How can art help rehearse the future and catalyze creative action across sectors and differences on important political issues?

In 2018, Concordia Fine Arts invited Les Interstices to develop and help establish a new arts-based transdisciplinary studio within the university across levels and departments.

The result, The Office of Rules and Norms (ORN), explored regulations, the rule of law, cultural norms and market standards as its main creative material. ORN’s mission is to reveal, comprehend, play with, subvert, and transcend current ways of understanding and acting in relation to regulatory forces in order to make room for more equitable alternatives.

Through the initiatives in its 3 axes, Art as Subversion, Art as Pedagogy and Art as Decision-Making, initial projects will explore grey areas of the building code, socially-biased regulations, the voices of future generations, and real estate speculation. It doing so, it also inspired and supported various students in rethinking their professional and academic pathways and starting new collectives on their own.

ORN was born out of Making Art Making Politics in 2018.