get them in trouble.”

On the likelihood that metro security will rain on the transit love parade, Bracken is optimistic. “We have a rule about never asking for permission,” he says, “because we’re not really breaking any laws [attendees are discouraged from bringing alcohol], except for playing music.” Expect a metro car festooned with paper streamers, massive speakers and partygoers this Friday night, and count on the raver constituency to represent.

TRANSIT RAVERS: Kevin Bracken and Lori Kufner

“We do notice that a lot of the people who come to our events are ravers themselves,” says Bracken, “and I think that’s because we’re so heavily involved in the scene. I’d expect that if we were really big chess club players, then there’d be a lot of chess club players coming to our events.”

Visit www.newmindspace.com and sign
up to the mailing list for details about
Montreal’s inaugural metro party