About the author:
Laura GodfreyGraduated with a BA from York University in 2008, where I worked as the Assistant Arts Editor at Excalibur, the university's community newspaper...
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Luminato (26), Sarah Lazarovic, TwitterJust when the fleeting, inconsequential world of Twitter is beginning to spread its wings, one Toronto artist has decided to pluck some noteworthy Tweets from the Twitterverse and stick them somewhere permanent.
Sarah Lazarovic’s art installation, called “Older,” was shown Tuesday in the Luminato Box at Brookfield Place (181 Bay St.). It was the fifth of 10 installations to be shown by different artists at this location - one for each day of the Luminato Festival.
For this installation, Lazarovic enlisted the talent of Wayne Reuben - the guy who hand-paints Honest Ed’s iconic store signs. Visitors to the installation were surprised and pleased to see these pithy statements written out in the authentic, unmistakenly Torontonian typography.
Lazarovic’s use of Twitter is based on an idea to take something impermanent and show people some of the witty, funny and thoughtful comments that people post in 140-character bites. Some of the Tweets were taken from random Torontonians, and some were well-known locals including Mayor David Miller and one-man band Final Fantasy.
“When you scroll down the page [on Twitter], you can hit ‘Older’ and read previous posts, but after a while they’re not really searchable,” Lazarovic said.
“So people are writing these sometimes interesting, sometimes banal things, and then they’re just disappearing.”
Lazarovic, infinitely approachable and full of smiles, spent the evening at the Luminato Box welcoming curious passersby to her exhibit. According to her, one of the great things about Twitter is the intimacy it creates with usually untouchable people in the city. How else would we know when our dutiful mayor was “off to the dentist?”
“[The mayor] went crazy for Twitter when it first came out, and he’s still a hardcore Twitterer,” Lazarovic said.
“It’s compelling because he has no filter - it’s not like he has some spokesperson putting out messages. It’s him sitting with his BlackBerry, telling you all this stuff.”
This idea of making Twitter posts permanent began recently, when Lazarovic started illustrating her favourite Tweets. They were posted on Torontoist.com, a blog she co-founded in 2004 with her now brother-in-law Josh Errett, current online editor for Now magazine. Although she has handed over the reins of Torontoist, Lazarovic makes a successful living as an illustrator, with work appearing in the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and the Ottawa Citizen.
With five days left of the Luminato Festival, that gives five new artists the chance to spotlight their own work in the Luminato Box. Although Lazarovic’s exhibit was taken down at 10 p.m. tonight, Wednesday morning will bring something completely different to the box from Regent Park’s ArtHeart Community Art Centre: a 10-foot totem pole, made entirely out of recycled, painted computer cases.