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| "Halifax Begs Your Pardon!" |
| July 7 -13 2002, Halifax, Nova Scotia. This TML was sponsored by Khyber Art Center and Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. |
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| This TML led to the formation of the Tactical Art Coalition, made up of a savvy set of interventionist artists from both the college and the community. |
It was summer, and Halifax was overrun with tourists
like it is every year, which led TAC to decide to offer
an alt.tour that recontextualized and/or
rehistoricized city monuments, public art, historical
sites, and green areas. This series of interventions
was quite friendly; however, police did overreact to
one element. CAE was giving a lesson in Tactical
Gizmology, in this case making a digital tag (see
documentation). One of the tags (a palm-size LCD
screen) was placed on a ferry with the scrolling
message: "Sorry for dumping raw sewage into the
harbor." It was found by a guard, removed, and
brought to his supervisor. What happened after that,
we can only speculate. The police were called, they
decided the gizmo was a bomb, and proceeded to
close the entire harbor. This unfortunate event
occurred on Friday afternoon just before people were
about to leave work. (Halifax police are known for
overreacting to the least provocation. As noted on
the TAC tour, 500 riot cops tear-gassed 200
protesters outside a G7 meeting the previous fall.
The gassing got out of control and drifted into the
tourist areas where it did its work quite effectively).
The upside of this was that there was a lot of press
and considerable discussion about interventions and
tactics in the press and other public forums. The
politics of urban space became visible for a short
while. The downside was a lot of people needing to
get home from work on the ferry could not (thanks
to the police), and one TAC member got arrested for
"adult divergence." It could have been worse. The
police originally wanted to charge the whole group
with criminal mischief ?a serious jail-time felony? but
in the end thought it would lead to too much bad
press.
The Halifax and NYC (Eyebeam) TMLs were organised
in collaboration with Beatriz da Costa. |
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