Future Perfect: New Bylaws for Civic Spaces

By-laws are cut up word-by-word and meticulously rearranged into a new set of rules for a transitioning world.
Attended Summer 2022
Created by: Mia + Eric and Action Hero
Future Perfect: New Bylaws for Civic Spaces is dada-meets-municipal governance project that recycles the dry and officious language of civic bureaucracy to re-construct, re-engineer and rehearse possible futures.
Real city byelaws documents that govern behaviour in public spaces are cut up word-by-word and re-arranged to create a new set of rules for a new world. Pasted up on billboards around the city, these new “Future Perfect” rules imagine new ways to move through civic space.
This project is a new collaborative project by artist duos Mia + Eric (CA) and Action Hero (UK). In a hopeful, positive act of re-configuration, byelaws that regulate behaviours in civic space are cut up word-by-word and meticulously rearranged into a new set of rules for a transitioning world.

From this new poetic script, selected phrases are enlarged and re-inserted back into the architecture of the cityscape on hoardings and giant billboards, acting as playful instructions, permissions or manifestos; a collection of imagined alternative behaviours unfolding throughout the city.
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Presentations 
  • Toronto, ON: Summerworks Festival- Parks Bylaws, August 2022 
  • Toronto, ON: Streets Bylaws, Summer 2022
  • Gateshead, UK: April 2022
  • Paisley, Scotland: May 2021 
  • Calgary, AB: August 2020