DIRT & DANGER
DIRT & DANGER is a response to the various, conflicting and political interests shaping urban development and civic discourse in Lethbridge, Alberta.

The work consists of a custom embroidered hat and a simple performance of walking through the downtown core of the small city.  The costume mimics a uniform worn by a police sanctioned, citizen patrol group called “The Watch.” Critically appropriating the policing strategy of patrolling the streets is meant as a rhetorical counter-position against the obfuscating language of cleanliness and safety used in the City’s Downtown Clean and Safe Strategy urban and economic development policy. 

DIRT & DANGER is not a statement of naive contrarianism against efforts to engender social and economic vitality.  It does not make an indiscriminate critique of the programs and social services contained within the strategy framework, nor is it an argument against cleanliness and safety, as such. The former being a concern for the quality of the built environment and the latter a sincere desire to live free from violence and discrimination. What I am suggesting is that “clean” and “safe” are not neutral objectives. They are targeted: exclusive categories aimed at social conformity by establishing narrow standards of conduct while vilifying all those who cannot, or will not, accept such strict parameters of
being. Once washed, clean and safe describe idealized and depoliticized spatial conditions where structures of domination are maintained and their operations proceed unencumbered. 

On the other hand, a coarse and gritty space is not easily ordered. It is an ever shifting aggregate consisting of intimate circumstances, distributed forces, and concrete political effects. These are open, necessary and generous commons.

Photos by Angeline Simon.

2019