Description:Q1196

Published on the occasion of A City Sleepover hosted by Jessica Rose. A City Sleepover took place on October 1st, 2011 during Nuit Blanhe part of the exhibition Restaging the Encounter curated by Candace Hopkins. Over 5,000 people participated in the giant civic slumber party occupying an abandoned train station in Toronto, Canada. A giant civic slumber party occupying an abandoned subway station is a call to action for city builders to go underground. An invitation to participate in the overnight construction of a giant fort, an inhabitable subway station is transformed into a liveable place: Sleepover City. The subterranean station potent for the collective imagination is a site of live architecture, a do-it-yourself city. The result is a shantytown—loosely planned, collaborative, and social—made out of sleeping bags and blankets spanning two subways. Drawing on examples of temporary architecture like tent cities, Sleepover City is a proposal for a model (readymade) city where collective dreaming can take place to re-imagine the city.