4 Comments Add your own

• 1. Mike  |  February 3rd, 2012 at 10:16

  What’s the story behind this?

• 2. Todd Falkowsky  |  February 3rd, 2012 at 10:32

  Not sure, anyone out there have clues? Obviously it is riffing on the TO city logo…but beyond that I am not sure what the concept was. Love it if people could help fill in some gaps on the site…lots of missing dets.

• 3. Darren O'Donnell  |  February 14th, 2012 at 11:31

  I was commissioned by the Queen West BIA to create these for Nuit Blanche 2011. Lillian Chan http://www.chimochan.com was the artist who fabricated them. They ended up being light boxes, with wood frames illuminated by florescent tubes. When the BIA presented these to the city for the inclusion in the catalogue, the city refused to include them claiming they were copyrighted.

• 4. Darren O'Donnell  |  February 14th, 2012 at 11:33

  here’s my artist statement:

  Mistaken City will be four illuminated light box signage (2′x4′x6″) displaying the official City of Toronto logo, rendered with a small spelling mistakes, the word Toronto as Tornoto, Torotno, Tonroto, and Tortono.

  Within the current taxonomy of global cities, Toronto is commonly viewed as Beta, relatively connected and influential within financial and cultural circuits of power, but still not possessing the various attributes to push it over the top into Alpha status. As such, Toronto can be considered a teenaged city with all the attendant insecurities and missteps.

  The desire for recognition from the adult world can propel a teenager into asserting their identity in awkward ways, exploring extremes in fashion, opinions and attitudes and, very often, questioning and doubting themselves. Toronto the teenager is no different, propelled as it is for global recognition, it has a tendency to doubt its past, fret about its future, thereby making mistakes in the present.

  The mistakes of Toronto are legion and constantly debated: The Gardiner Expressway, the OCAD building, the ROM, Rob Ford, Mel Lastman and the spectre of the ultimate mistake that haunts almost every ambitious Torontonian: should I have moved to London/New York/Berlin/Hong Kong/Paris etc. when I was young? Have I make a horrible mistake?

  Mistaken City revels in the mistake that is Toronto, the title playing on the dual meaning of mistake both as something done wrong and an incorrect understanding as in ‘mistaken identity.’

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