*Number subject to depending on friends willingness to participate / actually check their facebook messages.
]]>
Gillian Dykeman, C.E.O. of Human Services Inc. pitched ideas for creative office space design, integrating creativity into the workplace, and increasing worker efficiency at the DNA Artspace opening on November 29, 2013.
I spoke at length about these ideas with the Other Business Collective in the fall of 2012.
Human Services Inc. undertakes creative office space design as a means of engaging with corporate culture. This project opened at the DNA Artpsace in London, ON for November 29, 2013 as part of “No Boys With Frogs”. The research, development and production of this work has been generously funded by a Creation Grant from ArtsNB. An accompanying performance by the C.E.O. of Human Services Inc. (me) performed and pitched the company’s philosophy at the opening of this show.
The desire to make a workplace cool in appearance functions much the same way as all-too-familiar green-washing: the appearance of changing is allowed to stand in for making actual long-term and fundamental changes to power structures and systems.
Capitalism is genius at allowing people to harm each other, and institutional distances (per Arendt’s thoughts on the banality of evil) allow human beings to do great violence to other human beings and the planet while sitting comfortably at their desk in their benign office. How much can coolness and design mask these machinations?
]]>
I made this, and was a barista for 6 hours at the white rabbit open-air arts festival, a site-specific wilderness art residency/ one day art festival. Fellow participants included Amy Belanger , Matthew Carswell, Joshua Collins, Patrick DeCoste, Abby Fry, Zachary Gough, Wes Johnson, Gary Markle, Hannah Newton, Penelope Smart, Ella Tetrault, Danika Vandersteen, and Andrea Williamson
photo cred above: Andrea Williamson
]]>
I fixed up a very treacherous but frequently used shortcut in my backyard in the winter of 2007. As it’s steward for about three months (until I moved away), I repaired a barn door that was in the way, put gravel on the path, and put up a chalkboard and shelf on the barn next to the path. I left out chalk and hung a bucket of extra gravel on a bucket hung from the wall. I started baking and putting out a large jar of cookies a few times a week, using the chalkboard to indicate the kind of cookies. I did all this in secret. People always ate the cookies, and took to writing kind notes to me (not knowing who I was), to each other, and to whomever used the shortcut.
.
]]>
I participated in the group show “Re: Directions” which was installed at the SEEDS gallery in March, 2008. This show was co-curated by Emily Davidson and Scott Rogers. For this show, students fron NSCAD and ACAD exchanged directions. I sent directions to create a tin can telephone long enough to connect the two schools, which Jen Crieghtoninstalled at ACAD. I followed her directions and took pictures of myself in places that matched tourist postcards of Nova Scotia, creating a pic-nic scene at them all, and then installed the picnic with the photographs at SEEDS.
]]>