Quotidian things

In 2007, the Toronto art collective 640 480

launched an outdoor art project called Grand

Gestures. The project consisted of ten bronze

plaques that look a lot like the Heritage

Toronto plaques that commemorate our city’s

history.

640 480’s plaques commemorate quotidian,

rather than historical, events. The group

scoured YouTube for videos shot on Queen

Street West, distilled the videos they chose

into mini-narratives, bronzed them, then

mounted them near where the videos were

shot.

One of the collective’s artists, Jeremy Bailey,

got the idea for the project when he was kept

up late one night by the noise from bars near

his home on Queen West: “It’s loud,” he said,

“but it’s how someone remembers a

neighbourhood: by the people, not when a

building was built.” In reviewing the project,

Torontoist said that “What makes the plaques

so brilliant is how, by marking prosaic events

in such an overstated manner, they become

infinitely more interesting.”

Those same “prosaic events” are what makes

a narrative piece of writing powerful. A good

writer has to be in the habit of, first, noticing

them, and, second, writing them down. And

that means that a writer is always at work: at

school, on the subway, at home, at the mall,

she or he is gathering material.

Write a 25-35 word description of a prosaic event you observe here at school.

-- use both narrative and dialogue

-- use third person

-- write in the past tense

-- refer to the characters involved using

pronouns — no names (while those

characters would be surprised to see their

words and actions noticed and engraved, they

should not be ashamed by your description —

this isn’t an opportunity to make fun of our

fellow Lyons)

Watch this slideshow again athttp://121mackenzie.wordpress.com